THE NEW IRISH LAND BILL

THE substitution of yet another measure for the great Land Purchase Act of 1903 is a matter of such far-reaching importance not only to Ireland but to the United Kingdom that, before considering the Bill introduced by the Chief Secretary on the 23rd of November, it is desirable that the English reader, in particular, should remember that fresh legislation is not due to failure of the Land Act of 1903, but is due to its success. The transfer of title to agricultural land from landlord to tenant has proceeded so rapidly that, in view of the present condition of the money market, difficulty is experienced in financing the Act. The nature of the Act of 1903 must be understood. It was not a mere philanthropic project. It was a sound investment on the part of the United Kingdom on good security for the attainment of an object of great national and Imperial importance. And in order that the reader should grasp the situation it is advisable that he should glance back on the recent course of agrarian legislation in Ireland.

Since 1860 twenty-six Land Acts have been placed upon the statute book, the most notable among them being the Act of 1881 which secured to tenants fixity of tenure, fair rents, and free sale. The sanction for that, and for other similar Acts, lay in the assumption that, owing to excessive demand, owners of land were able to extort, and did in fact extort, exorbitant rents from the occupiers. A small minority, it was claimed, had a monopoly of an article necessary for the existence of the great majority and made an improper use of their power. On that hypothesis, the correctness of which need not be discussed, legislation for the adjustment of rents was undoubtedly necessary; but the legislation was faulty in two vital particulars. The Act of 1881 not only deprived landowners of rights and privileges inherent in ownership, to which it might be argued they had morally forfeited their claim through misuse; but it also took from them tangible property in the shape of houses and buildings, for which no compensation was given, the excuse being that, though the Act did deprive the landowners of some of their property, the property remaining to them would become so greatly enhanced in value as to render compensation unnecessary. A very short experience sufficed to

prove the speciousness of the plea. For the administration of the Act a commission was created consisting of a judicial commissioner and two other commissioners, with power to appoint sub-commissioners to value land and assess rents. No rules or guidance of any kind were given to the commissioners by the Act, or to the sub-commissioners by the Land Commission. No system was devised; no basis laid down on which rents were to be fixed, such as capacity of the soil, prices of produce, or cost of labour. Land was valued and rents were assessed apparently according to the impression made upon the mind of the individual sub-commissioner by the condition of the land as he saw it, without reference to the condition it ought to have been in if properly treated. The inevitable result was discontent all round. The effect of the Act was to leave landlords smarting under a sense of injustice, and rendered incapable of laying out a penny upon the land; and to tempt tenants to reduce their farms to the lowest possible condition before applying periodically to have a fair rent fixed. The consequence was that, though tenants gained somewhat by the transference of property to them, and greatly by the protection of judicial rents against exorbitant exactions, the injury to the industry-agriculture was permanent and great.

It was always felt that land tenure under the system culminating in the Act of 1881 was in a transitory state, and no less than twentyfive Acts, with the object of restoring single ownership by enabling the occupiers to buy out the other partner-the landlord-were passed between 1860 and 1896. By 1900 the Ashbourne Acts, as they are called, had become inoperative. Bankrupt estates, the estates of some absentees who had no other ties in Ireland, had been sold; all, in fact, that might be classed as forced sales had been concluded. The terms of the Acts were not such as to induce resident landlords and the owners of solvent estates to part with their property, and by the end of the century land purchase in Ireland had practically ceased. It was in these circumstances that the then Chief Secretary, Mr. George Wyndham, introduced a Land Bill into the House of Commons in 1902. The measure was condemned by landlords and tenants alike; and, faced with opposition on all hands Mr. Wyndham suggested that the Bill should be submitted to a joint conference in order to remove the difficulties which threatened to destroy it, and to enable it to be referred to a Grand Committee as a non-contentious measure. This suggestion came to nothing, and eventually the Bill was dropped. A complete impasse was reached, and the circumstances were full of gloomy forebodings for the future of Ireland. But in the meantime a few men had been thinking, and from thinking took to talking and writing to the Press, suggesting the possibility of some sort of conference between landlords and tenants to discuss the situation. It would be an interesting study, but quite out of place here, to trace the evolution of the policy of conciliation that bore its first fruit

in the Land Conference, for that conference will be found to mark a turning point in Irish history, however gloomy the immediate outlook may be. Suffice it now to say that the project met with but little support. The Landlords' Convention would have none of it—a motion in its favour by Lord Mayo being rejected by seventy-seven to fourteen. The more prominent landlords, when approached, refused to entertain the idea. Mr. John Redmond counselled the tenants to disregard the unauthorised waving of white flags and continue to fight.' The only assistance the movement received was from the Chief Secretary, Mr. Wyndham, who said 'that any conference would be a step in the right direction if it brought the prospect of a settlement between the parties nearer'; and from the Times which, by expressing its strong disapproval of the project, convinced many Irishmen that it was of a character certain to be beneficial to their country.

In spite of all discouraging indications, and there were many, the idea of a conference took root and grew, until it became evident that the advocates of conciliation and of a friendly meeting to discuss a matter of vital importance to the whole country were voicing the opinion of a great body of both landlords and tenants. A small Landlords' Committee was formed. A poll was taken of all the landlords of Ireland, which resulted in an overwhelming majority in favour of meeting the tenants, with a view to an understanding being reached. In face of favourable expressions of public opinion throughout Ireland the Nationalist leaders modified their views. The assenting landlords were again polled to choose representatives, and eventually the Land Conference was constituted; the representatives of the landlords being Lord Mayo, Lord Dunraven, Colonel Nugent Everard, Colonel Hutcheson Poe, while the tenants were represented by Mr. John Redmond, Mr. W. O'Brien, Mr. T. W. Russell, and Mr. T. Harrington, the Lord Mayor of Dublin.

