The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent Part 31

This Act might have been all right in principle, but it was useless in practice, and the compensation made to the County Court Judge for adjudicature came to far more than the amount awarded.

This is easily accounted for, thus:--

You might as well bring in an Act of Parliament to prevent people cutting off their own noses.

No sane person does such a thing, and no landlord ever turned out an improving tenant.

But the Irish tenants, having almost the sole representation of the country in their hands, returned a body of representatives pledged to the confiscation of landed property; and in order to keep his party in power by securing their votes, Mr. Gladstone brought in the Land Act of 1881.

I heard him introduce the motion in the House of Commons, and his speech was a truly marvellous feat of oratory. He was interrupted on all sides of the House, and in a speech of nearly five hours in length never once lost the thread of his discourse.

As far as I could judge, he never even by accident let slip one word of truth.

When the Act pa.s.sed, Mr. Gladstone antic.i.p.ated that eight sub-commissioners would do the work. This number very soon ran up to one hundred sub-commissioners and more than twenty County Court valuers.

The result is that every tenant has been running down his land and letting it go out of cultivation, for the tenants know the commissioners value the ground as they find it, and a premium is thus, of course, put on neglecting the soil.

To show the system on which the valuation was done, many cases have been known of the commissioners arriving to value a property after three o'clock on a December afternoon.

It is a positive fact that there are professional experts who obtain substantial fees for showing tenants the speediest methods of damaging their own land.

All the same I cannot help thinking their services are a matter of supererogation, for a recalcitrant Irish tenant in the South and West needs instruction in no branch of villainy.

On one of Lord Kenmare's estates, I executed drainage works costing over 200. These were dependent upon sluices to keep out the tide at high water. A few days before the land was to be inspected, the tenants put bushes in the sluices, let the tide in and flooded the whole land.

And then a prating, mendacious local schoolmaster began comparing these villains to the patriotic Dutch who flooded their land rather than permit it to be conquered by the national foe.

I could give scores of such instances of wilful destruction of property for the purpose of obtaining a reduction.

Here is one.

A tenant near Blarney, in County Cork, was seen to be ploughing up a valuable water meadow.

When asked by a gentleman why he was injuring his land, he replied without hesitation that he was going to get his rent fixed, and immediately afterwards he should lay it down again as a water meadow.

It is scarcely credible how great was the amount of perjury that this Act brought into the country.

A tenant on a property to which I was agent, whose rent was 6 a year, swore he expended 395 on improvements and all that it was worth afterwards was 4, 10s. He received the implicit credit of the court.

According to the laws of the Roman Catholic Church perjury in a court of justice is a reserved sin for which absolution can only be given by a bishop or by priests specially appointed for that purpose.

One priest applied to the bishop for plenary powers, and said the bishop to him:--

'Are the people so generally bad in your parish?'

'It's the fault of the laws, my lord,' replied the priest.

'What laws?' asked the bishop.

'Firstly, under the Crimes Act, my poor people have to swear they do not know the moonlighters that come to the house, or they would be murdered.

'Secondly, under the Arrears Act, they have to swear they are worth nothing in the world or they would not get the Government money.

'Thirdly, under the Land Act, while they have to swear up their own improvements, they must also swear down the value of the land, or they will get no reductions.

'So you see, my lord, the sin lies at the door of those who made the infamous laws which lead weak sinners into temptation they cannot be expected to overcome.'

The bishop said nothing, but he gave the priest all the powers he desired.

I myself heard this story from a parish priest who was present, and as I have several times told it to different people, it may have found its way into print, though I have no recollection of ever seeing it in black and white.

Allusion having just been made to the Arrears Act, it may be here opportune to point out that this was the next step in Mr. Gladstone's long sequence of Irish mismanagement. This iniquitous measure provided that no matter how great the arrears owed by the tenant, by lodging one year's rent another could be obtained from the Government, and the landlord was compelled to wipe out the balance. So that if Jack, Tom, and James were all tenants on town land, should Jack be an honest man he obtained no redress, whereas if Tom and James were hardened defaulters they obtained the complete settlement of all their arrears.

