The figures and facts recorded above will probably astonish the considerable class of persons to whom the word "Irish" has an air of wanting something, unless it is followed by "pauper." A smaller but perhaps not less intelligent class—that of English travellers in Ireland—will promptly jump to the conclusion that the figures are cooked; they will argue, "We have travelled in Ireland, and have been beset with beggars; how, then, can the country be so free from pauperism? Surely the true state of the case is that the people keep out of the workhouses merely in order to live on public charity in another form?" It cannot, I regret to say, be denied that mendicancy is very common in Ireland; so common as to be little less than a national scandal. There is, however, something to be said in mitigation of judgment, though perhaps not in defence. It is a matter in which figures are of little use; for no one could, by any possibility, estimate how many persons live wholly by begging. That there are in every community some persons who do may be taken as certain. That their number is larger in proportion to the bulk of the population in a Roman Catholic than in a Protestant community, is antecedently probable. The theory of the Roman Catholic religion positively encourages mendicancy. It is held to be no sin to live on alms, and to be a positive merit to give alms. Never turn away thy face from any poor man, is a text acted on by devout Romanists in its most literal acceptation. The result is not difficult to foresee. It must, however, be recorded to the credit of the Irish Catholic clergy, that they are beginning to see the folly of indiscriminate almsgiving; and though they are hampered in no small degree by the traditions of their Church, they have made many successful efforts in the direction of the organization of charity. Another influence, which largely contributes to the existence of the mendicancy that scandalizes the traveller, is the tradition of recent poverty. The habits of centuries are not effaced in a generation. Not much more than twenty years ago, begging was a recognized necessity in the life of the Irish poor. But now, when times are moderately prosperous, begging is limited almost wholly to old people who hang about the doors of Catholic chapels, and about places frequented by tourists. On the roads leading to such "show places," also, the tourist will be often beset by little knots of children clamouring for half-pence; but these are no more professional beggars than a gentleman who amuses himself with pheasant shooting is a professional dealer in game. It is a form of excitement with them; not a very high one to be sure, but not meaner or more vicious than baccarat or rouge-et-noir.
Still, when all is said, there is more mendicancy in Ireland than would exist if things were in a healthier state; and where mendicancy is common, pauperism must fluctuate largely. In more prosperous times, a larger number of mendicants can find support from a more copious supply of alms. When evil times curtail the fund whence alms are supplied, the mendicant must fall back on legal relief. From this point of view the small increase of six in ten thousand, already referred to,[23] seems to show that the commercial depression of 1877 has not largely touched the revenues of the Irish mendicant!
An account of the condition of the Irish people would be incomplete without some reference to the statistics of drunkenness and crime. Here we shall find some results of a rather surprising kind. Thus, in England and Wales in 1876, the population being 24,244,000, the number of drunkards brought before magistrates was 205,567; being, at an approximate estimate, one in every 118 of the population. In Scotland, the population being 3,527,800, the drunkards arrested numbered 26,209, or about one in 134. In Ireland, the population being 5,321,600, the drunkards brought before magistrates were 112,253; showing the enormous proportion of one in every 47 of the people. Of course these figures in all three kingdoms include very many cases of repeated conviction, so that it would not be fair to say that one man in every 118 in England, still less in every 47 in Ireland, is actually a drunkard. All the same, this comparison is sufficiently alarming as well as perplexing. It is rather paradoxical to find Scotland showing a smaller proportion of apparent drunkards than either of the other kingdoms; and some people might be ill-natured enough to hint that this result depended mainly on greater skill in keeping out of the hands of the police. On the other hand, a patriotic Irishman might, without any very flagrant paradox, argue that the fact of so many Irish being arrested for being drunk proves that they are actually a more sober people. It takes less to make an Irishman drunk, partly because he is more excitable in temperament, and partly because he drinks but seldom. The habitually temperate man, when he does casually exceed, shows his condition very promptly; the habitual toper can dissemble it far longer. Another reason that may be given for the state of things here indicated, is that the police force is more numerous in Ireland in proportion to the population than in England or Scotland;[24] and as, for reasons which will be hereafter seen, the police have actually less to do, they are able to expend a quantity of surplus energy in arresting drunkards whom the busier constables of England and Scotland would allow to stagger quietly home. That some or all these causes are in operation to bring about the startling excess of apparent drunkenness in Ireland, is manifest when we come to discuss the statistics of crime. The connection of crime with drink is a commonplace of moralists; but, like most other commonplaces, it requires to be seriously tested by the light of facts.
