THE IRISH LAND BILL. ONE question underlies the whole subject of the Irish Land Bill : Will the prosperity of Ireland be most promoted by the habits and ways of the people being raised towards those of England and Scotland, or by their being kept as much as possible to their old Irish character? What is wished for the future of Ireland? Is it to go on in a backward, half-miserable state, a bye-word to the rest of the kingdom, dragging England and Scotland through all kinds of dirt, as of late in the House of Commons, or gradually to reach a state of civilisation like theirs? Mr. Gladstone lately, in the House of Commons, told improving landlords that they would have saved much money if they had worked more according to Irish usages. Does he understand Irish usages and the nature of land improvement? The same principles of dealing with both the farming and management of land that are sound and profitable in England and Scotland will also work well in Ireland, except in small details arising from climate. If a farmer without capital cannot succeed in one country, he cannot in the other. Experienced farmers, having seen numbers of like cases, can tell what will be the sure result of Irish usages. With out exception, whenever usages, unsound in principle, seem to make a profit for a time, they do so at the cost of future loss, just like overcropping land. In spite of all assurances, there can be no doubt what is sure to happen from such usages. That which makes English ways of dealing with land and tenants distasteful in Ireland is, that they interfere with old bad habits. It is said truly that land improvements are disliked, and an improving landlord is unpopular on that account. This is so in a measure. Though he may be fair, upright, and charitable, and pay excellent wages, yet the people definitely prefer to be dealt with in the old, unbusiness-like way, under which, though they are sometimes wronged, yet they often get chances of wronging others, and gain advantages by scheming. They like business to be carried on loosely and carelessly, and with favouritism, and don't mind low wages, if the work is light. Last winter, during the outrage committed on me, it was given out that if my labourers held tight to my cottages, my farm would come to be divided amongst them, and all would return to what it used to be in the old times. This was the Irish idea. This feeling touches the important point, What weight is it right to give to the wishes of the people themselves on such questions? It is often said, Ireland should be governed according to Irish ideas. But when the ideas are undoubtedly unsound, surely it is wrong for Parliament to enact that which is contrary to the true interests of the country. There are many landlords in Ireland who have managed their estates in the same way as estates are managed in England, and have laid out capital largely in all sorts of improvements. The recent letters of the Times correspondent have surprised every one by showing the extent to which this good work has been done. It is mainly from the example of these landowners that better farming and higher wages have come in. Mr. Gladstone said, in introducing the Bill, that these men would not be included in it. If this is carried out, it will prevent great wrong being done to those who have been the pioneers of improvement, often at no small personal and money sacrifice. The Bill proposes to regulate the business of landowning just as much as before Mr. Huskisson's time many kinds of business were regulated by Act of Parliament. The principle is the same. The business is not to be left to be managed according to the personal objects and interests of those engaged in it, on the sound view that their self-interest will direct them better for themselves and the country, than it is possible Parliament can direct them. But secondary ends are to guide it, considered by Parliament to be of more importance. From first to last, the protection and gain of the tenant is the one point aimed at, whatever the hardship or injustice to others. However bad a tenant may be, though he has worn the heart out of his farm, he may sell his occupancy to the best bidder, and put a great bonus in his pocket. The amount he pays as rent is to be carefully regulated, lest it should be too much; and he is to hold the land for ever, unless for extraordinary faults of his own. Such protection was never given to any one else in the Three Kingdoms, and must produce the usual effect of protection. It is not limited, as it was in the Act of 1870, to small and poor tenants, or comparatively small tenants; under 50%. a year. It is to include tenants paying 2001. a year rent and over, and is to be made as far as possible compulsory for all future time. to any solvent man of good char- This is Even though a tenant does not pay his rent, or subdivides or sublets his farm, the landlord is to pay him a large compensation if forced to eject him for his badness. Every practical manager of land in Ireland knows that tenants only do not pay their rents, when they have so run out their land that no more can be got out of it except by manuring, for which they have neither means nor industry. It is usually bad seasons that bring on the crisis; because in fair years, with the wonderful indifference to debt, and the habits of borrowing that prevail in Ireland, it is surprising how some struggle on in idleness and drinking habits, that anywhere else would have ruined them twice over. But the true cause of their inability to pay is, that they have reduced the land so that it will yield neither crops nor grass. I have had land given up to me that would not grow weeds, and have learnt to consider a good crop of couch a favourable sign of land. A tenant left me a field, the twelve acres of which, when I had levelled the fences, would not feed one sheep. If the land was in good heart, it would be sure to pull them through. This was the true blunder of Mr. Forster's Compensation Bill of last Session. It The general idea on which the Bill put eighteen months more loss of rent has been framed is that of the Ulster on landlords. And as the farms