<k4 
 
P 6HAS.e.LAURlATe^ 
 IMPORTERS ? B °OKs 6l<llER s 
 
Present Irish Questions 
 
publisher's jUtmouncement 
 
 By the Same Author 
 
 The Campaign of 1815: 
 
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 London : Grant Richards 
 g Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, W.C. 
 
Present 
 
 Irish Questions 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM O'CONNOR MORRIS 
 
 Countv Court Judge and Chairman of Quarter Sessions of Roscommon 
 
 AND SliGO, AND 
 
 Sometime Scholar of Oriel College, Oxford 
 
 No<7€? 5e jxoi irpSiras <tt6\os, ov5' in (ppovriSos eyx os 2 ris aAe|eT0t. 
 
 — Sophocles. 
 
 'Blessed is the Amending Hand.' — Old Proverb. 
 
 BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 CHESTS UT HILL, MASS. 
 
 London 
 
 Grant Richards 
 
 New York: E. P. Dutton & Co 
 1901 
 
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 
 
 A TRIBUTE OF ADMIRATION AND ESTEEM 
 TO 
 
 THE MARQUIS OF DUFFERIN AND AVA, K.P. 
 
 THE MOST DISTINGUISHED IRISHMAN OF HIS TIME 
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 
 
DASSO 
 
 .Zj 
 
 Preface 
 
 I HAVE written much on Ireland from early youth, 
 especially in the Edinburgh Review and the Times ; and 
 two works of mine, 'Ireland, 1494-1868/ published in 
 'The Cambridge Historical Series,' and ' Ireland, 1798- 
 1898/ have been received with more than ordinary favour. 
 I have ventured to think that the opinions of a veteran 
 inquirer into Irish affairs, with respect to 'Present Irish 
 Questions ' just now of much importance, and certain to 
 be ere long fully discussed in Parliament and elsewhere, 
 may be of some use to a younger generation, that will have 
 to examine and must be affected by them. I am not 
 unaware of the cynical remarks of Swift on the disregard 
 shown to authors who may be said to have had their day ; 
 and I do not pretend that, in the instance of myself, ' old 
 experience ' has given something of a ' prophetic strain ' 
 to what is contained in this volume. But I can say, with 
 truth, that few living men have had such opportunities as 
 have fallen to my lot, during a long series of years, to 
 understand Ireland in its different parts, and the feelings 
 and sentiments of the Irish community ; to form sound 
 and moderate views on the many and perplexing pheno- 
 mena called ' Irish Questions ; ' to deal reasonably with 
 Irish political and social problems, free from the influences 
 of party prejudice and passion ; in short, to do my subject 
 complete and impartial justice. How the accidents and 
 associations of a life already protracted beyond the 
 
 332 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 ordinary span, have, as I hope, given me these qualifica- 
 tions, I have explained at some length in my ' Ireland, 
 1798-1898;' I shall not repeat what I have already 
 written. But Ireland has constantly been uppermost in 
 my thoughts ; and as regards the conclusions I have come 
 to in these pages, I may say, with the Roman historian, 
 'haec senectuti seposui.' 
 
 The examination of ' Present Irish Questions,' in this 
 work, shows the views I entertain with regard to the 
 actual condition of Ireland in its various aspects, and to 
 her probable future destinies. These views may be cen- 
 sured as too gloomy, and even paradoxical ; but Ireland 
 remains, as she was when Macaulay wrote of her, ' A 
 member indeed of the Empire, but a withered and 
 distorted member ; ' the revolution which has passed, nay, 
 is still passing, over her, has destroyed a great deal that 
 ought to have been preserved, and has put little that is 
 solid and stable in its place ; there is much that is threaten- 
 ing and even dangerous in her political and social order, 
 and in the sentiments of the mass of her community. In 
 the case of Ireland, indeed, as in that of any other 
 people, I have faith in the effect of salutary legislation 
 on wise and just principles, and of consistent good govern- 
 ment steadily carried out, of both of which there has been 
 but too little evidence, during the last twenty years, in Irish 
 affairs ; above all, my trust is large in the healing influences 
 of Time. But I have not forgotten that the vision of 
 1 Pacata Hibernia,' which flitted even before the majestic 
 understanding of Bacon, three centuries ago, has not been 
 realised ; the thoughtless optimism, which, during the last 
 two generations, has represented Ireland to be in a state 
 of continual 'progress,' nay, as 'contented and happy,' 
 whenever she has not been convulsed by disorder and 
 trouble, or racked by poverty and distress, has been com- 
 pletely falsified ; and with nations, as with individuals, the 
 profound remark of Butler is true ; a life of repentance 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 often fails to redeem the errors of the past. I proceed to 
 indicate some at least of the authorities which relate to the 
 different parts of my subject. The material condition of 
 Ireland of late years may, perhaps, be best ascertained by 
 studying, over some length of time, the large body of 
 statistics compiled by the Government, and contained in 
 that valuable publication, 'Thorn's Directory,' and by a 
 perusal of the Irish debates in Hansard. Reference, too, 
 should be made to the important papers of Mr. Childers, 
 of Lord Farrer, and of Mr. Sexton in the Report of the 
 Childers Commission, and especially to the evidence of 
 Sir Robert Giffen, and even of Sir Edward Hamilton, in 
 the Blue Books appended to that inquiry. ' England's 
 Wealth, Ireland's Poverty/ by Thomas Lough, M.P., 
 though a one-sided book, also deserves attention ; and 
 useful information may be obtained from ' The Five Years 
 in Ireland, 1895-1900/ of Mr. Michael J. F. McCarthy, too 
 much a eulogy, however, of things as they are, and marked 
 by a spirit of aversion to, and distrust of, the Irish priest- 
 hood, which are a characteristic of a small section of the 
 Irish Catholics. 
 
 The sources of our knowledge respecting the moral, 
 social, and political state of Ireland are numerous and 
 ample ; I shall confine myself, as much as I can, to those 
 which relate to what may be called her recent revolutionary 
 period, though Irish history in the past, even in the 
 distant past, is anything but an 'old almanack.' This 
 mass of evidence faithfully represents the disturbances 
 and the troubles that have prevailed in Ireland, with 
 intervals of time between, during the last twenty years 
 and upwards, and the fierce animosities and conflicts which 
 have been the consequence. Here a reader should again 
 consult Hansard, notably the debates on Ireland, during 
 the agitated period from 1880 to 1889 ; of course he should 
 only study the great speeches. The publications on this 
 subject are very many, and some of real importance ; as 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 regards the policy and conduct of the Land, and even of 
 the National Leagues, and the frightful outbreak of dis- 
 order and crime which was the result, nothing is equal in 
 value to the Report of the Judges of the ' Special Com- 
 mission/ and to the immense body of evidence brought 
 before them ; ' The Verdict,' by Professor Dicey, sums 
 up well the conclusions at which they arrived. The utter- 
 ances of the so-called Irish ' Nationalist ' Press, throughout 
 these years, fully verify the facts disclosed in the Report, 
 and its findings ; they have, indeed, been continued in a 
 less ferocious and violent, but in a significant, strain ever 
 since ; a collection of them will be found in the volumes 
 published by the Irish Unionist Alliance. On this subject, 
 and also on the state of opinion existing among a large 
 majority, probably, of the Irish people, see ' The Con- 
 tinuity of the Irish Revolutionary Movement,' by Professor 
 Brougham Leech ; ' The Truth about the Land League,' 
 by Mr. Arnold Foster, M.P. ; ' Parnellism and Crime,' 
 republished from the Times ; ' Incipient Irish Revolution,' 
 anonymous but able ; some valuable articles on Ireland 
 by the late Lord Grey that appeared in the Nineteenth 
 Century ; ' Disturbed Ireland,' by Mr. T. W. Russell, M.P. ; 
 'The Plan of Campaign Illustrated;' and 'About Ire- 
 land,' by Mrs. E. Lynn Lynton. The recent revolutionary 
 and agrarian movements in Ireland have not found many 
 to vindicate them, or even fully to explain their causes ; 
 but reference may be made to ' The Parnell Movement,' 
 by T. P. O'Connor, M.P. ; to the ' New Ireland ' of Mr. 
 A. M. Sullivan ; to Mr. Barry O'Brien's ' Irish Wrongs 
 and English Remedies ; ' and to a series of articles called 
 ' Ungrateful Ireland,' in the Nineteenth Century, from the 
 pen of Sir G. Duffy. A host of papers in quarterly, 
 monthly, and other reviews and magazines on the political 
 and social condition of Ireland of late years has, also, been 
 published from time to time. Attempts have been made, 
 quite recently, to show that the troubles of Ireland have 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 become things of the past, and that she is a prosperous 
 and happy land ; but though real improvement has 
 certainly taken place, these are mere repetitions of the 
 optimistic fancies that have so often proved delusions. 
 
 The great question of Home Rule, ' present ' if for a 
 time postponed, was first put forward formally by the late 
 Isaac Butt. His ' Irish Federalism ' is a thoughtful and 
 able treatise that ought to be studied. The speeches in 
 Parliament, from 1874 to 1885, on this subject, collected in 
 Hansard, deserve attention ; notably the violent attacks 
 on this policy made during many years by Mr. Gladstone. 
 Hansard, too, should be perused, after that statesman 
 became a convert to Home Rule, for the speeches on 
 both sides, on the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893 ; 
 some are of marked power and insight, though few rise to 
 the heights of great constitutional principles. Mr. Glad- 
 stone's defence of his sudden change of front will be found 
 in his ' History of an Idea/ a tract published soon after 
 his defeat at the polls in 1886; he has endeavoured to 
 vindicate his later Irish policy, in many pamphlets and 
 speeches, in volumes collected by himself. For a masterly 
 examination of his public conduct on matters relating to 
 Ireland, and in some other passages in his career, I would 
 especially direct the reader to the 'Memoirs of the late 
 Lord Selborne,' part ii. vol. ii. pp. 339-360 ; Mr. Lecky's 
 brilliant sketch in his ' Democracy and Liberty,' Cabinet 
 Edition, Introduction, pp. 19-56, is a composition of rare 
 excellence. Nothing is to be compared to Professor Dicey's 
 ' England's Case against Home Rule,' and his ' Leap in 
 the Dark,' for a thorough investigation, from the Unionist 
 point of view, of the natural and the probable consequences 
 of the Gladstonian Irish policy, and for an analysis of the 
 two Home Rule Bills ; few political works have attracted 
 equal attention. There have also been many publications, 
 on the side of the Union, of more or less merit ; see ' Home 
 Rule,' reprinted from the Times, containing several very 
 
 b 
 
x PREFACE 
 
 able letters and papers ; ' The Truth about Home Rule ; ' 
 ' A Sketch of Unionist Policy ; ' and a number of articles 
 in the Edinburgh and the Quarterly Review, and in other 
 reviews and magazines. The publications which advocate 
 Home Rule have not been numerous ; a reader may con- 
 sult the ' Hand Book of Home Rule,' edited by Mr. Bryce, 
 M.P. ; ' Irish Members and English Gaolers,' and ' Com- 
 bination and Coercion,' by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre ; and some 
 contributions to a few reviews and other serials. 
 
