I.
Nothing dies so hard as prejudice, unless it be sentiment. Indeed, prejudice and sentiment are but different manifestations of the same principle by which men pronounce on things according to individual feeling, independent of facts and free from the restraint of positive knowledge. And on nothing in modern times has so much sentiment been lavished as on the Irish question; nowhere has so much passionately generous, but at the same time so much absolutely ignorant, partisanship been displayed as by English sympathisers with the Irish peasant. This is scarcely to be wondered at. The picture of a gallant nation ground under the heel of an iron despotism—of an industrious and virtuous peasantry rackrented, despoiled, brutalised, and scarce able to live by their labour that they may supply the vicious wants of oppressive landlords—of unarmed men, together with women and little children, ruthlessly bludgeoned by a brutal police, or shot by a bloodthirsty soldiery for no greater offence than verbal protests against illegal evictions—of a handful of ardent patriots ready to undergo imprisonment and contumely in their struggle against one of the strongest nations in the world for only so much political freedom as is granted to-day by despots themselves—such a picture as this is calculated to excite the sympathies of all generous souls. And it has done so in England, where "Home Rule" and "Justice to Ireland" have become the rallying cries of one section of the Liberal party, to the disruption and political suicide of the whole body; and where the less knowledge imported into the question the more fervid the advocacy and the louder the demand.
It is worth while to state quite quietly and quite plainly how things stand at this present moment. There is no need for hysterics on the one side or the other; and to amend one's views by the testimony of facts is not a dishonest turning of one's coat—if confession of that amendment is a little like the white sheet and lighted taper of a penitent. Things are, or they are not. If they are, as will be set down, the inference is plain to anyone not hopelessly blinded by preconceived prejudice. If they are not, let them be authoritatively contradicted on the basis of fact, not sentiment—demonstration, not assertion. In any case it is a gain to obtain material for a truer judgment than heretofore, and thus to be rid of certain mental films by which colours are blurred and perspective is distorted.
No one wishes to palliate the crimes of which England has been guilty in Ireland. Her hand has been heavy, her whip one of braided scorpions, her rule emphatically of blood and iron. But all this is of the past, and the pendulum, not only of public feeling but of legal enactment, threatens to swing too far on the other side. What has been done cannot be undone, but it will not be repeated. We shall never send over another Cromwell nor yet another Castlereagh; and there is as little good to be got from chafing over past wrongs as there is in lamenting past glories. Malachi and his collar of gold—the ancient kings who led forth the Red Branch Knights—State persecution of the Catholics—rack-rents and unjust evictions, are all alike swept away into the limbo of things dead and done with. What Ireland has to deal with now are the enactments and facts of the day, and to shake off the incubus of retrospection, as a strong man awaking would get rid of a nightmare.
Nowhere in Europe, nor yet in the United States, are tenant-farmers so well protected by law as in Ireland; nor is it the fault of England if the Acts passed for their benefit have been rendered ineffectual by the agitators who have preferred fighting to orderly development. So long ago as 1860 a Bill was passed providing that no tenant should be evicted for non-payment of rent unless one year's rent in arrear. (Landlord and Tenant Act, 1860, sec. 52.) Even then, when evicted, he could recover possession within six months by payment of the amount due; when the landlord had to pay him the amount of any profit he had made out of the lands in the interim. The landlord had to pay half the poor rate of the Government Valuation if a holding was ￡4 or upward, and all the poor rate if it was under ￡4. By the Act of 1870 "a yearly tenant disturbed in his holding by the act of the landlord, for causes other than non-payment of rent, and the Government Valuation of whose holding does not exceed ￡100 per annum, must be paid by his landlord not only full compensation for