The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent Part 33

A considerable amount of capital has been made out of the depreciation of agricultural produce in Ireland as compared with England. But Ireland is a stock-producing country and not an agricultural country in the strict sense, for the cultivation of wheat in Ireland has long since ceased to exist. The true relation may be seen in the fact that in England the difficulty of getting store-cattle was a loss to farmers, whereas it has been a decided gain to farmers in Ireland--though they are not best pleased when you impress the fact on them.

Mr. Finlay Dun in _Landlords and Tenants in Ireland in 1881_ cites some examples which may be apt to-day when we are considering Mr. Wyndham's Act.

He writes on page 64:--

'Kilc.o.c.kan parish between Lismore and Youghal was in great part disposed of in the Landed Estates Court thirty years ago. It was bought, some of it by occupiers, some of it by shopkeepers and attorneys. Rents have been raised, and there is not much appearance of prosperity. Newtown, for several generations the fee-simple property of a family of the name of Nason, after the famine of 1846, was cut up and sold; the family residence is in ruin. At Lower Currygla.s.s, a few miles east of Lismore, a good farm of five hundred acres, belonging to a family who have been obliged to leave it, bears sad evidence of neglect; the good old deserted manor-house, the farm buildings, and a dozen cottages in the village are falling to pieces. Contrary to what might be antic.i.p.ated, some of the smaller proprietors in this district have been strenuous supporters of the Land League, although it is to be hoped that they repudiate the destruction of the cattle on the land of Mr. Grant, which were stabbed, and some of them drowned in the river. Mr. Grant had come under the ban of the League for evicting a dissipated bankrupt tenant, whose debts to the extent of two hundred pounds he had paid, and who would have been reinstated, if there had been the remotest prospect of reformed habits or of getting clear of his difficulties. Such acts appear to justify the statement, "that Irishmen don't know what they want, and won't be satisfied until they get it."'

G.o.d knows we have waded knee deep in blood of men, and domestic animals since that was written, yet to-day are we any nearer the final solution of the Irish difficulties? In my opinion, certainly not.

CHAPTER XVII

THE STATE OF KERRY

It has been stated that it is only within the last forty years that the bulk of the people of Ireland, long outside the pale of the ballot-box, have actively entered political life. This is quite true.

The whole of the Home Rule troubles followed the presentation of practically universal suffrage to the half-educated and over-enthusiastic Irish, who are easily led away, apt to believe mob-orators, and, by inherited instinct, to go against the Government.

What the effect of universal suffrage in India would be it is not my business to estimate. Still, the a.n.a.logy of what the ballot-paper provided in Ireland, if applied to the teeming population of our Oriental Empire, suggests a pandemonium to which the horrors of the Mutiny are but a mere scream of agony.

The ballot transformed Ireland; or rather, it permitted the worst pa.s.sions of the most ignorant to be played upon by interested adventurers, when the political power of Ireland had pa.s.sed for ever out of the hands of the restraining cla.s.ses. Democracy spelt anarchy, and the word patriotism was degraded in a way that had no parallel since the French Revolution.

The first outward and visible sign was the creation of the Irish Home Rule party, which const.i.tuted itself separate and distinct from the rest of the House of Commons, the standard of which the new gang was to debase. Nor did they rest content until it became the scene of faction fights and organised obstruction in combination with the flagrant violation of all decencies of language and behaviour.

Members were returned for Irish const.i.tuencies who had been convicts; others came who richly deserved imprisonment for life. They instigated murders, and clamoured because the murderers were not regarded as heroes; or if they were hung, canonised them as martyrs. They attempted to prost.i.tute the law to their own base standard of political morality.

They a.s.siduously laboured to render life valueless in Ireland and property worthless, whilst no deed was too cowardly, no atrocity too barbarous, for them to praise. They alone in modern times warred against women and children. Animals were the dumb victims of the inhuman ferocity they in no way tried to check, and they effectively taught the receptive Irish millions that a British Government could be coerced into giving what was demanded provided a sufficient number of crimes created a holocaust large enough to intimidate the weak-kneed at St. Stephen's.

