II.
ABOUT LEASES
A great deal has been lately said on the subject of leases, and more particularly about 31 years leases. We are unable to see what magic there is in the precise term of 31, but we have heard it so often named in certain quarters, that we begin to suspect it is a "shibboleth." We believe that a certain State official, having to deal with certain State lands once upon a time, gave 31 years leases to all the tenants thereon, who have thriven ever since. Hence has arisen a tradition amongst public men groping for light on the "Irish Difficulty," that not only is there luck in odd members, but that there is some special charm in the number of thirty-one.
Let us however make a present of this odd year to its advocates, and join issue with them on the question, notwithstanding the success of the experiment in question, whether a lease is the one and sole panacea for the Irish Farmer's ills.
We say it is not. We affirm that a lease is too mach for a bad farmer and too little for a good one in this country, And why? To answer this question aright we must define a bad Irish farmer and a good Irish farmer.
The bad farmer in Ireland is a man whose misfortune it is to be a bad farmer rather than his fault. He lacks skill and the habit of order more than he lacks security. It is really passing strange, as one goes from house to house on some Irish estates, to see how the people are marked off, as it were, into two distinct classes. If the distinction went by districts it would be more intelligible; but it does not. On the same hillside—on one farm we see the fences cared for, the ground free of weeds and wet, the crop flourishing, the house tidy and clean; and on the next one to it we see every one of these conditions reversed. And even if some of the slovenly ones do manage occasionally to get as good crops out of the ground as some of the orderly ones, surely life is not all a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. Deprive it of comfort, and you deprive it of half its sweetness; and though it may be argued that families which pass a half civilized and dirty existence, are, from never having known better, as happy after their fashion as the cleanest and most refined, still it is surely our duty, if we can, to introduce them to the higher walks of enjoyment, which when they have entered, they will never recede from.
From these remarks it will have been already seen that when we speak of a good farmer, we speak not only of a man who can raise fair crops of oats and potatoes, and turn a ready penny by the judicious buying and selling of cattle, but of one who can raise these crops in a clean and farmer-like manner, and who when he has made a little money by judicious "jobbing," as it is called, considers it a duty to expend some of it as well as a good deal of his spare time in imparting the polish of respectability to his family and his premises. We class, then, the man who (though he may raise very good crops) lives in a slovenly way, in a slovenly house, and cultivates his farm in a slovenly manner, not amongst the good farmers, but amongst the bad—amongst those, who in addition to all these defects, suffer the weeds to choke their crops, and the wet to sour their land, and, by bad rotation, poor ploughing, and indifferent manuring, wear out the sod till it is well nigh barren.
What advantage would it be to the community to give leases to such men as these? The only thing that it is posible to do is to bear with them as well as you can, and endeavour to train up their sons by dint of good schooling and agricultural teaching, to be more civilized and enlightened than their sires. But if their sons will not be trained, and will not improve, how long is forbearance to last?
Perhaps what we have written may be rather startling to some Ulster minds accustomed to what is, if not an actual, yet a virtual fixity of tenure. We shall be asked if we really and seriously propose that a man should receive notice to quit when he has paid his rent regularly for years, merely because he chooses to be slovenly in his farm, in his house, and in his person.
To this we reply that there is too great a tendency now-a-days to be very sentimental in behalf of certain classes, and to reserve all our animadversion for less favoured sections of the community. The present cry is all against bad landlords. Well, hit 'em hard, these bad landlords, so long as you are just and don't class good ones amongst them, or so long as you don't call a man a bad one who is really not so. But be still further just; and if you are down upon the bad landlords, pray be down upon the bad tenants as well If you make it your boast that you are patriotic Irishmen, show your zeal for your country by an impartial disapproval of all who would retard its advancement, whether they be landlords or tenants; and don't seek to perpetuate evils by agitating for leases or any other form of security for any but those who have shown some sign that they are likely to turn them to good account.
But it has been already remarked that slovenliness and bad farming are the misfortune rather than the fault of those of our fellow-countrymen whose name is unhappily "legion." Would We then visit upon them their misfortune? By no means. But we would make it their interest to do their utmost to rid themselves of this particular misfortune, by supplying them with the greatest possible stimulus to improve. We who pen these lines are surrounded by many such families. Right gladly would we feel assured that these families would remain in the houses of their forefathers till the third and fourth generation. But we should also like to see legislation so directed that they would have to win this boon by deserving it! We are not of those who Would impetuously uproot either landlord or tenant; but we are of the opinion that the Legislature should not leave a stone unturned to induce both landlords and tenants, by every motive of self-interest, and by every fear of the consequences of neglect—to keep pace with the 19th century. It is of the tenant, and not of the landlord that we are now speaking. Of the bad tenant therefore we say that we would give him no lease, lest he should snap his fingers in the face of his landlord and the community at large, and remain a bad one. But what of the good tenants? We have already said that for them we do not consider a lease a good enough reward. A lease implies a time at which, sooner or later, it would be in the power of the landlord to make a change of tenants. Now, this sort of argument is all very well in England or Scotland, where the love of the old fireside is not, as in this country, a national sentiment; and where the hearthstone and the roof tree have heen set in their places, not by the tenant but by the landlord—where, in fact, the tenant is a customer, taking from his landlord drained and fenced fields to till, and a trim house to live in; and not, as with us, a partner, who has built most of the house, and drained and fenced the most of the fields himself^ In Ireland, the farmer looks for something more than a lease; and considering the difference in the circumstances of the case, it is not without reason that he does so. And right sure are we that if such Irish landlords as are worthy of the name, were to be polled on the question, we should find nine-tenths of them taking a real pride in being able to point to the "old residenters" on their estates, whose forefathers were there as long as their own, or longer.
But how are these sentiments consistent with what we have already said of bad, or indifferent, or slovenly tenants? What about their old residentership—their partnership—their hearthstones and rooftrees? Why, we leave it incumbent on them, as we have said, to win for themselves the right to stand their ground, only providing, in the interest of the community at large, that win it and earn it they must; for, as there is in these modern days no divine right of kings, and no divine right of landlords, so there must be no divine right of the people, to set themselves as obstructions in the stream of progress, which never pursued a more bright and silvery course than it is doing in this our day!
We conclude, then, as we began. In Ireland a lease is too much for a bad farmer, too little for a good one. But it should be open to every bad one to become a good one. Not a stone should be left unturned by the State, or by the landlords, who, on their several properties, should be regarded as the representatives of the State, for the improvement of the habits and the agricultural skill of the people. And whereas it best befits the land economy of Ireland that outlay on improvements should rather be the joint work of the landlord and the tenant, than, as in the Sister Island, the sole work of the landlord, the tenant should in all cases have the value of his share of the outlay secured to him. And, moreover, as want of skill is so common amongst Irish farmers, and as that lack may cause much of their outlay, if unaided by skilful direction, to be abortive, every discouragement should be given to independent outlay on the part of the tenant without consulting the landlord; while at the same time due provision should be made against unreasonable objections to reasonable improvement from either side. Let but all this be secured; together with a wholesome modification of the law of eviction, and we shall gradually glide into such a fixity of tenure as shall reward real worth, while affording no shelter to the undeserving—a fixity of tenure which will fulfil the conditions of the Plantation of Ulster with an entirety which any mere plan of stereotyping, as it were, the state of things as^ they now exis^ would utterly and-signally fail to effect.