Handbook of Home Rule: Being Articles on the Irish Question

by Unknown

To understand an Irish Land Bill it is necessary to dismiss at once all ideas of the ordinary relations between landlord and tenant in England, and to grasp a true conception of the condition of an Irish tenanted estate. In England the relation between the landlord and tenant of a farm resembles, with a difference in the subject-matter, the relation between the landlord and tenant of a furnished house. In the case of the house, the landlord keeps it in a state fit for habitation, and the tenant pays rent for the privilege of living in another man's house. In the case of the farm, the landlord provides the farm with house, farm-buildings, gates, and other permanent improvements required to fit it for cultivation by the tenant, and the tenant pays rent for the privilege of cultivating the farm, receiving the proceeds of that cultivation. The characters of owner and tenant, however long the connection between them may subsist, are quite distinct. The tenant does no acts of ownership, and never regards the land as belonging to himself, quitting it without hesitation if he can make more money by taking another farm. In Ireland the whole situation is different: instead of a farm of some one hundred or two hundred acres, the tenant has a holding varying, say, from five to fifty acres, for which he pays an annual rent-charge to the landlord. He, or his ancestors have, in the opinion of the tenant, acquired a quasi-ownership in the land by making all the improvements, and he is only removable on non-payment of the fixed rent, or non-fulfilment of certain specified conditions. In short, in Ireland the ownership is dual: the landlord is merely the lord of a quasi-copyhold manor, consisting of numerous small tenements held by quasi-copyholders who, so long as

they pay what may be called the manorial rents, and fulfil the manorial conditions, regard themselves as independent owners of their holdings. An Irish Land Bill, then, dealing with tenanted estates, is, in fact, merely a Bill for converting the small holders of tenements held at a fixed rent into fee-simple owners by redemption of the rent due to the landlord and a transfer of the land to the holders. Every scheme, therefore, for settling the Land question in Ireland resolves itself into an inquiry as to the best mode of paying off the rent-charges due to the landlord. The tenant cannot, of course, raise the capital sufficient for paying off the redemption money; some State authority must, therefore, intervene and advance the whole or the greater part of that money, and recoup itself for the advance by the creation in its own favour of an annual charge on the holding sufficient to repay in a certain number of years both the principal and interest due in respect of the advance.

The first problem, then, in an Irish Land Bill, is to settle the conditions of this annuity in such a manner as to satisfy the landlord and tenant; the first, as to the price of his estate; the second, as to the amount of the annuity to be paid by him, at the same time to provide the State authority with adequate security for the repayment of the advance, or, in other words, for the punctual payments of the annuity which is to discharge the advance. Next in importance to the financial question of the adjustment of the annuity comes the administrative difficulty of investigating the title, and thus securing to the tenant the possession of the fee simple, and to the State authority the position of a mortgagee. Under ordinary circumstances the investigation of the title to an estate involves the examination of every document relating thereto for a period of forty years, and the distribution of the purchase-money amongst the head renters, mortgagees, and other encumbrancers, who, in addition to the landlord, are found to be interested in the

ownership of almost every Irish estate. Such a process is costly, even in the case of large estates, and involves an expense almost, and, indeed, speaking generally, absolutely prohibitory in the case of small properties. Some mode, then, must be devised for reducing this expense within manageable limits, or any scheme for dealing with Irish land, however well devised from a financial point of view, will sink under the burden imposed by the expense attending the transfer of the land to the new proprietors. Having thus stated the two principal difficulties attending the Land question in Ireland, it may be well before entering on the details of the Sale and Purchase of Land (Ireland) Bill, to mention the efforts which have been made during the last fifteen years to surmount those difficulties. The Acts having this object in view are the Land Acts of 1870, 1872, and 1881, brought in by Mr. Gladstone, and the Land Purchase Act of 1885, brought in by the Conservative Lord Chancellor of Ireland (Lord Ashbourne). The Act of 1870, as amended by the Act of 1872, provided that the State authority might advance two-thirds of the purchase-money. An attempt was made to get over the difficulties of title by providing that the Landed Estates Court or Board of Works shall undertake the investigation of the title and the transfer and distribution of the purchase-money at a fixed price. The Act of 1881 increased the advance to three-quarters, leaving the same machinery to deal with the title. Both under the Acts of 1870 and 1881 the advance was secured by an annuity of 5 per cent., payable for the period of thirty-five years, and based on the loan of the money by the English Exchequer at 3-1/2 per cent. interest. These Acts produced very little effect. The expense of dealing with the titles in the Landed Estates Court proved overwhelming, and neither the Board of Works, under the Act of 1872, nor the Land Commission, under the Act of 1881, found themselves equal to the task of completing inexpensively the transfer of the land;

