But suppose the rents in Ireland were exorbitant, who would be to blame?—the landlords who accepted them, or the people who swore to their extraordinary moderation? Let us look to the registry courts:—[36]
"There the landlords were found opposing the admission of their tenantry to the register, and stating on oath that they considered the rents received by them as the full value of the land—while the tenants, and their neighbours, and the liberal 'valuators,' were proving 'that it was let by those rack-renting and heartless men' grossly under its value. And indeed, when the small extent of the farms whose occupiers claimed the right to vote is taken into consideration, this must appear true; for it sometimes required to prove the land worth thirty shillings the acre more than the rent paid, to bring the annual profit up to the requisite ten pounds.
"That the rents were not considered as too high, we have not only the testimony of the freeholders themselves, but of other 'competent persons,' employed by the registry association, who, before the claimant was placed on the register, were obliged solemnly to swear, in public court, 'that the land was in most instances worth, and that a solvent tenant could afford to pay for it, double the rent imposed on the occupier by the landlord.' We say, in almost every instance, double the rent; for when it is considered that many have registered from seven to eight acres, it would be necessary to do so in order to bring the value up to the required £10; and yet those men who have so sworn, and those leaders who have encouraged and induced them so to swear, and who have procured and paid others to corroborate their testimony on oath, are the persons who so lustily proclaim the extortion of the> landlords! If what they have sworn, and what their priests have encouraged them to swear, be true, their landlords must be indulgent and merciful indeed. If the contrary, not only have they been guilty of perjury for their own injury; but those who assisted and abetted them must have been aware that they were encouraging them to commit a grievous sin."
At that time it was Mr O'Connell's object to attain political power, by proving the lands were set at a cheap rate; now it is his object to obtain popularity, by declaring that they are set at a rate far too dear. Which of his assertions are we to believe?
It may be said that only a few, comparatively speaking, of the landholders registered their votes; and that, from the value of the holdings of a few, it would be unfair to draw a conclusion as to the terms on which the land was held by the bulk of the people. This objection could only be urged by a person unacquainted with Ireland; for any man who attended the quarter-sessions there, must know that, if all the persons for whom the priests and liberal clubs served notice, and whose qualifications they were prepared to support, had come forward to claim and establish their rights to the franchise, the number on the register would have been quite as great as (if it did not exceed) that of the old forty-shilling freeholders. If the claims of those who did apply, and who, although rejected, were most vigorously sustained by the agitators, had been substantiated, the constituency would have been quite as numerous as the most ardent patriot could desire.
From whatever causes the wretched condition of Ireland may arise, want of tenure cannot be included amongst them; for if length of tenure secured prosperity, Ireland should have been prosperous indeed. In no country were such long leases heretofore given: from three lives and thirty-one years to three lives and sixty-one years, were the terms usually granted; and at this moment there are many leases still in existence, in all parts of the country, made towards the close of the last century, and held directly from the owners. And although the lands held under these are at a rent very much below even the present depressed value, and of course greatly under what they would have fetched in the time of the war, still we do not find their possessors generally comfortable or independent; but, on the contrary, they are in most instances in a worse condition than those tenants whose rent has varied with the times, and been influenced by the rise or fall in the value of agricultural produce. Seeing, then, that men placed in the most favourable circumstances, both as regards the moderation of their rents and the length of their tenures, are generally more wretched in the appearance of their dwellings, and more neglectful of the cultivation of their farms, than those at the mercy of landlords, represented to be the most tyrannical on earth—we must seek the cause of the degraded state of the people elsewhere than at the door of the owners of the soil. Until within the last few years, (and those are the years in which the landlords have most exerted themselves, and in which the tenantry, who would be influenced by them, have most improved,) leases of at least twenty-one years, and one life, were always given, which not unfrequently prolonged the tenure to sixty or seventy years. And nothing can be more erroneous than to suppose that the refusal to grant leases, latterly practised by some Irish landlords, has been the cause of any hardship or suffering to the people. The contrary is the fact; and no men know this better than those who so loudly exclaim against the practice. It is a great mistake to imagine that leases are in no instance granted: the truth is, that they are still very generally given; and that in a great majority of those instances where they are withheld, they are so withheld, not with the intention of taking advantage of the tenant's improvements, or depriving him of his political rights, (as the English people are led to believe,) but for the purpose of compelling him to improve and to live comfortably, in spite of his own predilections. On the best managed estates in Ireland, and those where green-cropping has been most generally brought into operation, there are no leases; yet on those properties the tenantry are invariably the most independent and contented. On the estates of the Earl of Gosford, and other proprietors in the north, under the able superintendence of Mr Blacker, (whose conduct is the theme of universal approbation,) no leases are given until the tenant shows, by his industry and his exertions, that he deserves one; and then, after he has for some years cultivated his farm in a proper manner, and is taught to estimate the value of an improved system, he gets his lease as the reward of his industry, without the slightest advance in his rent. From the bad feelings implanted in the minds of the peasantry, they generally prefer living in comparative misery, and allowing their land to remain in a state of nature, whether they have leases or not, rather than make any improvements which might tend to the landlords' ultimate advantage, even though these improvements would produce immediate benefit to themselves; and this bad feeling is actually supported by the undisguised enmity, which unfortunately, of late years, subsists between the gentry and the priests. We are far from saying that acts of oppression and injustice may not sometimes be perpetrated by landlords and agents. Amongst so numerous a body, there must be bad men: and if an instance, lately mentioned by Mr O'Connell, be true—namely, that of an agent who set a farm occupied by an industrious and well-behaved tenantry, who owed no rent, to an extensive grazier, at a rent of four pounds a year less than the resident tenants offered to secure—we must at once admit that nothing could be more heartless or cruel. But then we are bound in justice to state, that the agent so accused was the bosom friend of the great agitator himself, and a leading member of the Repeal Association, which has constituted itself the protector, par excellence, of the Irish people. May we not fairly suppose that, when Mr O'Connell denounces his friends, he would not hesitate to drag his political opponents to the bar of public opinion; and that the paucity of facts which he is able to adduce against the landed gentry, is a proof that they have not neglected the duties of their station, in so flagrant a manner as his wholesale denunciations would lead us to expect?