 The ' Present Question ' of the Irish land, and of Irish 
 landed relations, goes back to even remote antiquity, and 
 is connected with the whole course of Irish history. The 
 characteristics and peculiarities of tribal land tenure in 
 Ireland, before the Anglo-Norman Conquest, have been 
 admirably explained in Sir Henry Maine's ' Early History 
 of Institutions,' a very valuable work. I may refer to an 
 article on this book, from my pen, in the Edinburgh Revieiv 
 of July, 1875. See, also, the 'Senchus Mor,' and the 'Book of 
 Aicile,' fragments of the Brehon Laws, well annotated by 
 the late Professor Richey. The state of the Irish land, 
 from the Anglo-Norman Conquest to the beginning of the 
 Tudor period, has been fully illustrated in the ' Statute of 
 Kilkenny,' edited by James Hardiman, whose learned 
 commentary is useful and important ; in the ' Discovery ' 
 of Sir John Davies ; in Spenser's ' View of the State of 
 Ireland ;' in the 'O'Conors of Connaught,' by the O'Conor 
 Don ; in Hallam's ' Constitutional History,' vol. iii. chapter 
 on Ireland ; and in Professor Richey's ' Lectures.' I have 
 glanced at the state of Irish land tenure during the tribal 
 and the feudal ages, in the introductory chapters to my 
 ' Ireland, 1494-1868,' in the ' Cambridge Historical Series.' 
 The most complete account, perhaps, of the confiscations 
 of the Irish land, from the reign of Henry VIII. to that 
 of Charles I., will be found in the ' Carew Papers,' edited 
 by J. S. Brewer and William Bullen ; valuable informa- 
 tion abounds in the ' State Papers relating to the reign of 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 Henry VIII.,' edited by Hans Claude Hamilton ; in 'The 
 Life of Sir John Perrott and his Letters ; ' in the ' Earls 
 of Kildare,' edited by the Marquis of Kildare ; ' in the 
 'State Papers,' edited by Hamilton, ante, 'relating to the 
 reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth;' in the 
 ' Annals of the Four Masters ; ' and see Davies and Spenser, 
 ante. Several modern writers have treated this subject in 
 their narratives of Irish history ; Froude's ' History of 
 England,' vol. ii. ch. viii. ; vol. iv. ch. xix. ; vol. v. 
 ch. xxviii. ; vol. viii. chs. vii.-xi. ; vol. x. ch. xxiv. ; 
 vol. xi. ch. xxvii., may be consulted ; but a reader should 
 be put on his guard against the brilliant but partisan 
 historian. There is a valuable chapter also, in a very 
 different work, Mr. Lecky's ' History of England in the 
 Eighteenth Century,' vol. ii. ch. vi. pp. 92 seqq. ; and a 
 great deal may be learned from the 'O'Conors of Con- 
 naught,' and Richey's ' Lectures,' ante ; and especially from 
 an ' Historical Account of the Plantation of Ulster,' by the 
 Rev. George Hill, and from Sigerson's ' History of Irish 
 Land Tenure.' In the momentous period of confiscation, 
 from the beginning of the reign of Charles I. to that 
 of William III., a reader should study ' Strafford's Letters ; ' 
 Carte's 'Life of Ormond ;' Lord Clanricarde's 'Memoirs ;' 
 the ' Letters of Cromwell,' edited by Carlyle ; the ' Acts of 
 Settlement and Explanation ; ' the ' Articles of the Treaty 
 of Limerick ; ' Sir William Petty's ' Political Anatomy 
 of Ireland ; ' ' Macariae Excidium ; ' and the Abbe Mac- 
 Geoghegan's ' History of Ireland.' The modern authorities 
 on this period are numerous and some of great value ; see 
 Gardiner's ' History of the Commonwealth and Pro- 
 tectorate ' (the Irish chapters), notably vol. Hi. ch. xliv. ; 
 ' The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland,' by John P. 
 Prendergast ; ' The Life of Sir William Petty,' by Lord 
 Edmund Fitzmaurice, with an article by me in the Edin- 
 burgh Review of July, 1895 ; 'The Patriot Parliament,' by 
 Thomas Davis ; Macaulay's ' History of England ' (the 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 Irish chapters), vol. iv. ch. xxii. ; vol. v. ch. xiv.-xvi. ; 
 vol. vi. ch. xvii. ; and Mr. Lecky's ' History,' ante, vol. ii. 
 ch. ix. Many instructive and philosophic passages on 
 all these confiscations and their results, will be found 
 scattered among the writings of Burke ; they are 
 admirable. 
 
 The era of violent confiscation closed with the 
 reign of William III. ; the modern history of the Irish 
 land system begins from this period. For an account of 
 the penal code, as it affected Irish landed relations, refer- 
 ence maybe made to Vincent Scully, ' On the Penal Laws ; ' 
 to Howard's 'Popery Cases;' and especially to Burke's 
 ' Tracts on the Popery Laws.' Much, too, can be gathered 
 from Curry's ' State of the Irish Catholics ; ' from Primate 
 Boulter's and Archbishop Synge's ' Letters ; ' from the 
 writings on Ireland of Swift and Berkeley ; and from various 
 passages in the 'Works and Correspondence of Burke.' For 
 the state of the Irish land from the beginning of the reign 
 of George III. to the Rebellion of 1798, study the celebrated 
 'Tour' of Arthur Young, written in 1JJ6-7S ; Crumpe's 
 ' Essay ; ' an admirable sketch by Mr. Lecky in his 
 ' History,' ante, vol. vii. ch. xxvii. ; and Sir George Lewis 
 on ' Irish Disturbances,' a book which gives an account of 
 the rise and progress of the Whiteboy movement, and 
 carries the narrative down to 1836. Froude has illustrated 
 this subject very skilfully in his ' Two Chiefs of Dunboy ; ' 
 but his account, in his ' The English in Ireland,' is very 
 inaccurate and one-sided. The nature of Irish landed 
 relations during the troubled period before the Union is 
 fully explained in many passages of Mr. Lecky's ' History,' 
 ante, vols. vii. and viii. ; and the reader should peruse Lord 
 Clare's speech in the Irish House of Lords during the 
 debates on the Union. From the Union to the present 
 time, the authorities on the Irish land system are very 
 numerous ; it is not easy to make compendious selection. 
 For the period of the Great War, Edward Wakefield's 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 1 Account of Ireland ' is valuable, and so is, for the immedi- 
 ately subsequent period, the evidence on the state of 
 Ireland taken by a Committee of the House of Commons 
 in 1825. The nature and the characteristics of the Irish 
 land system, in 1843-44, are fully explained and com- 
 mented upon in the well-known Report of the Devon 
 Commission, and the voluminous evidence ; and for the 
 revolution wrought in the Irish land by the Famine of 
 1845-47, see tne 'Irish Crisis,' by Sir Charles Trevelyan, 
 republished from the Edinburgh Review ; and a ' History 
 of the Great Irish Famine,' by the Rev. John O'Rorke. 
 Much information, too, on the subject, as a whole, may be 
 obtained from ' L'Irlande, Sociale, Politique, et Religi- 
 euse,' of Gustave de Beaumont ; from ' Ireland from the 
 Treaty of Limerick to 1851/ by John Mitchell ; from parts 
 of ' Two Centuries of Irish History,' edited by James 
 Bryce, M.P. ; from several ' Reports ' of the Loyal National 
 Repeal Association ; and from parts of Mr. Barry O'Brien's 
 ' Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,' and ' Irish Wrongs 
 and English Remedies.' 
 
 The Irish land question has given birth to a literature 
 of its own in the last half-century ; legislation on the Irish 
 land system has been extraordinarily active. With respect 
 to the first, reference may be made to ' Two Centuries of 
 Irish History,' ante, and to Mr. Barry O'Brien's works, ante; 
 to ' Emigration and the Tenure of Irish Land,' by Lord 
 Dufferin ; to John Stuart Mill's 'The Irish Land Question ;' 
 to 'The Irish People and the Irish Land,' by Butt ; to Sir 
 George Campbell's ' The Irish Land,' a very good little 
 book ; to Judge Longfield's essay on the Irish land in 
 ' Systems of Land Tenure ; ' and to my own ' Letters on 
 the Land Question of Ireland,' republished from the Times. 
 I am happy to think that, on this subject, I have always 
 ' pitched my Whiggery low ; ' my first essay was on the 
 Encumbered Estates Act ; when fresh from Oxford I 
 condemned that scheme of confiscation as unequivocally 
 
xiv PREFACE 
 
 as, in the present and other works, I have condemned 
 Irish agrarian legislation since 1 880-81. Other books con- 
 tain passages on the Irish land system that may be read 
 with profit ; see the ' Recollections and Suggestions ' of 
 Earl Russell; 'Ireland in 1868/ by Gerald Fitzgibbon ; 
 1 Ireland,' by Lord Grey ; ' Journals, Conversations, and 
 Essays relating to Ireland,' by Nassau Senior ; and ' New 
 Views on Ireland,' by Lord Russell of Killowen. As 
 regards recent legislation on the Irish Land, from 1870 to 
 1896, the Acts passed by Parliament must of course be 
 studied, and also the important debates reported in 
 Hansard. Butt wrote a very able volume on the Land 
 Act of 1870 ; I contributed a short treatise ; an exhaustive 
 and technical work of great value, on all the Irish Land 
 Acts, has been produced by Messrs. Cherry and Wakely ; 
 this, with the Irish Reports, supplies ample professional, 
 and even general, information. With respect to the 
 administration of the Irish Land Acts, see the Report of 
 the Committee of the House of Lords, and the evidence 
 published in 1872 ; the Report of, and the evidence 
 collected by, the Bessborough Commission of 1880-81 ; the 
 Report of a Committee of the House of Lords on the 
 working of the Land Act of 1881, published, with the 
 evidence, in 1882 ; the Report, with the evidence, of 
 the Cowper Commission, 1888-89; the Report, with the 
 evidence, of the Morley Commission, 1 894-1 895 ; and, 
 especially, the Report of Sir Edward Fry's Commission 
 of 1897, with the important evidence it has put together. 
 Mr. Lecky, in his ' Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. ch. ii., 
 has criticised, almost as severely as I have done, recent 
 Irish agrarian legislation ; no serious defence of it has 
 ever been made or attempted. 
 