further, the tenants had no means of providing even the quarter of the purchase-money required by the Act of 1881. In 1885 Lord Ashbourne determined to remove all obstacles at the expense of the English Exchequer. By the Land Act of that year he authorized the whole of the purchase-money to be advanced by the State, with a guarantee by the landlord, to be carried into effect by his allowing one-fifth of the purchase-money to remain in the hands of the agents of the State Authority until one-fifth of the purchase-money had been repaid by the annual payments of the tenants. The principal was to be recouped by an annuity of 4 per cent., extending over a period of forty-nine years, instead of an annuity of 5 per cent. extending over a period of thirty-five years. The English Exchequer was to advance the money on the basis of interest at 3-1/8 per cent., instead of at 3-1/2 per cent. Though sufficient time has not yet elapsed to show whether the great bribe offered by the Act of 1885, at the expense of the British taxpayer, will succeed in overcoming the apathy of the tenants, it cannot escape notice that if the Act of 1885 succeeds better than the previous Acts, it will owe that success solely to the greater amount of risk which it imposes on the English Exchequer, and not to any improvement in the scheme in respect of securing greater certainty of sale to the Irish landlord, or of diminishing the danger of loss to the English taxpayer.

Such being the state of legislation, and such the circumstances of the land question in Ireland in the year 1886, the Irish Government Bill afforded Mr. Gladstone the means and the opportunity of bringing in a Land Bill which would secure to the Irish landlord the certainty of selling his land at a fair price, without imposing any practical liability on the English Exchequer, and would, at the same time, diminish the annual sums payable by the tenant; while it also conferred a benefit on the Irish

Exchequer. These advantages were, as will be seen, gained, firstly, by the pledge of English credit on good security, instead of advancing money on a mere mortgage on Irish holdings, made directly to the English Government; and, secondly, by the interposition of the Irish Government, as the immediate creditor of the Irish tenant. The scheme of the Land Purchase Bill is as follows:—The landlord of an agricultural estate occupied by tenants may apply to a department of the new Irish Government to purchase his estate. The tenants need not be consulted, as the purchase, if completed, will necessarily better their condition, and thus at the very outset the difficulty of procuring the assent of the tenants, which has hitherto proved so formidable an obstacle to all Irish land schemes, disappears. The landlord may require the department to which he applies (called in the Bill the State Authority) to pay him the statutory price of his estate, not in cash, but in consols valued at par. This price, except in certain unusual cases of great goodness or of great badness of the land, is twenty years' purchase of the net rental. The net rental is the gross rental after deducting from that rent tithe rent-charge, the average percentage for expenses in respect of bad debts, any rates paid by the landlord, and any like outgoings. The gross rental of an estate is the gross rent of all the holdings on the estate, payable in the year ending in November, 1885. Where a judicial rent has been fixed, it is the judicial rent; where no judicial rent has been fixed, it is the rent to be determined in the manner provided by the Bill.

To state this shortly, the Bill provides that an Irish landlord may require the State Authority to pay him for his estate, in consols valued at par, a capital sum equal to twenty times the amount of the annual sum which he has actually put into his pocket out of the proceeds of the estate. The determination of the statutory price is, so far as the landlord is concerned, the cardinal point of the Bill,

and in order that no injustice may be done the landlord, an Imperial Commission—called the Land Commission—is appointed by the Bill, whose duty it is to fix the statutory price, and, where there is no judicial rent, to determine the amount of rent which, in the character of gross rental, is to form the basis of the statutory price. The Commission also pay the purchase-money to the landlord, or distribute it amongst the parties entitled, and generally the Commission act as intermediaries between the landlord and the Irish State Authority, which has no power of varying the terms to which the landlord is entitled under the Bill, or of judging of the conditions which affect the statutory price. If the landlord thinks the price fixed by the Land Commission, as the statutory price inequitable, he may reject their offer and keep his estate.

Supposing, however, the landlord to be satisfied with the statutory price offered by the Land Commission, the sale is concluded, and the Land Commission make an order carrying the required sum of consols (which is for convenience hereinafter called the purchase-money, although it consists of stock and not of cash) to the account of the estate in their books after deducting 1 per cent. for the cost of investigation of title and distribution of the purchase-money, and upon the purchase-money being thus credited to the estate, the landlord ceases to have any interest in the estate, and the tenants, by virtue of the order of the Land Commission, become owners in fee simple of their holdings, subject to the payment to the Irish State Authority of an annuity. The amount of the annuity is stated in the Bill. It is a sum equal to £4 per cent. on a capital sum equal to twenty times the amount of the gross rental of the holding. The illustration given by Mr. Gladstone in his speech will at once explain these apparently intricate matters of finance. A landlord is entitled to the Hendon estate, producing £1200 a year gross