Dublin, Limerick, Meath, and Tipperary, do average a trifle more than the northern counties; but the one is the metropolitan county, and the quality of the land in the others is so superior to any in England or Ireland, that even at the small advance of two shillings an acre, they may justly be considered as more cheaply rented than any other counties.
To understand a people properly, their national character must be attentively studied; and this can only be done by a long residence and a close connexion with them. We cannot therefore be much surprised, that those who undertake to write on a country which they have never seen, or to prescribe remedies for the defects in the social condition of a people amongst whom they have never resided, should be led into grievous mistakes, and that they should be unsafe guides to direct the enquiries of others. Employment, hard work, large wages, and good living, form the objects of the Englishman and the Scotchman's ardent desire; while coarse food, bad lodging, and half clothing, are quite agreeable to the Irishman, if they be combined with independence—in other words, if by using them he may avoid labour, and enjoy those amusements to which he is passionately addicted, and in which he indulges unrestrainedly. We firmly believe, that if a choice of roast beef and loaf bread, accompanied by the labour necessary to earn them, were offered to "Pat" at home, or potatoes and milk, with liberty to frequent the horse-races, cock-fights, and dances, in his neighbourhood, he would unhesitatingly accept the latter. This may seem strange to an Englishman; but there is no accounting for taste. That the potato is coarse food, cannot be doubted; that it is wholesome, is abundantly proved by the stalwart men who subsist on it, and by the ruddy health of the chubby, merry urchins who have, perhaps, never tasted any thing else. Pity it is that the former should be so negligent of, or so indifferent to, their own advantage; or that the latter should have been (until lately) suffered to grow up in that ignorance which almost secures a continuance in the same courses which proved the bane and misfortune of their fathers. No peasant in Europe devotes so much of his time to amusement as does the Irishman. Go to the places of public amusement, or to the fairs and markets, in the busiest and most hurried seasons, and how many thousands will you see, who have no earthly business there but to meet their friends, to laugh and to chat, and (before Father Mathew reformed them) to drink and to fight!
To suppose, as some influential writers here do, that there is no alternative between the possession of land and absolute starvation, is one of those imaginary fictions often conjured up by those who wish to indulge in what they believe to be powerful, and wish to be pathetic, appeals to the feelings; but it betrays great ignorance of the subject on which they propound their opinions. The condition of the rural labourer, constantly employed by the gentleman or wealthy farmer, isgenerallymuchsuperior to that of the small landholder. Those men are bound by agreements which they must fulfill—they work continually; and although their wages are in some instances nominally very low, and in all much lower than we could wish, still their allowances—in house-rent, grazing, and con-acre—enable them not only to live comfortably, but sometimes to amass considerable sums of money. You always see good pigs, and very often more than two good cows, at their doors. It may not be amiss to say, that, inallinstances, they get the feeding of those cows for a rent varying from one guinea per year, when the nominal wages are low, to three shillings a-year, when tenpence a-day is given; thus, at the very highest price, getting for three shillings that accommodation for which Mr Cobden charges his workman twelve pounds! Yet the great object of those men is to get land and become farmers, although they almost invariably suffer by the change. They were before compelled to work to meet their engagements; having become their own masters, they in very many instances neglect their business, and devote the time which ought to be employed in the cultivation of their farms, to the discussion of politics and to the attendance on popular assemblies.
To say that the Irish are unemployed, not from inclination, but from necessity, is absurd;[35]this may sometimes be the case in the towns where the worst class of agricultural labourers reside—men who will not be employed while others can be had. A stranger meets able-bodied men walking about; he is told, and he sees, that there are no resident gentry in the neighbourhood to afford them work; he compassionates their condition; concocts a paragraph, and imputes the misery he witnesses to absenteeism. Let them accompany the idler to his home, and inspect his farm: he will find, out of a holding of from three to four Irish acres, perhaps an acre on which there was no attempt made at all to raise a crop, independent of untilled headlands, amounting to at least fifth of the ground under cultivation in each field. Why does he not employ himself on this land? If he has a lease, there can be no excuse; but even supposing him but tenant-at-will, it can in this instance be no justification. The land unused is not waste land, requiring an expenditure of labour and money, for which he might afterwards reap no advantage from the cupidity of his landlord. This is no such land: it is good, sound, arable land—perhaps the very best he has; and waste, purely and solely for the want of expending on it the labour necessary to prepare it for crop. He pays for it—yet he won't work it: he complains of want of employment, and he walks about with plenty to engage him beneficially for his own interests at home: he takescon-acre, for which he pays high, while he could raise his food on his own farm, if he only took the trouble of collecting manure, or devoting his time to its improvement.
