TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE PROGRESS OF THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. THERE is something perfectly astonishing in the progress made by the Irish Land Question within the last few months. It is almost too great to be trustworthy. Years ago, when we suggested the principle of a perpetual settlement,—such a settlement as that of the land in Bengal,—as the true remedy, we did not then say, and do not now say, for the economical, but for the political miseries of Ireland, our suggestion was treated in the press as that of a political eccentricity not far removed from lunacy. When Mr. John Stuart Mill took up a very similar ground two years ago, and published his celebrated pamphlet on the Irish Land Question, he was not very much more favourably received. Even the extreme Radicals treated his proposal as monstrous, and had he made in Parliament a motion founded on his pamphlet, it is not likely that he would have got three English Members to follow him into the lobby, and not many Irish. Well, at the present moment, a perpetual settlement in Ireland, i.e., fixity of tenure for the tenant in all cases except that of non-payment of rent, is so far from being a mere chimera, that there is at present no party in Ireland, not even the ultra-Conservative, which does not contain a number of strong advocates for it, while the land- lords can scarcely get any newspaper to.take up their side, or to brand the new doctrine as one of confiscation. That the Freeman's Journal,—Sir John Gray's organ,—should advocate absolute fixity of tenure is not very surprising. Sir John Gray has committed himself and his party,—Cardinal Cullen's party,—to the extremest form of the doctrine. He concluded his rather ad captandum speech at the banquet at Skibbereen a fortnight ago by saying, "We ask no thirty-one years' tenure. (Great cheering.) We ask fixity of tenure. (Applause.) And we ask that our people should strike root and grow on in this their own land like the oak of the forest," &c., con- cludin% with various rather world-worn comparisons between the vegetable physiology of a germinating acorn and the political physiology of Irish progress. And what Sir John Gray demands is also the demand of a very business-like meet- ing of tenant-farmer delegates, who met in Cork last week, and who agreed to insist on fixity of tenure with septennial revi- sions of rent,—these revisions to be estimated by the average market value of the several holdings for the previous 21 years, the value of all bond fide tenants' improvements being excluded from the estimate. But thereis nothing surprising in the tenant- farmers asking for as much as their political friends advise them to ask for,—and perhaps a little more; for to base the septennial revisions on the average value for so long as twenty-one years back does seem a little unreasonable. But there is something very remarkable in the fact that the members of the Dublin Corporation, including strong Conservatives, demand just as much. Sir John Barrington and Mr. Purdon (both strong Conservatives) demanded the other day perpetuity for the tenant-farmer as the only means of stimulating Irish agricultural industry. And then consider the line taken by the Press. The Irish Times (Liberal-Conservative) has gone in strongly for fixity of tenure, periodical valuation of rents, a tax on absentees, and, in short, the extreme programme. The Daily Express (Tory) adopts, we believe, Mr. Fitzgibbon's plan for enabling the tenant, by effecting improvements of 25 per cent., to entitle himself to a lease of 30 years, and by improvements of 50 per cent. to entitle himself to a lease of 60 years,—an innovation hardly less horrible to the landlords than perpetuity, with periodical revisions of rent, itself. Saunders' Newsletter advises the landlords to be prepared to make large concessions. The Evening Mail alone cries out confiscation !' and is so feebly supported that even it seems ill at ease in its position. Of the four landlord daily papers in Ireland, only one still holds to the landlord view. And it is perfectly evident from the tone of the letters sent to the Times that the landlords themselves are far from confident in their position, nay, that they are giving up the old ideas at least, of the power and rights of the landowner, for lost. Note the letter of the "Knight of Kerry " to the Times of last Tuesday. What a wail, as of a lost cause, is there in that last complaint of his ;— " in the present state of sentiment at your side of the Channel," —(surely it is still more so at his own side : it will be on our side that the fight will be made, as Lord Carnarvon's speech shows clearly enough, after all!)—" it seems to me that you are not satisfied to deal in detail with the actual evils of Ireland, and to enact what will go so far as is I needed to remedy those special evils, and no further, using suck means and acting on such principles as in parallel cases would' be sanctioned in England ; but taking what you, no doubt, con- sider a broader and more enlightened view, and adopting a. course apparently more glorious and certainly easier for per- plexed politicians, you seize on the salient points of distinc- tion (contrast, if you choose) between England and Ireland ; you decide that Ireland is a case per se, to be dealt with on the.
Gordian-knot-cutting principle, by sweeping measures, funda- mental changes, and on principles utterly opposite to what under any imaginable circumstances would be tolerated in. England." There is obviously the despondency of expected defeat in that lamentation.