But Mr. Parnell and the Land League would all have been promptly reduced to the pitiful unimportance from which they had so noisily emerged if it had not been for Mr. Gladstone.

The root of English politics has been party government--'where all are for a party, and none are for the State,' to reverse Macaulay's famous line. Now the Irish vote of sixty was a solid a.s.set, capable in many cases of weighing down one side of the political scale. It was obvious that the votes would be unscrupulously given, and Mr. Gladstone bid higher than the Tories. Literally the necessary parliamentary machinery for the government of the United Kingdom was clogged by the Nationalists, who brought obstruction to a fine art, and it was Mr.

Gladstone who always gave in when the Irish outcry would have stimulated an honest man to avail himself of all loyal forces which law and the common weal provided.

Long before this the Irish political agitator had set himself to embitter the relations existing between landlord and tenant. An Englishman goes into Parliament for various motives; an Irishman for his living. If he did not outshout his neighbour, if he were not implicitly obedient to Mr. Parnell, if he did not arouse the worst pa.s.sions of the worst people in his const.i.tuency, he was promptly dismissed.

To do them justice, the Irish members gave such an exhibition of blackguardism as has no parallel on earth, though it earned but the mildest rebuke from their obsequious ally, Mr. Gladstone.

In 1869, for example, before this balloting away of all that was creditable to Ireland, the relations between landlord and tenant were of the most kindly nature. The leading landlords of Kerry generally represented the county in Parliament with uniform decency and occasional brilliance, while larger sums were borrowed and expended by the landlords under the Land Improvement Act than were spent in the same way in any other county. I can prove that the princ.i.p.al landowner in Kerry--Lord Kenmare--expended a greater sum in ten years on his estates than he received out of them, though I cannot say he ever found out for himself that it was better to give than to receive.

For fifty years prior to what Mr. Gladstone was pleased to call his 'remedial legislation,' Kerry was unstained by agrarian crime; all things went on smoothly, and a number of railways were constructed with guaranteed capital, half of which was contributed by the landlords, although they received no benefit from the increased prices of farm produce caused by railway communication. The Board of Works returns show that the money borrowed by Kerry landlords under the different Land Improvement Acts amounted to almost half a million, and yet the deductions made under the Land Act were greater in Kerry than in other counties.

Here is an instance from my own experience.

I purchased from the Government in 1879 an estate, the rental of which was 517, 2s. 4d.; it was considered so cheaply let that the majority of the tenants offered twenty-seven years' purchase for their farms. I borrowed from the Government and expended on drainage 1120, 14s. 11d.

Then the Commissioners under the Land Act reduced the rental to 495, 10s. 6d., and the Government which sold me the estate continued to compel me to pay interest on the amount borrowed, although by its own legislation I was deprived of any advantage resulting from the outlay.

The rental of Kerry in 1870 was considerably less than it had been forty years previously, and higher prices were paid for the fee-simple of land than were offered in any other part of Ireland. But Mr. Gladstone's 'remedial manoeuvres' changed the country and the people.

Demoralising bribes to the Irish nation frittered away the proceeds of the plunder of the Irish Church. A notable instance was a million under the Arrears Act, the principle of which was that no honest tenant who had paid his rent could derive any benefit from it, but that any drunkard or squanderer who had not paid his rent might have it paid for him by the Government on swearing that he was unable to pay.

Here is an instance that occurred on an estate under my management.

A tenant, whose yearly rent was 48, had one year's rent paid by Government and another year's rent given up by his landlord, on his swearing that the selling value of his farm was _nil_; ten weeks afterwards he served me with a notice, as required by the statute, that he had sold the interest of the farm for 670.

Again, there was a tenant who swore that he had expended 513, 14s. 6d.

in permanent improvements, and that after this expenditure the fair letting value of the farm was only 17, though the original rent was 26, 4s.

How could I blame an ignorant peasantry for making false statements, when laws were framed by the leaders of public opinion in England which released the Irish tenants from every moral obligation, and made their a.s.sumed responsibilities and agreements a dead letter; while orators, living on the wages of patriotism, were allowed to preach sedition and plunder to an excitable people? The result was that the work of demoralisation made rapid progress, perjury became a joke, a.s.sa.s.sination was merely 'removal,' and men who had been brutally murdered were said to have met with an accident.