How can we be surprised at Irish absenteeism? Can we expect that any man who can avoid it, will willingly expose the lives of himself and his family, by taking up his residence amongst the "Thugs" of Tipperary? If an absentee comes to reside personally to superintend the improvement of his property, and takes part of his own estate to make a demesne and build a mansion, he must dispossess someone—and, like Lord Norbury, he is shot. Should he escape his fate, his motives are misrepresented, and his anxious endeavours to give occupation and employment to the people, are converted into the worst crimes; because they can only be carried into effect by changing the condition of men from pauper and idle tenants to that of regularly worked and well paid labourers. And what object can he have, in risking death in the cause of those who suffer themselves to be so misdirected and misled? Local influence he can have none—that will be monopolized by the priest; political importance he cannot expect, in a country where the representation is placed exclusively in the hands of the Roman Catholic bishops.[37]
Mr Waller resided, and employed the labourers in his neighbourhood; but he took a part of his own land into his own hands—he ejected tenants who were unable or unwilling to pay their rents, and he gave them compensation, and to such as remained employment. What of that? He dared to occupy his own property, and for this he suffered years of persecution. His own expenditure, and his wife's charities, were no protection; and at length, while enjoying the comforts of his home, he and the amiable and unoffending females of his family, were cruelly butchered on his own hearth: and though, in the conflict, their assailants must have been wounded and marked, they have not as yet been discovered. May we not ask why is this? How comes it that, in a Christian country, murder is tolerated, nay openly approved? that the assassin is protected and concealed, instead of being delivered up, and made amenable to the offended laws of his country?[38] Can the ministers of that religion professed by the vast majority of the people, have faithfully discharged their sacred obligations, if men be found, professing the religion of Christ and understanding its precepts, willing to enrol themselves as the hired bravoes of a "Black Sheep Society," and to butcher their neighbours for a petty reward? The Roman Catholic religion condemns murder as strongly as the Protestant religion; yet how happens it, that a whole community professing that faith winks at the crimes of the guilty? This total demoralization we look on as the worst feature of the case. There are, and always must be, bad men in every society; but how the great mass of the people could be brought to tolerate the commission of crimes amongst them, which cry aloud to Heaven for vengeance, is more than we can comprehend. Had the priests devoted that time which they spent in exciting the passions and misleading the judgment of their flocks, in the inculcation of the divine precept of brotherly love—had they exercised that influence which they undoubtedly possess in calming the passions and enlightening the minds of their people—the condition of their country would now be widely different from what it is; and surely their bishops might have been better employed in remedying the neglect of their subordinates, than in attending political meetings, and delivering postprandial orations, savouring more of the braggart boastings of a drunken drumboy, than of the deliberate opinions of a dignified ecclesiastic. In their zeal as politicians, the Roman Catholic clergy have forgotten their duties as priests; and they are now beginning to get a foretaste of the consequences: they became mob leaders at elections and popular meetings—they rode the whirlwind, "can they direct the storm?" The ruffian tasting blood in beating the electors, soon undertook business on his own account. The step from savage assault to actual murder, is but ideal. The man who encouraged, or connived at, the lesser crime, could scarcely expect to prevent the perpetration of the greater and the "boy" who commenced by applying "gentle force" to a reluctant voter, became in the fulness of his crimes the avowed assassin. The priest used him as "the bully"—he may repudiate, but he dare not denounce, him as "the murderer."
In the late debate, two publications on the state of Ireland were recommended to special attention; the one, "A Cry from Ireland," by Lord John Russell—the other, Mr Wiggins's book, by the Marquis of Normanby. The first we should scarcely have noticed, (the noble lord mentioned it with so much diffidence,) but for the impression it seems subsequently to have made on the mind of Sir R. Peel; but when we found a noble ex-lord-lieutenant recommending, as trustworthy and instructive, a book written on a subject which engrosses much of the public attention, we felt it our duty at once to apply to his "fountain of knowledge."
We cannot say that we have "read with attention" the whole of this whimsical production: few there are, we believe, who could command patience enough to wade through such a mass of contradictory absurdity; but we have selected such parts as we could find at all bearing on the subject Mr Wiggins professes to write upon; and we shall transcribe some few passages, if not for the benefit, at least for the amusement, of our readers; merely premising, that this gentleman gives us no data on which to found our opinions, and no guarantee for the truth of his statements but his own assertion. First, as regards the amount of rent charged in the north and south, Mr Wiggins says—
"In accordance with this view of the case, we find, in practice, that the rents are far higher in proportion to the produce of the land in those parts of Ireland where Romanism prevails, than in other parts, where Protestantism is professed by a considerable portion of the population."