Adjoining mountains and bogs, where the poorest class of the population generally reside, and where there is abundance of ground attached rent-free to each farm, and capable of being rendered profitable at a very little expense—in fact, without any other outlay than the labour required to open drains, and level it—we see scarcely any efforts made at improvement. A Scotchman, or an Englishman, would consider the possession of the land rent-free for three or five years, according to the difficulty of the undertaking, as a sufficient recompense for his trouble; although his time is much more valuable, on account of the higher rate of wages paid him. But an Irishman will consider a twenty-one years' lease as too short a tenure, to justify him in expending the time which he wastes gossiping with his neighbours, or sunning himself at the backs of the ditches, in the profitable employment of adding to what ought to be, if he had industry, his already too small holding. Here is a case in which we conceive legislation might operate much good. If every man who reclaimed ground which did not before pay rent, was guaranteed its possession by law for ten years after the first crop, at a nominal rent of one shilling the acre, it might be an inducement to the tenant to labour: it could be no loss to the landlord, as, if still left in a state of nature it would be useless to him, and after the expiration of the time guaranteed the tenant as remuneration for his trouble, the benefit would be his exclusively. In the case of a tenant-at-will, an arrangement could easily be effected, by which the tenant, if removed from the farm before the expiration of the stipulated term, might receive a just and reasonable compensation for the improvements which he had effected, or an allowance for the loss of the crops which, had he remained, he would still have been entitled to: and thus, without any government outlay, encouragement would be given for the reclamation of that part of the Irish waste lands which would be worth the trouble or expense of cultivation.
We are gravely told, in well-rounded and high-sounding sentences, that "in Ireland famine urges men to take land at any price—they must have it or die;" and that, "when a piece of ground falls out of lease, it becomes a bone of contention amongst some twenty or thirty miserable competitors, who outbid each other, to the great delight and profit of the ruthless and exulting landlord, and to their own utter ruin." If any one takes time to reflect on what he reads in every day's newspaper, he must at once perceive that this statement can have no foundation in fact; if a landlord remove a tenant for non-payment of rent, he finds it difficult to get another to succeed him, (in the disturbed districts it is almost impossible to get any man to do so.) Such is the dread of taking land, from the occupation of which others have been expelled, even on account of owing the most unreasonable arrears, that farms frequently remain waste for years, without any person daring to bid for them. Now if public opinion, and the dread of the punishment which is sure to follow, operate so powerfully in favour of the really blamable person, as to keep his land untenanted, how much more influence will they possess in restraining any man from seeking to obtain the land of another, if that other be unobjectionable in character, solvent in circumstances, and still in possession? Such a thing is never heard of. The landlord, if he were bad enough, might try to induce men to act so; but he could not effect it. If death pursue the man who undertakes to rent unoccupied ground, as in most instances it does, how much more certain would it be to overtake him whose conduct was the means of driving from his home a solvent and industrious person? If a landlord distrain for rent, he can find no bidders for the crops or cattle; how much more difficult will it be for him to obtain bidders for land? We have frequently heard the bad cultivation of the land in Ireland attributed to the constant shifting of the tenantry: we are quite convinced the result of the enquiry now instituted will show howunfounded this supposition is, and that the shifting or removal of the tenants, will be found to be a matter of much more rare occurrence in Ireland than in England. That scarcity and want are periodically experienced in Ireland, is but too true. Those visitations (which, thank God, are not frequent) arise from the failure of the potato crops, and generally occur in those districts most densely populated, and consequently worst tilled; in fact, they are greatly to be attributed to the neglect of the people themselves; who will not take the trouble of using those precautions against rot, which ought always to be adopted on a moist soil or in a mountainous country: but to talk of persons dying in Ireland of starvation is absurd, and bespeaks an utter ignorance of the national character. There are poor-houses; and besides, in Ireland, the hungry man may enter without hesitation, and share without apology in the meal of his more wealthy neighbour; and lodging, humble though it be, is never denied to the houseless or the destitute. Those who accuse Irishmen, of any class or party, of hard-heartedness or inhumanity, had better look at home. Intheircountry we never hear of verdicts of "death from starvation" being returned by coroners' juries; or of the weak and the unfortunate being compelled to seek for shelter in the hollows of decayed trees, or to sleep like brute beasts in the open parks, exposed to the cold and the inclemency of winter. The gentry may neglect their duties in other respects: as regards the performance of charitable acts, they are faultless; the middleman may be exacting—but he is hospitable; and the men who make those groundless charges, would be not a little astonished did they see the multitudes that are still fed (poor-laws notwithstanding) at thebigHouse of the Irish gentleman. We have said that failures of the crops, and scarcity, occur much more frequently in the densely populated parts of the country than in any others, and that those failures arise in a great measure from the neglect of the people themselves. Parts of Mayo, Galway, and Donegal, are the localities most subject to those visitations. In those counties the most miserable class of the peasantry exist; and nothing, we think, can prove more conclusively, that their misfortunes and their wretchedness cannot with justice be attributed to the misconduct of their landlords, but rather to their own,than the undisputed fact, that in those districts in which the people are worst off, the land is set at the lowest rent; and that where the greatest quantity of waste land is unreclaimed, and where that which is under cultivation is worst managed and least attended to, there, invariably, is to be found the greatest amount of unemployed labourers. It may be said they know no better mode of cultivation than what they practise. They do; those are the very men who go, and have from their youth been in the habit of going, to England and Scotland, where they see the benefits arising from a good system of agriculture. They fully appreciate, but won't practise it. The truth is—and this is one of the great sources of Irish misery—that by the constant agitation of which (under one shape or another) he is almost always the victim, the Irish peasant is induced to consider himself as the worst treated of God's creatures; by it he is kept in a continual state of dependence on anticipated events, which leads him to expect the amelioration of his condition by means of political convulsions, rather than by patient and persevering industry.
