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Michael
Davitt
Irish Social Problem, To-day, April 1884,
pp.241-255.
A
meaningless diagram has been omitted
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Irish Social Problem
Mr. Trevelyan's statement, in the recent debate upon Mr. Barry's Land
Act Amendment Bill, that 111,419 applications to fix fair rents had
been lodged since the passage of the Land Act, proves nothing. Twice
that number of tenants went into the Land League for a similar motive
– to obtain a reduction in rack-rents. The Land Act is neither a final
nor a temporary settlement of the Irish agrarian war. It is a mere
parley between contending forces, in which the bayonets of the Government
are alone the preservers of the peace. Matthew Arnold was right when
he declared, that ' the Irish Land Bill does not meet the moral
grievance of the Irish occupier, at all.' Neither does it grapple
with the material one, either. The Irish tenant farmer knows as well
as any ethical professor could demonstrate what is the true moral doctrine
of rent. He knows intuitively, that rent for land which the land does
not produce, whether fixed by land court or land-lord, – a rent upon
that which God has created for human sustenance which is tax upon the
labour of the tenant's hands in its cultivation, and not the interest
upon any outlay of the landlord's in working the soil, amounts to robbery,
no matter what landlord-and-capitalist-made law may say to the contrary.
He is likewise aware that the rents which are fixed in the Land Courts
are placed upon his own improvements. Every one who knows Ireland is
also cognisant of the fact, that while our climate is uncertain, while
prices fluctuate, and competition with the stock and agricultural produce
of other more favoured countries lasts, that which the law of the Land
Courts fixes as a 'fair rent' today, may from force of circumstances
for which the tenant cannot be held responsible, be a rack-rent the
next bad season. When to. these moral, economic, and material obstacles
in the way of the Land Act we have to add the national antipathy which
the moral grievance of landlordism, per se, will always keep. alive
in the minds of our people, how can even the most sanguine English
statesman look forward to a period when Ireland will become reconciled
to a class owner-ship of the land which is responsible for its all
but complete social ruin?
Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Trevelyan are, naturally enough, reluctant to
admit the inefficiency of the Land Bill of their party for the solution
of the Irish social problem. The genius of Whig statesmanship is tentative,
and by no means heroic. It is afraid to grapple courageously with even
recognised political or social evils. It dealt with the Irish land
question when Fenianism in 1870 and Land Leaguism in 1880 compelled
legislation, but only with a view of allaying intensified discontent,
and not to eradicate the cause of Irish poverty and reproductive disquiet
and outrage. This legislative empiricism has brought about the present
dead-lock. Farmers, it is alleged, want to purchase their holdings,
but cannot or will not. The landlords are frantic to sell, but nobody
appears at all anxious to buy. The leaseholders, numerous and politically
powerful, are left out in the cold. The Land Act was not passed for
them. Contrary to the spirit of the Bill, and the express declaration
of Mr. Gladstone, that rent was not to be paid for the tenant's own
improvements, the Land Courts have proceeded on the landlord's 'length
of enjoyment' theory, and have fixed the rent on the basis of
commercial value. The discontent which is the natural result of a purposely
mis-interpreted measure, and the stronger national feeling arising
from numbers of heartless evictions, all go to show how far Mr. Gladstone's
second attempt to settle the Irish land question has fallen short of
success. Yet Mr. Trevelyan could say, in his speech on the Land Act
Amendment debate, that 'It was meant for a land settlement for
Ireland, and the character of permanence and immutability which
ought to belong to such a settlement the Government are determined,
as far
as in them lies, to give it.' 'Twas ever thus.' A measure which
even ministers of the Crown have declared to be defective, and
for promising
to remedy which Mr. Gladstone's Irish Solicitor General was returned
for Londonderry County, is not to have its 'character of permanence
and immutability' disturbed, although the majority of Irish members,
including the supporters of the Government, demand changes and
alterations which require a very thorough 'disturbance' of some of its
chief clauses! In one single sentence Mr. Trevelyan has shown what
Westminster rule of Ireland means. An English minister holding an Irish
post in the administration of Irish Government declares, that the opinions
of the majority of Ireland's representatives are of no account in influencing
the legislation of their country. Their demands in the interest of
the peace and prosperity of Ireland are ignored on a purely Irish question.
