Mr. Justice Bewley has retired from office, and has been replaced by Mr. Justice Meredith, a capable and experienced lawyer. He has done, probably as much as in him lay, to alleviate some of the wrong done to Irish landlords; and for this he has been subjected to violent abuse, especially on the part of an advocate of Ulster farmers, whose tongue is at odds with his trade in temperance. But he is bound by the precedents set by those who have gone before him; and though the work of the Land Commission is now better done than it was before the Report of the Fry Commission appeared, and its general procedure has improved, little change has been effected in the reduction of rent in Ireland. The Government, as I have pointed out in a preceding chapter, has made a few administrative reforms in the composition and the arrangement of the Sub-Commissions; but it has not taken a single step to give effect to the recommendations made by the Fry Commission, so far as these are of real importance; it has refused to legislate on the subject, and to bring in the measure that was required; it has even refused to set a further inquiry on foot. The general results of the labours of the Land Commission and of its subordinate tribunals in fixing ‘fair rents’ may be summed up in a very few sentences. According to the Report of the Fry Commission, the tenants of rural holdings in Ireland are about 486,000 in number; 328,720 of these have had ‘fair rents’ fixed, between August, 1881, and the end of March, 1900.[137] The tenants, who have not had ‘fair rents’ fixed, are probably either tenants of lands not within the Land Acts, or ‘future tenants’ since 1881-82, or tenants too poor to pay law costs; but these, perhaps in nine cases out of ten, have indirectly had the benefit of the law, and have had their rents reduced like those of the large majority, by voluntary concessions on the part of landlords. The great mass of ‘fair rents’ has been fixed by the Land Commission and its dependents, and the proceedings of these tribunals have, beyond question, formed a standard for the adjustment of rent; whether ‘fair rents’ have been fixed by the County Courts,[138] or by agreements between landlord and tenant, they have, in the main, conformed to the measure established by the Courts set up in 1881. The reductions of rent made, in every way, in the first statutory leases, were, on an average, rather more than 20 per cent. on the old rental;[139] but those on the second statutory leases have been 22 per cent. more,[140] that is, the fixing of ‘fair rents,’ so far as it has gone, has reduced rents rather more than 42 per cent. It may be asserted, with some confidence, that through the operation of the new Irish land code, taking in tenancies of all kinds, Irish rents have been cut down nearly 40 per cent.; little doubt can exist that they are now lower than they were in the day of Wakefield, and in some instances in the day of Arthur Young, when the price of Irish agricultural produce was less than half what it is at the present time.[141]
The agricultural rental of Ireland, therefore, in all probability, has been reduced almost 40 per cent., or will be in a short space of time; and as long as the present system of fixing ‘fair rent’ continues, however it may be lowered, it will certainly not be raised. The Act of 1881, I have already said, would, by itself, necessarily reduce rents; but the faulty administration of it, on which I have dwelt, has reduced them far more than ought to have been the case. In fact, disguise it as you may, an immense confiscation, gradual, indeed, and veiled, but not the less real, has been made of the property of Irish landlords, even on the principles of a bad law; the evidence of this is, I believe, conclusive. Rents have been cut down indiscriminately in the great mass of instances; for example, rents in country districts only opened to good markets of late years, have been reduced quite as much as rents around Dublin, which had almost a monopoly of the best market until about 1855-60. But the proof of this spoliation is made most apparent by taking into account a single fact, and drawing the natural inference from it. The value of the landlords’ interest in the land, before 1881, was from 20 to 25 years’ purchase; it is now between 15 and 18; at the same time the value of the tenants’ interest has, in thousands of cases, enormously increased. I refer to a few examples out of scores to be found in the evidence given to the Fry Commission. I take first an estate in Ulster: ‘I only remember one case of a holding before 1881 that went up (in a sale of the farm) to anything like 20 years’ purchase of the rent, and I have several cases since then that have gone beyond it. I remember one case that struck me very forcibly because of the great amount the man got—20 years’ purchase. Since then I have known, 29, 35, 36, 34 years’ purchase to be given.’ I turn now to two estates in the south of Ireland: ‘Charles Bolster, 112 acres; rent £79 5s.; sold for £570 in 1889. Daniel Buckley, 9 acres, at rent of £3 3s.; sold in 1889 for £45. Christopher Crofts, 131 acres; old rent, £86; judicial rent fixed in 1893, £80; sold in 1889 for £120. Timothy Reefe, 5 acres; rent, 29s.; sold in 1891 for £47.’ I pass on to the second estate: ‘Next case, 65 acres; old rent, £60; judicial rent, £56 14s., fixed in 1883 by agreement; sold in 1883 for £330. Next, 76 statute acres; old rent, £115; judicial rent fixed in 1885 at £108; sold in December, 1885, for £1600.’[142]
This great fall in the value of the fee simple in the Irish land, and this great rise in the value of the tenant right, coinciding with the general fixing of ‘fair rents,’ distinctly point to a plain conclusion: the interest of the Irish landlord has been enormously reduced, a result never contemplated by the author of the Act of 1881. In truth, there has been little or no decline in the market price of land in Ireland; but property that ought to belong to the landlord has been improperly taken from him, and has been transferred to the tenant who had no right to it. Excuses, however, have been made for this wholesale abolition of rent; they are worthless, but may be briefly noticed. Ireland, it is said, is suffering, like England, from the agricultural depression of late years; and rents in Ireland have not been cut down more by the act of the State than they have been reduced in England by the voluntary acts of landlords. But agricultural depression in Ireland, a land of small holdings, and of pasturage, to a considerable extent, is not, by many degrees, as severe as in England, a land of large farms and largely of cereal culture; a signal proof of this is that, while in England, tenants have, in hundreds of instances, thrown up their farms, there has hardly been a case of the kind in Ireland, as appears from the Report of the Fry Commission. Besides, if agricultural prices have fallen in Ireland, compared to what they were, say, twenty-five years ago, they are higher than they were in the years, say, 1850-55, not to take into account the progress made by Ireland, in the last half-century, in crops, farm machinery, and the breeds of farming animals. As to the reduction of rents in England and Ireland, the supposed analogy completely fails. The rental of England rose greatly from 1850 to 1880; there was no corresponding increase in Ireland; there was thus a margin for reduction, in the greater island, which in the lesser did not exist. Again, no comparison can be made between State-settled Irish rents and English rents lowered by the voluntary acts of landlords. ‘Fair rents’ have practically been reduced for all time; the reduction of English rents is temporary, and can be at once annulled; this difference makes a supposed resemblance a very striking contrast. As to the argument that the Courts which have fixed ‘fair rents’ have been composed of honourable men, and that it is extremely invidious to make charges against them, mere leather and prunella may be brushed aside. No one disputes the honour of the Land and the Sub-Commissioners, but it does not follow that they have not done injustice; no one has disputed the honour of the Commission which carried out the Encumbered Estates Act, and yet it repeatedly sold estates at less than half their value.