We need scarcely say how much the sympathy expressed for his situation, and the abuse heaped on his landlord, tend to confirm the Irish peasant in his bad habits. Articles from the English press, and not extracts from the gospel, form the texts of the sermons which are delivered for his instruction: the object of the preacher is not to remove his prejudices, or to eradicate his faults; but to excite his animosities, and to extract his shillings: when peace and mercy are inculcated, it is not because they are commanded, but because they may be expedient.
In those parts in which there are no resident gentry to employ them, to set them an example, and to enforce a respect for the laws, the peasantry indulge in idleness, and engage in politics. They work at homeonly when it suits their convenience or inclination, and from others they can only procure work (at prices for which they will work) in the harvest and spring. In summer, after they have planted their crops, and made their turf, and set the milk of their cow, (if they have one,) they shut up their houses, send their wives and their families to beg, and betake themselves to England or Scotland to reap the harvest. There, until of late years, they earned the almost incredible sums of £16, sometimes of £20—latterly, competition and other causes have reduced the amount to, on the average, between £4 and £5. Out of this, on their return, they pay the rent of the con-acre which they have taken, while a third of their own holding is waste. With the balance and their oats they pay the landlord, in those cases in which he is so fortunate as to get any rent; and having secured an abundance of potatoes, they sit down to enjoy themselves for the winter. During the night they play cards for geese, turkeys, and herrings; attend dances, where they are enrolled and sworn into secret societies; and devote some hours to the wrecking of the houses, or the castigation of the persons, of those who are obnoxious to them. In the daytime, you find them at the places of public resort or amusement, or lazily and listlessly strolling about those miserable abodes—in whose floors you frequently find stepping-stones to carry you from the entrance to the space occupied by the fire, and before whose doors are those stagnant pools and heaps of filth, so disgusting to every traveller. Could they not remove those? Is it the landlord's fault that they don't? Does he wish their houses to be in such a condition, or encourage them to keep their own persons and those of their children in such a state of dirt and nastiness? Not at all. He does his best to prevail on them to adopt a different system; but his interference in their domestic matters is always looked on as an unjustifiable intrusion; in short, as a sort of minor grievance, and a petty act of oppression. Perhaps it is to be attributed to their poverty? Water, at least, is cheap and abundant in Ireland.
Such is a true and accurate account of the "tenor of those men's lives" and habits; and it is a continuance of this state of things that those who attack the Irish landlords so indiscriminately are, in reality, advocating.
Now, let us suppose that a tract of two thousand acres, set perhaps by the grandfather of the preset owner, and inhabited by a class of tenantry such as we have described, comes on a landlord's hands. It has been let and relet—tied up in settlements—and, until the termination of the lease, there may have been three or four intermediate landlords between the occupant and the proprietor. The present possessor comes to deal with an estate, ruined and almost worthless from mismanagement, over which he could exercise no control, and peopled by a pauper and surplus tenantry, for whose creation he is in noways accountable. This is exactly the condition of those estates, and the position of those landlords, whose treatment and whose acts have been latterly so much commented on. And we will now ask those who blame others so much, candidly to tell us what they would advise to be done—what, if placed in such a situation, they would do themselves. They will, no doubt, at once say, "Remove some, give them the means of going to the colonies, and make the rest comfortable." Why, that is exactly what the landlords have been endeavouring to do, and for which they have been denounced. This is just what Lord Lorton, Colonel Windham, and others, did; and for doing which they were designated "miscreants." If the tenantry were removed, even to better their own condition, the dues of the priest, and the physical force at the command of the agitator, would be lessened—and this would never answer. "Well, then, if this mode of management be not popular, leave all on the land, build them comfortable houses, and insist on a proper mode of cultivation. In Belgium and France men live on smaller portions of land in comfort, why should they not in Ireland? Lay out money in affording them employment, pay them fordraining and sewering—the benefit will be ultimately yours." The answer is obvious. It would require more money than the property is worth to build good houses for all; and, if built, they would soon go to ruin from the habits of the people. If they possessed the land in fee, the occupants, from their numbers, could not exist upon it. The landlord cannot make them emulate the Belgian or the Frenchman in industry. The produce of the orchards he may plant will be stolen, and the trees broken and destroyed, to obtain the fruit. They will not exert themselves to raise many things which are sources of profit to the poor man in this and other countries; or if they did, they would have no market—they would obtain no price for them. And why? Because their own misconduct prevents the establishment of any manufactures, or the outlay of any money amongst them. Who will carry his machinery to a country where—though he may be a good master and a kind friend, though he may give occupation to hundreds and