Messrs. Parnell, Dickson, Sexton, and Russell do not represent the
feelings of the Irish people on the land question at all equal to the
extent to which the member for Hawick district represents them. Mr.
Trevelyan, in a word, resorts to the traditional policy of English
statesmen towards Ireland, of ignoring a timely and moderate demand
that is made by those who know the people, when the country is outwardly
calm and comparatively free from crime. He mistakes a temporary quiet
for a promise of permanent content, and proclaims what ought to be
the motto of such a policy, 'no disturbance, no remedial legislation
– no outrage, no concession.' The Whig Government has said its
last word on the Irish land question. We shall see. I promise Mr. Trevelyan
that the Irish people have not said theirs on Irish landlordism.
The proposal to advance the whole of the purchase money to the tenants,
and to extend the time of repayment to such a number of years as will
make the annual charges approximate to the judicial rents, will be
more welcome to the landlords than to any other class in Ireland. Their
interests alone are jeopardised by delay. Those of the tenant farmers
incur no risks, as the market value of the landlord's property has
been falling, steadily, during the land agitation, to the consequent
benefit of that of the tenants. The country at large could not be expected
to view this depreciation with any other feelings than those of satisfaction.
The class which is bound to suffer most ere the Irish social problem
is solved is that which has chiefly contributed to the partial ruin
of the country. Justice required that some, at least, of the landlords'
rack-rented plunder should be restored to those from whom it had been
legally stolen, and no moral code is being violated in permitting the
so-called 'economic law of supply and demand' to operate
in full force against the unsaleable estates of those who unscrupulously
profited by the working of the same law when a mad competition for
land had ruined thousands of small farmers in the days of tenancy-at-will.
The pressure which the Government of Mr. Gladstone has been recently
wooing from Ireland, to extend the facilities of the purchase
clauses of the Land Act, has come from the landlords and not from the
people.
On the 19th of July last year a deputation of Irish landlords
waited upon Mr. Gladstone in Downing Street, almost begging for Government
loans, at low interest, with which to meet their liabilities.
The novelty
of a class in the community calling upon the State to loan money
to pay its debts was not sufficient to induce the Prime Minister to
promise
any relief. The ex-rackrenters were in despair. They could no
longer betake themselves, as in the good old times, to the fleecing
of their
tenants. A class which cannot exist unless privileged to plunder
the earnings of some other class is in a bad way when equity is made
to
put a stop to the legal theft. Crippled by the Land League, and
bereft of the power of raising rents, the Irish landlords had no credit,
and
so got no money from the Government, save what came through the
operations of the mischievous Arrears Act. Abandoning the loan scheme,
but with
their eyes still on the Treasury, they are now beseeching the
authors of the Land Act, whom they have heretofore denounced as the
accomplices
of the Land Leaguers, to render the purchase clauses of that
measure workable, or irretrievable ruin will overtake their properties.
Mr.
Plunket, member for Dublin University, and one of the ablest
advocates of the Irish landlords, spoke as follows in his speech on
the address
at the opening of the present session.
'At
the present time the interest of the landowners of Ireland is absolutely
unsaleable. It
is not by reason of any agricultural depression, but
by reason of the tenants' interest; and I have it on the authority
of persons well acquainted with the subject that in multitudes
of instances estates will be absolutely sacrificed by forced sale.
The incumbrancers
have not pressed for their claims up to the present time, but
in the face of a falling market they, of course, cannot be expected
to hold
out much longer, and unless something is done very shortly
numbers of estates will be sold at nominal value. I am glad to think
that there is in progress at present a movement amongst the Irish
members
and
Irishmen of different parties with the view of having some
steps taken that will enable that part of the Land Act to work fairly;
and
I trust
the Government will consider the case, which is one of the
most cruel and undeserved hardships which has fallen upon the landowners
of Ireland,
without any fault whatever of their own.'
Evidently
Mr. Plunket in no believer in the workings of 'the law
of supply and demand' when the market value of a landlord
interest is being operated upon. But why should the money of
the public be utilised
for the purpose of raising the market price of landlord property?