 To understand the real state of the financial relations 
 between Great Britain and Ireland, it is necessary to go 
 back to the times of the Union ; those who resist the Irish 
 demand avoid an appeal to history. The debates 
 
PREFACE xv 
 
 in the Irish Parliament in 1800 should be carefully 
 studied, especially the speeches of Castlereagh, Grattan, 
 and Foster. The Seventh Article of the Treaty of Union, 
 set forth in this work, should also be diligently scanned and 
 perused. See, too, the debates in the Imperial Parliament 
 in 1 8 16 ; the resolutions passed by the House of Commons 
 in that year ; and the Act abolishing the separate Ex- 
 chequer of Ireland. Reference, moreover, should be made 
 to the evidence taken before General Dunne's Committee 
 in 1864, in which sophistry triumphed for the moment 
 over truth. All these sources of information, however, are 
 scanty and imperfect compared to the celebrated Report 
 of the Childers Commission, with the valuable evidence 
 annexed to it ; this for the first time completely brings 
 out the whole facts on the subject. The debates in 
 Hansard on the financial claims of Ireland may also be 
 looked at ; but they are not of peculiar importance ; the 
 same remark applies to nearly all the articles in reviews, 
 magazines, and journals, in which endeavours have been 
 made to answer the Report. I may be allowed to say that 
 I have some claim to have a distinct opinion in this matter; 
 when still quite a boy I often heard my grand-uncle, the 
 late Sir John Newport, one of the ablest and last of the 
 Chancellors of the Irish Exchequer, condemn the financial 
 treatment of Ireland from 1800 onwards ; many years 
 afterwards I was intimately acquainted with several of the 
 independent Irish gentlemen, survivors of the great school 
 of Grattan, who protested against Mr. Gladstone's fiscal 
 Irish measures from 1853 to a later date; Butt and 
 Judge Longfield, both very able economists, fully con- 
 curred. With respect to local government and adminis- 
 tration in Ireland, see Mr. Barry O'Brien's ' Fifty Years of 
 Concessions to Ireland,' vol. i. books iv. and v. ; the Report 
 of the Commissioners on Irish Corporate Reform issued 
 in 1833-34, and the Irish Municipal Corporation Reform 
 Act of 1840; the Irish Towns Commissioners Acts; a 
 
xvi PREFACE 
 
 report made by Mr. W. P. O'Brien in 1878 ; a good treatise 
 by Mr. Bailey published in 1888 ; and the recent Irish 
 Local Government Act of 1898, with the debates in 
 Hansard on this measure, should be perused. The 
 authorities on Irish education of all kinds are numerous, 
 and some valuable. Froude has glanced at the subject, 
 with characteristic unfairness, in his ' The English in 
 Ireland ; ' the refutation of Mr. Lecky, in his ' England 
 in the Eighteenth Century,' is complete. A good 
 description of education in Ireland, in all its branches, 
 as it existed in 181 2, will be found in Edward Wakefield's 
 ' Account of Ireland,' vol. ii. ch. xxiv. ; another in Mr. 
 Barry O'Brien's ' Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,' 
 vol. i. book i. ; vol ii. book x. ; the author brings the 
 narrative down to 1881. As regards high education in 
 Ireland, reference may be made to 'The History of the 
 University of Dublin,' by the Rev. W. Stubbs ; to ' The 
 Constitutional History of the University of Dublin,' by 
 D. C. Heron ; to the Report of Archbishop Whateley's 
 Commission, in 1853, on the University of Dublin ; to Mr. 
 Gladstone's Irish University Bill of 1873, and the able 
 debates on the subject in Trinity College and the House 
 of Commons ; to Mr. Fawcett's Act of 1873 ; to a masterly 
 pamphlet by Butt, on the whole question, published in 
 1875; and to the 'Irish University Question,' by Arch- 
 bishop Walsh, with recent debates in Parliament on Irish 
 University reform. For ,the nature, constitution, and 
 working of the Queen's Colleges and the Queen's 
 University, see the debates in Parliament when Peel 
 introduced this policy ; many Reports ; the work of 
 Archbishop Walsh, ante; and the Act creating the 
 Royal University in Ireland may be examined. As 
 regards primary and secondary education in Ireland, 
 see the Reports of the Education Commissioners from 
 1810 to 1825 ; the Reports of the National Education 
 Board ; the Reports of the Kildare, Rosse, and Powis 
 
PREFACE xvii 
 
 Commissions, noticed in this work ; and Mr. Godkin's 
 1 Education in Ireland.' An excellent synopsis of the 
 subject, as a whole, will be found in ' The Educational 
 Systems of Great Britain and Ireland,' by Mr. Graham 
 Balfour. 
 
 WILLIAM O'CONNOR MORRIS. 
 
 Gartnamona, Tullamore, 
 i^ih May, 1 90 1. 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IRELAND IN 1901 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Ireland has passed through a revolution in the Victorian age — 
 Material progress — Dublin — Belfast — Improvement in 
 Catholic places of worship and in the habitations of the 
 people — State of the Irish community — Symptoms of retro- 
 gression — Decline of agriculture — The progress of Ireland 
 much less than that of England and Scotland, and why — 
 State of the Irish land system — Recent legislation has done 
 some good, but it has been unjust, and has had pernicious 
 effects — Ireland divided into three peoples — Notwithstanding 
 great reforms Catholic Ireland is still, in the main, disaffected 
 — Presbyterian Ireland — Cry for the confiscation of the 
 Irish land — Protestant Ireland — Fall of its old ascendency — 
 Discontent among the landed gentry — Nature of the govern- 
 ment of Ireland by the Imperial Parliament — Its merits and 
 defects — Attitude of the greater part of Ireland towards it — 
 The administration of Irish affairs — The bureaucracy of the 
 Castle — The Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic Irish 
 Churches — The administration of justice in Ireland— Irish 
 literature and public opinion — General survey of the present 
 state of Ireland — Irish policy of Lord Salisbury's Ministry — 
 ' Present Irish Questions' to be discussed in this work - 1 — 38 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 
 
 The question of Home Rule not extinct — The reasons — Butt's 
 scheme of Home Rule — It is denounced and ridiculed by 
 Mr. Gladstone, and defeated in the House of Commons— 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Death of Butt — The Home Rule movement becomes allied 
 with a foreign conspiracy — Davitt and Parnell — The Land 
 League — Mr. Gladstone's surrender to it — The movement 
 makes no progress in the Parliament of 1880-85 — The 
 General Election of 1885 — Mr. Gladstone suddenly adopts 
 the policy of Home Rule — The probable reasons — The 
 Home Rule Bill of 1886— Its nature and tendencies — Deci- 
 sive objections to the measure — It is rejected at the General 
 Election of 1886, having been previously rejected in the 
 House of Commons — Policy and conduct of Mr. Gladstone 
 — The Home Rule movement makes some progress in 
 England, and why — The Home Rule Bill of 1893 — It is 
 much worse than that of 1886 — The reasons — It is rejected 
 by the House of Lords — Home Rule under different forms — 
 The Union must be maintained — Proposal that Parliament 
 should occasionally sit in Dublin — The over-representation 
 of Ireland should be redressed ... - 39 — 83 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND — SKETCH OF THE 
 HISTORY OF THE LAND SYSTEM OF IRELAND TO THE 
 YEAR 1870 
 
 Great importance in the history of Ireland of the conditions of 
 land tenure — The ancient Celtic land system and its charac- 
 teristics — The Norman conquest of Ireland — Norman feud- 
 alism in the Irish land — The policy of Henry VI L, and 
 especially of Henry VIII. — The era of the conquest and con- 
 fiscation of the Irish land — The possessions of the O'Connors 
 of Offaly wrested from them — Forfeiture of the domains 
 of Shane O'Neill, and of the Earl of Desmond— Attempts at 
 colonisation — All Ireland made shire land — The extinction 
 of the old Celtic land system — The Plantation of Ulster 
 — Progress of confiscation during the reigns of the two first 
 Stuarts — The Civil War — Immense confiscations made by 
 Cromwell — His scheme of colonisation a failure — The era of 
 confiscation closes after the battle of the Boyne and the fall 
 of Limerick — The Penal Code of Ireland — Its fatal effects 
 on the Irish land — Dismal period in Irish landed relations 
 — Gradual improvement — The period described by Arthur 
 Young — Evil traces of the past remain — Whiteboyism and 
 agrarian disorder — State of Irish landed relations up to the 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 TAGES 
 
 rebellion of 1798, and after the Union— Over- population and 
 the results— Distress after the Peace— State of Irish landed 
 relations up to 1844— The Report of the Devon Commission 
 —The Famine and its effects on the Irish land— The En- 
 cumbered Estates Acts— State of Irish landed relations from 
 1848 to 1868 ------ 84—129 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND {continued)— -THE 
 IRISH LAND ACT OF 1870— THE LAND LEAGUE AND 
 THE NATIONAL LEAGUE— THE LAND ACT OF l88l — 
 SUBSEQUENT LEGISLATION AS REGARDS THE LAND 
 SYSTEM OF IRELAND 
 
 State of landed relations in Ireland in 1869-70— Mr. Gladstone 
 Prime Minister— The Land Act of 1870— Its merits and 
 defects— A short period of prosperity in Ireland— Ominous 
 symptoms— Michael Davitt— The teaching of John Finton 
 Lalor in 1848— The ' New Departure ' in Fenianism arranged 
 in America— Foundation of the Land League— It was a 
 foreign rebellious conspiracy, with an agrarian side, under 
 a constitutional mask— Parnell the master spirit of the League 
 —His visit to America and the results— A short period of 
 distress in Ireland— Conduct of the Irish landlords— Progress 
 of the Land League— Mr. Gladstone again Prime Minister 
 in 1880— The Compensation for Disturbance Bill rejected 
 by the House of Lords— Outburst of agrarian crime, as the 
 Land League increases in power— Rents at Griffith's valua- 
 tion—Boycotting—Frightful state of Ireland in 1 881— After 
 a short attempt to repress it, Mr. Gladstone surrenders to 
 the Land League— The Land Act of 1 881— Mr. Gladstone 
 breaks the pledges he had made in 1870— His promise of 
 compensating the Irish landlords— The Land Act of 1881 a 
 bad and unjust measure directly inconsistent with that of 
 1870— The ' No Rent Manifesto'— The Kilmainham Treaty 
 —The Phcenix Park tragedy— Coercion— Parnell founds the 
 National League, the successor of the Land League— Renewal 
 of agitation in 1886— Struggle with law and the Government 
 —Subsequent agrarian legislation for Ireland— This is really 
 a concession to agitation, for the benefit of Irish tenants, 
 and to the injury of Irish landlords - - - 130—187 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (continued) — THE 
 ADMINISTRATION OF THE IRISH LAND ACTS 
 
 PAGES 
 
 The administration of the Land Act of 1870 in the main good — 
 Difficulty about claims for tenants' improvements — The ad- 
 ministration of the Land Act of 1881, and of its supplements 
 — The Land Commission and its Sub-Commissions — Allow- 
 ances to be made for these tribunals — Principles which the 
 Land Commission should have adopted in fixing ' fair rents ' 
 — The procedure and practice it ought to have established 
 — It made mistakes as to both — The nature of the Sub- 
 Commission Courts — This was objectionable in the highest 
 degree — These Courts have, however unconsciously, done 
 grave wrong to Irish landlords — Causes of this — Character- 
 istics of their proceedings — They disregarded the principles 
 they ought to have followed, and adopted faulty and erro- 
 neous methods — Different illustrations of these grave mis- 
 takes — The Land Commission and appeals as to ' fair rent ' 
 — Importance of this subject — Faulty procedure of the Land 
 Commission in appeals — Valuers — The second Land Com- 
 mission — Its procedure worse than that of the first — Theory 
 of occupation right — This another wrong done to landlords 
 — The Fry Commission and its report — Confiscation of the 
 property of Irish landlords — The proofs of this — Apologies 
 made for the Land Commission — The administration of the 
 Land Purchase Acts ----- 188—229 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (continued) — PROPOSED 
 REFORM OF THE IRISH LAND SYSTEM 
 
