THE IRISH SUB-COMMISSIONS.
MANY years ago, in the height of the Cattle Plague, a Yorkshire squire was heard to clinch a long argument in favour of the compensation for slaughtered cattle by the remark, "You see, if this compensation is not paid, rents cannot be paid ; and if rents are not paid, it is Revolution." " Why so," asked his interlocutor, " any more than when shopkeepers' book-debts are not paid I" "Ah," said the squire, shaking his head sadly, " I call that question incendiarism." He was not angry, and he was not a foolish person, rather a keen one, in fact ; but he had been bred from childhood in the idea that a landlord's trade in farms differed in some way from a shipowner's trade in ships, or a mine-owner's trade in royalties, or any other trader's dealing in his goods, and he could not get it out of his head. The State must give him his rent, if nobody else would, or society would come to
an end. That feeling is, we believe, the main cause alike of the horror and the surprise with which the holders of real property outside Ireland have received the decisions of the Irish Sub-Commissioners. In spite of all the exhaustive discussions on the Land Bill, they could not bring themselves to believe that judicial Courts would actually reduce rent, or be guided in fixing it by anything -but auction value. The tenants might be made more secure, and the landlord might lose powers, but the rent was sure to remain as it had been fixed by agreement. Their conviction was the stronger, be- cause they had never realised to themselves the true nature of the Irish landlords' position. English landlords are so rich, and therefore, as a rule, so lenient in bad times, and there are so many careers open to English tenants, that the assertion that land could be preposterously rented, that demands could be made on tenants, and agreed to, which could be met only out of other sources than the land, struck them as untrue. When, therefore, they found the Sub-Commissioners actually working the Act, actually insisting that there was a " fair" rent which a tenant could get out of the soil, and that under the terms of his partnership in the holding he could be legally asked for no more, they were aghast, with a surprise which soon changed into a sort of religious horror. The thing could not be. Rent was the foundation of society. The Sub-Commissioners must be deciding wrongly, they must be misinterpreting the Act, or they must be yielding to coercion. Mr. Plunket, usually moderate, makes that last charge, for which there is not a particle of evidence, in the most formal way, and judging by his record, we should think he believed it, that he was sincerely un- able to credit that rent could fairly be lowered by one-fourth. The amazement of a man so able and so experienced gives us some measure of the amazement of his class.
We believe, after much and careful inquiry, that no real in- justice has hitherto been committed, and that before many weeks are over, the best judges, the moderate and sensible section of the Irish landlords, will acknowledge openly that they have not been robbed, that the bulk of the decisions have been reasonable, and that while one or two of the Sub-Com- missioners have been foolish enough to lay down abstract pro- positions capable of misconception, their judgments, as a whole, have been in no way unfair. That is, we know, a prevailing opinion among the ablest of the landlords already ; and it is spreading fast, so fast, that we expect to see a general consensus among men owning a large portion of the soil of Ireland that the Courts' decisions are the best and easiest bases for their future relations with the tenantry. They are offering the "judicial rent " to their people, as the fairest compromise. It is not from temperance of judgment, or indifference to rent, or fear of the people that these gentlemen will act, but from their thorough recognition of a fact which the English landlords are hardly even yet acknowledging to themselves as true. The sen- sible Irish landlords know perfectly well that in Ireland they and their tenants have been partners in the profits of the land, that the tenant was always entitled to some reasonable share, and that he always had a right, though the right was often squeezed out of him, to a voice in fixing that share. That principle was the very root of Irish agrarian arrange- ments ; it was the idea embodied in law in 1870 ; it was the justification for Mr. Forster's Disturbance Bill, thrown out by angry English Peers, who would not understand it ; and it was the moral basis of the Land Act of 1881. With that principle clearly in their minds, the sensible Irish landlords see that one of two alternatives was inevitable, —either the produce must be divided in shares, as in Italy and parts of France ; or the shares must be fairly fixed in money, by an impartial but irresistible arbiter. The first arrangement would have made litigation universal and per- petual, and the second was preferred. That once adopted, it followed of necessity that the landlord's share should be only " fair," i.e., should not be more than a reasonable human being competent to judge could expect, on an average of years, to get out of the soil, after the tenant had received a decent maintenance, and interest on any capital invested. That is what a landlord would get if the market were really free, it was all he was entitled to by the unwritten law, and it was all that any just landlord intended to exact. As the old rents were fixed by competition among a people with only one thing to compete for, and were constantly either in arrear, or paid from sources other than the land, it was inevitable that on the new basis of adjudication they should come down ; and they have come down. It was intended by Parliament, if on inquiry it proved that the tenant