What claim upon the aid or generosity of the State have a class
of monopolists
like the Irish landlords? For generations they have shamelessly
robbed a poor and unfortunate tenantry with impunity. As residents
in Ireland
they have been merciless, both in their rent exactions and
as the administrators of rural justice. They have, as was once
truly said by the London Times,
enforced their rights with a hand of iron, and neglected their
duties with a front of brass.' As absentees they have
expended outside of Ireland the wealth which no effort of theirs
helped to produce,
and which, as the sole result of tenant labour and the wants
of the community, should have been expended in Ireland. Their
general treatment
of the agricultural classes, which constitute three millions
of our population, has been the chief cause alike of the poverty
and discontent
of the country. From it has resulted the agrarian crime which
has so injured both the name and the peace of Ireland. Having
perpetrated
their inhuman evictions, 'the virtual sentences of death,' by
aid of the law and the bayonets of England, they have made
Englishmen participators in the odium of such acts and co-heirs
to the feelings
of revenge with which the expatriated victims of Irish landlordism
are animated towards the power which ruthlessly drove them
from Ireland. Not less than one hundred millions of public
taxes have been expended
in the last eighty-four years in the administration of exceptional
and coercive laws, rendered necessary, in consequence of
the tyranny and legal robbery of the Irish landlords; and
now after
this record
of criminal action and criminal neglect, of abuse of power
and of opportunity, when the consequences of their long and
ruinous social sway in Ireland
is reacting upon themselves, the public taxpayer is expected
to sanction a scheme by which twice the market price of portions
of their estates
will be obtained in order to recruit their shattered means
of persecution, and give to the disturbing element in Irish
social life a longer lease
of poverty-inducing and crime-provoking power.
The pressure which the Irish landlords are bringing to bear
upon the Government on the purchase question, is easily understood;
but that
with which the name of Captain O'Shea, the member for Clare
Co., is identified, is not so clear. He is just now the hero
of a requisition
which has been signed by the majority of the Catholic Hierarchy
and of the members of Parliament for Ireland, and can boast
that Mr. Gladstone's
letter to him was the first indication of a promised statement
from the Premier on the purchase clauses of the Land Act. That
this requisition
was prompted by the Government is quite certain, Captain O'Shea
is, towards the Parnell Parliamentary party, what Mr, Errington
is at the
Vatican, the unofficial ambassador of the Gladstone administration;
and when any Governmental policy requires either the neutrality
or co-operation of the Irish representatives the member for
Clare is the
Government medium for diplomatic intrigue. To increase the
facilities for purchase at the eager behest of Irish landlords
might displease
the popular party in Ireland; but if a similar movement could
be obtained from persons who might be said to represent the
tenant-farmers, the
step which the Government had made up its mind to take before
Captain O'Shea obtained a single signature to his requisition
could then be
taken with safety, if not with profit, by Mr. Gladstone. Hence
the O'Shea requisition and the Gladstone letter and promise.
The contemplated extension of the purchase clauses of the
Land Act involves the most serious consequences to the tenant-farmer
class of
Ireland. Upon what basis of value will the holdings of would-be
peasant proprietors be purchased? If not on the present market
price of the
landlord's interest, what standard will have to determine
the
number of years' purchase for a farmer to pay? According
to Mr. Brodrick's
statement in the recent debate the average price of land
in 1872 was 221⁄2 years' purchase, while that of the land which was sold
in Ireland in 1882 averaged but 7. Will the Land Commission or the
Landed Estates Court be authorised to sell to the tenants at this figure?