The crimes with which drink is most closely connected are naturally those which come under the class of offences against the person. Drink may, indeed, prompt offences against property; but chiefly in an indirect fashion. A drunkard is very likely to be in want of things which he may seek to obtain by theft; but drink is not the sole cause of poverty, and professional thieves are not habitual drunkards. Referring then to the class of offences against the person, we find that in 1876 only four persons were sentenced to death in all Ireland. The number sentenced in England was 32. Here is already a considerable discrepancy; for the population of England is to that of Ireland in the proportion of only about four and two-fifths to one, and the death sentences in England were eight times as numerous as in Ireland.[25] But this is not all. Nearly all the murders in Ireland are agrarian, and with these drink is only casually if at all connected. On the other hand, nearly every murder in England is committed more or less under the influence of intoxication. Turning to the secondary punishments, we find twelve sentences of penal servitude for life in England, while there were none in Ireland. Ten of these twelve ought perhaps to be discounted, as representing ten commutations of capital punishment, for of the thirty-two persons sentenced to death in England only twenty-two were executed. But the most remarkable discrepancy is seen when we come to sentences of penal servitude for terms of years. Of these there were only fifty in Ireland against 280 in England. In the absence of returns of crime actually committed (including undetected offences), it is not easy to pronounce an opinion of much value; but from the statistics of conviction it would appear that violent crimes against the person are much less prevalent in proportion to the population in Ireland than in England. These results are by no means contrary to reasonable expectation, when we consider the vast congestion of population in London and other cities in England, to which there is no parallel anywhere in Ireland. But, such as they are, they seem to show that the apparent addiction of Irishmen to strong drink is not attended by a proportionate addiction to the more serious forms of crime. On the other hand (and this must be recorded for whatever it may be worth), we have 1078 sentences of imprisonment and other minor penalties inflicted in Ireland, against only 1533 similar sentences in England.
Turning now to the class of offences against property with violence, we find two sentences of penal servitude for life in England, against none in Ireland; 271 sentences for terms of years in England, against 26 in Ireland; 898 sentences of minor terms of imprisonment against only 69 in Ireland. In cases of this nature one might naturally expect drink to be a considerable predisposing cause. On the other hand, there is no assignable connection between drink and crime unaccompanied by violence, except in so far as poverty is an effect of drink and a cause for crime. Even here, however, the proportion fails; for the convictions for minor offences against property in Ireland were only 798, against 10,674 in England: and of these only 104 suffered penal servitude for terms of years, against 1063 in England.
All this, it may be said, simply shows that there must be a great deal of undetected crime in Ireland. To a certain extent, no doubt, this is true; but the remark applies chiefly to some of the more serious crimes, especially agrarian murder. There is not the same motive for concealing minor forms of crime, nor perhaps would even the Ribbon organization make such concealment practicable. To be sure it may be urged that, though minor crime is not purposely concealed, the police are too busy keeping the peace and looking after Fenians and Ribbonmen to have time for detecting ordinary thefts. This fact may, indeed, have something to do with the apparent scarcity of petty crime in Ireland; but this is certainly not the aspect of the case usually dwelt upon, by Judges of Assizes, for instance, when a Grand Jury sends up a pair of white gloves instead of a sheaf of criminal indictments. However this may be, I merely record the facts as I find them; leaving readers, for the most part, to draw what inferences the facts seem to suggest. One inference they suggest to me is, that Irishmen are not such very drunken animals after all; or else that they are somehow or other an exception to the rule which connects drink and crime. The undeniable blot on the Irish character—agrarian outrage—is not to be accounted for by drink. The true explanation is familiar to all who really know the country. The Irish peasant is very largely dependent on the soil for his support, and believes himself to be wholly so. He also believes himself to have a moral and a historical right to the possession of the soil; a belief which contains a considerable admixture of truth, provided it be stated with the proper limitations. Unluckily, the Irish peasant holds it without any limitation at all; and herein lies the secret of his hostility to the law. The peasant ejected, or in fear of ejectment, looks on himself as a ruined man (which he need not be), and as a wronged man (which he is only very partially). Men ruined and wronged have always been raw material for brigands; and the Ribbonman is simply a brigand in a frieze coat.
