MR. CAMPBELL ON IRISH TENURE.*
WHEN we say that every Member of Parliament who intends to take part in the discussion on Irish land tenure should study this masterly pamphlet, we offer to such member counsel for which, if he accepts it, he will be sincerely grateful. The literature of the subject is already voluminous ; but nothing at once so exhaustive and so temperate has as yet appeared upon the tenants' aide, and it will have this immense attraction for all Conservatives,—it proves beyond controversy that the Irish land question does not involve the English one. An English tenant may have moral rights which are not yet fully enforced, and which the Legislature may one day be called upon to recognize ; but he certainly has not that historical and unbroken co-proprietorship in the soil which Mr. Campbell claims and, as we think, proves for the ordinary Irish tenant. Armed with a minute knowledge of every kind of tenure, from the simplest to the most complex, from that of Scotland, where ownership means an absolute right even of expelling all tenants, to that of parts of Madras, where there is practically no ownership at all, unless it be vested in the State, whichis a debatable point, Mr. Camp- bell shows that tenure in Ireland arose, as in Bengal, from the gra- dual crumbling-down of the village system ; that up to the Settle- ment by James I. there was an acknowledged co-proprietorship rest- ing between the chief and the cultivator ; that after the great Confis- cation made by Cromwell, the new landlords readmitted the tenants as cultivators very nearly on the old terms, there being competi- tion for tenants ; that the customary right of retaining posses- sion was maintained by both parties for ages after it had been formally abolished by law, and that it has at length been consoli- dated into a system under which the landlord is entitled to every- thing except possession, which in his judgment, as well as the tenant's, belongs to the latter. Mr. Campbell gives heaps of instances in which this fact is acknowledged by the superior class, a man like Mr. Trench, for instance, writing of ' a tenancy as a property; and another, like the late Lord Derby, declaring that he could not evict ; and a third, like Mr. Scully, being condemned by all landlords merely or evicting ; and expresses his belief that but for the split on politics, the two classes would never have quarrelled on the subject. So ingrained is the belief in both, that in the course of extensive travels Mr. Campbell never met a landlord who would not hear reason upon the subject, if only he were an Irishman. He was sure to understand and in part to acknow- ledge' the tenant's claim, though he might wish to limit it. He considers that the customary right which exists everywhere, and is identical with Indian " ryottee," is best formulated in Ulster, and is the root of the apparently preposterous prices given for the good-will. "It is sometimes said to be extra- ordinary and unaccountable that farmers give for the tenant-right of a farm a price as high as that which the fee-simple of the land would fetch. But then it must be remembered that what is called the fee-simple is only the land- lord right, burdened with the tenant-right of another who is prac- tically co-proprietor. It is quite intelligible that a farmer should give 140 for a right of occupancy carrying the possession which he desires, rather than pay the same sum for a superior landlord.- right which gives no possession. If the two rights could be sold together they might fetch £80; but I believe that the great majority of the farmers would in such a case rather give £800 for the tenant-right of twenty acres than the same sum for the absolute fee-simple of ten acres." So full, again, is the-tenant's be- lief in the validity of his right, that he will not give it up for a written lease, which, he says, only gives the landlord rights of inter- ference not involved in the customary system. Mr. Campbell believes • The Irish Land. By George Campbell, Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces of India. London: Trabner. Dublin: Hodges.