To obtain the grant of a year's rent from Government, the tenant had to swear as to his a.s.sets and also as to the selling value of his farm.

Here is an ill.u.s.tration which came under my own observation.

A tenant named Richard Sweeney, whose rent was 48 a year, owed three years' rent. He paid one year, the Government provided another, and the landlord had to forgive the third.

To obtain this result, Sweeney swore that the selling value of his farm was _nil_, and he received a receipt in full.

A few weeks later he served me--as agent for the landlord--with notice that he had sold his interest in the property for 630.

That is not the end of my story.

The purchaser was a man named Murphy, and a very few years afterwards, upon the ground that the rent was too dear, he took the farm for which he had paid 630 to Sweeney into the Land Courts and got the rent reduced to 36.

The absurdity of this system was well brought out before the Fry Commission, when one high-commissioner and a sub-commissioner both said that in valuing the land they took into consideration the tenant's occupation interest.

The reader will see the way this works out, if he will accept the very simple hypothetical case of two tenants holding land to the worth of 40 each, and one of them only paying 20 a year rent. When they both took their cases into the Land Court, the man paying the lower rent of 20 would obtain the larger reduction, because he had the greater occupation.

These facts will show that a Purchase Bill was an absolute necessity.

Lord Dufferin truly remarked that landlord and tenant were both in the same bed, and Mr. Gladstone thought to settle their disputes by giving the tenant a larger share than he had ever had before. But the tenant considered that as he had obtained that concession by fraud and violence, if he could only give one effective kick more, he would put the landlord on the floor for the rest of the term of their national life.

When introducing the Land Act of 1870, Mr. Gladstone proved himself if not an Irish statesman, an admirable prophet, for he denounced in antic.i.p.ation exactly what the effect of the Land Act of 1881 would be.

In 1870, he prospectively criticised such an inst.i.tution as the Land Court, which in 1881 he proposed, with its power to give a 'judicial rent.'

'But it is suggested we should establish, permanently and positively, a power in the hands of the State to reduce excessive rents. Now I should like to hear a careful argument in support of that plan. I wish at all events to retain at all times a judicial habit of not condemning a thing utterly until I have heard what is to be said for it; but I own I have not heard, I do not know, and I cannot conceive, what is to be said for the prospective power to reduce excessive rents. If I could conceive a plan more calculated than everything else, first of all, for throwing into confusion the whole economical arrangements of the country; secondly, for driving out of the field all solvent and honest men who might be bidders for farms; thirdly, for carrying widespread demoralisation throughout the whole ma.s.s of the Irish people, I must say it is this plan.'

And again:--

'We are not ready to accede to a principle of legislation by which the State shall take into its own hands the valuation of rent throughout Ireland. I say, "take into its own hands" because it is perfectly immaterial whether the thing shall be done by a State officer forming part of the Civil Service, or by an arbitration acting under State authority, or by any other person invested by the law with power to determine on what terms as to rent every holding in Ireland shall be held.'

This categorical denunciation of the principle which he was then asked, and which he peremptorily refused to sanction, was not enough for Mr.

Gladstone, for the records of debate show he went farther, but enough has been cited to show that never was prophecy more fully fulfilled.

Outrage followed outrage with a rapidity unequalled in Europe, and that in a country which previous to his remedial measures had practically been unstained by an agrarian outrage for fifty years.

It would certainly be both remiss of me, and altogether below the character which I trust I have acquired for honest plain speaking, if I omitted to give my views upon Mr. Wyndham's Act, for those readers who regard my book as something more than a storehouse of anecdotes--and since it is written at all, I maintain it claims to be more than that--having noticed the freedom with which I have spoken of previous English legislation for Ireland, may very naturally think I should be begging the question of the hour, if I did not offer a few observations on the latest development of the Irish question.