Not at all. By extending the period of repayment over fifty years,
and lowering the interest on loans so that the annual charges will
approximate to the judicial rents, the farmers will be hoodwinked into
bargains by which the impecunious landlords will pocket the Government
loans to the tune of 20 or 25 years purchase for their otherwise unsaleable
interest. It is true the tenant will be no longer at the mercy of the
landlord; but he will have to pay an equivalent sum to the rent to
the Government for fifty or sixty years, by the end of which time he
will probably realise the felicity of having done something for posterity
as well as for the landlord,
and discover in this fact a corresponding consolation for having done
nothing for himself. With an annual Government
charge equal to the judicial rent upon his holding the farmer will
find it well nigh impossible to borrow other money should adverse circumstances
arise; while without his interest being thus mortgaged he would experience
no difficulty in this respect. That these considerations will influence
the action of the Irish tenant-farmers in the purchase question goes
without saying. They are a shrewd class of men, and, like the peasantry
of every other country, are swayed much more by selfish interests than
by patriotic principles. They are fully alive to the present unsaleable
nature of the landlords' interests. They are also convinced that few
if any land jobbers will now be found so reckless as to buy up saleable
estates when the power of rack-renting has been, to a great extent,
swept away. The teachings of the Land League against 'land grabbing' still
exercise a potent and salutary influence over the minds and acts of
the entire agricultural class of the country, and will continue to
do so for years to come, thereby checking that ruinous competition
for holdings which encouraged the landlords in past years to carry
on their system of rack-renting and clearance. Under these circumstances,
and with the opposition of the popular sentiment of the country against
any purchase scheme which will contemplate rents that are fixed on
tenants' own improvements as the basis of price, there is not much
likelihood of anything-like a 'brisk business' being
done in the sale of landlord property, even when the whole
of the purchase
money is loaned by the State. Ireland must not be expected
to be generous to a class which never knew how to be just.
To propose that tenants who have reclaimed their mountain
or bog-land holdings by years of unremitting toil should
pay a
twenty years purchase
of a judicial rent that is fixed upon the property which
was created by their toil and sweat, is simply monstrous.
As well
demand of a depositor
in a savings' bank a similar tax ere he could claim the savings
of a lifetime as his own. No landlord capital has been expended,
no effort
outside that of the tenants has been at work to bring a semi-savage
soil into a moderate state of cultivation; and yet after
the purchase money has been paid over and over again in the
rack-renting
which has
been the rule upon estates made up of this description of
holding, Mr. Gladstone is about to propose that the occupiers
of these
reclaimed lands shall pay the price which the landlords demand
before the fruits
of the tenants' toil can be called their own. There are probably
near 200,000 holdings of this description in Ireland. They
are found chiefly
along the Western Coast counties from Donegal to Cork and
in the mountain and bog-land districts in other parts of
the country.
They comprise
the area of periodical distress and may be said to constitute
the chief difficulty in the solution of the Irish social
problem. One out of
scores of similar cases which came under my notice when making
a tour of some of these districts last year will suffice
for an illustration
of the wrong which purchase will inflict upon the poorest
of our farming class. Widow Collins, of Lissheenfro, West
Clare,
was a tenant of Col.
McDonnell's. Her holding consisted of eleven acres of cut-away
bog. The Government valuation was £3. The rent which her husband and
herself had been paying for thirty years was £11 4s. She went
into the Land Court and obtained a reduction of £6 4s., and for
having taken this step against the landlord she was evicted for £19
arrears of the old rack-rent, which she was unable to pay. Taking the
judicial rent of £5 as being a fair rent according to a legal
tribunal, we see that the sum of £6 4s. more than what was fair
was compelled to be paid each year for thirty years by this poor family.
A total of £186 was thus extracted over what the landlord was
justly entitled to receive, or £86 more than the price of the
fee simple, if we reckon that at the figure which the landlords will
endeavour to induce the Government to aid them in obtaining, twenty
years purchase of the judicial rent; or £126 more than what the
fee simple would cost, if the Government valuation be taken as the
basis of fair value. Yet had this poor woman not been evicted, as described,
she would be required to pay £l00 more before she could
claim the property which her husband's labour created, and
which their rack-rent
payments had already really purchased twice over.
Upon what principle of fair dealing the landlords are to be
helped to screw large sums of purchase-money from these mountain
and bog-land
tenants is not easy to discover. They have been the most fearfully
rack-rented portion of our tenantry. Rents have been levied
not upon the capabilities of the reclaimed soil but upon the
extraneous sources
from which the poor people have been accustomed to receive
aid, such as turf-cutting, labour of the head of the family
in England and Scotland
in the summer months, and remittances from relatives in America.