I have already shown how apt a prophet Mr. Gladstone was in his forecast in the House of Commons in 1870, and one more quotation adds testimony to his inspiration--though from what direction it came I will not linger to inquire:--

'Compulsory valuation and fixity of tenure would bring about total demoralisation and a Saturnalia of crime.'

Exactly.

Mr. Laing, formerly M.P. for Orkney, in a magazine article defended the 'Plan of Campaign' as an innocent attempt to defend the weak against the strong, and as having been adopted only on estates where rents were too high, in fact, as the result of high rents. As a matter of fact, in Orkney the rents advanced 194 per cent., and during the same period in Kerry they dwindled. He also a.s.serted that the Irish tenants'

improvements had been confiscated by the landlords as the tenant improved.

Certainly the law did not prevent them increasing the rent; but, unfortunately for the reasoning of Mr. Laing, and his taking for granted imaginary 'confiscations,' figures most decidedly prove that the landlords did not use any such power. The rentals have steadily decreased while the landlords were borrowing and expending nearly half a million in my own county.

This fact is conclusively demonstrated by the Government returns.

As to the National League--with all its paraphernalia of boycotting, shooting from behind a hedge, merciless beating, shooting in the legs, and other similar variations of Irish Home Rule, on which I shall dwell in a later chapter--being only a protector of the weak tenant against the hard landlord, I think one fact will prove more forcibly than any argument the fallacy of such an a.s.sertion.

There were two estates in Kerry let at a much lower rate than any others in the county--those of Lord Cork and Colonel Oliver.

Colonel Oliver's agent was the only one fired at in Kerry in 1886, and Lord Cork's agent was the only one obliged to employ over two hundred police to protect him in endeavouring to recover in 1887 rent which was due in 1884. This rent was due on land let at considerably under the Poor Law valuation, and the rents were only half what was paid in 1860.

These cases afford a decided proof that the Land or National League carries on its government irrespective of high or low rents, and the 'Plan of Campaign' is worked according as the local branches of the League have disciplined or terrorised the inhabitants of a district, the orders from 'headquarters' depending on the probability of success.

I should like to retort on Mr. Laing that, while the evidence before the Land Commissioner proved the rental of Ireland was diminis.h.i.+ng, that of the country where his own property lay increased to an unusual degree. I do not say the landlords confiscated the tenants' improvements, possibly they made none. But figures are hard facts, and they prove three things:--

First, that Kerry landlords spent 453,539 on improvements. Secondly, that the rental of Kerry was lower in 1880 than in 1840. Thirdly, that the rental of Orkney increased 194 per cent. during that time.

On the south-west coast of Kerry lie the Blasquets, a group of islands the property of Lord Cork, one of them inhabited by some twenty-five families. The old rental was 80, which was regularly paid. This was reduced by Lord Cork to 40, the Government valuation being 60. Now this island reared about forty milch cows, besides young cattle and sheep, and at the period when might meant right in Ireland the inhabitants, having some surplus stock, took possession of another island to feed them on.

This island was let to another man, but he was not able to resist the tenants any more than the mouse nibbling a piece of cheese is able to fight a cat.

For ten years up to 1887 those tenants paid no poor rate. They successfully resisted the payment of county cess, to the detriment of their fellow taxpayers, and they only paid one half year's rent out of six, and that not until they had been served with writs. And these people, in the year 1886, sent a memorial to the Government to save them from starvation.

This is a remarkable case, and proves that poverty and the cry of starvation are not always the result of rents and taxes, as the Irish patriots and their English separatist allies so frequently a.s.sert.

I am going to quote a colloquy overheard at a Kerry fair to show how deeply the teaching of Messrs. Parnell, Gladstone, Dillon, Morley, Davitt, Biggar, and Company has taken root in the Irish mind.

Jim from Castleisland meeting Mick from Glenbeigh, asks:--

'Well, Mick, an' how are ye getting on?'