CHAPTER XXII.

THE FINISHING STROKE.

I have not the slightest doubt, that you will tell me that Ireland is _not ruined_, that she was never before in so satisfactory condition, and that you will bring forward ingeniously manipulated statistics to prove your case.

You will tell me that the farms are larger,--that the farm stock is richer,--that the peasant proprietors who were a failure (contrary to Mr. Mill’s theories) are disappearing, and holdings are more consolidated; but, my Fanatical Friend, if Ireland be not ruined, what is the meaning of this frantic legislation, which many of its supporters can only excuse on the ground of expediency, not equity? How is it that, during the last thirty-two years, nearly 1,500,000 acres have gone out of tillage and 677,000 acres have gone out of farming altogether?

How is it that, during the last nine years, there has been a decrease of 1,000,000[82] live stock in Ireland, or nearly one-ninth of the total?

How is it that, during one year, 114,327[83] acres of land in Ireland have gone out of farming, and that with a decreasing population, and that in spite of a better crop in 1880 than in 1879?

What is the meaning of the increase of 18,000 paupers and 115,000 emigrants in Ireland within the last three years?

Mill would have told you that the extinction of peasant proprietors was a sign of retrogression; whether that be so or not, the crushing out of weaker industries is decidedly not a sign of prosperity.

But now tell me, what would you think of the prosperity of an undertaking in which the original shareholders had been ruined and sold their shares at a greatly depreciated price; and this second set of shareholders again being ruined, again sold their shares at a still further depreciated price, whilst the third set of shareholders, obtaining their shares at this enormously depreciated value, were able to make some little show of temporary prosperity. Would any business-man call that a prosperous undertaking?

Now this is precisely the case with Ireland. Under the Encumbered Estates Act, thousands were reduced to beggary,[84] and the new landlords were able to make a temporary show of prosperity on the ruin of their predecessors. When this was over, the still more iniquitous Land Act of 1881 was passed to complete the ruin of landlords.

Mr. FitzGerald, of Dublin, states that there are more than 600 cases before the Court, and that the Judges have, from time to time, adjourned the sales rather than consent to a “wanton sacrifice of property, for which there are no bidders.”

Land, which one of the Judges declared to be worth thirty years’ purchase, was sold for eleven years’ purchase, and the unfortunate owner was told “You must submit to the inevitable.”

But this is not all; the Land Act of 1880 has put a stop to all possible improvement of land, for no reasonable man will expose himself to the risk of losing his money on improvements, because, notwithstanding any contract he may have made with his tenant, the Land Commission may step in and legalize a breach of the contract.[85]

The typical landlords in Ireland, whom you hold up for public execration, are not rich noblemen; it would be better for Ireland if they were, but they are mostly men of the middle class, struggling hard to escape the pauperism your iniquitous legislation has brought upon them.

Mr. Gladstone on one occasion said:--

“If Great Britain has become a place where the majority can oppress the minority in this way, it has come to be a place of which I should say that the sooner we get out of it the better.”

I repeat Mr. Gladstone’s sentiment with greater emphasis. If Mr. Gladstone, with his majority, are allowed to oppress the minority in this way, England is no longer the place for honest and loyal subjects.

FOOTNOTES:

[82] Total livestock in Ireland in 1874, 9,665,700; in 1883, 8,667,000.

[83] Decrease of acreage farmed in 1882--

Cereal crops 20,356 acres. Green crops 21,072 ” Flax 33,643 ” Meadow and Clover 39,256 ” ------- Total decrease 114,327 acres.

_Statesman’s Yearbook_, 1883.

[84] “It forced properties to a general auction, to be sold for whatever they would bring, at a time when _legislation had imposed new and unheard of burdens on landed property_. At a time of unprecedented depression in the value of land, it called a general auction of Irish estates. _English History records no more violent interference with vested interests_ than the provision by which this Statute forced the sale of a large portion of the landed property at a time no prudent man would have set up an acre to be sold by public competition.” (Tenant Right in Ireland, Butt, p. 881.)

“Estates that would have been well able to pay twice the encumbrances laid upon them, if property was at all near its ordinary level of value, now failed to realize enough to meet the mortgages, and the proprietors were devoted to ruin.... The tenants complain that they have gained little and lost much in the change from the old masters to the new.” (‘New Ireland,’ A. M. Sullivan, p. 88.)

At the sale of Lord Gort’s property thirteen years’ purchase was the maximum; many lots were sold at five. Some portions of the property since resold have fetched twenty-five and twenty-seven years’ purchase.

Excessive rack-renting has been attributed to sales under this iniquitous Encumbered Estates Act.

“In those sales persons buy small portions of property; of course their interest is to get as large a return as they can, and they think of nothing but an increase of rent.” (_Minutes of Evidence, Lords Committee_, 1867.)

[85] See Speech of Mr. W. H. Smith, M.P., Nov. 19, 1883, commencing “No country on the face of the earth has been so misunderstood and misgoverned as Ireland, &c.”