This short résumé indicates the manner in which the new policy took root in Ireland, grew and bore fruit in spite of strong but not unnatural opposition. It is not strange that men arrayed in opposite camps, warm from the fight, were at first suspicious of each other; but all opposition was overborne by the sound common-sense of the Irish people, an asset which can always be relied upon if given a fair chance. Realising that land purchase was at a standstill, they came to the wise conclusion that the best chance of putting an end to landlordism and the unsatisfactory system of dual ownership lay in friendly conference and compromise.

Space forbids even a précis of the recommendations of the Conference, but certain principles on which it acted must be mentioned. Briefly they were :

(1) That dual ownership ought to be abolished.

(2) That it could be abolished only by the creation of a peasant proprietorship in its place through sale and purchase.

(3) That it was in the interest of the community that the expropriated landed gentry should remain in the country.

(4) That income should be the basis of price, and that second term rents or their fair equivalent, less 10 per cent. for cost of collection, represented income.

(5) That landlords should receive such a price as would, when invested, produce income, and should be offered some inducement to sell.

(6) That the price tenants gave should be such that their annual payment of interest and sinking fund should represent a substantial reduction on their second term rents or their fair equivalent, and that they should receive some inducement to buy.

(7) That the difference between the price which the owner ought to receive and the occupier ought to give should be made good by the State.

(8) That the wounded soldiers' in the land war-evicted tenants -should be re-instated in their old holdings with a view to purchase, or, when that was impossible, should be provided with other but equivalent holdings.

The Conference met in the Mansion House, Dublin, in December 1902, and the report was published on the 3rd of January 1903. The report was received with acclamation by every public body and private association in the country. It was realised also throughout the United Kingdom that, in the words of Mr. Redmond in his address to the London branch of the United Irish League, ' England had now for the first time since the Union a chance, at a ridiculously small cost, of bringing the land war to an end.' The Government of the day was appealed to. The leader of the Irish Nationalist Party seized the first opportunity on the reassembling of the House of Commons to move an amendment to the King's Speech humbly to represent to your Majesty that it is in the highest interests of the State that advantage should be taken of the unexampled opportunity created by the Land Conference Agreement for putting an end to agrarian troubles and conflicts between classes in Ireland by giving the fullest and most generous effect to the Land Conference Report in the Irish Land Purchase proposals announced in the Speech from the Throne.' Advantage was taken of the opportunity, and in the following March Mr. Wyndham introduced his famous Land Bill framed on the report of the Land Conference.

It would be a vast mistake to look upon the Bill of 1903 as merely an instrument for assisting a certain number of occupying tenants to purchase their farms. That, though a desirable thing in itself, could not be considered a matter of urgent necessity or of great national or Imperial concern. The Bill had a far wider and deeper significance.

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The Conference, subordinating all minor considerations, aimed at a remedy for a disease that for centuries had vitiated the life of Ireland. Parliament, animated by the same spirit, passed, with the consent of all parties, a great measure of healing and of peace.

The Act met with universal approval. Mr. Redmond declared that if successfully and reasonably worked, the Act would in a comparatively short space of time bring to an end, once and for all, the struggle of centuries, marked as it has been all through by suffering, by sacrifice, aye, and by bloodshed and by crime.' It decreed, he said, the absolute and complete abolition of landlordism, root and branch .. with the consent of all English parties, and, what may seem more extraordinary still, with the unanimous consent of the Irish landlords themselves.' After referring to the fact that the Land Act provided the money for the complete transfer of the land in Ireland without imposing one shilling additional burden upon the tenants, Mr. Redmond added:

Nay, more than that, I am understating the case. It provides that immediately this transfer takes place all rent shall instantly cease, and the annual instalment which the tenants will be called upon to pay for a specified and limited number of years will be less than the reduced rents which they are now paying, by a percentage which, while naturally it will vary according to the circumstances of various estates, will in all cases where the people act with common prudence and firmness be large and substantial.

The blessings showered upon the Land Act were put on record in the name of the whole Irish party. At a meeting of the National Directorate of the United Irish League in Dublin, presided over by Mr. Redmond, the Land Act was welcomed as the most substantial victory gained for centuries by the Irish race for the re-conquest of the soil of Ireland by the people.' It was looked upon as heralding 'a new state of things, in which all Irish-born men, irrespective of class or creed, will have a common interest in labouring unitedly for the national rights and happiness of our country.' The Directorate recognised the national character of the Conference, and the Imperial nature of the Act. Amendments,' they said, 'demanded by the National Convention have been conceded in Committee to an extent to which no great Government measure in relation to Ireland has ever before been modified in deference to the demands of Irish public opinion.' They attributed the 'happy result' of the Land Act to

the exertions of a United Irish Party, under the leadership of Mr. Redmond, and of Mr. T. W. Russell's Ulster Tenants' Rights Association,' and to 'the wisdom and active good-will displayed by that section of the landlord leaders who made the Land Conference possible, and the loyalty with which Mr. Wyndham and his associates in the Government of Ireland endeavoured to make good his pledge to give legislative effect to the recommendations of that Conference, as well as to the high public spirit with which the Liberal Party resisted the temptation to extract any party advantage from the situation.