THE LAW OF EVICTION AND THE POOR.
THAT the "processes of eviction" should be declared " painful ' to kindly men, is natural enough, and is also, we hope, literally true ; but why they should be declared " odious " to a free people is, we confess, to us almost unintelligible. We can only imagine that Mr. Gladstone, in hurling that epithet at them, an epithet which would be as reasonable if it were flung at all surgical operations, forgot as entirely as his more ignorant followers forget, the enormous and permanent benefit which the right of eviction, like the law for the recovery of debt, confers upon the poor. It is the instrument by which their rents are made so low. The rich can build houses for themselves, but the poor have, and can have, only two alternatives, to hire decent houses from those who have capital enough to build them, or to put up huts or cabins of their own, too cheap, and therefore too rotten for healthy habitation. The former is the alternative adopted in Great Britain, and it is far the better one, provided that rents are low, the condition of which is that they shall be regularly paid, a stipulation, again, only to be enforced if the tenant who does not pay can be easily exchanged for the tenant who does. Suppose for a moment that the right of eviction ended, and that the owner could at the utmost only seize his tenant's goods. That would be pleasant enough for the rich, because the furniture of a good house is always security for one year's rent, and their rents would therefore remain as before ; but it would be a terrible fine upon the poor. The owner could not protect himself by taking the rent in advance, for after the first year, or quarter, or week, the tenant could by law re- fuse to budge ; and if he hired his furniture instead of buying it, the landlord would have no redress. His only chance, therefore, of making the profitable investment for which alone houses are built or farms purchased, would be to raise rent all round until he had insured himself,—that is, to exact from the honest poor tenants, who are the immense majority, enough to insure himself against the dishonest or the unemployed. In other words, the great body of the working poor would be heavily fined by an extra tax of, say, five shillings in the pound on their rentals, for no purpose except to extinguish the right of expelling defrauding tenants by legal force. In the majority of rural districts the increase would be far greater than this, for rents there are nominal, the object of building cottages being to secure the labour which, without the right of eviction, could not be secured. In all great towns, too, where " homes " are let by the room, the rates would at once jump up, probably to the level of Paris or New York. If eviction from a house or a farm ought to be "odious," eviction from a room ought to be more odious still, because the sufferer is poorer, and therefore more helpless. Yet without the right of eviction it would be simply impossible to let a house in floors or rooms, except at rates extravagant enough to cover the chance that the body of tenants or some of them, being sure of impunity, would set the rent-collector at defiance.
It may be said that were eviction abolished, everybody who wanted a house would buy one, and that the practice of tenancy would be exchanged for the practice of transfer ; but that only changes the form of the increase of rent. The workman could only buy his house with money raised on mortgage, and the interest of that money must be high or low according to the security, which security depends upon the power of foreclosure. Foreclosure involves the removal of the defaulting debtor from his " home " just as much as " eviction " does, or bankruptcy does, or any other conceivable process for the ree,overy of debt. No doubt we may abolish every process, and leave the payment of creditors entirely to the "love," or the "good feeling," or the "instinctive sense of justice" of their debtors, an ex- periment which was, we believe, once tried for a few months in an American State ; but the result could only be either a destruction of credit fatal to the poor, or a demand for profits sufficient to constitute both profit and in- surance. The process is as certain as anything in arith- metic, and would involve an extra tax upon poverty worse even than the one it pays now in buying every- thing bulky, coals for example, retail instead of whole- sale. The latter tax, which in its total proportion to the incomes of the poor is a positively frightful one, could be modified or even abolished by co-operation ; but the loss from want of security could not. It is as independent of legislation as arithmetic is. There is a tendency in the public mind just now to believe that every peremptory law enforcing payments is a harsh law, and the effect of such laws in reducing the payments demanded is altogether forgotten. The very men who know accurately the effect of a high Bank rate in limiting business, seem unable to realise that the insecurity of their payments taxes the poor exactly as an unprecedented Bank rate would tax business men. Of all the " hardships " of the poor, there is probably no single one which presses so constantly and so painfully as their inability to borrow small sums at low rates, as richer men with securities are always able to do. If they could in the hour of pressure get help at 4 per cent. from a bank instead of at 12 per cent. from a pawnbroker, their whole relation to the circumstances around them would be modified for the better. We honestly believe that the man who could devise a law, however severe, making small loans of money to the poor inevitably secure, would almost do as much for their comfort and their chances of prosperity as the repeal of the Corn Laws did. Millions are ready to be lent them at 4 per cent., not from charity, but from the desire to invest deposited money, if only it were possible to make the money safe ; but it is not possible, and therefore the poor not only pay three times the proper rate, but submit to what is often a grave inconvenience and always a humilia- tion, the deposit of necessaries in the pawn-shop. Their protection, the one guarantee which enables them to share the advantages of the capitalist in buying cheaply, is the law which makes their creditors secure.
It will be asserted, is asserted every day on the platform, that the security for landlords could be obtained without such " brutal " ways of enforcing it, and that Mr. Glad- stone, who himself admits that the "processes of eviction," though "odious," may be "necessary," must have that thought in his mind. Well, if he will propose a substitute for eviction which can be enforced even against recalcitrant tenants, there is not a thinking man or a kindly man in these islands who will not consider it, with a hearty wish that he may find it acceptable and wise. Nobody wants to see the "forces of the Crown" employed in collecting debts, or even the humbler bum-bailiffs who in London represent that imposing power, and nobody that we know of fails to pity either Irishmen or Londoners when turned out of their homes. If Mr. Gladstone, with his financial insight and his wonderful knowledge of detail, can suggest such a plan, let us have it by all means, and both parties will agree—if the Parnellites will let them, which is improbable—to embody it in law ; but no such plan has been suggested yet, or, indeed, seems to meaner men so much as conceivable. If the State bought up everything or stole everything, it would still have to levy rent either in meal or malt, and in the event of refusal, to retake its property by processes just as severe as at pre- sent, though possibly, when the democracy was sole owner, they would cease to be " odious." Pending such a, plan, the law must be carried out, and evictions must go on in the interest of the great body of the poor, who, if they could not be compelled to pay rent, would be charged for their houses, as minors are charged for the money they borrow, at rates intended to extract profit even if every third man defaults. The abolition of eviction, which to some orators on platforms seems such an ideal, means nothing whatever except the pillage of the honest poor for the benefit of those among them who do not acknowledge debts.
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