THE IRISH LANDLORDS AND THE LAND ACT.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.".1
Sra,—The Irish landlords who are asking for compensation for the injustice done them by the Land Act, quietly take for granted in all their statements that the value and practically receivable income of an Irish estate are to be measured by its nominal rent-roll ; that, for instance, a reduction by the Assistant-Commissioners of 25 per cent. in rent entails upon the landlord a diminution of one-fourth in the value and income of his land. If Irish rents were like Consol dividends, this, of course, would be plain enough ; but in reality there has always existed the broadest possible distinction between the rents which Irish tenants of highly rented estates have undertaken to pay, and those which their landlords can, upon an average of years, look forward to receiving. Perhaps, then, you will allow a correspondent who has had some small experience in Irish land. dealings to warn your English readers against accepting the landowners' extravagant estimates of the injury they will suffer from reductions in their nominal rent-rolls.
Firstly, as to the effect of such reductions on the selling
value of land think it may be stated. without fear of con- tradiction that, except in the few cases in which the actual tenants have become purchasers, land let at rack-rents, or any- thing approaching to them, has always fetched comparatively low prices in the Landed Estates Court. So far, indeed, is rent alone from being the measure of value, that the prices of free- hold land. sold in the Court have in ordinary times varied. within such extremely wide limits as from 10 years' to 25 years' pur- chase on the annual net rental. In other words, a man may have now and then bought £120 a year in rack-rents, and could almost always buy from £80 to £100 a year in such rents, for the price he would have to pay for £48 a year receivable out of land let at low rents. Purchasers of land, of course, look to the security for the rent they buy, quite as much as to the amount of it; and in all ordinary times this security lies mainly in the quantity, quality, and productiveness of the land for which the went is paid. The much vilified. Griffiths' valuation, affording trustworthy information upon these latter points, has often proved a safer guide than the rental to the selling value of land. Some years ago, I acted as trustee of an estate (about up to the average in point of condition and management), part of which was sold in six lots in the Court. Putting out of the question one small lot, for which, for special causes, there was no real bidding, I find that upon the net rental the prices obtained varied as widely as from fourteen years to twenty-five years' pur- chase, while upon Griffiths' valuation they ranged within the narrow limits of from 20 to 22 years' purchase. If results like these afford any trustworthy guidance, it may be reasonably doubted whether the estates mentioned in Lord Monck's letter as having been reduced in rental by the Assistant-Commis- sioners from £14,063 to £10,592, would have fetched much more money in the Landed Estates' Court before the redaction than afterwards. It seems clear that in most cases these were rack- rented estates, in fact, as to one estate (in the county of Mona- ghan, I think) it came out during the proceedings that it had been bought in the Court a few years previously, at a trifle under ten years' purchase on the then rental. If, as being let at rack-rents, these estates had fetched 14 or 15 years' purchase on the rental of £14,063, they would have brought in from £196,000 to 0210,000. How many years' purchase land will fetch upon the judicial rental fixed under the Land Act, there are as yet no data for directly estimating. It may be admitted that estates on which rents have been largely reduced by the Commissioners are not likely to sell so well as estates -which have been always low-rented, for the pauperising effect
on the tenantry of the rack-rents previously exacted will take years to get rid of. But there is still Griffiths' valuation to fall back on, and at from twenty to twenty-two years' purchase on Griffiths' valuation (29,311), the estates mentioned in Lord Monk's letter would now be worth from £186,000 to £195,000.
Turning next to the question of income, no doubt, until the commencement of the Land-League agitation, even rack-rents have been fairly well paid, whenever harvests have been good and the prices of agricultural produce well maintained. Upon too many Irish estates, indeed, the utmost that could be got out of the tenants in such favourable years has been taken as the standard by which rents were permanently fixed. But, of course, upon all highly-rented estates, whenever the times were bad, rents fell into arrear. Though the generality of Irish
tenants are by nature amongst the most penuriou% and hoard- ing of mankind, men from whom the uttermost penny was exacted in rent during prosperous times could do little iu the way of accumulation against bad times. Hence it is that, quite apart from the action of the Land League, and as the result of the bad harvests of several recent years, such vast arrears of rent are now owing on many estates throughout Ireland, that they constitute the most serious practical obstacle to the beneficent working of the Land Act.
Now, it is precisely the precarious margin of rent irrecover- able in bad years, recoverable in good years only at the cost of such a perpetuation of poverty as the landlord himself is out of pocket by, when bad times come round again, that will disap- pear from the nominal rent-roll of Irish estates by the opera- tion of the Land Act. What value an actnary would put upon this occasional and intermittent kind of income, it would be hard. to tell ; but such as it is, this is the income which it is gravely proposed by the Irish landlords and their advocates in the • Press to capitalise for compensation, on the same footing as if it were payable quarterly at the Bank of England, and that, too, without regarding the fact that the income in question adds little or nothing to the selling value of the land it is derived from, and without taking any account of the greater security which every reduction of rent necessarily gives to the landlord. for the rent still remaining payable.—I am, Sir, &c.,
AN IRISH TRUSTEE.
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