 Retrospect of the present Irish land system — Position of the Irish 
 landlords — Position of the Irish tenant class — This not as 
 advantageous as might be supposed — The effects of the 
 land code on Irish agriculture injurious — The effects on the 
 general Irish community— Confiscation, violation of con- 
 tracts, shock given to credit, increased alienation of classes, 
 and demoralisation — The land system considered on the 
 side of ownership — ' Voluntary purchase ' — Mischief of this 
 policy — It sets up a false standard against rent, and creates 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 unjust distinctions between different classes of tenants — The 
 results it has produced already — An instance of the system 
 — The demand for the compulsory purchase of the Irish 
 land caused by ' voluntary purchase ' — Compulsory purchase 
 has some hold on opinion, but is an impossible, and would 
 be a disgraceful and ruinous policy — It would ruin Irish 
 landlords as a class — Instances — It would ultimately bring 
 Ireland into the state in which she was before the Great 
 Famine — Proposed plan for the reform of Irish land tenure 
 — Questions as to the means of compensating Irish land- 
 lords, a deeply wronged order of men - - - 230 — 270 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE QUESTION OF THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS BETWEEN 
 GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 
 
 The subject briefly considered — Financial position of Ireland 
 before 1782, and under Grattan's Parliament — Her taxation 
 and debt small before 1798 — Ireland financially a distinct 
 country — At the Union, Pitt wished to 'assimilate her in 
 finance' with Great Britain, but this impossible, and why — 
 Ireland's contribution after the Union — This was unjust, but 
 it left her financially a distinct country — Ireland made nearly 
 bankrupt — The compromise of 18 16 — The Irish Exchequer 
 closed, and the Irish and British debts consolidated — The 
 object of the compromise was rather to relieve Ireland from 
 her burdens than to assimilate her in finance with Great 
 Britain — She still remained for many years financially dis- 
 tinct from Great Britain, and is so still to some extent — The 
 conduct of Peel a striking proof of this — Mr. Gladstone 
 imposes the income tax on Ireland, and her spirit duties 
 are largely raised — Injustice of this policy — The Committee 
 of 1863-64 — Ireland does not obtain financial justice — The 
 Report of the Childers Commission made upon a refer- 
 ence by Mr. Gladstone following Mr. Goschen — The Com- 
 mission declares that Ireland has been greatly overtaxed 
 for many years — Evidence on which it has founded this 
 conclusion — Examination of arguments to the contrary — 
 Another Commission promised, but the promise not fulfilled 
 — Importance of settling this question - - - 271 — 308 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE QUESTIONS OF IRISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND 
 EDUCATION— OTHER QUESTIONS— CONCLUSION 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Irish county government — The grand jury system in the eigh- 
 teenth century — Its merits and defects — The grand jury 
 system in the nineteenth century, and especially since 1836 — 
 The Irish poor law system — Elected and ex-officio guardians — 
 The local government of cities and towns in Ireland — Muni- 
 cipal institutions founded in Ireland by the Norman kings — 
 Why they did not prosper — Boroughs and municipalities 
 founded by James I. and the Stuarts — Their condition in 
 the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — The Municipal 
 Reform Act of 1840 — The Towns Commissioners Acts — 
 Attempts to reform the municipal system of local govern- 
 ment in Ireland — The Local Government of Ireland Act, 
 1898 — Complete change in Irish local government — The 
 County Councils — The County Borough Councils — The 
 District, Rural, and the Urban District Councils — Their 
 functions, rights, and duties — All these bodies placed on a 
 democratic basis — Attitude of the County Councils in the 
 southern provinces — Education in Ireland — History of 
 primary- education — The National system of education — The 
 principles on which it is founded — How it has worked, and 
 what its results have been — Secondary education in Ireland 
 — Its history — Its present condition very imperfect — The 
 Intermediate Education Act — University education in 
 Ireland — Its history — Trinity College — The Queen's Colleges 
 and the Queen's University founded by Peel — Their com- 
 parative failure — Mr. Gladstone's Bill to reform University 
 education in Ireland — Its glaring errors and failures — 
 — Trinity College thrown open in 1873 — The Royal Uni- 
 versity founded in 1879 — Present state of University educa- 
 tion in Ireland — The true principles of reform — Other 
 Irish questions — Conclusion ... - 309 — 360 
 
 Appendix ------- 361—428 
 
 Index ------- 429 
 
Present Irish Questions 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IRELAND IN I9OI 
 
 Ireland has passed through a revolution in the Victorian age — 
 Material progress — Dublin — Belfast — Improvement in Catholic 
 places of worship and in the habitations of the people — State 
 of the Irish community — Symptoms of retrogression — Decline 
 of agriculture — The progress of Ireland much less than that of 
 England and Scotland, and why — State of the Irish land system 
 — Recent legislation has done some good, but it has been unjust, 
 and has had pernicious effects — Ireland divided into three peoples 
 — Notwithstanding great reforms Catholic Ireland is still, in the 
 main, disaffected — Presbyterian Ireland — Cry for the confiscation 
 of the Irish land — Protestant Ireland — Fall of its old ascendency — 
 Discontent among the landed gentry — Nature of the government 
 of Ireland by the Imperial Parliament — Its merits and defects — 
 Attitude of the greater part of Ireland towards it — The adminis- 
 tration of Irish affairs — The bureaucracy of the Castle — The 
 Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic Irish Churches — The ad- 
 ministration of justice in Ireland — Irish literature and public 
 opinion — General survey of the present state of Ireland — Irish 
 policy of Lord Salisbury's ministry — ' Present Irish Questions ' 
 to be discussed in this work. 
 
 To understand thoroughly the Ireland of the present day, 
 it is necessary to have studied her history in the past. 
 Nevertheless, if we go back to a comparatively recent 
 period, say to the beginning of the reign of Victoria, we 
 can obtain a reasonably clear idea of her existing condition. 
 
 B 
 
PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 A revolution has passed over her in this space of time 
 almost as complete as the revolution which has transformed 
 France ; the results have not yet been fully developed, 
 but in nearly all respects they have been immense. The 
 community has, for the most part, made material progress ; 
 but this has been far from great or decisive ; it has been 
 interrupted by seasons of distress, one culminating in a dire 
 catastrophe, and has been retarded by many causes of 
 trouble. Taking the external aspect of Ireland first, 
 Dublin has certainly advanced in the last sixty years ; the 
 capital has been surrounded by fine and increasing suburbs ; 
 the squares, the streets, the shops have improved ; above 
 all, though much remains yet to be done, the contrast 
 between the dwellings of the rich and the poor is much less 
 painful than it was within living memory. No city, how- 
 ever, has made such progress as Belfast : its population, 
 which, in i84i,was not more than 75,000 souls, was, in 1891, 
 upwards of 255,000;* its opulence has probably grown 
 tenfold ; it is the centre of the great manufacture of Ulster ; 
 its building-yards are renowned for its magnificent ships ; 
 its estuary is crowded with the thronging fleets of commerce. 
 The towns dependent on it, too, and the whole adjoining 
 region, are flourishing from the great trade in linen, which 
 has been aggregated within a comparatively small space ; 
 indeed, this prosperity has extended over all the north-east 
 of Ireland, and Londonderry has long been a thriving 
 seaport. Few of the towns of the rest of Ulster and 
 of the southern provinces have improved ; but signs of 
 augmented wealth appear in other directions ; in this 
 respect they are striking in the extreme. The places of 
 worship and the religious houses of the Catholic Church 
 of Ireland have been transformed ; the mean ' chapels ' 
 of the past have largely disappeared ; most parishes have 
 a suitable church ; fine cathedrals dominate many towns ; 
 
 * It considerably exceeds 300,000 by the figures of the census of 
 1 901. 
 
IRELAND IN 1901 
 
 we often admire monasteries and convents in architectural 
 splendour. The most remarkable phenomenon, however, 
 of this description is the great and fortunate change which 
 has taken place in the habitations of the community 
 throughout the country. The dense and wretched hovels 
 which, sixty years ago, barely sheltered the millions of 
 Irish indigence, if still too frequent, have been, for the most 
 part, effaced ; the houses of the better class have greatly 
 increased in numbers, though the population has enormously 
 declined.* And the face of the landscape in most counties 
 bears witness, on the whole, to a still perceptible pro- 
 gress. The chief industry of Ireland, indeed, as I shall 
 show afterwards, has certainly retrograded within the last 
 twenty years ; her agricultural area and resources have 
 much diminished. The advance, too, which, from about 
 1853 to 1876, was manifest and rapid in most of her rural 
 districts, has been, to a considerable extent, checked ; 
 capital has, for some time, been avoiding her soil. But if 
 the process was stern, nay, appalling, the land has, within 
 the last half century, been thrown open to husbandry, 
 infinitely better and more fruitful than had existed before ; 
 the exertions which were made, for a long space of time, to 
 improve cultivation have left far-spreading traces ; we still 
 behold the beneficent results. The land over the greater 
 part of its surface is not ' puckered up ' in thousands of 
 squalid patches, the holdings of masses of cottar paupers ; 
 it has been made more available for real farming ; and it 
 has been largely drained, enclosed, and covered with wood- 
 land — at least, up to a recent period. 
 
 1841 1891 
 
 * Houses of the first class 40,080 ... 70,740 
 
 „ second class ... 264,184 ... 466,632 
 
 „ third class 533,297 ••• 312,589 
 
 „ fourth class ... 491,278 ... 20,617 
 
 These figures are taken from that most valuable publication, ' Thorn's 
 Irish Directory for 1901,' p. 631. It contains the statistics of Ireland 
 carefully compiled from official sources. 
 
PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 The material condition of the Irish community has, also, 
 improved since the late Queen ascended the throne. This, 
 no doubt, is to be largely ascribed to the effects of the great 
 Famine of 1845-47, and of the immense emigration that 
 followed in its train. The resources of Ireland, before that 
 calamity, were unable to support, in anything like comfort, 
 the teeming multitudes crowded on her soil ; an official 
 report, made in 1838, proved that two millions and a half of 
 the poor in Ireland were for months in the year on the brink 
 of starvation ; this huge mass of indigence, which forced up 
 rent, beat down wages, and was most injurious to good 
 husbandry, was almost incompatible with real social pro- 
 gress. The great and continuing exodus of the Irish race, 
 which has gone on for more than half a century, has not been 
 without untoward results ; but it has relieved the country 
 from a destructive incubus ; and this has certainly wrought 
 a beneficent change, though the population has declined 
 from about eight millions in 1837 to about four and a half 
 millions in 1895.* Ireland, indeed, is still, mainly, a poor 
 country — in some districts she is exceedingly poor ; but the 
 disappearance of overwhelmingly redundant millions has 
 enabled her to maintain the millions that have remained 
 much better than of old, and has distinctly raised the 
 standard of living among all the humbler classes. The 
 wages of agricultural labour, seldom more than six or 
 seven shillings a week before the Famine, and then paid 
 in potatoes by a vile truck system, have risen to ten and 
 even twelve shillings, usually paid in cash ; and they have 
 not fallen, though Irish agriculture is very far from 
 prosperous. The wages of the higher kinds of labour have 
 also greatly increased ; this is apparent in nearly all trades, 
 and is especially apparent in the trades of Ulster. At the 
 same time, the potato has long ceased to be the sole food 
 of the poor ; their dwellings, though still too often mean 
 and bad, are infinitely better than they once were ; their 
 * There has been a small decrease since 1895. 
 
IRELAND IN 1901 5 
 
 attire, and even their appearance, has greatly improved. 
 I do not think, indeed, that O'Connell's description of the 
 peasantry of Munster in 1825 could now be fairly applied 
 to even the worst parts of Ireland, the impoverished tracts 
 on the seacoast of Connaught : ' They have no clothes 
 to change, they have none but what they wear at the 
 moment. . . . Their food consists of potatoes and water 
 during the greater part of the year ; potatoes and sour milk 
 during another portion ; they use some salt with their 
 potatoes when they have nothing but water.' * There is 
 evidence, also, that, even of late years, the wealth of Ireland 
 has, in some measure, increased, especially in the middle 
 and lower middle classes. The landed gentry, indeed, 
 owing partly to the effects of Free Trade, and partly to 
 those of legislation I shall describe afterwards, have been 
 impoverished in many instances, and in many ruined ; 
 and the Irish tenant farmer, if gorged by the spoil of his 
 landlord, has not gained all that an agrarian revolution 
 was expected to give him. But the commerce of Ireland 
 has made progress, within the last two decades, if this has 
 not been by any means great ; and though the capital she 
 holds in the best securities has perceptibly diminished of 
 late years, there has been a very large increase in most 
 kinds of other investments, f 
 
 This picture of Ireland, however, has dark features ; her 
 welfare has been, at best, partial ; considerable deductions 
 must be made from it. The progress of the capital, as 
 
 * Evidence taken before a Select Committee of the House of Com- 
 mons, 1824-25, vol. i. p. 49. The whole of O'Connell's evidence should 
 be studied. 
 
 1894 1900 
 
 f Funded Debt held in Ireland ... ,£22,917,530 ... ,£18,303,627 
 Government Funds and other securi- 
 ties : India Stock, Land Stock, 
 War Stock, Joint Stock Banks, 
 Trustee Savings Banks, and Post 
 
 Office Savings Banks ,£67,432,000 ... ^77,494,000 
 
 'Thorn's Directory, 1901,' p. 718. 
 
PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 has been the case in London, is largely to be ascribed to 
 the depletion of many country districts, a change that has 
 been going on for a long period, and has been accelerated 
 by the decline of the landed gentry in wealth. The 
 enormous advance of Belfast, and of the adjoining neigh- 
 bourhood, has been, to a great extent, caused by the con- 
 centration of the linen manufacture within a small area ; 
 the hand-loom has disappeared from Ireland ; this has 
 been injurious to many petty towns and villages. The 
 population and the trade of nearly all the chief towns 
 in the southern provinces have diminished ; Cork, with its 
 immense natural advantages, has not prospered ; Limerick 
 and, notably, Galway are in decay ; most of the inland 
 towns show few signs of improvement ; the outskirts of 
 almost all are defaced by lines of ruined hovels, the wrecks 
 of abodes a dwindling tale of indwellers has left. Many 
 of these urban centres were, sixty years ago, seats of 
 manufactures and of other industries, which, to a certain 
 extent, were flourishing ; but these sources of wealth have, 
 for the most part, been dried up ; they have been blotted 
 out by the gigantic manufactures of England and Scotland 
 poured into Ireland, everywhere, within a few hours, by 
 steam. The collapse, indeed, of Irish manufactures in the 
 last half century has been striking and mournful ; 696,000 
 persons were employed in textile and dyeing industries in 
 1841 ; in 1881 there were only 130,000; and though the 
 growth of machinery may in part account for this 
 difference, it assuredly cannot fully explain it* The 
 same remark applies to Irish fishing industry ; the small 
 craft which once swarmed along the coast, and, rearing a 
 breed of hardy mariners, gathered in the prolific harvests 
 of the sea, have been vanishing year after year; in 1867, 
 9332 boats, and 38,444 men and boys were engaged in 
 
 * See the remarkable evidence of Mr. Booth, a high authority, 
 taken by the Childers Commission, ' Minutes of Evidence,' vol. ii. 
 pp. 212, 213. This should all be studied. 
 
IRELAND IN 1901 
 
 this calling; the numbers were 5646 and 21,940 in 1891.* 
 Turning to the face of the country, agriculture, we have 
 seen, has improved, if we look back to the period before 
 the Famine ; but it is still centuries behind that of England 
 and Scotland, and of late years it has markedly declined. 
 It is not only that the prices of agricultural produce are 
 much less than they were, in the last generation, and that 
 its total value has fallen from £97,885,000 in 1851-55, 
 to £88,955,000 in 1 889-93.1 The agricultural area of 
 Ireland has diminished from 1879 to 1899 by rather more 
 than 400,000 acres ; % and it is absolutely certain that 
 within these decreasing limits, as I shall point out in 
 subsequent chapters, agriculture has made little or no 
 progress, and in some districts has distinctly become 
 worse ; we see the results of the vicious legislation of the 
 last twenty years in deteriorated farms, in hundreds of 
 cases, in a most injurious neglect of arterial drainage, and 
 in the destruction of thousands of acres of woodland. 
 And the ruin which has overtaken many of the landed 
 gentry has been made only too manifest in the desolate 
 aspect of scores of country seats, once happy homes, that 
 now know their owners no more. 
 
 It must be borne in mind, too, as we examine the 
 present state of Ireland, that if, on the whole, she has 
 made some progress, she is still, as I have said, a poor 
 country, and that a considerable part of Connaught, her 
 western province, has, for years, been in so poor a condition, 
 that the Government of late has laudably made a great 
 effort to raise it out of the depths of indigence. Other 
 considerations, moreover, must be taken into account, if 
 we would form a just conclusion as to the material 
 
 * 'Thorn's Directory, 1901,' p. 699. 
 
 t Report of Childers Commission, p. 43 — 
 
 1851-55 1889-93 
 
 Crops £58,537,000 ... £34,643,000 
 
 Stock £39,348,000 ... £53,312,000 
 
 \ 'Thorn's Directory, 1901,' p. 684. 
 
PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 position of Ireland, and, especially, as to her material 
 prospects, The reduction of her population, up to a 
 certain point, was an essential condition of her social 
 progress ; but that limit appears to have been far sur- 
 passed ; this continuous decline, during more than half 
 a century, has become an ominous symptom. More than 
 3,700,000 of souls have emigrated from Ireland since 
 1851;* and this number does not include the masses 
 which fled from the catastrophe of 1845-47. This immense 
 drain on the life of a nation has, for years, had a per- 
 nicious effect ; in large parts of the country labourers 
 have become so scarce that it is often difficult to save the 
 harvest, which should be quickly gathered in, in a wet 
 climate ; and hands are wanting to industry in many 
 places. Emigration, too, has taken away the best part of 
 the people, men and women in the flower of existence ; 
 the reproductive power of the community has, accordingly, 
 declined ; the birth-rate of Ireland is less than it was ; 
 infirmity, disease, and, notably, insanity have increased ; 
 the population of the towns is seldom active and thriving.f 
 At the same time, the taxation of Ireland has become 
 many degrees more excessive in the last sixty years ; 
 the local rates have advanced from about £1,000,000 to 
 nearly £4,000,000 ; the general taxation has been well- 
 nigh doubled ; and a tribunal of the very highest authority 
 has recently declared that Ireland is immensely overtaxed, 
 and has been for upwards of forty years. Nor can there 
 be a real question but that large interests connected with 
 the land have suffered greatly in the period that has now 
 extended from 1878-79. It is unnecessary to refer to 
 the condition of the landed gentry ; I shall notice it at 
 some length afterwards ; but, much as the Irish people 
 dislike the Poor-law, pauperism has distinctly increased 
 
 * 'Thorn's Directory, 1901,' p. 629. 
 
 t See the striking observations of Mr. Childers, well worth serious 
 attention : 'Report of the Childers Commission,' pp. 186, 187. 
 
IRELAND IN 1901 
 
 during the last ten years, though the population has fallen 
 off in numbers, and the charge of pauperism shows a 
 corresponding increase.* The Income Tax returns, too, 
 as regards the land, are of sinister omen ; those under 
 Schedule A have greatly diminished since 1890 ; and there 
 is a considerable decline of property in the Funds.f As 
 to the argument that the Tenant Right of the Irish farmer 
 has risen in value, and that this proves Irish agriculture 
 to be in a prosperous state, this is a complete, nay, a 
 grotesque, fallacy. The rise in the value of Tenant Right 
 is simply one of the many signs that a huge confiscation 
 has taken place in the Irish land. 
 