The Irish landlords, I repeat, have been iniquitously despoiled; a huge confiscation has been made of their property. If the simplest right is to be done in this province, their claim to compensation has been rendered complete—apart from the utterances of Mr. Gladstone; should this be disregarded, Parliament will have been chargeable with a grave breach of faith, and a precedent will have been set from trampling on the just rights of property in the Three Kingdoms, which will be dangerous in the extreme. I pass on to consider the Irish land on the side of ownership, and the administration of the system of so-called ‘land purchase.’ Of the total of £40,000,000 alone available, some £20,000,000 appear to have been expended; some 50,000 tenants have been made owners of their farms, without having paid a shilling of their own, that is, rather more than one in ten of the whole tenant class in Ireland. The politicians who declared against ‘dual ownership,’ that bugbear of self-sufficient ignorance, can find little consolation in these figures; I shall comment afterwards on what this state of things has produced. The Government of Lord Salisbury still proposes to seek to accelerate ‘land purchase’ of this kind; and loud complaints have been made of the law’s delay in not having made the process more speedy. I have had no experience in this matter, and shall, therefore, give no opinion on it; but it appears to me that there has been some want of care in making advances to these so-styled ‘purchasers;’ not a few were insolvent when they acquired their farms, and many are now on the verge of bankruptcy. This, however, was perhaps inseparable from the system that has been pursued; it is only an additional proof of its essential vices.
CHAPTER VI
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (continued)—PROPOSED REFORM OF THE IRISH LAND SYSTEM
Retrospect of the present Irish land system—Position of the Irish landlords—Position of the Irish tenant class—This not as advantageous as might be supposed—The effects of the land code on Irish agriculture injurious—The effects on the general Irish community—Confiscation, violation of contracts, shock given to credit, increased alienation of classes, and demoralisation—The land system considered on the side of ownership—‘Voluntary purchase’—Mischief of this policy—It sets up a false standard against rent, and creates unjust distinctions between different classes of tenants—The results it has produced already—An instance of the system—The demand for the compulsory purchase of the Irish land caused by ‘voluntary purchase’—Compulsory purchase has some hold on opinion, but is an impossible, and would be a disgraceful and ruinous policy—It would ruin Irish landlords as a class—Instances—It would ultimately bring Ireland into the state in which she was before the Great Famine—Proposed plan for the reform of Irish land tenure—Questions as to the means of compensating Irish landlords, a deeply wronged order of men.
Having traced the attempts that have been made to reform Irish land tenure, in the last thirty years, and noticed the administration of the new Irish land code, I must, for the sake of clearness, take a short retrospect, and consider the Irish land system as it exists at this day; I shall review it on the side of occupation first, that is, in the relations of landlord and tenant. The agricultural rental of Ireland, we have seen, has been, or is being, reduced about 40 per cent. since 1881, through the operation of laws carried out by tribunals of the State; this proceeding, unexampled in civilised lands, has been the means, I have proved, of doing gross wrong to the Irish landed gentry. But this, if a signal, is only one of the many acts of injustice perpetrated on a cruelly injured body of men. The fee simple has been wrested from the Irish landlord, where he has been subjected to the legislation of late years; he has been deprived of the ownership which had been his birthright. An estate, nominally for fifteen years, but really capable of being renewed for ever, has been created against him by an unjust law; and this has been vested in his former tenants, subject to the mode of land tenure known as the ‘Three F’s,’ the chief of these being ‘fair,’ that is, State-settled rents, in the adjustment of which he has no voice. He may, no doubt, retain fragments of his old proprietary rights; parts of his estate may be excluded from the provisions of the law; he may be the lord of ‘future tenants;’ he is left ‘royalties,’ such as minerals, mines, and timber; he possesses most of his former legal remedies; and should the holders of the lands, which had been his own, who have obtained the benefits of the ‘Three F’s,’ infringe the statutory conditions imposed on them, they may be dispossessed, and he may enter upon their farms again. But, notwithstanding exceptions and possibilities like these, the Irish landlord has, for practical purposes, been well-nigh assimilated to a rent-charger, and his tenants have been nearly converted into owners of the soil, an utter revolution in the whole land system, in truth, turning it upside down. The status, indeed, of the Irish landed gentry now bears a strong resemblance to that of the chief landlords of the eighteenth century, who, separating themselves altogether from their lands, let them in perpetuity at low rents, and, as a necessary consequence, produced the middleman, the pest, as he has rightly been called, of Irish land tenure.