Democracy and Liberty. William Edward Hartpole Lecky

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СКАЧАТЬ duty of suppressing anarchy and securing property. A hasty visit to the farms was made, and rents were settled according to their present condition. In this way, in a country where farming was already deplorably backward, slovenly and wasteful farming received a special encouragement in the form of the greatest reduction of rents.

      It is not surprising that such decisions carried with them little moral weight. When complaints were made, the ministers dilated on the indecency of questioning ‘judicial decisions;’ as if such arbitrary proceedings as I have described bore any real resemblance to the judgments of a law court, where a judge is guided at every step by the clearly defined provisions of the law, and where his task is simply to decide or explain its relations to the facts that are before him. It may be observed, too, that while competition for rents was extinguished by the law, and rentals greatly reduced, the competition for tenant-right was practically unrestrained, and the price of tenant-right rapidly rose.³² There could be no better proof that the reductions did not represent the real market depreciation of value, but were in a large degree simply the transfer of property from one class to another.

I have no wish to put forward any extreme or exaggerated view of the sanctity of landed property. In my own opinion, the Legislature has a perfect right, if the public welfare requires it, to take possession of all such property, and to sell or hire it on such terms as it pleases, on the single condition of giving full compensation to the owners. The recommendation of Mill, that Irish landlords should be altogether expropriated, receiving full compensation, seems to me very doubtful in point of policy, but in no degree objectionable in point of principle. Mill will certainly not be suspected of any undue leaning towards landowners, but his doctrine differs little, if at all, from that which I am maintaining. ‘The claim of the landowners,’ he writes, ‘is altogether subordinate to the general policy of the State. The principle of property gives them no right to the land, but only a right to compensation for whatever portion of their interest in the land it may be the policy of the State to deprive them of. To that their claim is indefeasible. It is due to landowners, and to owners of any property whatever, recognised as such by the State, that they should not be dispossessed of it without receiving its full pecuniary value, or an annual income equal to what they derived from it. … When the property is of a kind to which peculiar affections attach themselves, the compensation ought to exceed a bare pecuniary equivalent.… The Legislature, which, if it pleased, might convert the whole body of landlords into fundowners or pensioners, might, á fortiori, commute the average receipts of Irish landowners into a fixed rent-charge, and raise the tenants into proprietors, supposing always (without which these acts would be nothing better than robbery) that the full market value of the land was tendered to the landlords in case they preferred that to accepting the conditions proposed.’³³

      I should myself state the claims of the landlord in somewhat different terms. As much land in these islands is held in trust, it seems to me that the Government, if it deprives the landlord, for purposes of public policy, of the whole or a portion of his property, is bound in equity to compensate him by such a sum as would produce, if invested in a trust fund, an income equal to that of which he was deprived.

The course which was pursued by the British Legislature towards Irish land was different, and if the terms ‘honesty’ and ‘dishonesty’ apply to the acts of Parliaments or Governments as truly as to individuals, it was distinctly and grossly dishonest. Under the Constitution of the United States, the greater part of this legislation, being a direct violation of contract, would have been beyond the competence of Congress. Nor is there, I believe, anything in the legislation of the great European countries that is parallel to it. It has been described by one of the best continental writers upon government as an attack on the principle of property more radical than any measure of the French Revolution, or even of the Reign of Terror.³⁴ It is, indeed, much less like ordinary legislation than like extraordinary legislation of the nature of Acts of attainder or confiscation. There is, it is true, one material difference. Acts of attainder are usually passed for the purpose of confiscating the property of men who have been guilty of treason or rebellion. As the Parnell Commission abundantly showed, the true crime of the Irish landlords was their loyalty. It was for the avowed purpose of ruining and driving from the country ‘the English garrison’ that the Fenian party organised the agrarian agitation that led to the legislation of 1881.

      The Bill was defended by some very serious statesmen on the ground of necessity. A gigantic agrarian conspiracy, including the bulk of the Irish peasantry, the great transfer of political power that had taken place in Ireland under English legislation, and an acute and protracted agricultural crisis, produced by bad seasons and wretched prices, had, they said, brought Ireland into a state in which some such measure was inevitable. It must be added that its character and effects were much misunderstood. It was believed that the free sale clause, which enabled a tenant who was in difficulties to sell his tenant-right to a solvent farmer, and, after paying all debts, to emigrate or set up business with a substantial capital, would operate to the great advantage of all parties. It would, it was thought, give the broken tenant a new start, secure the rent of the landlord, put an end to all necessity for evictions, and at the same time attract farmers of energy and industry; and it was not foreseen how completely it could be paralysed by violence and intimidation.

It is also tolerably certain that a considerable number, at least, of the most important ministers never anticipated that the provisions for settling rents by the authority of the court would be applied to the bulk of Irish tenancies, or made use of to create a new level of rental. It would, they believed, simply reduce to the general average those exceptional and extortionate rents which, in every county, undoubtedly existed. If it had not been for the assurances to this effect given by the ministers, it is very improbable that the Bill would have passed. ‘My view,’ said Mr. Bright, ‘is, that in reality the rents in Ireland will for the most part, in nine cases out of ten, be fixed very much as they are now.’³⁵ ‘The Government,’ said the Attorney-General for Ireland, ‘did not admit that there would be any loss to the landlord except the loss of a power which he ought not to exercise.’³⁶ ‘I deny,’ said the English Chancellor, ‘that it [the Bill] will, in any degree whatever, diminish the rights of the landlord, or the value of the interest he possesses.’³⁷ ‘I think,’ said Mr. Forster, ‘the final result of the measure within a few years will be, that the landowners of Ireland, small and large, will be better off than they are at this moment.’³⁸ It was believed that rents would be often raised as well as often lowered, that the tenants who were moderately rented would, in consequence, abstain from going into the court, and that the Act would in practice apply only to a small number of over-rented tenancies. Lord Carlingford, who spoke with especial authority on all Irish questions, and who took the chief part in carrying the measure through the House of Lords, was very explicit. ‘My lords,’ he said, ‘I maintain that the provisions of this Bill will cause the landlords no money loss whatever. I believe that it will inflict upon them no loss of income, except in those cases in which a certain number of landlords may have imposed upon their tenants excessive and inequitable rents, which they are probably vainly trying to recover.’³⁹

I am far from presuming to fathom the true meaning or design of the statesman who is chiefly responsible for this legislation. In introducing the Bill of 1870, with its dangerous principle of compensation for disturbance, Mr. Gladstone had specially and repeatedly maintained that he was conferring a benefit upon the owners as well as the occupiers of the soil. He deplored the fact that the selling value of Irish land was much lower than that of British land, and predicted that the effects of his legislation would make it ‘not merely worth twenty or twenty-five years’ purchase, but would raise it altogether, or very nearly, to the value of English or Scotch land.’⁴⁰ In 1881 he used similar language. When introducing a measure establishing fixity of tenure he was confronted with his own very plain words in 1870, which I have already quoted, about the confiscatory character of such a measure; but it was not difficult for so supreme a master of the art of evasion to extricate himself from his difficulty. He skilfully met the demands for compensation for property and legal rights that were clearly taken away by alleging that he was not injuring, but, on the contrary, benefiting the landowner. In many cases, he said, the probable effect СКАЧАТЬ