Chapter XV: The Present State of the Question 204 (7)

"Inasmuch as one of the main conditions of success in reference to any land purchase scheme must be its prompt application and the avoidance of those complicated investigations and legal delays which have hitherto clogged all legislative proposals for settling the relations between Irish landlords and tenants, we deem it of urgent importance that no protracted period of time should ensue before a settlement based upon the above-mentioned principles is carried out; that the executive machinery should be effective, competent, and speedy, and that investigations conducted by it should not entail cost upon owner or occupier; and, as a further inducement to despatch, we suggest that any state aid, apart from loans which may be required for carrying out a scheme of land purchase as herein proposed, should be limited to transactions initiated within five years after the passing of the act.

"We wish to place on record our belief that an unexampled opportunity is at the present moment afforded his Majesty's government of effecting a reconciliation of classes in Ireland upon terms which, as we believe, involve no permanent increase of Imperial expenditure in Ireland; and that there would be found on all sides an earnest desire to cooperate with the government in securing the success of a Land Purchase Bill, which, by effectively and rapidly carrying out the principles above indicated, would bring peace and prosperity to the country.

"Signed at the Mansion House, Dublin, this third day of January, 1903.

"DUNRAVEN (_Chairman_) JOHN REDMOND
"MAYO WM. O'BRIEN
"W. H. HUTCHESON POE T. W. RUSSELL
"NUGENT T. EVERARD T. C. HARRINGTON"

It soon transpired that the idea of a conference between landlords' and tenants' representatives was the government plan for laying the foundation of the bill that they contemplated introducing as a government measure later on. The tenants' representatives, who, in the then position of the land question, with prices falling and the third revision term looming in the distance, had all the trumps in their hands, were hopelessly outmanoeuvred by the landlord section.

The question to be discussed was largely a financial one, but still the tenants had not a man of financial ability at the board. It is true the members of the conference were nominated, and not selected by their respective sides, though afterwards, for reasons easily understood, the nominations were ratified by the parties concerned. But nominated by whom? By a Captain Shawe Taylor, a personage popular with all parties, but in this matter undoubtedly the agent of the government. The conference sat five times, and all through the proceedings the nationalist representatives were rubbing their hands with glee, for they thought the millennium had come.

The landlord party, on the other hand, were in nightly communication with the Castle. Treasury experts were drafted over to Dublin, and no stone was left unturned to secure for the landlords a measure which would satisfy the most exacting. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. On the 3d of January, 1903, the land conference issued its report. Clear-headed politicians saw at once that the tenants had played the game and lost. Every advantage or benefit that the landlord sought or claimed was secured to him by this treaty, as it was afterwards styled, in terms that could not be gainsaid. The tenants' clauses in the report were mostly pious expressions of opinion, which were afterwards, when the Land Bill came to be drafted, brushed aside, or quietly ignored. But all was not yet lost.

The _Freeman's Journal_, under the able guidance of Mr. Thomas Sexton, in a series of powerful articles, reviewed the whole position. It boldly but temperately pointed out the defects in the conference report. It refused to shout with the crowd. It could not see that much was gained. It clearly saw that a great deal had been lost. The bill, a large and complicated measure of eighty-nine clauses, was shortly afterwards introduced. It was a great measure and aimed at the final settlement of the land question. And, indeed, such an end, devoutly to be wished, would certainly have been attained had the amendments pressed on the government during the passage of the bill by the organ of the tenants been accepted and embodied in the act.

Clause after clause was closely examined, and the defects exposed by Mr. Sexton in a series of articles, inspired if not actually written by him in the _Freeman_. He had done much service for Ireland in the past, but I doubt if his great abilities had ever been better applied than to the work of examination, elucidation, and amendment of the Land Bill of 1903.

His criticisms culminated in the publication of a schedule of amendments which he claimed were necessary to the final settlement of the question.

It is worth while now putting them on record, for they have a true historical value. It is now seen in the working of the act, that the acceptance of some of the amendments contained in the schedule materially improved the bill, while the omission of the others explains the necessity for still further legislation on the subject.

The following is a summary of the amendments referred to:--

1. The rights of tenants under the Fair Rent Laws should be maintained intact.

2. No non-judicial tenant should be excluded from purchase by reason merely of his tenure. Caretakers of holdings of which they had previously been tenants should have the rights of tenants for the purpose of purchasing such holdings.

3. As a condition precedent to purchase, non-judicial rents and first term rents fixed or agreed upon down to the end of 1896 should be reduced to the average level, substantially of second term rents, and purchase should not be transacted in the cases of non-judicial rents, or of such first term rents, except upon this basis.

4. The purchase system being voluntary, the compulsory limits of price in this bill should be struck out.

5. The aim of the system being to extinguish dual ownership and equal treatment being essential both as between past and future transactions, and also between the tenant who buys his holding and the landlord who buys back his land sold by him to the State, no rent charge should be reserved. Such a reservation would forever exclude the tenant from ownership, by erecting a new and perpetual system of landlordism in the place of the old.

6. The rate of interest on consols being now two and one-half per cent, the new guaranteed stock might be issued at two and one-half, instead of two and three-fourths as proposed, and by this means the decadal reductions, instead of being abolished as the bill provides, might be allowed at the rate of eight per cent; or, at the option of the purchaser, the period during which his annuity would be payable could be shortened by about ten years. If the annuity rate were three and one-half, the purchaser might be allowed to choose between decadal reductions at the rate of eleven per cent, and a term of redemption shorter by nearly twenty years than that prescribed in the bill.

