Part 1 — VII.—The Present Position Of The Irish Land Question. By Jonathan Pim, K.C.

Introductory

The following chapter contains an account of the change which has been wrought by legislation in the position of the Irish tenant farmer and labourer during the last forty years. The change is large—the benefit and improvement equally great. The task is, however, not much more than half completed. The holdings purchased, or agreed to be purchased, by tenants under the Purchase Acts amount to about 378,000. There remain to be purchased about 227,000. The Congested Districts Board have done good work in the congested districts, but what has been done has hardly gone beyond the experimental stage. The experiments have, to a large extent, succeeded, but their very success enlarges the vista of work to be done in the future. The work of the District Councils in providing better dwellings for agricultural labourers is perhaps more nearly completed. Nevertheless, much still remains to be done.

Under the second section of the proposed Bill “to amend the provision for the Government of Ireland,” the “general subject matter of the Acts relating to Land [pg 167] Purchase in Ireland” is reserved. This would seem to include the Land Purchase work of the Congested Districts Board, but it is doubtful if it would include any part of the Labourers' Acts. Taken in conjunction with the whole scheme of the Bill, and especially with its financial provisions, the wisdom of this reservation is evident. That work which has gone so far and has been so beneficial in its operation should be stopped, or even hampered, in its development, would be an injury which, even the undoubted benefits a Home Government will bring with it would scarcely out-weigh. No doubt Ireland, if thrown altogether on her own resources, could, after a few years' time, continue the work of land purchase and could finally complete it, but the interregnum would be most mischievous. All those who had not purchased would be dissatisfied, and the Irish Government would be subjected to a pressure which they would find it hard to resist. The danger would be two-fold. On the one hand the Government might attempt to raise money at an excessive rate of interest and would thereby embarrass themselves financially; on the other hand an attempt might be made to force the Government to pass a “Compulsory Purchase Act” and to fix the price of purchase at a much lower figure than could be obtained under a system of free agreement. The Imperial Government itself runs no risk in reserving Land Purchase; on the contrary, it will run less risk under Home Rule than it does now. At the present moment, there is due to the Treasury a sum of about £71,000,000, money advanced for the purchase of land. The amount of the annual instalments payable on this sum is about £2,226,785, and on the 31st of March, 1912, there was due for arrears the sum of £44,156.120 The purchase [pg 168] annuitants have up to the present discharged their obligations in a most faithful and honest manner. There is not the slightest reason to think that they will act differently in the future, but if, as some political prophets seem to consider possible, they do, in the future, strike against the payment of the instalments they themselves will be the principal sufferers, for under the proposed Bill the Treasury may, out of the sum to be transferred to the Irish Government, before making the transfer, deduct each year the amount then due on account of purchase annuities. This, if it happened to any large extent, would render fresh taxation necessary—a contingency which would certainly not be desired by the Irish Government. The proposed Bill does not contain any specific provision giving power to the Irish administration, in the case of local repudiation, to make the counties in which repudiation had taken place repay to the Irish Treasury such sums as they had been forced to pay to the Imperial Treasury. If such a provision were inserted, it would make the position of the Treasury extremely secure.

When Mr. Gladstone introduced his first Home Rule Bill in 1886, the land war was at its height. The country was, on the one hand, full of intense and unreasoning bitterness and resentment, and, on the other hand, of unreasoning terror of the consequences of the change of administration. There are many persons, to-day convinced believers in the policy of Home Rule, who do not regret that the Bill of 1886 failed to pass. Things were not very much better in 1893, although, owing to the Land Act of 1881, the land war was slowly losing its fierceness. Since then a slow, but no less deep and far-reaching, change has passed over the tenant farmers of Ireland. The bitterness and discontent which rightly possessed them [pg 169] during the whole of the last century have at last given way to more kindly and contented feelings. This is due in a great measure to the large remedial measures passed first by Mr. Gladstone's Government of 1880 to 1895, and afterwards by the Conservative Administration between 1896 and 1905; but it is perhaps even more due to the feeling which has slowly grown up among the agricultural population that, at last, they are being listened to, and that their wants are being attended to, imperfectly, no doubt, but still with sympathy and with a desire to do what can be done to meet them. Whatever dangers may attend the granting of Home Rule now, they will not be the dangers which terrified and controlled public opinion in 1886 and 1893. Almost all the confusion, trouble, and crime of last century was due to the vicious absurdity of the Irish land code and to the miserable condition of the Irish tenant farmers produced thereby. That is now changed and Ireland has become a quiet and comparatively crimeless country. The danger which many foresee under a Home Government is of a different kind. It is rather that the overwhelming peasant vote may render the administration unduly parsimonious and so unwilling to place any additional burden on the owners of land that a kind of political stagnation may arise therefrom. Ireland cannot, of course, be kept permanently out of the great movements of European thought, but, for the moment, it may be safely alleged that in no part of Europe is property safer.

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