THE IRISH PROBLEM.
I.
A PLEA FOR THE IRISH LAND.
We are going to beg of our readers to join us for a while in considering the Irish Land Question from a new point of view—one at which both Landlord and Tenant can meet, and for a while cast off that cloak of selfish considerations which hinders each in his progress to a practicable solution of the difficulty. We propose to regard the question neither from the Landlord's point of view nor from the Tenant's point of view, but, with due regard to the reasonable rights of both, from the point at which that oft-quoted personage—the Intelligent Foreigner—would take his stand if asked for his opinion as to what would be best for the community at large. The Intelligent Foreigner regarding the question in the abstract would say—"Here is an island abounding in the elements of productiveness. Much of it is well-cultivated and fertile; but a great deal of it is ill-cultivated and not made to produce two-thirds of what it might. The soil of this island is chiefly owned by large proprietors who have no stimulus save that of a sense of moral obligation, in a greater or lesser stage of development, to induce them to advance the condition of their tenantries. They lack the stimulus of self-interest; for they can raise their rents, whether they have contributed to the improvement of the soil or not, so that an increase of their incomes is not dependant on their own careful thought and consideration as to the means by which the greatest quantity of produce may be elicited from the soil. They have nothing to do, unless impelled by their own good feeling, save to eat, drink, and be merry, while others without are toiling 'to make up the rent.' If the property of any given landlord wears a poor and neglected aspect, no odium falls upon him from the side of his fellow-landlords. He is not shunned as a man who does not meet his obligations. But what can you expect? Dirt and rags are proverbial in Ireland: and what wonder if some of her lords of the soil are 'clad width a dirty and ragged estate' on which nearly every cottage and field tells its tale of listlessness and neglect on the part both of the tenant whose abode is there, and of the landlord who does not stimulate the tenant to better things."
But are the landlords only to blame for this prevalence of ragged houses and tattered land? "No"—the Intelligent Foreigner will continue—"I have found ample evidence," he will say, "in
my journeyings through this island, of every effort being made by resident landlords and their families, to improve the condition of the people committed to their charge; and many a tale have I heard of heart-breaking disappointment—of the most persistent efforts to civilize the small farming community being met not only by a want of inclination, but also by what appears to be a downright inaptitude to improve.
"Make some of them dykes to drain their meadows, and they will not be at the trouble to clear out the weeds periodically unless absolutely goaded to it. Drain their fields and they will let the outfall get stopped up, till by-and-by the wet boils up worse than ever. Rag-weeds and thistles are suffered to infest their pastures. Nothing will induce them to make straight rigs, nor to keep their fences in anything like decent repair. The pig is always in the kitchen, and a noxious pool in front of the door occupies the spot which amongst the English cottagers a trim flower bed would adorn. They stick perversely to antiquated modes of cropping; and exhaust your land thereby to the uttermost; and then turn round good-humouredly—for they are always good-humoured—and tell you that 'it's no odds, so long as it makes them enough to live on after they have paid the rent.' To such men, Ulster Tenant Right is the Right to carry on a half civilized existence, no man hindering them."
This is the sort of sketch which the Intelligent Foreigner would make of our country and our countrymen; admitting of course that he had only picked out the salient points of backwardness and neglect, on the principle that good landlords and well-to-do tenants and trim farms, however plentiful they might be throughout the country, were nothing more than one had a right to expect to find in any civilized land at the end of the 19th century, so that only the negligent landlords or tenants were deserving of special attention as causing blots on the face of the landscape which had no business to be there.
What cure, then, would be devised for the evil by the impartial observer? Again, and again the words are being reiterated, until they will soon become a bye-word:—"Compel the bad landlord by law to do that which the good landlord would do from a sense of duty!" Well and good—but is that sufficient? Is there no counterpart to such an obligation? If the good landlord's efforts to advance his tenants to their proper place in the march of progress are often unavailing, what can you expect of the bad landlord, even if he is put under legal pressure? You must go still further, and you must compel not only the bad landlord, but also the bad tenant, by law, to do that which the good tenant would do voluntarily and as a matter of course! And this is our "Plea for the Irish Land." Neither landlord nor tenant must be suffered to disfigure the face of the country with cabins or cottages needlessly squalid, if the law can do ought to prevent it; neither landlord nor tenant must be suffered to allow wet, and weeds, and bad cropping to curtail the generous yield which a properly cultured soil would produce, if it is possible to make an enactment which shall ensure good farming.
It will be said that we here point to a sort of ideal despotism by which the law is to make every body good and happy in spite of themselves.
Nothing of the sort. We only propose that the channel of legislation should be turned into such a direction that each and all—landlords and tenants—will find it to their decided advantage to keep pace with the progress of civilisation around them, and to their decided disadvantage not to do so.
And how can this be effected? We have already observed that the landlord has no stimulus in the shape of self-interest, to make it worth his while to devote himself to property-management as a real mercantile business, which if he manages badly, it will be so much the worse for him, and if he manage well, it will be so much the better for him. The improving landlord who endeavours, but endeavours in vain, till he gives it up in despair, to get his farms to be something like Belgian farms, has at least one consolation if he fails. He gets his rents in full, all the same. Even this amiable individual requires another goad to stimulate him to still greater exertions. Even over his head there must be held the fear of the periodical government valuation which, if his farms fall back in productiveness, must visit him with a depreciation in his rental. He will then see that the backward farmer, by gentle means if possible, or if these fail, by sterner ones, must be made to advance, or to give place to another. And that the backward farmer may not have it to say that he had no stimulus, the same periodical valuation which raises or lowers the rental of the landlord, must give the tenant full credit for all improvements of proved value made by him with his landlord's consent, on or in the soil. And safeguards must be given against vexatious refusals on the part of the landlord or tenant, to make or to acquiesce in the making of such necessary improvements as shall fall to the part of either of them to effect.
The present idea of Ulster Tenant Right amongst the farming class appears to be that a farmer should be irremovable so long as he pays his rent, and that he should have the right to sell his interest to the highest bidder. This idea may suit the private interests of the farmers themselves well enough; but we—while ready to forego for the public good much landlord prerogative— prerogative—assert most decidedly our opinion that such an idea does not tend to the best interests of the community at large.
The farmer ought to be removable by his landlord for improper cultivation, aye and for persistence in maintaining a piggish habitation, (cases of which a government official should be the judge if appeal was demanded). And, in order to restore our patchwork holdings to proper shapes and sizes, so that they may be farmed in accordance with the laws of economy, the landlord should have the selection of the successor to a tenant about to leave. As for sales to the highest bidder—that may be all very well amongst a certain class who know what they are about; but we have already alluded in the columns of the Tyrone Constitution to the influences of whiskey and "sweeteners" in transactions of this nature! We beg of the many farmers in favoured and wealthy districts, and of some newspaper writers, whose experience is for the most part confined to the trim farms in the neighbourhood of our towns, to weigh well our very earnest words, written, we honestly declare, in the interest of no particular class, and we heartily trust under the influence of no particular prejudice; and we hope to unite all our readers, in the name and for the sake of Irish progress, in the opinion we have already expressed that the land legislature of the future ought to be based upon the principle "that the bad landlord and the bad tenant should be compelled by law, to do that which the good ones would naturally do from a sense of duty and of their own real advantage."