diffuse wealth among thousands—his spindles may be stopped at the beck of a priest, and his machinery left to rust at the dictate of Mr O'Connell. Independent men do not wish to lose all self-control—to sacrifice all right of private judgment; and he who dares to assert his own opinions, or to defy the behests of the "Liberator," has no business to betake himself to Ireland. As to giving employment in sewering and draining—which would benefit the estate—it is not every man who can afford to set his land at a cheap rate, and afterwards to expend his income for the immediate benefit of the occupier. But even this has been attempted. Lord Lansdowne tried to accomplish it on his Irish estate; but the steward he sent to superintend the work was noticed to quit, and driven out of the country, by the very persons for whose benefit those improvements were planned—by the very men who were to be paid for their execution. Under such circumstances as we have stated, in many instances the fear of death compels the landlord to abandon all idea of improvement. He must submit to sacrifice his rent, because those in possession can't or won't pay him; and, if he removes them, he can find no one to succeed them: and, in addition to his other consolations, he has the pleasure of seeing himself described as a monster more ruthless than any Russian despot; while some hut, the erection of which hedared not have prevented, is described, perhaps sketched and stuck in a book, as an incontrovertible proof of the miserable condition to which his rapacity and neglect have reduced his unhappy dependents.
No direct legislation can affect the social condition of Ireland; before you can hope to benefit the country,you must establish tranquillity, and inspire the peasantry with a due respect for the law, and a just estimate of the rights of private property. The question is—by what means are those things to be accomplished? You may give land at a lower price than it now brings, but you will not thereby cause any perceptible change in the habits of the people. They may be wealthier, but they will not be cleanlier. Their rents may be better paid, but the peasant will still live on the potato. The filthy cabin will exist, and the cow and the pig will feed at the same board, and occupy the same apartment as the owner, until you elevate the moral and social feelings of the man, and teach him to require as a necessary what he now looks on as a superfluous luxury.
Much of the poverty of the Irish peasantry has been attributed to the con-acre system. But if this system were not found, by the persons who practise it, to be more beneficial, and less laborious, than raising crops from their own land, it would not be persevered in. In those counties in which con-acres are scarce, the cry is, that the people are starved, because they can't have them. Where they are abundant, they are impoverished by the prices they pay for them. The Terryalt system, in the south, originated in the gentlemen farmers refusing to break up their land, and in the people assembling in mobs, digging the ground, thereby rendering it unfit for pasture, and compelling the owners to letit for potatoes. It may be said, how could they avoid doing this? They had no land to raise potatoes on, and they must have them or die. This is not the case. The only persons who could be so circumstanced are the day-labourers; and to them it must, personally, be a matter of indifference what land was, or was not broken: for, by their agreements, those gentlemen and farmers who employ them, are bound to provide them with potato land; consequently they would not risk their lives to procure what was already guaranteed them. Those agrarian disturbances originated with small farmers, whose own farms were not half cultivated; or tradesmen, who would not have been so anxious to procure con-acres, if they did not find them in general a much cheaper mode of procuring their staple commodity than by having recourse to the markets. The first use a servant boy or girl makes of their earnings, is to plant con-acres, not for subsistence, but for sale. Half an acre of potatoes is generally the foundation of the fortune. The rent paid for potato ground has been enormously magnified. Mr Wiggins sets it down at £12 per acre. It may let for this price (theplantation acre) in the immediate vicinity of Dublin, Belfast, or some other large cities; where, from the contiguity of the market, the produce of a good acre will be worth from £40 to £60, according to the rate of prices. But, in the rural districts, such a price is never heard of; and it is only by the prices in those districts that the condition of the people can be affected. From £5 to £7 and £8 will be found the usual prices; and we should be glad to know what English farmer would give upwards ofone acre three roodsof his best land, well tilled and highly manured, at such a price, the renter only holding it for one crop, and paying no taxes whatever. The average produce per acre of good con-acre will be, at least, twenty tons of eating or marketable potatoes, independent of a large quantity fit for seed, and for the feeding of pigs; the value of those latter will greatly over-pay the expense of seed, planting, and digging. And taking the price at 1s. per 112 lbs., the renter will have £20 worth of potatoes for £8; a clear profit of £12 on the acre. It, of course, occasionally does occur, that from failure of the seed, rot, or other casualties, the crop may not be worth the rent; in this case an abatement, sufficient to satisfy him, is made to the holder, or it is left on the landlord's hands. Potatoes being a perishable crop, and a species of food which cannot be preserved beyond a season, their price fluctuates more than that of any other kind of provisions. Last year the price in this "country of famine" was 4d. for 112 lbs.; in general the prices vary from 1s. (seldom less) to 2s., and sometimes 3s., the 112 lbs.