had no share left, or an insufficient share in the profits of cultiva- tion, that they should come down. It is impossible, therefore, to attack the Commissioners merely for reductions, without attack- ing the whole principle of Irish land tenure—the unwritten lax. the written law of 1870, and the Act of 1881—and the only serious question is the justice of the extent of the reduction_ That is matter for evidence, and we believe that when this clamour is over, the evidence will be admitted by experts, by sensible Irish landlords, and by such of the tenantry as have not been demoralised by absurd promises, to amount to this. La- Sub-Commissioners, allowing for an occasional blunder, and conceivably, in rare cases, allowing for terrorised or bought evi- dence—we are puzzled, we confess, every now and then, by the conflicting evidence as to area, which is a matter susceptible of scientific demonstration—have given, roughly, just decisions, and have made reductions which only seem great because the previous over-renting, often nominal, had been great also. In Ulster, landlords and tenants are both disappointed, which certainly points to that conclusion. In the West, the land-- lords are beginning to offer the judicial rent as their rent for the future, which also points to it. In the South, the tenantry are only half pleased, which has the same meaning. In the- East, agents are reporting that the compromise will work, if only the "no rent" delusion can be dispelled. Mr. Laing, the only experienced but disinterested person who has yet spoken publicly, says that he has gone through the decisions, that in some startling cases he knows they are right; and that. speaking broadly, they are just what he should decide in regard to his own Orkney estates. Moreover, A%hile the average reduction still leaves the rent above the Poor-law valuation, made, no doubt, in the interest of landlords, it is distinctly less than the reduction going on this year over the grain-growing counties of England, and not more than the reduction without which the Scotch leaseholders say it is impossible to keep their agreements. It is true, of course, that in the latter two cases the reduction is made under free con- tract, and therefore open to revision ; but then free contract is not, as Irish landlords all know, though English landlords are so slow to see it, the basis of Irish tenure. You might as well argue that the landlords' share in a Scotch building feu is too small, because if he could evict at will he could get more. Eviction at will is just what that particular tenure does not permit.
We believe that these statements, though necessarily general, and subject to the discovery of a very small number of un- justified decisions—all open to appeal—will be the statement
pressed on Parliament by men whose evidence cannot be re- jected, that before the discussion on the Commissions begins much of the fury will have exhaled, more especially
if outrages die away, under the verdicts of juries rv- conciled to the law ; and that when the true fight begins, the struggle will be found to be not for the repeal of the Act..
which would be civil war, or for compensation, which is im- possible, but for some relief against rent-charges, dowers, and the like, formerly granted on the presumption that the Eng-
lish tenure would kill the Irish tenure; for some method Of accelerating the action of the Land Act—which may be found,
though we still hope better things, to be impeded by its owl, supreme success ; and for some new security that the landlord shall actually get in cash his "reduced" share. On the first point we can as yet offer no opinion, though we incline to think some relief may be found just and possible,—througli an advance from the State at low interest to pay off crushiag but temporary rent-charges ; and the second depends to., entirely upon facts to be hereafter developed, for an opinio.a to be formed. We can oonceive it quite possible, however, if tenants generally prefer a decree to an arrangement—which seems to be the case in some districts—that the Treasury must consent to a large temporary increase of the Commissions, and that the Commission must be authorised, if landlords and tenants agree on terms, to give decrees without hearing evid- ence at all, except upon the fact of that agreement. It is, however, to the last point that the landlords, if they are wise, will direct their earnest attention. Their first interest now is what their tenants' interest formerly was, viz.,more security, and it is difficult to feel satisfied that in this respect human ingenuity has exhausted its resources. The Irish plan of ejectment, be- sides being exceptionally brutal, certainly has not worked well. It has not protected the rent., and it has irritated the rent-payers beyond reason, and it is, at all events, imaginable that when legal acumen was fairly at work, a better one might be devised. It is not our part to make suggestions, but we can conceive of an Agricultural Bankruptcy Law which a solvent tenant would not face, yet which would avoid the heartbreaking incidents of the present system; and conceive, too, though with little hope, that if Insurance Offices could be invested with certain powers of recovery, the application of insurance to rents might not be beyond mathematical possibilities. At all events, it is towards more security that landlords affected by the Land Act should direct their Parliamentary efforts, and not to a com- pensation which they will not obtain, or a censure of the Land Commissioners which, even if it could by possibility be carried, must be resultless. If all the Commissioners were dismissed to-morrow, they must have successors, who must proceed upon the same lines, and arrive at very nearly identical results.
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