7. Sales of untenanted land, and, in particular, resales of demesne or other land to vendors, should be subject to the needs of migration, of enlarged holdings, and of making provision for evicted tenants, in the case of each estate or district, and no evicted farm should be resold to the vendor, or sold to a new tenant, if the evicted tenant, or his personal representative, is willing to become the purchaser.

8. The cost of improvement of estates and untenanted land, being charged to every purchaser and repaid by his annuity, should be provided for as part of the advances required for the purposes of this act, leaving the reserve fund available to the estates commissioners for cases of exceptional need.

9. It is necessary to maintain the existing satisfactory condition that the holding, or other land purchased, is to be sufficient security for the repayment of the advance.

10. The Purchase Aid Fund should be increased to not less than twenty millions; and distributed either in inverse ratio to the number of years' purchase in each case, or by a uniform grant of a fixed number of years' purchase to every selling landlord.

11. A term of years should be fixed in the bill, on the expiration of which term the provisions for grants from the Purchase Aid Fund, resales to landlords, and distribution of purchase money free of cost should cease to operate.

12. The subject of sporting and mineral rights calls for clear provision dictated in the public interest, instead of the ambiguous, loose, and inconclusive proposals which appear in the bill.

13. It is requisite that the limit of advance to an evicted tenant be not less than the ordinary limits; also, that provision be made for restoring evicted tenants to their former holdings when vacant; for making arrangements to that end when the holdings are occupied; and for stocking the land.

14. The cramping restrictions imposed on the congested districts board, which have effectually prevented that body from dealing with the great agrarian evil of the West, would not be removed or substantially diminished by the meagre proposals of the bill; nor can the privations and miseries endured in the congested districts be sufficiently abated in any other way than by such a redistribution of grazing ranches as will provide the people of those districts with land enough to yield them the means of living. As the guarantee fund--now ample enough for every purpose--is henceforth to apply alike to congested and other districts, and as advances for land purchase are seen to be free from risk, and special treatment is to be applied to congested estates throughout the country, it is evident that the time has come for a uniform system of land purchase, and that this is to be secured, either by investing the congested districts board, for all the purposes of land purchase in their particular areas, with powers corresponding to those of the estates commissioners, or else by giving the estates commissioners jurisdiction for land purchase in the congested districts, and authorizing the board to apply its income wholly to its various other objects of expenditure.

15. The proposals with regard to the Labourers' Acts are so trivial that they cannot be amended. The government should be asked to appoint a commission to inquire and report, this year, how the question may be adequately dealt with; and a bill directed seriously to that end should be passed into law next session.

The Irish Land Act, 1903, otherwise known as the Wyndham Act, from the name of the Irish chief secretary who introduced it, came into force on the 1st of November, 1903. This is not the place to set forth its provisions, but the principal advantages which accrue to a selling landlord and a purchasing tenant availing of its provisions may be briefly stated. The entire purchase money agreed upon is paid to the landlord in cash. No part of the purchase money is retained as a guarantee deposit. For the purchase of a single holding the limitations of preceding acts are extended to L7000.

The vendor of an estate shall receive in addition to the purchase money from the tenants a bonus for his own immediate benefit. The landlord is enabled to sell his demesne, and repurchase it at a profit. The landlord may sell his estate direct to estate commissioners appointed by the act, or to the congested districts board, and these bodies are enabled to resell to the tenants after readjustment and partition of the holdings on the estate if necessary. Enlarged powers of investment of purchase money are conferred upon trustees. The principal advantages secured to the tenant are as follows: At the end of sixty-eight and one-half years, a tenant becomes owner in fee of his holding. As soon as the agreement to purchase is signed, he ceases to be liable for rent. He is enabled to repay the advance at the rate of three and one-fourth per cent of his purchase money. (Though the reduction of the annuity rate from four per cent under the previous act to three and one-fourth per cent under the Wyndham Act is an undoubted advantage to a tenant, it is certainly to his disadvantage that the amount set aside towards the sinking fund should be reduced from one and one-fourth per cent and one per cent to one-half per cent.) In congested districts the land commission, or congested districts board, may purchase lands under certain conditions to enable them to deal with the problem of congestion.

The greatest blot on the measure is undoubtedly what is known as the "Zones." The act provides that if the price agreed upon between the parties allows a reduction of not less than ten per cent nor more than thirty per cent on a tenant's existing rent, in the case of a second term rent, and a reduction of not less than twenty per cent nor more than forty per cent in the case of a first term tenant, the bargain _must_ be sanctioned by the commissioners without inquiring whether the land in question is security for the "advance."

The result of this provision is that tenants have been wheedled or cajoled into agreeing to bargains which they will find it difficult or impossible to keep. The price of land became artificially inflated, and the average of eighteen years' purchase paid for land in Ireland under the previous Purchase Acts has been raised by five to seven years' purchase. It is essential that free bargaining should be restored if purchase is to proceed on sound economic lines. In spite of the efforts of the wisest of their leaders, the Irish tenantry are rushing into bargains under the Wyndham Act that may eventuate in dire consequences for themselves and for the country.

The importation of Canadian cattle when it comes will have a serious effect on the Irish produce market, and a further decline in produce prices may be expected.

Will the Irish tenant be then able to discharge his liability to the State and have sufficient margin for living? That is the question for the future. The answer to it alone can settle whether we have yet reached finality in the Irish Land Code.

Footnotes:

[1] Carlyle, Appendix, No. 17.

[2] See Lecky, II., 216 _et seq._

[3] T. P. O'Connor, "The Parnell Movement," pp. 53, 54.

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.

Punctuation has been corrected without note.

Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original.

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