THE IRISH LANDLORDS' CASE.
THE Irish Landlords do not put their case very well. The remarkable pamphlet called " Confiscation, or Contract?" just published by Messrs. Ridgway, is issued with the sanc- tion of a large committee of their body, and is undoubtedly a most eloquent and able statement of the best moral argument against Home-rule, —viz., that the British Par- liament has passed laws far more kindly and more just towards the Irish people than the Irish Parliament would have passed,—has granted emancipation, civil equality, a low suffrage, a Poor-law, a system of education approved by both creeds, and a tenure far more favourable to the tenant than the tenure prevalent in Britain. The author (Dr. Webb, Regius Professor of Civil Law, Dublin) shows conclusively that "British misgovernment" has of late years—that is, during at least two generations—been an extremely lenient, on points perhaps over lenient, government of the people. He shows also that the "confiscations" did not cover any great
portion of the soil of Ireland, that the origin of landlords' rights is as old as in many other countries where it was originally violent, and that there exists in Ireland a class of landlords with a singularly special claim upon the State, namely, the men who have paid £52,404,494 for lands sold through the Encumbered Estates Court, in reliance upon an " indefeasible title" promised to them by Par- liament. He shows, too, that many of the evil circumstances existing in Ireland are irreversible, that no legislation can make the climate other than too moist, the population other than too thick upon the soil in certain Provinces, the people other than too poor for the larger and, as he assumes, more profitable cultures. All these things he shows, and his pamphlet will be quoted by all landlords with approval, and will one day be an arsenal of arguments against Home-rule ; but he has, nevertheless, made two omissions which he will find are fatal to the influence of his eloquence in England. He does not show that the reduction of the landlord's power is equiva- lent to the confiscation of his property, or that such reduction, now demanded by the people, will not tend to the political and social security of Ireland.
The second point almost decides itself. Nobody that we can find seriously doubts that the power of the landlords, considered as a body, and with the fitting exceptions for particular families, is hated in Ireland with a hatred which threatens not only the peace of society, but the respect for property, which the people are by temperament, conviction, and creed inclined to display. Ireland is not a land full, like some parts of France, of hatred for the rich ; or like pro- vinces of Germany, Silesia for one, of dislike for capital ; or like Southern Italy, of tolerance for violent robbery and extortion. The popular rage is directed against the landlords and their power, and no one denies that if that power could be abrogated without robbery, Ireland would be indefinitely relieved ; the cause of the long-continued social war would be removed. Even the author of the pamphlet does not deny this, though he attributes the hatred to agitation, and would evidently not resist a plan for buying out the landlords at a full valuation. Indeed, denial, in the face of the facts, is impossible. No factitious agitation could produce the heated popular feeling we see in Ireland, nor can any one allege that a system, which after a trial of 200 years, with every conceivable aid from legislation, has produced such results, such terror in landlords, such virulence in tenants, is other than a failure. The object of the social system, whatever it may be, is not social war. We have main- tained landlordism in its English form in Ireland for two centuries, and the result of it is that if we are determined to keep it up, we must govern Ireland as a dependency and directly by the sword. Well, the English Liberals recognising that clearly, believe that they can abrogate landlordism in its English form with- out confiscation, and propose, through measures still unrevealed, even if settled, to carry that purpose into effect. What is the use of simply saying that this will be confiscation ? What will the change involve a confiscation of ? Power ? The right of the State to settle what power one citizen shall have over another has been acknowledged throughout its history, and has never been questioned, though in two well- marked cases, the abolition of slavery and the aboli- tion of the hereditary right to the "high and low justice " possessed by the Highland chieftains, a pecu- niary compensation was paid. Is it, then, the land itself? The State is expropriating land every day for purposes of general advantage, and has a clear right to decide whether the termination or modification of landlord authority is such a purpose. Or, finally, is it money which is confiscated ? That is just what the Liberals deny. Their proposals, under all their forms, and we quite admit their forms are mani- fold, are all reducible to two,—to buy out the landlords, and resell the land to the tenantry, giving them certain State help in the purchase ; or to