I have no desire to compose an Essay on the Land Question; but it is absolutely impracticable to discuss Irish social economy without finding the Land Question in one's way. It is the question which most closely concerns the industrial classes; for the land is the mainstay of Irish industry. It is the pivot upon which all Irish politics turn; for although priestly influence counts for a great deal, that influence itself depends in great measure on the land hunger of the peasantry. I feel that I should be leaving Hamlet out of the play if I did not say a few words on the matter. As I have already hinted, the Irish peasant has three reasons for his desire to be "rooted in the soil." One is a traditional reason. He thinks that his forefathers were unjustly ousted by foreign conquerors. His belief rests on an utterly distorted view of history. It is true that eight hundred years ago a few of the ancestors of a few of the existing peasantry might in a sort of sense have been called landowners. But so far as the Gaelic race survives, it would be equally true to say that the ancestors of the existing peasantry had been the serfs or the slaves of barbarous chieftains. The old Gaelic tribal ownership, if left to itself, might or might not have ripened into a peasant proprietary; but the only real grievance which the existing Gaelic peasantry can allege, is that the English conquest forcibly interrupted the natural process of evolution. Moreover, a large number of the existing peasants are no true Gael at all, but the descendants of Danes, Normans, and the various waves of Saxon settlers from Elizabeth to William of Orange. In parts of Ireland there are even to be found the descendants of French Huguenots, of Scotch fugitives involved in the Stuart insurrections, and of refugees of 1793. That such a colluvies gentium should claim to be the heirs of Septs which occupied the land
"Ere the emerald gem of the Western world
Had been set in the crown of a stranger,"
is simply a proof of profound ignorance of history. Such, however, is the vague traditional belief; and it is complicated with a moral sentiment, that he who tills the land has a right to live by the land. The sentiment is open to no objection, provided it be understood that the land is an instrument of production in which the whole community is interested. The cultivator has the same right to live by the land as the artisan to live by his handicraft, and no more—that is, both peasant and artisan have a right to expect that the social system shall be so adjusted that neither shall be unjustly deprived of the fruit of his labour. But neither peasant nor artisan can claim that any instrument of production shall be used for the sole sake of the producer. Hence, even if peasant proprietorship were undeniably the best thing for the peasant, it does not follow that he has a moral right to it, unless it be good for the whole community as well. This consideration is too often neglected by the thorough-going advocates of peasant proprietorship. They assume that the interests of the peasants are the only interests to be considered. In Ireland, indeed, they are not far wrong; for the peasantry are very nearly the whole community. This, however, only raises the previous question, whether peasant proprietorship would be a success in Ireland—of which hereafter. The last and most practical of the agrarian arguments is that a tenant evicted is a man ruined. Even this is only partially true, and at most is only an argument against capricious eviction. It is conclusive as against the system of tenancy at will, or any of those short tenures which are, in fact, a standing notice to quit. It holds good in favour of peasant proprietorship to this extent—that the ruin of a peasant proprietor can only occur through his own fault or misfortune, and not through the caprice of a landlord. In short, the discontent of the Irish peasantry proves that the Anglo-Irish system of tenure is about the worst of all possible systems; but it proves little or nothing in favour of peasant ownership.
My own opinion (valeat quantum) is that the soil and climate of Ireland render the country utterly unfit to maintain a considerable body of peasant proprietors; but that, nevertheless, it would be wise and politic to establish peasant properties as widely as may be practicable. The climate is notoriously damp, and variable in the extreme. Grain crops are inferior and precarious—root crops are not much better—even meadows are untrustworthy, because of the difficulty of haymaking—but Irish pasture is perhaps the best in the world. Natural conditions mark out Ireland as a pastoral and cattle-breeding country; and such a country is the destined home of latifundia. It is not merely that cattle require large spaces of pasture; but the trade in cattle requires capital, and requires the power of staying through seasons of adversity. An attempt to breed or deal in cattle by a class of peasant proprietors, acting singly, could only end in ruin; a ruin even more complete than bad seasons would bring upon unsuccessful cultivators of grain. Another product for which Ireland is eminently fitted is timber.[26] This also obviously requires spaces of land, and intervals of idle capital, utterly incompatible with any system of small holdings. Nature would seem to have marked out Ireland as a country to be thinly populated; historical accident once made her one of the most populous of countries, and we all know what came of it. The people were dependent on a single kind of food; it failed, and misery ensued such as modern Europe had never beheld. The scenes of 1847 we may devoutly hope will never be witnessed again; but such a season as 1878-79 would be a trial that few peasant proprietors could stand. Why then do I say that a peasant proprietary ought to be created? Because I believe that in the experiment is to be found the sole method of convincing the Irish peasants that their true interest lies in quite another direction. The peasant now believes that all he wants in order to be prosperous is to be "rooted in the soil." It is of no use to appeal to abstract reasoning. He knows that he has to pay rent, and that he is liable to eviction for non-payment. Carefully as recent legislation has guarded him against capricious eviction, he knows that if his landlord chooses to pay for turning him out, out he must go. The few of his neighbours who do acquire freeholds, he perceives to be comparatively prosperous. He does not take into account that the prosperity of the freeholder is maintained by precisely the same exceptional energy and thrift which in the first instance enabled him to secure the freehold. Besides, it is undeniable that cæteris paribus a man who holds rent-free is likely to be better off than one who pays rent; and so long as rent is the rule and freehold the exception, the few freeholders will seem at least to possess an advantage over the many rentpayers. In short, the peasant farmer will never cease to believe ownership a panacea for all his ills, until he shall have tried it, and failed. Of course it does not absolutely follow that the experiment of creating a peasant proprietary must needs fail. It may succeed; and then the Irish land problem is solved. For the reasons given above, however, I think it would fail. If all the holdings of fifteen acres and under (there are 285,000[27] of them, or nearly half the whole number of farms in Ireland) were turned into peasant properties tomorrow, I believe they would in thirty, or at most in fifty, years be recast into large cattle farms, owned probably for the most part by joint-stock companies. The process of consolidation would be partly the buying out of ruined peasants after some such seasons as we are now undergoing; partly a voluntary union of the residue, who would find association desirable in order to secure a sufficiency of land and capital. But those who might be compelled to part with their lands could no longer ascribe their ruin to the tenure by which they held. It would be made clear to them and to all concerned that it is the laws of Nature and not the laws of England which hinder Ireland from maintaining a dense agricultural population.