In Ireland, good con-acres are looked on by the peasantry as a certain source of wealth; here they are considered as a main cause of their poverty. Who are the best judges—the people who use, or those who read about them? But whatever may be the merit or demerit of the con-acre system, (and we are none of its advocates,) it is unjust to charge its practice on the landlords. They have nothing whatever to do with it; it is a mode of dealing between one class of tenantry and another. The assertion in the "Cry from Ireland," that the peasantgives his manure, and pays 18s. an acre besides, is too ridiculous to require confutation.
But suppose the rents in Ireland were exorbitant, who would be to blame?—the landlords who accepted them, or the people whosworeto their extraordinary moderation? Let us look to the registry courts:—[36]
"There the landlords were found opposing the admission of their tenantry to the register, and stating on oath that they considered the rents received by them as the full value of the land—while the tenants, and their neighbours, and the liberal 'valuators,' were proving 'that it was let by those rack-renting and heartless men' grossly under its value. And indeed, when the small extent ofthe farms whose occupiers claimed the right to vote is taken into consideration, this must appear true; for it sometimes requiredto prove the land worth thirty shillings the acre more than the rent paid, to bring the annual profit up to the requisite ten pounds."That the rents were not considered as too high, we have not only the testimony of the freeholders themselves, but of other'competent persons,' employed by the registry association, who, before the claimant was placed on the register, were obliged solemnly to swear, in public court, 'that the land was in most instances worth, and that a solvent tenant could afford to pay for it,double the rentimposed on the occupier by the landlord.'We say, in almost every instance,double the rent; for when it is considered that many have registered from seven to eight acres, it would be necessary to do so in order to bring the value up to the required £10; and yet those men who have so sworn, and those leaders who have encouraged and induced them so to swear, and who have procured and paid others to corroborate their testimony on oath, are the persons who so lustily proclaim the extortion of the> landlords!If what they have sworn, and what their priests have encouraged them to swear, be true, their landlords must be indulgent and merciful indeed.If the contrary, not only have they been guilty of perjury for their own injury; but those who assisted and abetted them must have been aware that they were encouraging them to commit a grievous sin."
At that timeit was Mr O'Connell's object to attain political power, by proving the lands were set at acheaprate;nowit is his object to obtain popularity, by declaring that they are set at a rate far too dear. Which of his assertions are we to believe?
It may be said that only a few, comparatively speaking, of the landholders registered their votes; and that, from the value of the holdings of a few, it would be unfair to draw a conclusion as to the terms on which the land was held by the bulk of the people. This objection could only be urged by a person unacquainted with Ireland; for any man who attended the quarter-sessions there, must know that, if all the persons for whom the priests and liberal clubs served notice, and whose qualifications they were prepared to support, had come forward to claim and establish their rights to the franchise, the number on the register would have been quite as great as (if it did not exceed) that of the old forty-shilling freeholders. If the claims of those who did apply, and who, although rejected, were most vigorously sustained by the agitators, had been substantiated, the constituency would have been quite as numerous as the most ardent patriot could desire.