that the right, on the whole, secures the prosperity of the farmer, even when his farm is small, declaring that Galway cottiers do actually do the thing economists say they cannot do—that is, bring up a splendidly handsome race of children who are getting educated—and drawing this remarkable contrast between Scotland and Ulster :—
"True, in Scotland a man would devote the same money to taking on lease and stocking a large farm ; he might more economically develop the resources of the soil, and pay the landlord a larger rent. The farmer might be a more enterprising and productive member of society. But then we must compare the Irish farmer not only with the Scotch farmer, but also with the Scotch labourer. Where we have six Ulster farmers, we should perhaps have in Scotland one farmer and three labourers. The position of the Scotch labourer is not altogether good ; it has been remarked lately that he is too much a wandering proldtaire, without local ties or the softening influence of a home and home surroundings. Although a 200 or 300-acre farm in Scotland, worked by an ordinary farmer and his men, is a very excellent institution, and a 1,000 or 1,500- acre farm is a very interesting model of industrial enterprise, there may -be such a thing as over-civilization. If, as is,! think, the course of things, the Scotch system more and more tends to the greater farms to which I have alluded, we shall have nothing but great agricultural manufac- turers working great enterprises by bodies of workers for wages ; the division of society into the widely-separated classes of capitalists and proletaires, which is the great puzzle—as I think, the great -evil and difficulty—of the day, will be carried out in agricul- ture, as it has been carried out in manufactures, and nothing will remain of the old Conservative society. The small Irish farmer, if he wants the means of the large Scotch farmer, has, at all events, the great advantage that he works for himself, not for another. His wife and children rear poultry, carry to market milk and butter, and make money in little ways front which the great farmer is precluded. In the tracts where tenant-right is fully established he has, in virtue of his fixity of tenure, the ornamental garden and pleasant-looking orchard, -which you hardly see in a groat barrack-looking Scotch farm-steading."
"If the people live frugally and poorly, so long as they are -content, what is that to us ? At any rate, they have produced on such living one of the finest races on this earth. Where have we a more distinguished race than that of the North of Ireland ? They fully equal the Scotch, from whom so many of them spring. Some of their dis- tinguished men may have had a little beef for a generation or two, others have sprung direct from the people. If porridge and potatoes produce such men, why should we object to a diet of porridge and potatoes ? At any rate, be it in the abstract good or be it bad, the main point is that the sys- tem of small farms and tenant-right is a fact in the North of Ireland, and that it works at least tolerably well, or is not proved to work ill. The -day may come when over-civilization may lead to a tyranny of pro- letaires and Reds over the rich among ourselves, and we might then long for a conservative Ireland of email landowners, with something to lose by revolution."
The legal right, which Mr. Campbell fully acknowledges, being thus in direct conflict with the customary right, what is to be done 4,o bring them into accord ? Clearly, Mr. Campbell says we must take something from one of the two rights, something, it may be, of real value, and he repudiates openly all those pleasant formulas under which confiscation is described as a process tending to the advantage of both parties, but he thinks confiscation should be reduced to the possible minimum, and therefore dismisses fixity of tenure. "It would," he says, "be a one-sided compro- mise,—that is to say, it would be giving to one side all that they claim, and in some sense more, for an absolute right by law is more than an imperfect right under an elastic custom not recog- nized by law." He forgets that fixity of tenure with a revision of rents every fourteen years would give the landlord the full benefit of the great rise in values which would follow the restoration of order, a rise which in Bengal has been so great that no large estate is now ever sold for arrears of the quitlent ; but we may let that pass. We shall not get fixity, and ned not for the moment dis- cuss what seems to us its innumerable advantages to the landlord. Next to fixity is a settlement of any kind, and this Mr. Campbell would secure by introducing "for a time a sort of despotic power. I would have a commission with power not only to inquire, but to act. They should have a general instruction to give effect to the custom, and to restrain landlords from exercising legal rights contrary to the custom. Under them would be local Courts of con- ciliation and arbitration. The tenants, instead of shooting Mr. Scully, would have power to summon him, and make him show cause why he should not be restrained from acting contrary to the cus- tom in ejecting them without reasonable cause ; and so in all other cases of contention between landlord and tenant. The cen- tral authority would control and render uniform the proceedings of the local tribunals—would collect and systematize the results. In fact, we should commence by establishing Courts of Equity, in the original and literal sense of the term—simple Courts, with an untechnical procedure, with power to do justice between man and man on the general principles of equity and good conscience, as interpreted by the customs of the country. Eventually, as has been the case with our older Courts of Equity, rules equivalent to law would be established, and we might hope that, warned by past experience, we should not permit these Courts to become worse
