When Mr. Gladstone introduced his first Home Rule Bill in 1886, the land war was at its height. The country was, on the one hand, full of intense and unreasoning bitterness and resentment, and, on the other hand, of unreasoning terror of the consequences of the change of administration. There are many persons, to-day convinced believers in the policy of Home Rule, who do not regret that the Bill of 1886 failed to pass. Things were not very much better in 1893, although, owing to the Land Act of 1881, the land war was slowly losing its fierceness. Since then a slow, but no less deep and far-reaching, change has passed over the tenant farmers of Ireland. The bitterness and discontent which rightly possessed them [pg 169] during the whole of the last century have at last given way to more kindly and contented feelings. This is due in a great measure to the large remedial measures passed first by Mr. Gladstone's Government of 1880 to 1895, and afterwards by the Conservative Administration between 1896 and 1905; but it is perhaps even more due to the feeling which has slowly grown up among the agricultural population that, at last, they are being listened to, and that their wants are being attended to, imperfectly, no doubt, but still with sympathy and with a desire to do what can be done to meet them. Whatever dangers may attend the granting of Home Rule now, they will not be the dangers which terrified and controlled public opinion in 1886 and 1893. Almost all the confusion, trouble, and crime of last century was due to the vicious absurdity of the Irish land code and to the miserable condition of the Irish tenant farmers produced thereby. That is now changed and Ireland has become a quiet and comparatively crimeless country. The danger which many foresee under a Home Government is of a different kind. It is rather that the overwhelming peasant vote may render the administration unduly parsimonious and so unwilling to place any additional burden on the owners of land that a kind of political stagnation may arise therefrom. Ireland cannot, of course, be kept permanently out of the great movements of European thought, but, for the moment, it may be safely alleged that in no part of Europe is property safer.
Part I. The Fair Rent Acts and the Land Purchase Acts.[121]
Two Classes of Occupiers of Land in Ireland—Economic and Uneconomic.
The occupiers of Irish agricultural holdings are of two classes—those whose farms are economic, and those whose farms are uneconomic. By an economic holding is meant one of sufficient productive capacity to support a family at a reasonable standard of comfort without help from outside sources. One class holds land of a fertility, quantity, and situation that enables the occupier to live at a reasonable standard of comfort out of the produce, and pay a rent. The other class also lives on and partly out of land, but land of a character, quantity, or situation that will not support a family at a proper standard of living without extraneous help. In the case of the first class, the fairness of the rent is the most important consideration; in the case of the second, the land and rent are often minor elements in the struggle for existence. The land is either so limited in amount or of so unproductive a character that, without outside help such as the wages of labour, or help from friends and relations, the income of this class would sink below the line necessary for subsistence, and actual starvation would ensue. It has often been pointed out that agricultural rent is in many cases paid in Ireland for farms out of which [pg 171] no true economic rent is earned. This means, as every economist knows, that, were the ordinary and necessary cost of production, including the remuneration of labour, deducted from the returns from the cultivation of land, no surplus would remain for the payment of rent. Consequently, the rent paid for such land is not true agricultural rent. It is more of the nature of house-rent paid by working men in towns, who, out of the wages that they earn in their various employments, spend certain portions in food, clothing, and shelter. But the Irish peasant, who tries to support his family on an insufficient farm, has not the advantage of having a demand for his labour at hand. He has either to emigrate, to migrate, or to live below the proper standard of decency and comfort. Consequently, he is neither in the position of the farmer nor of the labourer. He is the occupier of a piece of land on which he builds his cabin, and pays a rent which is supposed to be agricultural, but which is really not earned out of the land, but is paid out of whatever other supplementary income he is able to obtain by working for wages in other countries; or by contributions from outside sources. The Irish Fair Rent Acts are supposed to deal only with agricultural holdings. The rents fixed under them are intended to be agricultural and economic rents. It is evident to anyone who has examined the circumstances of the small holdings of the West of Ireland, that the rents assessed on them under the Land Acts in many cases are not agricultural rents, but are payments more of the nature of site rents, or the rents of non-agricultural holdings, which were not supposed to be subject to the provisions of the Irish Fair Rent Acts at all. Were the Land Acts strictly administered, unquestionably the greater portion of the small holdings on the western seaboard and other [pg 172] parts of Ireland would have been excluded, and applications to fix agricultural rents on them would have been dismissed.
Confusion of Treatment of Occupiers of Economic and Uneconomic Holdings.
The importance of the view here put forward lies mainly in the fact that until the passing of the Act of 1891, under which the Congested Districts Board was created, no attempt was made to distinguish between the two classes of occupiers of Irish land. The occupiers of economic and uneconomic farms were subject to the same laws, and were treated in the same manner. No attempt was ever made to distinguish between the man who could make his rent out of his land and the man who could not. Both were included in the Fair Rent provisions of the Act of 1881, as it was administered, and a rent was assessed on what was practically the site for a cabin as if it were a farm. This confusion of treatment of two different problems renders it necessary to trace the evolution of the Irish Land Acts if we are to understand intelligently the problem that presents itself in dealing with congestion in Ireland, and it is accordingly proposed to sketch shortly the steps by which Irish land legislation has advanced, and how it at present deals with the various classes of holdings that have to be taken into consideration.
Special treatment for the congested districts was not thought of in the earlier remedial Land Acts. The Act of 1881, if strictly administered, as we have seen, would have excluded most of the holdings in such districts. After twenty years' experience of this Act it was found that its provisions, even though amended [pg 173] repeatedly, did not meet the special difficulties. The Congested Districts were not withdrawn from the operations of the various Land Acts—merely additional powers were given for ameliorating the condition of the people in the defined localities.
The Land Act of 1881 is naturally regarded in Ireland as the sheet-anchor of the peasant—as the Magna Charta of his rights. On the other hand, it has been looked on by many land-owners as an unjustifiable invasion of their rights, and it has often been blamed for results which it recorded rather than caused. To justify that Act of 1881, we must understand the preceding conditions that governed the tenure of land in Ireland.