From whatever causes the wretched condition of Ireland may arise, want of tenure cannot be included amongst them; for if length of tenure secured prosperity, Ireland should have been prosperous indeed. In no country were such long leases heretofore given: from three lives and thirty-one years to three lives and sixty-one years, were the terms usually granted; and at this moment there are many leases still in existence, in all parts of the country, made towards the close of the last century, and held directly from the owners. And although the lands held under these are at a rent very much below even the present depressed value, and of course greatly under what they would have fetched in the time of the war, still we do not find their possessors generally comfortable or independent; but, on the contrary, they are in most instances in a worse condition than those tenants whose rent has varied with the times, and been influenced by the rise or fall in the value of agricultural produce. Seeing, then, that men placed in the most favourable circumstances, both as regards the moderation of their rents and the length of their tenures, are generally more wretched in the appearance of their dwellings, and more neglectful of the cultivation of their farms, than those at the mercy of landlords, represented to be the most tyrannical on earth—we must seek the cause of the degraded state of the people elsewhere than at the door of the owners of the soil. Until within the last few years, (and those are the years in which the landlords have most exerted themselves, and in which the tenantry, who would be influenced by them, have most improved,) leases ofat leasttwenty-one years, and one life, were always given, which not unfrequently prolonged the tenure to sixty or seventy years. And nothing can be more erroneous than to suppose that the refusal to grant leases, latterly practised by some Irish landlords, has been the cause of any hardship or suffering to the people. The contrary is the fact; and no men know this better than those who so loudly exclaim against the practice. It is a great mistake to imagine that leases are in no instance granted: the truth is, that they are still very generally given; and that in a great majority of those instances where they are withheld, they are so withheld, not with the intention of taking advantage of the tenant's improvements, or depriving him of his political rights, (as the English people are led to believe,) but for the purpose of compelling him to improve and to live comfortably, in spite of his own predilections. On the best managed estates in Ireland, and those where green-cropping has been most generally brought into operation, there are no leases; yet on those properties the tenantry are invariably the most independent and contented. On the estates of the Earl of Gosford, and other proprietors in the north, under the able superintendence of Mr Blacker, (whose conduct is the theme of universal approbation,) no leases are given until the tenant shows, by his industry and his exertions, that he deserves one; and then, after he has for some years cultivated his farm in a proper manner, and is taught to estimate the value of an improved system, he gets his lease as the reward of his industry, without the slightest advance in his rent. From the bad feelings implanted in the minds of the peasantry, they generally prefer living in comparative misery, and allowing their land to remain in a state of nature, whether they have leases or not, rather than make any improvements which might tend to the landlords' ultimate advantage, even though these improvements would produce immediate benefit to themselves; and this bad feeling is actually supported by the undisguised enmity, which unfortunately, of late years, subsists between the gentry and the priests. We are far from saying that acts of oppression and injustice may not sometimes be perpetrated by landlords and agents. Amongst so numerous a body, there must be bad men: and if an instance, lately mentioned by Mr O'Connell, be true—namely, that of an agent who set a farm occupied by an industrious and well-behaved tenantry, who owed no rent, to an extensive grazier, at a rent of four pounds a yearlessthan the resident tenants offered to secure—we must at once admit that nothing could be more heartless or cruel. But then we are bound in justice to state, that the agent so accused was the bosom friend of the great agitator himself, and a leading member of the Repeal Association, which has constituted itself the protector,par excellence, of the Irish people. May we not fairly suppose that, when Mr O'Connell denounces his friends, he would not hesitate to drag his political opponents to the bar of public opinion; and that the paucity offactswhich he is able to adduce against the landed gentry, is a proof that they have not neglected the duties of their station, in so flagrant a manner as his wholesale denunciations would lead us to expect?
How can we be surprised at Irish absenteeism? Can we expect that any man who can avoid it, will willingly expose the lives of himself and his family, by taking up his residence amongst the "Thugs" of Tipperary? If an absentee comes to reside personally to superintend the improvement of his property, and takes part of his own estate to make a demesne and build a mansion, he must dispossess someone—and, like Lord Norbury, he is shot. Should he escape his fate, his motives are misrepresented, and his anxious endeavours to give occupation and employment to the people, are converted into the worst crimes; because they can only be carried into effect by changing the condition of men from pauper and idle tenants to that of regularly worked and well paid labourers. And what object can he have, in risking death in the cause of those who suffer themselves to be so misdirected and misled? Local influence he can have none—that will be monopolized by the priest; political importance hecannot expect, in a country where the representation is placed exclusively in the hands of the Roman Catholic bishops.[37]
Mr Waller resided, and employed the labourers in his neighbourhood; but he took a part of his own land into his own hands—he ejected tenants who were unable or unwilling to pay their rents, and he gave them compensation, and to such as remained employment. What of that? He dared to occupy his own property, and for this he suffered years of persecution. His own expenditure, and his wife's charities, were no protection; and at length, while enjoying the comforts of his home, he and the amiable and unoffending females of his family, were cruelly butchered on his own hearth: and though, in the conflict, their assailants must have been wounded and marked, they have not as yet been discovered. May we not ask why is this? How comes it that, in a Christian country, murder is tolerated, nay openly approved? that the assassin is protected and concealed, instead of being delivered up, and made amenable to the offended laws of his country?[38]Can the ministers of that religion professed by the vast majority of the people, have faithfully discharged their sacred obligations, if men be found, professing the religion of Christ and understanding its precepts, willing to enrol themselves as the hired bravoes of a "Black Sheep Society," and to butcher their neighbours for a petty reward? The Roman Catholic religion condemns murder as strongly as the Protestant religion; yet how happens it, that a whole community professing that faith winks at the crimes of the guilty? This total demoralization we look on as the worst feature of the case. There are, and always must be, bad men in every society; but how the great mass of the people could be brought to tolerate the commission of crimes amongst them, which cry aloud to Heaven for vengeance, is more than we can comprehend. Had the priests devoted that time which they spent in exciting the passions and misleading the judgment of their flocks, in the inculcation of the divine precept of brotherly love—had they exercised that influence which they undoubtedly possess in calming the passions and enlightening the minds of their people—the condition of their country would now be widely different from what it is; and surely their bishops might have been better employed in remedying the neglect of their subordinates, than in attending political meetings, and delivering postprandial orations, savouring more of the braggart boastings of a drunken drumboy, than of the deliberate opinions of a dignified ecclesiastic. In their zeal as politicians, the Roman Catholic clergy have forgotten their duties as priests; and they are now beginning to get a foretaste of the consequences: they became mob leaders at elections and popular meetings—they rode the whirlwind, "can they direct the storm?" The ruffian tasting blood in beating the electors, soon undertook business on his own account. The step from savage assault to actual murder, is but ideal. The man who encouraged, or connived at, the lesser crime, could scarcely expect to prevent the perpetration of the greater and the "boy" who commenced by applying "gentle force" to a reluctant voter, became in the fulness of his crimes the avowed assassin. The priest used him as "the bully"—he may repudiate, but he dare not denounce, him as "the murderer."