all improvements made by himself or his predecessors, such as unexhausted manures, permanent buildings, and reclamation of waste lands, but also as compensation for disturbance, a sum of money which may amount to seven years' rent." (Land Act of 1870, secs. 1, 2, and 3.) Under the Act of 1881 the landlord's power of disturbance was practically abolished—but I think I have read somewhere that even of late years, and with the ballot, certain landlords in England have threatened their tenants with "disturbance" without compensation if their votes were not given to the right colour—while in Ireland, even when evicted for non-payment of rent, a yearly tenant must be paid by his landlord "compensation for all improvements, such as unexhausted manures, permanent buildings, and reclamation of waste land." (Sec. 4.) And when his rent does not exceed ￡15 he must be paid in addition "a sum of money which may amount to seven years' rent if the court decides that the rent is exorbitant." (Secs. 3 and 9.) (a) Until the contrary is proved, the improvements are presumed to have been made by the tenants. (Sec. 5.) (b) The tenant can make his claim for compensation immediately on notice to quit being served, and cannot be evicted until the compensation is paid. (Secs. 16 and 21.) A yearly tenant when voluntarily surrendering his farm must either be paid by the landlord (a) compensation for all his improvements, or (b) be permitted to sell his improvements to an incoming tenant. (Sec. 4.) In all new tenancies the landlord must pay half the county or Grand Jury Cess if the valuation is ￡4 or upward and the whole of the same Cess if the value does not exceed ￡4. (Secs. 65 and 66.) Thus we have under the Land Act of 1870 (i) Full payment for all improvements; (2) Compensation for disturbance.
The famous Land Act of 1881 gave three additional privileges, (1) Fixity of tenure, by which the tenant remains in possession of the land for ever, subject to periodic revision of the rent. (Land Act, 1881, sec. 8.) If the tenant has not had a fair rent fixed, and his landlord proceeds to evict him for non-payment of rent, he can apply to the court to fix the fair rent, and meantime the eviction proceedings will be restrained by the court. (Sec. 13.) (2) Fair rent, by which any yearly tenant may apply to the Land Commission Court (the judges of which were appointed under Mr. Gladstone's Administration) to fix the fair rent of his holding. The application is referred to three persons, one of whom is a lawyer, and the other two inspect and value the farm. This rent can never again be raised by the landlord. (Sec. 8.) (3) Free sale, by which every yearly tenant may, whether he has had a fair rent fixed or not, sell his tenancy to the highest bidder whenever he desires to leave. (Sec. 1.) (a) There is no practical limit to the price he may sell for, and twenty times the amount of the annual rent has frequently been obtained in every province of Ireland. (b) Even if a tenant be evicted, he has the right either to redeem at any time within three months, or to sell his tenancy within the same period to a purchaser who can likewise redeem and thus acquire all the privileges of a tenant. (Sec. 13.)
Even more important than this is the Land Purchase Act of 1885, commonly called Lord Ashbourne's Act, by which the whole land in Ireland is potentially put into the hands of the farmers, and of the working of which much will have to be said before these papers end. This Act, in its sections 2, 3, and 4, sets forth this position, briefly stated: If a tenant wishes to buy his holding, and arranges with his landlord as to terms, he can change his position from that of a perpetual rent-payer into that of the payer of an annuity, terminable at the end of forty-nine years—the Government supplying him with the entire purchase-money, to be repaid during those forty-nine years at 4 per cent. This annual payment of ￡4 for every ￡100 borrowed covers both principal and interest. Thus, if a tenant, already paying a statutory rent of ￡50, agrees to buy from his landlord at twenty years' purchase (or ￡1,000) the Government will lend him the money, his rent will at once cease, and he will not pay ￡50, but ￡40, yearly for forty-nine years, and then become the owner of his holding, free of rent. It is hardly necessary to point out that, as these forty-nine years of payment roll by, the interest of the tenant in his holding increases rapidly in value. (Land Purchase Act, 1885, secs. 2, 3, and 4.)
