Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
The Peril of Home Rule (Author: Peter Kerr-Smiley)

Chapter 9

The Land Question

One of the most important questions with which we in Ireland have had to deal has been the settlement of the land. For hundreds of years there has been continual strife between the landlord and the tenant in Ireland, with the result that the farmers could not settle down to steady work. In 1835 a start was made in the right direction. Mr. Sharman Crawford, who was then member of Parliament for Dundalk, introduced the first Tenant Right Bill, which proposed that the Irish tenant, in the event of disturbance, should be entitled to compensation for outlay on his land, but the Bill did not pass. In 1843 Sir Robert Peel appointed a Commission known, from its chairman, as the Devon Commission. Its recommendations were on the same lines as those contained in the Bill of 1835 — the recognition of the Ulster custom, or something analogous to it, for the protection of the tenants. Parliament, however, refused to give effect to these recommendations, and the tenant remained at the mercy of the landlord. In many districts such a system of land tenure naturally led to abuses and created bitter feelings

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which even the wiser legislation of later years has not yet entirely eradicated. The Act of 1860 endeavoured to put an end to all ‘customary’ tenures, and declared that the relations between landlord and tenant should be governed solely by contract. It was unjust and unworkable, and made matters worse than ever. Ten years later the great Land Act was passed, which Mr. Gladstone at that time described as final. He adopted the principle of the Ulster custom, and he gave the tenant a pecuniary interest in improvements he had made suitable to his holding. In addition to this, the smaller tenants were to receive compensation for disturbance. The larger tenants were supposed to be well enough able to look after themselves, and were excluded from compensation except for tillage, buildings, and reclaiming of land. Although this measure was considered Radical for those days, no serious opposition was offered to it either in the Commons or the Lords.

Bad seasons and the collapse in prices in the later 'seventies again brought distress and agitation, and in 1881 Mr. Gladstone once more took up the task of settling the Land Question. A Bill was introduced, in the shaping of which Ulster took a great and enlightened part. It established what was known as the ‘three F's’: Fair Rents, Free Sale, Fixity of Tenure. Under this measure judicial leases covering a period of 15 years were compulsorily substituted for tenancies at will,

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and a land court set up to fix fair rents. Besides this, the right of the tenant to sell his interest in the holding was recognised and legalised, and he was secured from eviction except for non-payment of rent. Some people would have us believe that we owe this great measure to the Nationalists. But it must not be forgotten that on the occasion when the Bill was down for second reading in the House of Commons, Parnell and his followers walked out of the House. Speaking at Galway on October 1st, 1880, he had stated his views as follows:
‘I wish to see the tenant-farmers prosperous, but, large and important as is the class of tenant-farmers, constituting as they do, with their wives and families, the majority of the people of this country, I would not have taken off my coat and gone to this work if I had not known that we were laying the foundation in this movement for the regeneration of our legislative independence.’

This shows that Parnell cared little for the farmers of Ireland, and that he was only using them as pawns in the Home Rule game. So outrageous were the efforts of the Land Leaguers to obstruct the working of the Act that Mr. Gladstone was driven to a system of wholesale arrests, Mr. Parnell and some hundreds of his followers being lodged in Kilmainham Jail. Mr. Parnell did his best to discourage the farmers from taking advantage of

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the Act, but the great bulk of them were more interested in Land Reform than in Home Rule, and did not accept his advice. Under the Act of 1881 and subsequent Acts passed by Unionist Governments, the Irish farmers have got reductions in their rents ranging from 40 to 50 per cent.

The policy of hindering Land Reform is still vigorously pursued by the leaders of the United Irish League, who have put an almost absolute stop to land purchase in Ireland, because they fear that, once the land is bought out by the occupiers, agitation will cease and the Home Rule movement suffer in consequence. In order to give the Act of 1881 a fair start, an Arrears Act was passed in the following year, under which arrears to the extent of £2,000,000 were wiped out. This was the last of Mr. Gladstone's Irish Land Legislation, and while we must allow him all credit for the benefits he conferred on the farmers in Ireland, it is well to point out that he was then strongly opposed to Home Rule. It soon became obvious that Mr. Gladstone's Act was only a temporary alleviation but not a permanent solution of the Irish Land Question, and that the only satisfactory settlement of the problem was that provided by the Unionists, who in 1885 passed the first practical measure of land purchase, based on the principle of the ‘Bright Clauses’ of the Church Act of 1869. It was

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known as the Ashbourne Act, and under it £5,000,000 was allocated to the Irish farmers for the purchase of their holdings; but it did not take long for this money to run out, and in 1888 a further £5,000,000 was granted —24,000 farmers availing themselves of the benefits under both Acts. It is somewhat strange to find that land purchase, although advocated for a generation by Mill and Bright, has never found favour in the eyes of the modern Home Rule Radicals, and that both the Radical and Nationalist parties opposed the second grant of £5,000,000.

We now come down to 1891, when Mr. Balfour's Act was passed to extend and modify the two Ashbourne Acts, £30,000,000 further being provided for land purchase. The land itself formed the security, and Government Stock was issued which the landlords, who sold, might exchange for Consols. This Act greatly facilitated land purchase all over the country as well as the 40th Clause of the Land Act of 1896, an Act passed by the Unionists under which Second Term rents were fixed. The terms, however, did not prove sufficiently generous to induce the landlords to sell, and a conference of landlords and tenants was held in Dublin in 1902, when terms were agreed upon, which were afterwards embodied in Mr. Wyndham's Act of 1903, which gave the landlord a bonus and induced him to sell on terms which gave the tenants a reduction ranging from 4s.

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to 6s. in the £1, the entire purchase-money being wiped out in 68 1/2 years. The success of this Act can be gauged from the fact that in a little over four years sales had been made between landlord and tenant for half the unsold lands in Ireland. From the passing of the Wyndham Act until October 31, 1909, 217,219 holdings were sold, and the amount of purchase-money was £73,642,689. Between August, 1886, and October, 1909, 288,618 farms were sold, and the total amount of the purchase-money guaranteed by the Imperial Parliament was £97,535,287.

The result of this was that over large areas of Ireland order and industry began to supersede idleness and disorder. The farmers lost all interest in the Home Rule movement, and refused to subscribe to its funds. Naturally such a change was regarded with dismay by the Nationalist leaders, who soon availed themselves of the chance to obstruct further land purchase.

In 1909 Mr. Birrell introduced a new Land Purchase Bill at the dictation of Mr. John Dillon and the extreme men of the Nationalist party. The Bill itself increased the amount the tenant had to pay and reduced the amount of the landlord's bonus, thereby putting an almost complete stop to land purchase. This is plainly seen from the fact that the sales under the Wyndham Act averaged £12,000,000 per annum, while the average under

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the Birrell Act does not reach £1,000,000 per annum. It cannot be denied that most of the agitation in Ireland during the last hundred years was due to the passionate desire of the Irish farmers to become possessed of their land. Parnell was clever enough to use the land agitation for pushing Home Rule along, but those farmers who have purchased their holdings have really no desire to see an Irish Parliament established. Most of them have ceased contributing to the fund of the United Irish League, and they take a very languid interest in the demands of the professional agitators for Home Rule. In fact, all they desire is to be left alone. Thus when Mr. John Redmond wants money for the Home Rule agitation he has to go to America for it.