In the late debate, two publications on the state of Ireland were recommended to special attention; the one, "A Cry from Ireland," by Lord John Russell—the other, Mr Wiggins's book, by the Marquis of Normanby. The first we should scarcely have noticed, (the noble lord mentioned it with so much diffidence,) but for the impression it seems subsequentlyto have made on the mind of Sir R. Peel; but when we found a noble ex-lord-lieutenant recommending, as trustworthy and instructive, a book written on a subject which engrosses much of the public attention, we felt it our duty at once to apply to his "fountain of knowledge."
We cannot say that we have "read with attention" the whole of this whimsical production: few there are, we believe, who could command patience enough to wade through such a mass of contradictory absurdity; but we have selected such parts as we could find at all bearing on the subject Mr Wiggins professes to write upon; and we shall transcribe some few passages, if not for the benefit, at least for the amusement, of our readers; merely premising, that this gentleman gives us no data on which to found our opinions, and no guarantee for the truth of his statements but his own assertion. First, as regards the amount of rent charged in the north and south, Mr Wiggins says—
"In accordance with this view of the case, we find, in practice, that the rents are far higher in proportion to the produce of the land in those parts of Ireland where Romanism prevails, than in other parts, where Protestantism is professed by a considerable portion of the population."
We refer to our previous statements, founded on unquestionable authority, to show how perfectly erroneous this "view of the case" is. The direct contrary is the fact; land is set for at least one third more in the Protestant and peaceable north, than in the Roman Catholic and turbulent south. As a specimen of our author's style when he becomes jocose, and of his veracity when he describes the conduct of Irish landlords, we give a graphic sketch, representing the mode of letting land in the sister country—
"Fancy a 'lord of the soil' (a petty one 'tis true) walking with a bevy of biddershumblyfollowing him, after obtaining a bid of money far beyond the value from one, exciting the others to outbid in duty rent, thus:—'Well, Mich, you hear what Pat bids; now, what willyouadvance?'—'Why, yer honer, God knows it's more than the value, but I'll give yer honer three days turf-drawing.'—'Three days is it, my lad, when you know well enough that my turf-stack takes a month's fine weather to get in?'—'Och! then,' says Denis, 'but I'll not grudge your honer a week.'—'By the powers now,' says Larry, 'I'd give yer honer two weeks, if the place and the rint would kape a horse, or a mule, or a donkey, in the way of drawing; but I'll bring yer honer a fat pig any how, and pay the rint of four pounds an acre as punctually asany otherman.'—'Larry, the land is yours, my boy, and a mighty chape bargain too! Ted Sullivan promised me five pounds an acre plantation; but I was rather doubtful of his manes—I'll only ask ye to cut and save me a few slane, according to times, as you cannot draw it.'"
£4 the acre!!! this certainly beats any thing we ever heard of before; and until now we thought it a service of danger for any man to bid for another's holding, or even to take an unoccupied one; but Mr Wiggins has made many discoveries which are new to us, and not the least extraordinary is, that "Lycurgus gave laws to the Athenians."!!!
One of the great panaceas of Lord Normanby'sprotégéis, that the land should be "set at full rents, onsensible leases"—which he proceeds to describe as leases for not less than twenty-one years. We have heard of manylongerleases than those of twenty-one years, we never heard of anyshorterbeing granted; and as the usual course is also to add a life—which may, and not unfrequently does, prolong the tenure to sixty or seventy years—we think that, if "sensible" leases had any effect, Ireland would have been long since contented.