Under the Land Act of 1887, the tenants received the following still greater and always one-sided privileges, (i) By this Act leases are allowed to be broken by the tenant, but not by the landlord. All leaseholders whose leases would expire within ninety-nine years after the passing of the Act have the option of going into court and getting their contracts broken and a judicial rent fixed. No equivalent power is given to the landlords. (Land Act of 1887, secs, 1 and 2.) (2) The Act varies rent already judicially fixed for fifteen years by the Land Courts in the years 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884, and 1885. (Sec. 29.) (3) It stays evictions, and allows rent to be paid by instalments. In the case of tenants whose valuation does not exceed ￡50, the court before which proceedings are being taken for the recovery of any debt due by the tenant is empowered to stay his eviction, and may give him liberty to pay his creditors by instalments, and can extend the time for such payment as it thinks proper. (Land Act of 1887, sec. 30.)
By these extracts, which do not exhaust the whole of the privileges granted to the Irish tenant, it may be seen how exceptionally he has been favoured. Nowhere else has such wholesale interference with the obligations of contract, such lavish protection of the tenant, such practical persecution of the landlord been as yet demanded by the one-half of the nation; nor, if demanded, would such partiality have been conceded by the other half. Yet, in the face of these various Acts, and all they embody, provide for, and deny, our hysterical journal par excellence is not ashamed to publish a wild letter from one of those ramping political women who screech like peacocks before rain, setting forth how Ireland could be redeemed by the manufacture of blackberry jam, were it not for the infamous landlords who would at once raise the rent on those tenants who, by industry, had improved their condition. And a Dublin paper asserts that anything will be fiction which demonstrates that "Ireland is not the home of rackrenters, brutal batonmen, and heartless evictors"; while political agitation is still being carried on by any means that come handiest, and the eviction of tenants who owe five or six years' rent, and will not pay even one to clear off old scores, is treated as an act of brutality for which no quarter should be given. If we were to transfer the whole method of procedure to our own lands and houses in England, perhaps the thing would wear a different aspect from that which it wears now, when surrounded by a halo of false sentiment and convenient forgetfulness.
The total want of honesty, of desire for the right thing in this no-rent agitation, is exemplified by the following fact:—When Colonel Vandeleur's tenants—owing several years' rent, refused to pay anything, and joined the Plan of Campaign, arbitration was suggested, and Sir Charles Russell was accepted by the landlord as arbitrator. As every one knows, Sir Charles is an Irishman, a Catholic, and the "tenants' friend." His award was, as might have been expected, most liberal towards them. Here is the result:—"We learn that the non-fulfilment by a number of the tenants of the terms of the award made by Sir C. Russell is likely to lead to serious difficulties. They refuse to carry out the undertaking which was given on their behalf, having so much bettered the instruction given to them that they insist upon holding a grip of the rent, and not yielding to even the advice of their friends. About thirty of them have not paid the year's rent, which all the Plan of Campaign tenants were to have paid when the award was made known to them. This is the most conspicuous instance in which arbitration has been tried, and the result is not encouraging, although landlords have been denounced for not at once accepting it instead of seeking to enforce their legal rights by the tribunal appointed by the Legislature."
