Democracy and Liberty. William Edward Hartpole Lecky

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СКАЧАТЬ tenant, under the belief that he would enjoy his tenancy for a sufficient time and at a sufficiently low rent to compensate him for them. The immense deterioration of Irish land through bad and wasteful farming forms, however, a considerable offset against these improvements.

      That rents in Ireland before 1870 were not in general extortionate, and were, indeed, much below the competition value, is abundantly proved.¹⁸ It is proved by the fact that wherever tenant right was permitted this right of occupation sold for a large sum; by the fact that wherever subletting was permitted the tenant almost invariably let the whole, or portions of his tenancy, at much higher rents than he paid. It is proved by the evidence of men of the greatest authority on Irish land, such as Judge Longfield and Master Fitzgibbon, and by the direct testimony of the Bessborough Commission in 1881, which, after a long and careful investigation, arrived at the conclusion that in Ireland it was unusual to exact what in England would have been considered as a full and fair commercial rent.’¹⁹ It is proved by comparison with English and with foreign rents, and by the slow increase of Irish rents, as compared both with the prices of the chief articles of agricultural produce and with the increase of rents in other parts of the kingdom. Arthur Young, in his day, considered the rents paid in Ireland to the owner of land unduly, and often absurdly, low; and in bringing in the Land Bill of 1870, Mr. Gladstone stated that, in the ninety years that had elapsed since Arthur Young wrote, the rents of Ireland had just doubled, and, if Ulster were excluded, had much less than doubled, while in ninety-eight years the rental of England had trebled, and in ninety-nine years the rental of Scotland had sextupled.²⁰ If we take a shorter period, and a period of great prosperity, we shall come to much the same conclusion. Mr. Caird, who is one of the best modern authorities on agriculture, computed that in the seven years before 1869 ‘the land rental of England has risen 7 per cent., that of Scotland 8 per cent., while that of Ireland appears in the same time to have advanced, from its lowest point, not more than 51/2 per cent.’²¹ Taking Ireland, indeed, as a whole, it is probably the portion of the United Kingdom in which the benefit of the great rise in the price of agricultural produce in the third quarter of the nineteenth century has fallen most largely to the labourers and tenants, and in the smallest degree to the landlords.²²

But although it is not true that Irish rents were in general unduly high, it is true that the position of the great body of the Irish tenants was utterly precarious; that in three provinces of Ireland many causes had conspired to break down the good feeling between landlord and tenant which was essential to a sound agrarian state; and that cases of gross oppression and extortion, though they were a small minority, did exist, and were not infrequent. Subletting, it is true, had much diminished, and with it the chief cause of extravagant rents. No fact is more clearly stamped upon every page of Irish agrarian history than that men of the farmer class have always been far harsher masters than men of the gentleman class; and in these latter days there have been instances of tenants holding at very moderate rents under the landlord, and actually having their rents reduced by the Land Court, at the very time when they were themselves extorting for portions of the same land extreme rack rents from their labourers. To no spot of the globe, indeed, is the parable of the servant who, having been forgiven his debt by his own master, exacted the last penny from his fellow-servant, more applicable than to Ireland.

But among rents paid to the actual owner of the soil two classes were often extortionate. There were small properties in the hands of men of narrow means, either of the trading or farming classes, and there were tracts—often extensive tracts—which had been bought by speculators under the Incumbered Estates Act, usually with borrowed money. There were cases in which the purchasers at once sought, by extensive clearances and greatly raised rents, to recoup themselves for their outlay. In the sale of these estates the tenants had usually been unprotected by lease. The law under which the estates had been sold recognised in them no right in their improvements, and rents were sometimes raised, in estates which had derived most of their value from recent tenants’ improvements, in a manner that was positively fraudulent. The purchaser thought only of his legal rights. He knew nothing and he cared nothing about the history of his property.²³ Sometimes, too, on older estates, particular farms might be found rented at a strangely higher rate than those around them. The explanation is, usually, that these rents had formerly been paid to a middleman, and had not been revised when the middleman was removed.

      The Act of 1870 had many merits, but it admitted, as I believe, a dangerous and dishonest principle. The Act of 1881 appears to me one of the most unquestionable, and indeed extreme, violations of the rights of property in the whole history of English legislation. In order to realise its character it is only necessary to remember that before the legislation of Mr. Gladstone the ownership of land in Ireland was, like that in France and in America, as absolute and undisputed as the ownership of a house, or a horse, or a yacht. The Incumbered Estates Act, and all the proceedings connected with it, brought this fact into the clearest relief. It had been the policy of the Whig Government, supported in its day by the loud applause of the Liberal party, to place landed property in Ireland on the strictest commercial basis. The measure was carried in 1849, at a time when Ireland was reduced to the lowest depths of misery by the great Famine, and when the newly imposed poor law in many cases equalled, in some cases even exceeded, the whole valuation income of an estate, and it was pressed on by the Liberal party with extreme harshness, to the ruin of countless landlords and creditors.

      By this Act, at a time when Irish land had sunk to a mere fraction of its normal value, the first incumbrancer of an estate, or any other creditor who believed that the estate would fetch a price large enough to meet the payment of his own demand, might force the estate by a summary proceeding, and before a newly constituted court, into the market, utterly regardless of the interests of the other creditors and of the owner. Every creditor except the petitioner who was forcing the sale was at liberty to bid; and even the petitioner, by leave of the court (which was easily procured), might become the purchaser of the depreciated property. ‘By this new process,’ writes a very competent lawyer, ‘estates were sold to the amount of many millions, during the years 1849, 1850, 1851, and 1852, for less than half their value, and less than half the prices which the same estates would bring had the sale been deferred till the end of 1863. Some of the most ancient and respected families in the country, whose estates were not incumbered to much more than half their value, were sold out and beggared; thousands of creditors whose demands would have been paid if the sales had not been accelerated were not reached, and lost the money which they had lent upon what was ample security at the time it was lent, and would again have become sufficient security had the property not been ruined by the poor law and sold in that ruined condition, in a glutted market, under an enactment devised for the professed purpose of improving the condition of Ireland. The law's delay, which in ordinary circumstances is a grievance and a vexation, would have had a salutary and a just effect in those calamitous times. There was no justice in exonerating the early incumbrancers from all participation in the effects of the visitation which had come upon the country, and every feeling of humanity and every principle of equity demanded temporary indulgence from them. There was cruel injustice in turning a destructive visitation of Providence into an advantage to them which they could not have had if the law had been left as it stood when they made their contracts and took their securities, and as it still stands in England.′²⁴

This measure, however, was at that time put forward by the Whig party as the supreme remedy for the ills of Ireland. It was pushed on against all remonstrances, and with many insults to the broken and impoverished landlords, who were now fast sinking into the shades of night. Political economy, it was said, was vindicated, and with a chorus of self-congratulation the Whig leaders proclaimed that Irish property was at last placed on its true basis, that all feudal superstitions had been effectually exorcised, and that a new and energetic class of landlords would replace the old thriftless, apathetic landlords of the past. During the last twenty-five years the main object of the leaders of the Liberal party has been to undo the work of 1849.

      Let us now look at the Incumbered Estates Act from another side. The purchaser purchased from the Government, and at the invitation of the Government, the complete and absolute ownership of the estate, subject only to the existing contracts under which it had been hired out to the tenants. СКАЧАТЬ