 If Ireland, therefore, has made material progress, this 
 has been slow, partial, and with large drawbacks ; such as 
 it is, it must be mainly ascribed to the results of the Famine, 
 which liberated the soil from a destructive burden. The 
 whole country, it has truly been said, has still too much 
 the look of a ' great neglected estate,' requiring develop- 
 ment in most of its parts ; large sections of the population 
 are poor, feeble in health, and backward. Any advance, 
 moreover, which Ireland has made in well being, since 
 1837-38, is as nothing compared with the extraordinary 
 growth of the prosperity of England and Scotland, within 
 the same period. True-hearted Irishmen grieve as they 
 pass from the lesser to the greater island, and contrast the 
 husbandry of Galway and Mayo with that of the Lothians 
 and Kent ; as they gaze on the Shannon, with scarcely a 
 sail on its waters, and the Clyde teeming with its fleets of 
 commerce ; above all, as they turn from the decaying 
 towns of their own country to such centres of wealth and 
 
 * 'Thorn's Directory, 1901,' p. 662. Number of paupers relieved in 
 1890, 454,178 ; in 1898, 525,104. Charge in 1890, ,£856,008; in 1898, 
 ^981,333. These are the latest returns. 
 
 f 'Thorn's Directory, 1901,' p. 674. Assessment of lands, in 1890, 
 under Schedule A, ,£12,736,967; in 1899, ^11,664,453. Funded 
 property at the same periods, ,£803,300 and ,£615,630. These, too, 
 are the latest returns. 
 
io PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 of gigantic trade, as some even of the provincial cities of 
 Britain, not to speak of the mighty world of London. The 
 causes, indeed, of this contrast may be easily found ; the 
 mineral resources of Ireland are scanty ; her commerce 
 and manufactures are small ; she is essentially an agri- 
 cultural land, which has lost much from the effects of Free 
 Trade ; she has suffered greatly from misgovernment, 
 agitation, and social disorder ; all this has kept her back 
 in the national race. The mineral products, on the other 
 hand, of England and Scotland are immense, and of the 
 first importance in an age of invention ; they have decisively 
 contributed to the huge development of the opulence and 
 the trade of Great Britain ; the policy of Free Trade, 
 carried out for years, has had marvellous results in the 
 same direction ; if British agriculture is not progressing, 
 British commerce and manufactures are still supreme ; and 
 Great Britain has been for ages a law-abiding land, in 
 which order has been happily combined with liberty. 
 These considerations fully explain the wide and ever- 
 increasing distinction between Ireland and England and 
 Scotland, only too manifest ; they have been amply verified 
 by unerring statistics. Two figures may suffice for a 
 general reader ; the resources of Ireland were estimated, 
 a few years ago, at a sum of about four hundred millions 
 sterling, that of Great Britain at not less than ten thousand 
 millions.* 
 
 * ' Report of the Childers Commission,' p. 72. I cite also the follow- 
 ing from the Report, p. 43 : ' The income-tax figures are, perhaps, the 
 best and most complete test of the comparative growth of the wealth 
 of the two countries. Taking the two years, 1854 and 1892, we find 
 that the net assessment for Great Britain was, in 1854,^245,389,931 ; 
 and in 1892, .£570,971,740. The net assessment for Ireland was, in 
 1854, ,£21,334,448; and in 1892, £26,851,585. In these thirty-eight 
 years the net assessment for Great Britain is more than two and a 
 third times as great as it was in 1854, whilst that for Ireland has only 
 increased by one quarter. Put in percentage form, the figures are 
 still more striking : In 1854 Great Britain was assessed at 92 per cent, 
 of the whole ; Ireland 8 per cent. In 1892 Great Britain was assessed 
 
IRELAND IN 1901 n 
 
 The social structure of Ireland springs from the soil ; it 
 is most apparent in the relations that have been formed in 
 the land. I shall dwell, at some length, in other chapters 
 of this work, on the history and the characteristics of the 
 Irish land system, and on the revolution through which it 
 has passed ; I can here only briefly glance at the subject. 
 That system, at the beginning of the late reign, still repre- 
 sented, in many respects, the features it had borne in the 
 eighteenth century, though these had been, in a great 
 degree, modified. The land, over four-fifths of its surface, 
 was still in the ownership of a small class of men, divided 
 in race and faith from its occupants ; the conquests and 
 confiscations which had drawn deep lines of distinction 
 between the Anglo-Protestant landlord and the Catholic 
 and even the Presbyterian peasant, had still left their 
 indelible traces, if these had been, to a considerable extent, 
 effaced. Absenteeism had increased since the Union, 
 though absentee estates were showing signs of improvement ; 
 middleman tenures, with their manifold and complex mis- 
 chiefs, were disappearing, but were still numerous j various 
 causes, to operate for many years, were diminishing the 
 security of the peasants' tenure. The power of the dominant 
 landlord class v/as declining ; it was being weakened by the 
 Castle bureaucracy, and by the emancipation of Catholic 
 Ireland ; but it was still nearly supreme in landed relations ; 
 this class was all but the absolute lords of the tillers of the 
 soil. It is untrue that it was oppressive and unjust as a 
 a rule ; but some of its members abused their excessive 
 power ; it had too much in common with an exclusive 
 caste ; and a whole train of economic causes were aggra- 
 vating the evils of a land system from its origin placed on 
 unsound foundations. Agriculture was advancing in not 
 a few counties ; many of the landed gentry were improving 
 
 at 95*50 per cent, of the whole; Ireland 4/50 per cent. In other 
 words, Ireland's assessment was to that of Great Britain as 1 to 11 in 
 1854, and as 1 to 21 in 1892.' 
 
12 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 men, who were making a beginning in the scientific farming, 
 which, before long, was to be more fully developed. But 
 the population, we have seen, had increased by millions 
 Ireland could not support ; over whole districts, especially 
 in Munster and Connaught, the land had been split up into 
 petty holdings, the seats of a huge multitude of human 
 misery. Rents, therefore, were being unnaturally forced 
 up, and the wages of labour unnaturally cut down ; the 
 land system was disorganised, and filled with dangerous 
 elements. The worst vice of the system, however, has yet 
 to be noticed ; from different causes which I shall point out 
 afterwards, the occupiers of the soil in Ireland had, as a 
 general rule, made even the permanent improvements on 
 their farms, and large sums had repeatedly been paid on the 
 transfer of these ; they had thus gradually acquired con- 
 current rights in the land, in tens of thousands of instances ; 
 and yet these were outside the pale of the law, and could 
 be annihilated by eviction, or even the raising of rent. 
 These rights had the support, in parts of Ulster, of a 
 long-established custom, and were usually respected in the 
 southern 'provinces ; but they ought long before to have 
 had full legal protection ; and they were sometimes violated 
 or disregarded by unscrupulous landlords. The results 
 were seen in the White Boy and the agrarian disorders 
 which had disturbed Ireland for more than a century, and 
 even ran back to the confiscations of the past. 
 
 This land system, essentially bad as it was, marked by 
 evil distinctions and pregnant with wrong, scarcely attracted 
 the attention of British statesmen, until nearly the middle 
 of the nineteenth century. Peel was the first minister 
 who, even dimly, perceived its vices ; he appointed a 
 Commission to report on the subject. The labours of this 
 body were, in part, laudable ; but the Commissioners, 
 filled with prejudice as to the excellence of British land 
 tenure, and without experience of that of Ireland, made 
 a capital mistake in the suggestions they offered. Instead 
 
IRELAND IN igoi 13 
 
 of recommending that the concurrent rights of the Irish 
 tenant in the land, often equivalent to a real joint owner- 
 ship, should receive, as was but just, the sanction of law, 
 they proposed to restrict these in many ways ; they put 
 forward a plan of 'compensation,' as they called it, that 
 was worse than useless. Legislation to this effect was 
 withdrawn from Parliament ; the terrible visitation of 
 1845-47 had ere long shattered the Irish land system, 
 bringing ruin on hundreds of the landed gentry, making 
 thousands of farmers of the better classes bankrupt, forcing 
 the petty holders of the land — the cottar population, 
 as it was named — to fly from the country in despairing 
 multitudes. The land was largely set free from a dense 
 mass of wretchedness ; it was the general belief of the 
 public men of the day, that what was most required, at 
 this conjuncture, was to attract men of capital to it to do 
 it justice, and to get rid, as quickly as possible, of the large 
 body of Irish landlords, who, even before deeply involved 
 in debt, had been made hopelessly insolvent by recent 
 events. The Encumbered Estates Act became law, with 
 scarcely an opposing protest ; it was to ' regenerate Ireland,' 
 its authors proclaimed ; its results were to develop a bad 
 class of landlords, to annihilate the rights of the Irish 
 peasant wholesale, and to cause an iniquitous confiscation 
 on an enormous scale. The Irish Land Question, as was 
 the phrase, was now raised once more; in 1852 the 
 occupiers of the Irish soil set on foot an agitation to 
 vindicate their rights, destroyed or endangered by what 
 had lately occurred ; the Government of Lord Derby lent 
 a favourable ear ; but it was defeated in the House of 
 Commons by intrigue ; the land system remained in the 
 state in which it had been left ; no real attempt to improve 
 it was made. A series of years followed in which Ireland 
 made distinct progress, and her agriculture advanced ; it 
 became a fixed idea with British statesmen, that there was 
 nothing radically bad in Irish land tenure, and that its 
 
14 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 defects would gradually disappear ; the grievances of the 
 Irish peasant were ignored ; his claims to what was now 
 known as his Tenant Right, urged feebly by his advocates, 
 were voted down in Parliament ; and a general belief pre- 
 vailed that what Ireland most needed was a still further 
 and steady removal of what was deemed 'her surplus 
 population ' from her soil. 
 
 As has so often happened in the affairs of Ireland, her 
 real condition at this period was not understood ; and the 
 reform in her land system, which had become essential, 
 was indefinitely delayed with disastrous results. Mean- 
 while, though things were serene on the surface, the 
 inherent vices in Irish landed relations were not really 
 changed, and, in some respects, were made worse. The 
 Fenian troubles and outbreak of 1865-67 showed how 
 much there was still peccant in the state of Ireland ; Mr. 
 Gladstone addressed himself, in 1870, to the task of 
 effecting a reform in her land system. The measure he 
 carried through Parliament was bold, and, in the main, 
 statesmanlike ; but it was injured by the predilection for 
 English land tenure its author avowed, a general miscon- 
 ception of British statesmen ; it was not without marked 
 and even grave defects ; and though unquestionably it did 
 real good, it did not satisfy the tenant class — at least, the 
 men who had become its leaders. In a few years the 
 frightful period of the Land League had begun ; a Reign 
 of Terror prevailed in about a third part of Ireland, 
 accompanied by far-spreading and atrocious crime. The 
 movement was really a huge conspiracy, formed in America 
 to overthrow British rule in Ireland ; but Mr. Gladstone, 
 now minister for the second time, resolved to deal with it 
 only on its agrarian side ; he wrought a complete revolu- 
 tion in the Irish land system, on principles wholly different 
 from those of his measure of 1870. This legislation was 
 prepared without reflection ; it passed through Parliament 
 when that assembly was almost in a state of panic ; its 
 
IRELAND IN 1901 15 
 
 author professed that his only object was to secure the 
 occupier of the Irish soil in his legitimate rights ; but the 
 methods he adopted to attain this end have never been 
 heard of in modern times, and have never been employed 
 before in civilised lands. The principle of the mediaeval 
 statutes, which endeavoured to fix the price of bread, and 
 the rate of wages, was extended to the Irish land system ; 
 rents were to be adjusted through the agency of the State, 
 by tribunals to which no parallel can be found ; tenants' 
 improvements were declared exempted from rent ; and a 
 mode of land tenure, hitherto condemned by Mr. Gladstone, 
 and known as the ' theory of the Three F's,' was applied 
 to the great majority of Irish tenancies, in an exaggerated, 
 crude, and dangerous form. This legislation, revolutionary 
 and socialistic alike, has been given more ample scope in 
 the last twenty years ; it probably affects four-fifths of the 
 rented lands in Ireland ; it has fashioned the type of land 
 tenure over nearly all the country. The successors of 
 Mr. Gladstone, who, indeed, had boasted that it set the 
 doctrines of Adam Smith at nought, were not blind to 
 the evils it soon developed ; but it is questionable if their 
 attempts to mitigate these, and to place the Irish land 
 system on a better basis, have not been at least as open 
 to censure. With the ignorance of Irish land tenure 
 common in British statesmen, they proclaimed, what 
 assuredly was not the fact, that Mr. Gladstone had 'created 
 a dual ownership' in the Irish land, and that, in order 
 to get rid of this intolerable thing, it was necessary, in 
 accord with English ideas, to bring Ireland, as far as 
 possible, under ' single ownership,' and to make the 
 occupiers of the Irish soil, to a large extent, its owners. 
 The system of ' Land Purchase ' in Ireland, begun in 1870, 
 was freed from the limitations which made it safe and just, 
 and widely enlarged under new conditions ; Irish tenants 
 were encouraged to acquire the fee in their holdings, by 
 a process never contemplated before ; instead of having to 
 
1 6 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 pay any part of the price, the State advanced them the 
 whole purchase moneys, repayable by an annual charge 
 much less than any true rent. About a tenth part of the 
 tenant class of Ireland have become owners of their farms 
 by these means ; the transaction has been in no sense a 
 1 purchase ; ' though given the name, it is really the exact 
 opposite. 
 