Lord Normanby is reported to have stated as facts, on the authority of Mr Wiggins, "that in Ireland, where the saleable produce of a farm was £150, the share of the landlord in rent was £100; while on the other hand, in England, if the produce was £300, the share of the landlord was still £100." Mr Wiggins, in his "able work," also shows, that in the shape of county cess the charge was nearly double in Ireland what it was in England. It is difficult to form any accurate idea of the relative amount of the county cess paid in Ireland, and of the local taxes inEngland, as in both countries they vary in each different locality. In Ireland, the exact amount of county cess levied in each barony, can be easily ascertained by reference to the respective county books; but in England, as the local taxation is in a great measure put on by vestry, it would be an arduous task to strike an average.
In Ireland, the county cess varies in every barony, according to the amount of public works executed in each, or according to the state of crime in each district. Inpeaceablecounties, and those which do not border on the Shannon, the county cess will vary from tenpence to one shilling an acre, half-yearly; while in disturbed districts, and in those counties adjoining the Shannon, it will amount to much more. In the first, because of the large sums obliged to be levied off them, as compensation to those whose cattle were maliciously houghed, or whose houses were burned; and in the latter, because of the great boon (the grant to improve the river) bestowed on Ireland by that government of which Lord Normanby was a prominent member. In the former case, those who pay highly have only themselves to blame; if they were well conducted, and discouraged the commission of crime, as all well-disposed men ought to do, they would not have to bear those additional burdens. In the latter, the grand-juries have no control; they must assess to repay the principal of the money advanced to them, and discharge the interest. Here we may be permitted to remark, that we believe, since publicity was given to their adjudications on fiscal matters, there is quite as little jobbing in Ireland as in this country. As a proof of the disposition of the gentry to reduce the expenditure to the lowest possible amount, we will state, what every gentleman serving on grand-juries in Ireland must be cognisant of—namely,that not more than one-third of the presentments approved of by the rate-payers, are ever passed by the grand-juries; and yet road sessions, at which the principal rate-payers have power to vote, were instituted to check the extravagance of the proprietors.
The difficulty in ascertaining the proportion of the produce of the soil taken as rent by the landlords in either country, exists principally as regards the large holdings; because in England a great proportion of the farms are under tillage, while in Ireland, if not the whole, by far the greater part of all the extensive farms are under grass; and the profits of the grazier vary so much, that it is hard to form any correct estimate of the proportion of the produce taken by the landlord as rent, and that left to the tenant as interest for the money employed in the purchase of stock. But in the smaller class of holdings, we can have no difficulty in coming pretty near the truth; and as it is the grievances of the class of men by whom those small farms are held which require examination, the amount taken from them as rent, and left to then as remuneration for their labours, is what is most requisite to be ascertained. Let us, then, take a farm of twelve Irish acres, at 30s. an acre.
According to the Irish mode of cultivating, it will be cropped and stocked as follows:—
This is but a rough calculation, and an underrated one as regards the profits of the tenant; but it serves our purpose sufficiently, and shows that, instead of taking two-thirds of the produce, the landlord takes not one-fourth—much less than the amount assumed to be taken in England. But when we consider the additional imposts which the Englishfarmer has to pay in tithes, poor-rates, turnpikes, &c., we must at once perceive how very much less the Irish tenant is charged in comparison to what he is subject to. But if the farm, stocked and cropped as we have above described it, (and it is the usual mode,) were cultivated as it ought to be—if, instead of having one-half under natural pasture, it were tilled after the Scotch or English system, and one-half or two-thirds of what is now comparatively unproductive pasture, were under green crops—we need not say how much the saleable produce would be increased; and consequently, how much the tenant's profits would be augmented. Yet surely that it is not so cultivated, is not the landlord's fault. If he has given a lease, he has no control further than to exact his rent; if he supply instruction, it may not be received; if he set a good example, it may not be followed. If the tenant will not consult his own interests, the landlord is not to be held as responsible for the consequences of his neglect. The fair way to calculate in this particular would be, not to take the saleable produceat what it is, raised under a deficient system and negligent cultivation; butat what it might be, if the tenant had but industry, and would but do his duty.
In an article on the Irish fisheries, in theQuarterly Reviewfor September last, (page 475,) we find it stated, that "the agricultural produce of Ireland was, in 1832, estimated at £36,000,000 per annum, issuing out of 14,603,473 acres of land—a return nearly one-half less than that rendered by an equal number of English acres; and this with five labourers employed in Ireland, where two only are required in England." The rental of Ireland is ascertained to be above £12,000,000; and thus we see that in fact the Irish landlord only receives the one-third of the saleable produce, raised by his slothful and negligent tenant, as rent. Let the produce be made equal to that of England, (and with common industry this might be made to exceed it,) and the share of the produce extracted as rent would only be about one-sixth. Yet Lord Normanby "burkes" this correct information, and clutches on the vague and unfounded assertions of Mr Wiggins, merely for the purpose of damaging the character of a body of men, who had already been sufficiently injured by the consequences of his misgovernment.
We shall briefly advert to a few more of the items in the catalogue of Irish tenants' grievances.