grant in one shape or another fixity of tenure, free sale of tenancies, and at first starting fair rent. These projects, says the landlords' advocate, involve confiscation, but why do they ? Will they lower the interest which the landlord is entitled to receive for his capital in the soil ? The Liberals declare that they will not, that the fixed rent, resettled by law at certain intervals, will be positively worth more to the landlord than his present power of claiming, but not getting, a rent fixed by himself. They maintain that just as a right to £3 a year from the British Treasury will sell for twice as much as the right to £3 a year from the Portuguese Treasury, so a claim to i10 a year from a contented Irish tenant will sell for much more than a claim to i12 or f15 a year from a tenant who, every third or fourth year, will fail to pay. The landlord may suffer by the alteration of the system, nay, will suffer, for power is enjoyable ; but he will not suffer any loss of money, any confiscation. Yes he will, say the land- lords, because fixity involves free sale, and under free sale the incoming tenant will pay the outgoing tenant, and that money ought to go to the landlord. As Dr. Webb puts it :— " A tenant's rent is fixed by an arbitrator at, say, £100 a year as a fair rent. Availing himself of his privilege of free sale, he sets up his holding for sale by auction, and sells it for £2,000. The incom- ing tenant becomes subject to the interest on 22,000, in addition to the fair rent of 2100 a year. In other words, the landlord is robbed of 22,000, in order that the rent payable by the occupier may be doubled. To crown the absurdity of the injustice, the man who pro- tests that he cannot be trusted to deal with his landlord for a lease, on account of the severity of the competition, is the very man who avails himself of the severity of that competition to double the rent upon his neighbour. The whole proposal is absurd. Fair Rent is strangled by Free Sale, and Fixity of Tenure is only Confiscation in disguise."
How is the landlord robbed of £2,000 ? Surely a pamphleteer who can write like this author can see that without the right of sale the tenancy would have no value at all, the new tenant only giving the money because of his right when he departs to get it again. Does Dr. Webb mean that if the tenancy were held at will, the landlord could double the rent ? He must know that he could not, that the superior value of a farm under fixity is the result of the fixity, and not of anything inherent in the farm. The higher rent can be got out of the soil, because the tenant, being immovable,—being, in fact, owner under quit-rent,—can put into the soil more labour and more money without fear. The tenant has gained something by fixity, and in some cases something very valuable ; but the landlord has not lost anything, except a vague power of in- creasing the rent unfairly at the risk of seeing his tenant fail, or of being exposed to a general strike against rents too heavy to be paid, and a considerable amount of power.
The talk about confiscation, so long as the landlord obtains a fair rent, revalued from time to time, is mere declamation ; but we do not deny that there is a case for the landlords, although they have not the moral courage to state it. They can allege that the State sold them or gave them the right to something more than a fair rent, the enjoyment of a position of much social dignity, of much power, and of light and pleasant occu- pation ; and that it implicitly promised to maintain them in this position, until actually deprived of power to do so. That is what they think, and we should not dream of denying that their thought is true ; that the English con- querors and legislators did mean this, and did very often express their meaning. But then the State also laid down an im- plicit condition that the system should be found to work, that society should be stronger for it, that Ireland should become in all good respects more English. Has this happened ? Will any reasonable man venture to declare that because of the English tenure the social life of Ireland has become more secure, or more happy, or even, if that phrase means anything, more English V Has Ireland become better affected to British rule, easier to govern, or even, if we must speak with such brutal plainness, what landlords would consider more thoroughly subjugated V The existing situation answers that question most emphatically. At this moment, the English tenure is so hated in Ireland that landlords infinitely more lenient than landlords in Eng- land—landlords like the Duke of Leinster—are guarded by detachments of armed police ; and a man who ventures to say that his object in life is to tear Ireland from England, is the idol of more than half the people. Can that situation be called success, or can the Irish landlords, whose fault, or mis- fortune—and half of their fault, at least, is pure misfortune— fairly claim a power the long defence of which, by law and by military force, has been attended by such results ? We say no,—that their just claim is to their money, and no more.
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