 I shall describe all this legislation, in detail, afterwards, 
 and shall indicate its far-reaching effects ; here I can only 
 take a cursory survey. The attempts that have been made 
 to reform the Irish land system, in the last sixty years, have 
 been, with scarcely an exception, failures ; the Irish land, 
 it has truly been said, is strewn with the wrecks of repeated 
 errors. The Land Act of 1870 was, on the whole, a well- 
 conceived measure ; but the recommendations made by 
 the Devon Commission, the iniquitous and destructive 
 Encumbered Estates Act, the agrarian revolution wrought 
 by Mr. Gladstone, and the ' Land Purchase' Acts, as they 
 are falsely called, have been monuments of want of insight 
 and knowledge. And, what is even worse, legislation on 
 the Irish land has, over and over again, been too long 
 delayed, and has been inconsistent, fitful, founded on no 
 principle ; the results have been in a high degree disastrous. 
 Reforms that would have been gladly welcomed if made 
 years before, have been treated with contempt when made 
 too late ; and reforms have more than once been hasty 
 experiments, carried out under the stress of menacing 
 troubles. The fable of the Sibylline books has been 
 realised in this matter ; and not a few of the efforts to 
 improve Irish land tenures have been little better than 
 sudden leaps in the dark. As to recent legislation in this 
 province, its consequences and tendencies have become 
 manifest. That it has effected some good may be admitted ; 
 it has removed grievances that no doubt existed ; it has 
 made the government of Ireland more easy for the time ; 
 it has allayed discontent for a moment ; but the good is 
 
IRELAND IN 1901 17 
 
 far outweighed by the evil. It is not only that the 
 nostrum of the ' Three F's,' and the adjustment of rent by 
 the intervention of the State, have cut down the rental of 
 Ireland to an extent that cannot be justified, and have 
 transferred to the occupier of the Irish soil a large part of 
 what was the owner's property by a process of confiscation 
 concealed, but certain. It is not only that the status of 
 the Irish landlord has been iniquitously transformed to his 
 extreme injury, and that the status of the Irish tenant has 
 been changed to his extreme advantage, in both instances 
 without a pretence to right. The Irish land system has 
 been reduced to an almost hopeless state ; it presents 
 some of the worst features of the past ; its conditions 
 discourage the improvement of the land, promote its 
 deterioration in many ways, and banish capital away from 
 it ; and its plain tendency has been to make agriculture 
 decline. And the revolution, which has been thus 
 accomplished, has aggravated the divisions of classes in 
 Ireland, and has been attended with ruinous litigation on 
 a huge scale ; and it has produced demoralisation far- 
 reaching and profound, a sense of insecurity in all landed 
 relations, and a far too general disregard of the respect 
 due to contract. The policy, too, of so-called 'Land 
 Purchase ' has been accompanied with a train of evils on 
 the increase. It is not creating, as its authors fondly 
 hoped, a class of loyal and thriving freeholders ; it is 
 not even creating a body of industrious and improving 
 farmers. It is, on the contrary, developing, in some of its 
 parts, the bad land system of the eighteenth century ; it 
 has proved injurious to agriculture in one important 
 respect. Above all, from the very nature of the case, it 
 has drawn harsh, nay, unjust, distinctions between the 
 landed classes, which necessarily have been a cause of 
 much discontent ; and it has inevitably provoked a demand 
 for a universal confiscation of the Irish land even worse 
 than any of those which have been the curse of Ireland. 
 
 C 
 
PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 I pass from the material and general state of Ireland to 
 that of the Irish community, in its different parts. That 
 community is still divided, as it has been for ages, into 
 three separate and distinct peoples, marked off from each 
 other in race and faith; whatever 'Nationalist/ leaders 
 may assert, it is not, and has never been, in a real sense, 
 a nation. The lines of demarcation between Catholic, 
 Presbyterian, and Protestant Ireland are at least as clearly 
 defined as they have always been ; they have probably been 
 widened by the troubles of late years, and by the legisla- 
 tion which has been a consequence. Catholic Ireland has 
 a population of some three millions and a half of souls ; it 
 is in the main a Celtic race, but with a considerable 
 admixture of other elements ; it has passed through a 
 revolution remarkable and immense. Sixty years ago, the 
 worst parts of the Penal Code had long been things of 
 the past ; but the Irish Catholics had only recently thrown 
 off the last remains of that thraldom, under O'Connell's 
 guidance ; and their emancipation had only been effected 
 by a great and very threatening movement. They were 
 still comparatively an alien and a subject people ; they 
 had not many owners of land ; they were not numerous in 
 the upper trading and the professional classes ; education 
 was greatly wanting among them ; they were for the most 
 part a backward and poor peasantry, almost serfs of land- 
 lords distinct in creed and in blood ; and they formed the 
 bulk of the teeming millions that vegetated on the soil in 
 indigent misery. The Irish Catholics, too, had still many 
 and real grievances ; the tithe of the Established Church 
 had long been an unjust burden on the petty husbandman ; 
 it had recently given rise to a frightful war of classes, and 
 had only been commuted a short time ; the Established 
 Church itself was a moral wrong, felt acutely by the 
 Irish priesthood at least. Catholic Ireland, besides, was 
 deeply sunk in ignorance ; the system of national educa- 
 tion had only begun to flourish ; and the Irish Catholic 
 
IRELAND IN 1901 19 
 
 was still all but wholly excluded from county administra- 
 tion and municipal government. The worst of these 
 grievances, however, was the state of the tenure of the 
 land ; this was especially harsh on the Catholic peasant ; 
 if oppression was not general or even common, he was 
 too often subjected to excessive rent and unfair eviction. 
 This order of things has all but completely passed away ; 
 the position of Catholic Ireland in the State has almost 
 wholly been changed. Catholic emancipation has long 
 been an accomplished fact ; Irish Catholics and Protestants 
 are equal before the law ; and have really equal chances 
 in fighting the battle of life. Though still not numerous, 
 the Catholic owners of land have multiplied ; the Irish 
 Catholic middle classes have made a marked advance ; 
 they have grown in knowledge and increased in wealth ; 
 they have risen to a higher plane of existence. At the 
 same time, the grievances of the past have nearly all been 
 removed by law, often indeed very late, and by question- 
 able means ; but the Established Church has fallen from 
 its high estate ; education has been diffused through the 
 Catholic masses ; the Irish Catholics have obtained more 
 than a just share in local government and administration 
 of all kinds ; their ascendency in this province is well-nigh 
 assured. The most important, however, of these changes 
 is that which has taken place in the state of the Irish 
 Catholic peasantry. The process which lifted up millions 
 of these from the land and sent them into exile was, no 
 doubt, terrible ; but it was the condition of the welfare and 
 the progress of the population which remained. A great 
 deal of the legislation, besides, which has revolutionised 
 the tenure of land in Ireland, and has had a special effect 
 on the Catholic occupiers of the soil, has been essentially 
 ill designed and unjust ; above all, it has been much too 
 long delayed. But the Irish Catholic peasantry have long 
 ago ceased to be serfs ; they are more the owners of their 
 own holdings than their former landlords; their rights in 
 
PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 the land have been more than protected ; they have 
 acquired the fee in their farms in thousands of instances ; 
 the days of rack rents and harsh evictions have passed 
 away for ever. If the lines of the old Irish land system 
 may still be traced, they rather resemble, it has truly been 
 said, the lineaments of a phantom than of a living being. 
 
 The attitude, however, of Catholic Ireland, and the 
 sentiments of the immense majority of the Irish Catholics, 
 must cause painful misgivings in reflecting minds. Their 
 aristocracy, indeed, and their landed gentry have always 
 been loyal and true subjects ; they can scarcely be dis- 
 tinguished from their Protestant fellows. The Irish 
 Catholics, too, of the upper middle classes are generally 
 attached to the institutions under which they live ; and 
 Catholic Ireland has produced many eminent public 
 servants, and has given splendid ornaments to the Bench 
 and the Bar. But the spirit that prevails among the Irish 
 Catholic lower middle classes, and notably among the 
 masses of the peasantry, and the opinions and feelings they 
 ostentatiously avow, are deeply to be regretted in many 
 respects. Notwithstanding all that has been done for it, 
 and the immense reforms made in its interest, this part of 
 Catholic Ireland is, beyond question, more disaffected and 
 disloyal to the State than it was when O'Connell was its 
 master spirit ; it is more hostile to government, law, and 
 the existing order of things. The teaching of the Land and 
 the National Leagues, and of the successor which has taken 
 their place, has penetrated into the Corporations and Local 
 Boards, in which the Catholic Irish are supreme ; these 
 assemblies echo with revolutionary and socialistic cries, and 
 denounce the whole system of British rule in Ireland, 
 aiming especially at the Sovereign and those in the highest 
 places. The Irish Catholics, too, in the three provinces 
 of the south, have gained a complete ascendency in county 
 and municipal affairs ; their first object has been to exclude 
 the landed gentry from them, and to destroy the influence 
 
IRELAND IN 1901 21 
 
 which belongs to property ; and they have exhibited 
 tendencies absolutely opposed to the Constitution to which 
 they owe their authority. The worst symptoms, however, 
 appear in the state of the peasantry ; they have obtained 
 advantages of which their fathers never even dreamed ; the 
 land system has been turned upside down for their behoof ; 
 they have no grievance in landed relations ; and yet they 
 remain unfriendly to the State, and show no sign of grati- 
 tude. This class contains the multitudes, who for more 
 than twenty years, have allied themselves with a conspiracy 
 against our power in Ireland, and who, at the bidding of 
 designing men, shout treasonable utterances at mob gather- 
 ings, and denounce the ' Saxon ' and ' landlordism ' with 
 one voice ; and though they are a timid and somewhat 
 inert mass, and they would not rise like their fathers in 
 1798, they would not lift a hand to support our rule were 
 foreign invaders to descend on our shores. This state of 
 opinion, no doubt, is intelligible to the real student of Irish 
 history ; the Irish Catholics are a people who have been 
 cruelly wronged ; they have only slowly risen out of serf-like 
 thraldom ; above all, they have only attained the position 
 they hold in the State after long years of trials, and by 
 giving trouble ; they treasure the Celtic traditions of the 
 past ; we may regret that they are what they are, but 
 can hardly feel surprise. In other respects, the Irish 
 Catholic masses, especially in a democratic age, must arouse 
 the solicitude of thinkers worthy of the name. Many 
 thousands of them are still illiterate ; they are too generally 
 the mere followers of priests and demagogues, tossed 
 hither and thither as their masters direct ; they are 
 animated by crude and wild ideas, like the peasantry of 
 France before the Revolution ; they have scarcely anything 
 in common with the corresponding class in England, trained 
 for centuries in habits of well-ordered liberty. They form, 
 in a word, a dangerous and easily led democracy ; and yet, 
 owing to recent legislation, ever to be deplored, they possess 
 
22 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 almost a monopoly of political power in Ireland, and have 
 sent representatives to Parliament whose acts are a by- 
 word. 
 