And, in point of fact, the more evidence accumulates on the subject, the more certain it becomes that the root of the political disease of Ireland,—by which we mean the root of that popular spirit which excuses agrarian crime and regards the Government as its natural enemy,—is the shamefully insecure position of a people who see themselves always exposed to the danger of being suddenly and arbitrarily deprived either of the fruits of their own hardly-earned, labour, or of customary rights which by long usage they have learned fairly enough to regard as their own. There.
are very few agrarian murders in Ireland which, when carefully inquired into, do not turn out to be due to some such flagrantly unjust dispossession. And yet there are numbers of such flagrantly unjust dispossessions which do not ever lead to murder, and of which consequently we hardly hear in England Twosuch causes of agrarian murder have been elucidated in the papers of this week, — one, the case of "Clarke v.. Knox," by the Times' Commissioner in Ireland,—a case in, which the unfortunate tenants were served with notices. of ejectment by a proprietor 'wishing to sell because the proprietor wishing to buy would not buy except free from all sub-tenancies. They were assured that these notices were only formal, and then directly the transaction. had been completed, they found to their cost that they were. really to be ejected, in spite of all these assurances,—tho ugh. the agent was so shocked at the transaction that he threw the whole onus of it on the proprietors, and declared that if the tenants were turned out, it would be an "unparalleled out- rage." The other case is almost equally illustrative of the true cause of the hatred felt for the law, and the sympathy felt, with vindictive murderers who have wreaked their vengeance on those who chose to enforce the law. It is the case of Mr. Hunter's murder in Mayo, the history of which has been lucidly told in the Echo. In that case, Aix. Hunter, a Scotch- man, had taken the lease of an estate on which rights of turf-- cutting had been held from time immemorial by a certain lumber of peasants, but the reserve of these rights had, by an oversight, been omitted from the lease. The grantor of the lease at first himself paid the lessee,—Mr. Hunter,—enough,— it was only £3 a year,—to cover these poor persons' rights, as the reserve of their privilege had been left out owing to his. own negligence. But when this gentleman sold his estate to a new proprietor, Mr. Hunter raised his demand from £3 a. year to £10 a year, which the new proprietor was unwilling to pay ; and accordingly Mr. Hunter brought a suit against one of the peasants who cut turf, for trespass, and the- man was fined 5s. and charged £48 for costs,—the deci- sion going against him through some defect, it is supposed, in the getting-up of the poor man's case. The peasants had regarded it as, what, in fact, it was, only a dispute between the lessee and the proprietor—their rights having been so. long unquestioned—and when one of them was suddenly fined £48 costs and his crops seized by Mr. Hunter by way of distress, the rage inspired by the act was so great that Mr. Hunter was murdered. These two cases are perfect sample cases of the wrongs which give rise to these fearful agrarian crimes, and to the still more dangerous hatred of the law, as a law deliberately unjust to the peasant and therefore earning for such revenges the sympathy of the people. Now, what seems perfectly clear is, that to undermine this spirit, to turn the feeling of the peasantry towards the law into one of respect for a just law which protects and never robs them, it is abso- lutely essential that tenancies-at-will in Ireland should virtually cease ; that there should be a fixed minimum term, at least, within which no tenant should be dispossessed, except for non-payment of the rent agreed upon—that the presumption should be on the side of the tenants, at least for a fixed time, and not on the side of the owner.
It is urged in reply that anything like fixity of tenure, even with periodical revisions of the rent, would ruin Ireland economically. Judging by the case of Ulster, and indeed by plenty of illustrations derived from other parts of Ireland, this is a most wonderful assertion. But what, we wish to insist on is that, whether it would benefit Ireland economi- cally or not, is not the first, but a very second-rate question. It is not where Ireland has been most prosperous but where she has been least prosperous that there is at present least active conspiracy and resistance to law. The prosperity gained in many parts of Ireland has been used only to foment and organize the discontent of the peasantry,—to agitate for more justice. Suppose it true, as an able writer in the Daily News, of Thursday, no doubt picking his ground carefully, asserts, that long leases are sure to be distinguished by inferior tillage, that fixity of tenure would at first "diminish pro- gress" and "stereotype desolation." Were it so,—still the first and deepest evil in the present condition of Ireland is not the inferior tillage, is not the wretched hovels, and the indo- lence of the cultivator ; it is the wide-spread belief that the law -is an organized injustice to the Irish, and the universal sympathy with those who break the law. How often are we to repeat 'that the more wealth Ireland has accumulated, the more loudly and bitterly she has protested against our rule ? Is the sense of injustice which drives ignorant men to murder to be weighed for a moment in the scales against mere economical advantage. What has converted the Tory politicians and the Tory news- papers to the great heresy of fixity of tenure, is the clear percep- tion that the agricultural population of Ireland would accept any _real boon in that direction as a pledge of reconciliation with the law, as a sign that Irishmen are at last to have the unexpressed law of Ireland expressly administered by Irish tribunals. Be the economical effect what it may,—suppose Irish industry .retrogrades for a few years in consequence—a most monstrous supposition,—suppose less wealth is accumulated, and less money invested in the soil in consequence of the Irish knowing that what they gain by such investments will be their own, —still, if the Irish were to be reconciled with the law, if agrarian murders were to cease, if ejectments for non-payment 'of rent were to be supported by the public opinion of the neighbourhood, if the Irish farmer were to be content, the 'change would have been more than amply justified. It is a ,political, and not mainly an economical, measure of which we are in search. It is a political motive more than an economi- cal motive which compels the search. It is a political and not an economical conversion to a new faith which is now passing over the minds of the Irish Tories. It will be a poli- tical and not an economical stimulus which will be applied to the minds of English landowners—Liberal and Tory alike. That some very substantial step towards fixity of tenure is about to be made in Ireland we feel no more doubt than we felt last year that some very substantial step towards religious equality was about to be made in Ireland. All the signs of the times are clear and positive. Even the landlords see what -is coming, and moan aloud. It is the beginning of the end.
Previous page