With a legal machinery of relief so comprehensive and so favourable to the tenant, it would seem that the Plan of Campaign, with its cruel and murderous accompaniments, was scarcely needed. If anyone was aggrieved, the courts were open to him; and we have only to read the list of reduced rents to see how those courts protected the tenant and bore heavily on the landlord. Also, it would seem to persons of ordinary morality that it would have been more manly and more honest to pay the rents due to the proprietor than to cast the money into the chest of the Plan of Campaign—that boite à Pierrette which, like the sieve of the Dana?des, can never be filled. The Home Rule agitators have known how to make it appear that they, and they alone, stand between the people and oppression. They have ignored all this orderly legal machinery; and their English sympathisers have not remembered it. Nor have those English sympathisers considered the significant fact that this agitation is literally the bread of life to those who have created and still maintain it. Many of the Home Rule Irish Members of Parliament have risen from the lowest ranks of society—from the barefooted peasantry, where their nearest relations are still to be found—into the outward condition of gentlemen living in comparative affluence. It is not being uncharitable, nor going behind motives, to ask, Cui bono? For whose advantage is a certain movement carried on?—especially for whose advantage is this anti-rent movement in Ireland? For the good of the tenants who, under the pressure put on them by those whom they have agreed to follow, refuse to pay even a fraction of rent hitherto paid to the full, and who are, in consequence, evicted from their farms and deprived of their means of subsistence?—or is it for the good of a handful of men who live by and on the agitation they created and still keep up? Do the leaders of any movement whatsoever give a thought to the individual lives sacrificed to the success of the cause? As little as the general regrets the individuals of the rank and file in the battalions he hurls against the enemy. The ruined homes and blighted lives of the thousands who have listened, believed, been coerced to their own despair, have been no more than the numbers of the rank and file to the general who hoped to gain the day by his battalions.[B] The good in this no-rent movement is reaped by the agitators alone; and for them alone have the chestnuts been pulled out of the fire. Furthermore, whose hands among the prominent leaders are free from the reflected stain of blood-money? These leaders have counselled a course of action which has been marked all along the line by outrage and murder; and they have lived well and amassed wealth by the course they have counselled.
From proletariats in their own persons they have become men of substance and property. These assertions are facts to which names and amounts can be given; and that question, Cui bono? answers itself. The inference to be drawn is too grave to be set aside; and to plead "charitable judgment" is to plead imbecility.
The plain and simple truth is—the protective legislation that was so sorely needed for the peasantry is fast degenerating into injustice and oppression against the landlords. Thousands of the smaller landowners have been absolutely beggared; the larger holders have been as ruthlessly ruined. For, while the rents were lowered, the charges on the land, made on the larger basis, were kept to their same value; and the fate of the landlord was sealed. Between the hammer and the anvil as he was and is placed, his times have not been pleasant. Families who have bought their estates on the faith of Government sales and Government contracts, and families who have owned theirs for centuries and lived on them, winter and summer—who have been neither absentees nor rack-renters, but have been friendly, hospitable, open-handed after their kind, always ready to give comforts and medicine to the sick and a good-natured measure of relief to the hard pressed—they have now been brought to the ground; and between our own fluid and unstable legislation and the reckless cruelty of the Plan of Campaign their destruction has been complete. Wherever one goes one finds great houses shut up or let for a few summer months to strangers who care nothing for the place and less than nothing for the people. One cannot call this a gain, look at it as one will. Nor do the tenantry themselves feel it to be a gain. Get their confidence and you will find that they all regret the loss of their own—those jovial, frank, and kindly proprietors who did the best they knew, though perhaps, judged by present scientific knowledge that best was not very good, but who at least knew more than themselves. Carrying the thing home to England, we should scarcely say that our country places would be the better for the exodus of all the educated and refined and well-to-do families, with the peasantry and an unmarried clergyman left sole masters of the situation.
In the desire of Parliament to do justice to the Irish peasant, whose condition did once so loudly demand amelioration, justice to the landlord has gone by the board. For we cannot call it justice to make him alone suffer. His rents have been reduced from 25 to 30 per cent. and over, but all the rent charges, mortgages, debts and dues have been retained at their full value. The scheme of reduction does not pass beyond the tiller of the soil, and the landlord is the sole loser.[C]
Beyond this he suffers from the want of finality in legislation. Nothing is left to prove itself, and the tinkering never ends. A fifteen years' bargain under the first Land Act is broken up under the next as if Governmental pledges were lovers' vows. When, on the faith of those pledges, a landlord borrowed money from the Board of Works for the improvement of his estate, for stone cottages for his tenantry, for fences, drainage, and the like, suddenly his income is still further reduced; but the interest he has to pay for the loan contracted on the broader basis remains the same. Which is a kind of thing on all fours with the plan of locking up a debtor so that he cannot work at his trade, while ordering him to pay so much weekly from earnings which the law itself prevents his making.
If the sum of misery remains constant in Ireland, its distribution has changed hands. The small deposits in the savings-banks have increased to an enormous extent, and............