of tenant-right, but stretched much bad tenants are sure to have been run further than in Ulster. Mr. Glad- out, there was no more chance afterstone has said this plainly. The wards of their recovery. The fact of leading feature of Ulster tenant- impoverished condition of the land of right is, that the tenant, though large numbers of tenants being the ever 80 bad a tenant, who has true cause of their ruin, is the never spent 18. in improvements, most stubborn fact connected with is allowed to sell his occupancy the question. Parliament may ignore Now it is certain that landowning and farming are as much businesses as cotton-spinning; and every reason that made Mr. Huskisson abolish the system of regulating business by Act of Parliament fifty years ago, as being hurtful to all, applies equally to the present time, and to land. it, as Mr. Forster does. But it is sure to prevail at last, one way or the other; because money, and manure, and industry, alone can get over it. The bad tenant has taken the value out by over-cropping and little manure, -which is now called reclaiming the land, and is supposed to give him a title to eternal compensation, but which is mostly exhausting land that never needed reclamation. If this loss to the owner, from the worn-out condition of the land, was honestly valued, it would be found to be very large in every case. But on many estates the tenants have been allowed to sell their interests. Where this has been sanctioned by the landlord, and some tenants have sold and others have bought their farms, no doubt an equity in their favour has been established, and was secured to them by the Act of 1870. But there are other estates whose owners have seen that to allow a man who hires a farm to buy out a previous tenant is to deprive him of the capital by which alone he can manure and stock it, and farm it well, and also to sacrifice a large part of the owner's own reversion. It is notorious through the whole Three Kingdoms that the capital of tenants is too small for their farms; whether times are good or bad, they would do better if they had more capital. So as Ireland is much the poorest, an extra way of exhausting tenants' capital is to be enforced by Parliament, and the cost of it to be taken from the owners. This is the real difficulty of Free Sale, as the Duke of Argyll has truly shown. It is so thoroughly understood even in Ireland, that many landlords have always sacrificed arrears which the new tenant would have paid them. Many of us, too, have refused to let on fines, though very profitable, because they are an injury to the tenants by absorbing their capital. But it is said that Free Sale works well in Ulster. In Ulster they have the advantage of some Scotch blood, and a great trade like the linen trade circulates much capital-an advantage which is wholly absent elsewhere. And yet I believe that except in parts where the linen manufacture still flourishes, and the loom makes capital to buy land and stock it afterwards,1 or in the neighbourhood of towns where business provides capital, the tenantright system is not succeeding. It is quite certain that in Donegal and in all the more mountainous and remote parts of Ulster, though tenant-right is in full force, the tenants are as miserable as in the worst parts of Connaught. Mr. Tuke's evidence on this is conclusive. Long prior to the present troubles I urged that the tenant-right system would necessarily end in making Ulster the poorest part of Ireland. That to suck an occupier dry of capital when he enters on his farm and most needs it for stocking and farming well; to take it to pay arrears due by the previous tenant, to pay debts, or to squander in drink-is a course which can only hinder the prosperity of the country; and further, that as tenant-right is always left as a chattel to widows and children, to be paid by the son who succeeds-the farm is clean pumped out of capital once in every generation. When tenants hire land without having to pay anything for it but the annual rent, it is certain that, their capital being left available, they must prosper better. My own tenants have long been doing this, and have now in consequence much more capital than their neighbours. In these times capital is the very life of good farming. Some say that high farming will not answer. That is seldom true; but if high farming will not pay, it is certain that low farming cannot do so, however low the rent. All farmers in the Three Kingdoms who are thriving are doing 1 It is often not understood that the handloom weaving in cottiers' houses, once very general, enabling small lots of land to be paid for and stocked afterwards, is the true cause of tenant-right flourishing in Ulster. so by capital. There are many instances of tenants with capital who have hired farms too dear, yet by industry and capital have made them pay, and got a gain for themselves besides. But without capital a farm cannot pay even a moderate rent. It may very well be asked whether the new Commission is to value the land at what it is worth to a tenant who has sufficient capital to farm it well, or at what it is worth to one who has paid half or three-fourths or all his available capital to the broken tenant for tenant-right? If the tenant keeps his capital available, the farm must be well worth five shillings per acre more to him. If he has to make large permanent improvements, besides buying the tenantright, he is still worse off. Has all knowledge of business and common sense been banished to the planets with political economy? There has been great boasting about Lord Portsmouth's estate in Wexford. It happens to be very favourably situated near a small seaport, which helps to provide capital. Let any intelligent land manager say what must be the condition of an estate on which the tenants at entry spend a great part of their capital in buying the broken tenants' right of occupation of the land-not over well farmed, at any rate, and probably much exhausted and on which the landlord never spends a shilling on any improvement? Everywhere else such a landlord would be held to be thoroughly wrong. And wrong Lord Portsmouth really is. His principle of management cannot be for the advantage of the country. It cannot tend to place his land advantageously in the hands of good future Irish farmers. Many of us would think we were injuring our characters as men of business if we acted as he does. It is quite certain that if, as Mr. Gladstone plainly admitted, only a limited proportion of Irish landlords. can be justly complained of as bad, a very large proportion of Irish No. 260.