They have first been compelled to pay rent for land which they
themselves
have reclaimed, and the rent has then been mercilessly adjusted
so as to tax the extra labour and sources of income of the
unfortunate
tenants. They are mostly all housed in one-roomed cabins, built
of mud or rubble. More than a million of human beings are thus
domiciled
in Ireland, and the effect which the purchase scheme now clamoured
for by the landlords would have upon the social prospects of
these people would be to continue them in their present condition
for the
remainder of their lives by having to pay an equivalent to
a judicial rack-rent for fifty years, in order that the class
which has shamelessly
robbed and oppressed them may receive a liberal price for their
infamously administered properties.
It is not the better housing of these one million people,
or how extra agricultural industry can be fostered among
them,
or how the holdings
upon which they live can be enlarged; or, failing this, how
some of them can be migrated to unoccupied better land, which
engages the attention
of the Liberal Government. No. That would be going to the
root of the social evil of Ireland. It would be commencing
where
sound social reform
should begin, in a regard for the practical amelioration
of the condition of the poorer class of workers; but as Whig
statesmanship
only concerns
itself with temporary expedients, oscillating between Tory
retrogression and Radical progress, it would be expecting
too much to count upon
even the semblance of a final remedy for the Irish Land Question
from a party that has been bungling over its solution during
the past fifteen
years. To emigrate the people and compensate the landlords
for the working of a system which has reduced our population
to less than it
was eighty-four years ago, is Mr. Trevelyan's conception
of how the Irish Social problem is to he solved. John Stuart
Mill
has said that 'When
the inhabitants of a country quit the country en masse because the
Government will not make it a place fit for them to live in, the Government
is judged and condemned.' But in the opinion of our
Irish Executive, Mr. Tuke is a truer political economist
than Mr. Mill. Nevertheless,
the people of Ireland will naturally incline to a contrary
belief while facts like the following can justify them in
doing so. The diagram
which follows represents thirty-two squares of one thousand
miles each, and will correspond with the area of Ireland,
which is 31,874 square
miles.
From this diagram it will be seen that but one-fourth of the
entire area of the country is under cultivation, while 16,000
square miles
of land are under grass. The remaining 8,000 square miles comprise
water, bog, and waste land. In 1814 the population per square
mile was 270 persons. In 1881 it had diminished to 160, representing
in
the short space of forty years a loss of 110 persons per square
mile, a fact (taking into account the extent of soil capable
of sustaining
at least 500 people where but 160 are now remaining), without
a parallel in the history of any system or scheme for the depopulation
of a civilised
country. Yet it is a country thus criminally depleted which
English Liberal statesmanship proposes to drain still More,
in furtherance
of what is but a ruthless policy of Celtic expatriation, no
matter by what other euphemism of expression, or under what
pseudo-philanthropic
pretence, it is attempted to be masked.
DIAGRAM OMITTED
There are 10,000 square miles of Irish land under grass, and
semi-waste at the present time, which could be planted with
farms and brought
under cultivation, while leaving sufficient pasturage land
for the grazing purposes of the country. Why should this
land be allowed to
starve for labour while thousands of labourers and cottiers'
families are being emigrated or left starving for the want
of its use? Is it
not a heartless mockery of the helplessness to which English
Statesmanship has reduced Ireland that we are compelled to
listen to arguments about 'an
over-populated country,' while we have before our eyes
every day millions of acres of fruitful land which no hungry
man dare touch?
It is the curse of Tantalus inflicted upon a people in pursuance
of a policy of political vengeance for their uncompromising
nationality,
and if such an inhuman system of rule and ruin begets daily
increasing trouble and danger to the Government which is
responsible for its continuance,
it is but the providential infliction of a just penalty for
a course of persistent wrong.
The most significant feature of the present phase of the
Irish agrarian struggle is the conversion of the territorial
class
to the doctrine
of peasant proprietary, or, as it is now termed, ' occupying proprietary.' It
is not surprising, on the other hand, that few, if any, landlords,
conservative though they are as a class, advocate state or national
proprietary. A Conservatism of the masses, which would result from
any other system than one that should be in the interests of a class,
finds no favour with the landocracy. The stability of society must
be contingent upon a monopoly, and this monopoly must be the property
of a class. Conservatism is, therefore, the profession of a selfish
creed; and that anxiety for the preservation of political and social
institutions which a landlord speaker or writer parades with such patriotism
when attacking the advocates of reform, is but akin to the celebrated
expression of Louis XIV, 'L'etat, c'est moi.' Society, law,
order, government, mean the landlords with, in Ireland, the addition
of British Empire and loyalty; and if any encroachment is attempted
on the part of the community at large upon any unjust privilege attaching
to the ' sacred rights ' of this class, then society,
law, order, government, British Empire and loyalty are menaced
with the
prospect of universal ruin.