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than the original evil. The equity being consolidated and crys- tallized, might in the course of a few years be turned into law. I do not deny that I believe this would practically lead to something like fixity of tenure in a large number of holdings.'' Since the pamphlet was published, Mr. Campbell has formulated the claims which the commission would consider somewhat further, and proposes that wherever the proprietor makes all improve- ments, tenure shall be considered by contract, and be subject to avoidance under the terms of the contract ; but wherever the tenant makes them, the tenure shall be by status, and the tenant shall not be ejected, save on payment of a sum equal to the market value of his tenancy, while his rent shall not be raised so as to absorb the value of his improvements. This scheme comes near that attributed to the Government, and though it does not, in our belief, go far enough, leaving it still possible for a very wealthy landlord to throw a district into rebel- lion, still the broad fact of this pamphlet remains,—that an Indian judge of high repute and enormous experience considers, after months of special inquiry, that in Ireland the coproprietors hip of the tenant is capable of distinct proof ; and though bred a Scoteh proprietor, ventures to give this testimony to the result of the customary system under the most unfavourable conditions :- "Indeed, all over Ireland it may be noticed, that the best land is generally occupied by the larger farms, while above and below, along the edge of the mountains and the edge of the bogs, one can plainly trace the lines of small thatched farm-houses, where the most petty farms have been reclaimed from the bog and hill-side by the labour of the poorest people. If we reproach them with the smallness and poorness of their farms, we must bear in mind that but for them there would have been no cultivated land there at all. My Scotch prejudices were not in favour of the Irish character, and on the strength of what was told me I have said a good deal depreciatory, though not condemnatory, of tho southern Irish. I must say, how- ever, that the more one sees of them the more one likes them. Whether they are really pure Celts I cannot say. If darkish hair predominates, it is very far from universal ; and blue oyes are in an overwhelming majority, as I ascertained by running my eye round the rural schools in the 'next parishes to America.' But be the race what it may, they are a pleasant, intelligent, and in the main industrious people. No man, however determined may be his opinion in favour of large farms, and however conclusively he may prove by the rules of political economy that it is impossible for any man to keep out of the poorhouse on such farms as the poorer Irish hold, can got over the fact that hundreds of these small farmers live happily and contentedly, if they are only let alone ; rear plump and healthy children, pay their way, pay their rent, keep out of the poorhouse, and are altogether most independent men, who regard the cabin which they have built and the bit of land which they have reclaimed with as much pride and affection as any noble who looks on his broad acres from his ancestral castle. It is necessary to see and realize these tenures, and then say whether it is not enough that a great lord, who has done little or nothing to the land, should live in his luxury on the rents wrung from thousands of these small tenants: whether he should also be entitled to use the power of the British Empire to clear them off the soil which they cumber, if it so pleases him. It is true that their cabins are to our ideas degrading in the ex- treme. The pig is still habitually introduced. There are filth and smoke within and a dungheap without. But, nevertheless, it is the fact that they are not only to all appearance happy, but are most distinctively healthy. They are singularly free from the fever which, according to all sanitary laws, ought to kill them, The abundance of a healthy and prolific population sufficiently proves the success of the system under which they breed human beings. We may call them savages—perhaps justly—but they send their children to school and pay for their school- ing. These children can be savages no longer. And no one can see the rows of healthy happy children who flock to school, decently dressed, without feeling that the system which produces them is not in all respects irretrievably bad."
We have been so anxious to state Mr. Campbell's view in a brief form, that we are conscious we have done injustice to the lucidity of the arguments by which he supports it. They, however, with their wealth of illustration, scarcely admit of condensation, and we will, therefore, only repeat that the most Conservative mem- ber will, we are convinced, lay them down with a groaning acknowledgment that he has learnt much, and that, after all, there is something of justice in the Irish claim of tenant-right.
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