CHAPTER LXXXVII.

THE IRISH LAND SYSTEM.

By T. W. RUSSELL, M.P.

THERE has," says the Report of the Bessborough Commission, "survived to the Irish farmer through all vicissitudes, in despite of the seeming or real veto of the law, and in apparent defiance of political economy, a living tradition of possessory right, such as belonged in the more primitive ages of society, to the status of men. who tilled the soil." No one anxious to get to the bottom of the Irish Land System can afford to ignore the fact here referred to. It is the root of three centuries of Irish trouble, and it has finally forced a system of legislation the avowed object of which is to restore peasant ownership of the land. In an article such as the present, limited in more senses than one, it would be manifestly impossible to describe, at any length, the ancient system of land tenure in Ireland. Space alone forbids it. This much, however, may be said that, although under the Breton laws, the conception of individual ownership began to be evolved, the Celtic idea centred in a community of ownership. The chief of the clan or sept was elected. under the law of Tanistry. By virtue of his position he became the proprietor of a seigniary over all the lands of the tribe. The common people were not tenants in the, modern sense. They held under the law of Gavelkind,

and, on the death of any member of the tribe or sept, his holding reverted not to his heirs but to the tribe-a fresh distribution by the chief being necessary. This, in substance, was the Celtic system of tenure. And although, as I have said, the idea of single ownership was gradually being evolved, the Chieftain becoming more and more a landlord, it held its own until finally supplanted by English feudalism. The impossibility of maintaining such a system was apparent, and both the laws of Tanistry and Gavelkind were formally abolished by the Courts in the reign of James the First.

Before this took place, however, several efforts were made to impose the English system of tenure upon the Irish Chiefs. Speaking of Henry the Eighth in this connection, Mr. Froude observes: "Henry did not insist that the Irish, ill-trained as they had been, should submit at once to English law. He disavowed all intention of depriving the Chiefs of their lands, or of confiscating their rights for the benefit of Englishmen. He desired to persuade them to exchange their system of election for a feudal tenure, to acknowledge by a formal act of surrender that they held their lordships under the Crown. In return they might retain and administer the more tolerable of their own Breton laws till a more settled life brought with it a desire for the English common law." In the reign of Elizabeth a similar effort was made notably, in Connaught. Here it was proposed to establish the feudal tenure by the imposition of something like a head-rent for the Crown, the land in return being freed from all cess and taxation. All these efforts, however, were in vain, and finally, as I have said, by a judgment in the Courts, the laws of Gavelkind and Tanistry were abolished and the English tenure established. It was a

fateful and fruitful decision. Under the old system a man who had four sons was in this position: On his death all the sons were members of the sept, and had a share in the common inheritance of the clan. Their position was now very different. The land on the death of the father no longer reverted to the clan, but to the eldest son. He alone was entitled to succeed, and the three younger brethren were left out in the cold. Thus, at the very start, English law was weighted. At the very start it became an engine of oppression. The confiscations, known to every reader of history, followed. The old chiefs were all but entirely dispersed, and whether this was done under Tudor, Cromwellian, or Williamite auspices, the effect was the same-a rankling sense of injustice and wrong remained. The rest is the history of Irish landlordism, a history full of tragedy and suffering.

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I have thus roughly outlined what may be called the ancient history of the Irish Land Question, my main purpose being to state somewhat in detail the Agrarian position at the present time. In modern times the Irish tenant has been weighted with two serious drawbacks. He had, in the main, to provide what may be called the farming plant, i.e., he had to build his own house, drain and fence the land, and do whatever was to be done in the way of improvements; and when all was done he had little or no security of tenure. In the main he was a yearly tenant, liable to be evicted, and his property confiscated, at the will of the landlord. The system was an odious one. Under it gross injustice was done, and we owe to it more than to everything else combined, those Irish troubles which have puzzled statesmen and taxed the resources of the Empire. So recently as 1860, a measure, popularly known as Deasy's Act, was passed.

So little were the actual facts of the situation then realized by Parliament, that this measure-the main principle of which made the letting of land in Ireland a mere matter of contract between two parties—was passed with comparative ease. It may have satisfied the political It ignored the actual facts of the situation

economist.

in Ireland. There could be no fair contract between two such contracting parties. The one was bent upon extracting rent; the other was clinging to a patch of land, for which there were many bidders--each of them prepared to outbid the other; and each of them knowing full well that they were cutting one another's throats. But better times were at hand. They came with the dawn of household suffrage, and in 1870 the first step was taken to put the Irish land system on an equitable basis. The measure then introduced and passed by Mr. Gladstone had a two-fold object. It aimed at making evictions costly and difficult, and to secure compensation to the tenant for his improvements. Under the Irish Church Act, passed in 1869, the glebe lands had been mainly sold to the occupiers, and, although this operation had been carried through on most unfavourable terms for the Church tenants, it was the beginning of that system of land purchase which has already had notable results. Accordingly, Mr. Bright, during the passage of the Bill of 1870, secured clauses giving fresh facilities to agricultural tenants for the purchase of the fee simple of their holdings. Truth compels me to say, however, that this the first real step taken in the direction of fairplay to the Irish tenant-was of a very faulty character; Mr. Bright's clauses were killed by Treasury regulations and Mr. Gladstone's efforts to cripple the evictor were largely rendered of no effect by the ability shown by the Irish