The conversion of the Irish landlords to the doctrine of a
peasant proprietary is recent. Four years ago such a scheme
was either Utopian
or insane, when talked of in connection with Ireland, in the
opinion of those who are now advocating it as an essential
remedy for the existing
social evils of the country. Sudden conversions do not invite
the credit of honest conviction. This rapid development in
the economic education
of our landlords needs enquiring into for an explanation of
its motives. Very little investigation will be needed to unmask
then. The Land Act
of 1881 establishes a dual legal proprietorship in the land
of Ireland. Absolute ownership is, however, not destroyed,
it is only divided:
but the proprietory relationship of the joint landlord and
tenant owners is so antagonising that the partnership is only
workable by the intervention
of the State in the machinery of the Land Court. Under this
arrangement, backed by the state of public feeling against
land-grabbing, the interest
of the farmer threatens to eat up that of the landlord. With
the latter the chief difficulty is the intervention of the
State, while the farmer
has the public voice at his back in favour of the abolition
of his little difficulty, which is, of course, the landlord.
Finding himself
in this situation, it strikes the landlord that his best policy
is to get the State to buy him partially out, before his entire
interest
becomes unsaleable; and he now appeals to the author of the
Land Act to render him this necessary aid in order to get out
of a daily increasing
difficulty of position.
The first anxiety of the Irish landlords is a liberal price
for that portion of their dilapidated interest which they
are anxious to sell,
and this they expect the government to virtually guarantee
by reducing the interest on loans to tenants, and extending
the period of repayment
from 35 to 50 or 60 years: but their next concern is for
the gradual formation of a peasant proprietary. Lord George
Hamilton,
Lord Lansdowne,
The O'Connor Don, Lord Castleton, and numerous others of
the same fraternity, have written and spoken on the advisability
of carrying out such a
scheme in Ireland. In this the landlord party is showing
consummate
judgment. Peasant proprietary will not destroy, it will only
extend the absolute ownership of land: an ownership which
will always be in
the market for purchase and re-consolidation into large estates.
The sale of some landlords' properties, and of portions of
others will
not be compulsory, except to the extent of the landlords'
pecuniary difficulties: and facilitating the purchase of
what the landlords
cannot now sell, will be only extending relief to a portion
of that class
without contributing in any material way either to the abolition
of Irish landlordism or to the final settlement of the Irish
land question.
Landlordism will still remain as an institution powerful
for evil, though shorn of some of its former unjust privileges:
and 'landlordism
in Ireland,' no matter by what conditions it may be restricted
in its administration of the land, means a continuation, more or less,
of those social evils which have been associated with the system since
the unpropitious hour when it was first introduced into the country.
Peasant proprietary, therefore, is not 'the abolition of landlordism,' unless
as a result of compulsory expropriation, and the accompaniment
of .a law against consolidation, together with the imposition
of a land tax
in the interests of the nation – changes which the landlords
well know are not contemplated by the present Liberal party.
The Irish landlords
are quite safe in agitating for a peasant proprietary, and
it is only this feeling of security which has caused them
to advocate in 1884
what they denounced as communism and the disintegration of
society so recently as 1879. In this respect, at least, the
landlords of Ireland
have learned wisdom. It remains to be seen whether the people
have, on their part, profited also to a like extent by the
experience of
the last five years. For my part I firmly believe they have,
and that they will have little or nothing to do with this
contemplated purchase
scheme, which has for its chief, if not sole, object, the
relief of bankrupt Irish landlords at the expense of Irish
tenants; which purpose
is sought to be masked by offers to some farmers to become
the landlords of their own holdings, in fifty years time
– at the selling landlord's
own price!
MICHAEL DAVITT
Back to early Irish workers' movement
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