-VOL. XLIV. tenants can be most justly complained of as very bad. Never were words more without justification than Mr. Bright's that the Irish land system has failed by its own defects. It has failed mainly from the faults of the tenants, and from scheming and jobbing to appropriate that which is not theirs. The recent agitation, and the sentimental feebleness of the Irish Government in failing to enforce the Law at the time of difficulty-these are the true causes of most of the troubles which for the past nine months have come so home to many of us, and caused so much wretchedness. The Duke of Argyll-who, having been himself a member of the Government just before, must have had all the information on behalf of the Bill possessed by the Ministry-states with immense weight : 1 and 2. That on most estates, especially the larger, the unhealthy competition for land is specially guarded against, and regulations enforced for the benefit of the tenants. 3. That the evils arising from the inveterate bad habits of the tenants can only be checked by the landlords, and by substituting good tenants for bad ones. 4. That the much- abused buyers under the Landed Estates Act are often the most improving landowners, and very few have unduly raised rents. 5. That the Land Act of 1870 has stopped capricious evictions, and secured tenants compensation for improvements. 6. That there has been a total failure to show any number of undue or frequent raisings of rent, such raisings often having been proved to be reasonable and moderate. 7. That in Ulster such raisings of rent have not eaten up the tenant-right, as is alleged. 8. That Free Sale prevents any outlay on improvements by landlords, and can only work with any fairness when both landlord and tenant can agree, and so a just proportion be attained. K 9. That almost all evictions since 1870 have been for non-payment of rent, or other justifiable cause. 10. That the increase of debts to money-lenders by the smaller tenants is very great. This is the direct consequence of the Act of 1870 having made yearly tenants more secure in their farms, and it is sure to grow worse if more security is given. Not one of these assertions of the Duke of Argyll has been contradicted. To those who have lived in Ireland, they are well-known facts. Let any one fairly consider them, and ask himself how it is possible to rest a Bill for depriving owners of part of their property, and tying up their hands for the protection of tenants, bad as well as good, on so weak a foundation-and this in view of the probability that the bad habits of the tenants will turn the new system to their own worse trouble? I may add that the so-called landhunger is greatly exaggerated. Like all else that is made into a political motive, a very undue weight of importance has been laid upon it. It may exist more or less in poor parts, but in other parts there is little or none of it, no willingness whatever to pay too much rent for land. In my time the rent of land has varied four times, as seasons were good or bad. What sense can there be in any one hungering for fifty acres of land, if he has not stock or money to farm it? He must have horses, and cows, and seed, however low the rent may be. Land hunger is chiefly felt by the very poor, who think a cabin and a few acres at any rent, without stock, will make them better off, and so offer foolishly for it. Bad tenants, who ruin themselves by running out their land, must be removed for the sake of the country, no less than for the sake of the landlords, and most of all for the sake of their own children, that they may not grow up in misery and indolence as their parents have done. To give the land of these poor people to better tenants is a real gain, more especially if they get it without being halfbeggared in paying for the tenantright. Most of all it is a gain, when a business-like landlord lets the land, with sufficient buildings and no charge but the rent, to the most industrious and steady. Such industrious men can afford to pay a higher rent by several shillings per acre for an addition to their farms, and can pay it with more ease than the lazy tenant ejected paid his smaller rent. The good tenant was able to live out of his original farm, and as he has not to live out of the addition, that alone enables him both to pay a higher rent, and to make more profit for himself. If a landlord has the judgment to select his tenants in this way, why is Parliament to stretch him on a bed of Procrustes, and make his rent such as will suit all the lazy tenants in the neighbourhood? Could any business on earth thrive under such conditions? If the bad tenants are to be kept in their farms instead of good tenants being encouraged, in what way is it possible for the country to improve? We are sure that prices of all farm produce are now much higher than they were thirty years ago. The Act under which Griffith's valuation was made (15 and 16 Vic. c. 63) gives the prices at which the valuation shall be made. Wheat, 78. per cwt.; oats, 4s. 10d.; barley, 58. 6d. ; flax, 498.; butter, 15s. 4d.; beef, 358. 6d.; mutton, 418.; pork, 32s. Many of these are now nearly double; all are much higher. There is work enough for broken tenants to do in most parts of Ireland. I have never turned out a tenant without offering him work for as long as he liked, if he was willing to do it. Is it really expected that the difference between industry and idleness can be abolished for the good of bad Irish tenants? It is overlooked that it is not the nominal amount of the rent that is a gain or a loss to an owner; it is the money he actually gets out of the land. It is perfectly certain, especially in Ire |