 Conciliation, therefore, as the phrase is, has failed in the 
 case of the greatest part of Catholic Ireland ; this re- 
 mains an alien, even a perilous, element in the State ; it is 
 worse than useless to shut our eyes to the truth ; the time 
 is still apparently distant when it will become contented 
 and loyal. Presbyterian Ireland is a people of rather 
 more than half a million of souls, almost concentrated 
 within a nook of Ulster ; it was rebellious in sentiment a 
 hundred years ago ; it is now devotedly attached to the 
 British connection, and has firmly supported the Union 
 during a period of trouble. This community, nevertheless, 
 of artisans and farmers is rather widely separated from 
 the aristocracy in their midst, for the most part English in 
 blood, and of the Anglican faith ; and though the Presby- 
 terian farmer has obtained the benefit of the late reforms 
 of land tenure, and has received advantages far in excess 
 of justice, he declares himself to be discontented with his 
 lot, and is clamouring for a vast confiscation of the Irish 
 land in his selfish interest. The Irish Protestants are 
 a population rather larger than the Presbyterians ; but 
 they are scattered over all parts of the country ; they do not 
 possess the political influence of their distant kinsmen in 
 Ulster. They comprise at least three-fourths of the lead- 
 ing landed gentry, and a considerable number of the 
 better class of farmers ; they predominate in the learned 
 professions, and in the higher walks of commerce. But 
 their lower orders feel the loss of the ascendency which 
 was once their birthright ; they have been thrust out from 
 corporate and local government ; they are isolated amidst 
 a population not in sympathy with them ; as a people 
 they can hardly be described as prosperous. As to the 
 Protestant landed gentry, they have for centuries been the 
 most loyal of subjects ; it is significant that they have been 
 
IRELAND IN 1901 23 
 
 called the British garrison by the conspirators who seek to 
 overthrow our rule in Ireland ; they have given many 
 eminent worthies to the State, and proved their devotion 
 to it at the gravest crises ; what they are has been 
 shown in the war in South Africa. At present, however, 
 profound and just discontent has sunk deep into the 
 hearts of this order of men. They are the heirs of con- 
 quest and confiscation, it is said ; but they were placed in 
 the position they hold by English kings and Parliaments ; 
 is that any reason that, within the last half-century, the 
 Nemesis of conquest and confiscation should have been 
 invoked against them, in the Encumbered Estates Act 
 and predatory agrarian laws ? They were too much of 
 an exclusive caste, separated from their dependents, and 
 possessing powers over the occupiers of the soil, which 
 were sometimes abused ; is that any reason that they 
 should have been deprived of political influence, sup- 
 planted by the bureaucratic Castle, changed from owners of 
 their estates into mere pensioners, shut out by the force 
 of law from local and county government ? What, how- 
 ever, the Irish landed gentry most deeply feel is that, in 
 the course of the last sixty years, they have been deceived, 
 nay, betrayed, by British statesmen, who, having repeatedly 
 assured them that their position was secure, have sacrificed 
 them when it seemed to suit their purpose. 
 
 The Imperial Parliament has, during the last century, 
 had absolute control over the affairs of Ireland. No 
 impartial student of history will deny that it has governed 
 Ireland very much better than her old Parliament could 
 possibly have done, after the dreadful rising of 1798 had 
 literally torn the country to pieces. The large majority 
 of thinking persons have long ago been convinced that the 
 policy of Home Rule, that is, the substitution for the 
 Houses at Westminster of a statutory legislature seated in 
 Dublin, would be disastrous to the Empire and Ireland 
 alike ; and that the evils attendant on the present system 
 
24 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 would be aggravated a hundred-fold by the revolution 
 Mr. Gladstone tried to effect. Nor can it be questioned 
 that the Imperial Parliament has, for a long period, 
 sincerely desired to legislate and rule for the good of 
 Ireland, and has accomplished important Irish reforms, 
 whatever legitimate exceptions may be taken to them. 
 Protestant ascendency and the Established Church have 
 fallen ; the law has long been indifferent to Irishmen of all 
 classes ; education has been brought home to the mass of 
 the people ; the tenure of land has been transformed, 
 unwisely no doubt, but wholly in the interest of the occu- 
 piers of the soil. Nevertheless, much that the Imperial 
 Parliament has done, and left undone, in the Victorian 
 era, remains matter of censure and regret ; and its Irish 
 administration has been in many respects unfortunate. 
 The neglect to make a provision for the Irish Catholic 
 priesthood, a main object of Pitt and of our best statesmen, 
 when the Anglican Church was disestablished in 1869, 
 was a grave and a calamitous mistake ; the attempts that 
 have been made to reform the Irish land system have, 
 with scarcely an exception, been sorry failures ; the 
 results have been, in no doubtful sense, deplorable. Few, 
 too, will justify such measures as the establishment in 
 Ireland of household suffrage, that is, giving a monopoly 
 of political power to an ignorant and priest-ridden 
 democracy,* and depriving property and intelligence of 
 all influence, or as the handing over county and city 
 government, in three-fourths of Ireland, to much the same 
 classes. Nor are even positive errors such as these the 
 worst, perhaps, that can be laid to the charge of the 
 Imperial Parliament in the conduct of Irish affairs. With 
 rare exceptions, the reforms it has made have been, un- 
 happily, too late, and have been obtained only through 
 menacing popular movements ; it has over and over again 
 
 * See on this subject the true and indignant remarks of Mr. Lecky, 
 ' Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. pp. 27, 28. 
 
IRELAND IN 1901 25 
 
 made Irish questions the mere subjects of the selfish 
 strife of party, with evil consequences for Irish interests ; 
 it has occasionally, and even for large spaces of time, 
 shown a marked indifference to reasonable Irish demands ; 
 and its administration of Ireland has repeatedly been 
 inconsistent, even contradictory, shortsighted, and feeble. 
 It must be acknowledged, indeed, that the rule of the 
 Imperial Parliament, in the circumstances in which Ireland 
 has been placed, is, from the nature of the case, faulty in 
 many respects ; it is that of a dominant assembly practi- 
 cally controlling a subject dependency ; and, as we see 
 in the striking instances of Athens and Rome, this kind 
 of government has never been free from great and real 
 objections. This, no doubt, is no reason that we should 
 fly from less to unbearable evils, and adopt the fatal 
 scheme of Home Rule ; and the causes that have made 
 our Parliamentary regime in Ireland as defective as it is 
 are evident, and, as I shall point out afterwards, may 
 probably be removed, to some extent at least, without 
 subverting the constitution of these realms. But the broad 
 fact remains, and cannot be concealed ; the Imperial 
 Parliament, much as it has done, has not reached the 
 hearts or gained, in any degree, the sympathy of an 
 immense majority of the Irish people. 
 
 This conclusion, indeed, has been made only too mani- 
 fest, if we look back at the history of Ireland within living 
 memory. The Catholic Association defied the Imperial 
 Parliament, and was supreme in four-fifths of Ireland, from 
 1824 to 1829 ; O'Connell, in 1843, rallied tne Irish Catholic 
 millions to the cause of the Repeal of the Union, that is, 
 to the subversion of British rule from the Giant's Causeway 
 to Cape Clear. Home Rule became a popular cry when 
 proclaimed by Butt ; Parnell soon rose to the head of an 
 Irish faction, which deliberately tried to paralyse and 
 cross Parliament, and to make its sway in Ireland of no 
 avail and contemptible. The Land League and the 
 
26 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 National League were essentially conspiracies of foreign 
 origin, and they appealed to socialistic greed in a season 
 of distress ; but their chief object was to annihilate British 
 power in Ireland ; they had the support of huge Catholic 
 masses ; they returned to Parliament a band of more 
 than eighty men, one of whose purposes was to check- 
 mate its authority. Too much is not to be made of these 
 movements ; three-fourths at least of the Irish community 
 have repeatedly been led away by able but unscrupulous 
 leaders, and rush into courses to which they are not 
 earnestly inclined ; but these unquestionable facts assuredly 
 prove that the institutions under which they exist are not 
 acceptable to the great body of the people of Ireland. 
 This attitude has been displayed with marked and too 
 plain significance, within a period, as it were, of yesterday. 
 The United Irish League fills the place of the Land and 
 the National Leagues ; it is a conspiracy against the State, 
 like its forerunners ; it aims ultimately at the same objects ; 
 its organisation and machinery are the same ; it seeks to 
 establish its domination by similar methods. It is, no 
 doubt, less formidable than the Land and the National 
 Leagues ; it has received little support from America, and 
 has no one to compare with Parnell at its head ; but it 
 has sent more than three-fourths of the representatives of 
 Ireland into the House of Commons ; and these have 
 combined to put in force the arts of obstruction with an 
 audacity, a perseverance, and a measure of success, 
 perhaps never so conspicuous before. Its authority is 
 less far-reaching than that of its predecessors ; but it 
 has established a reign of tyranny in not a few counties ; 
 it is largely backed by the Irish priesthood and by much 
 the greatest part of Catholic Ireland ; and its leaders 
 boast, not without truth, that, disloyal as many of their 
 utterances are, they are completely in accord with popular 
 sympathies. The acts and the speeches, indeed, of these 
 men have never been more unequivocal than within the 
 
IRELAND IN 1901 27 
 
 last two or three years ; * yet almost everywhere they 
 obtain the applause and the support of the multitude. 
 An Irish contingent was sent to fight for the Boers ; 
 the war in South Africa was yelled at, at huge public 
 meetings, as an odious instance of English tyranny and 
 crime ; every reverse that befell our arms was welcomed ; 
 the Irish masses, especially of late, have made a display 
 of their antipathy to, and hatred of, the State. There 
 was an outbreak of disloyal noting in Dublin at the 
 Diamond Jubilee; but for the accident of the Spanish 
 
 * The tone of disaffected opinion in Ireland can only be thoroughly 
 understood by a careful study of the conduct and the language of 
 ' Nationalist' leaders. I select a few specimens out of hundreds of 
 instances. Mr. William O'Brien, the Corypheus of the United Irish 
 League, spake thus at Letterkenny in January, 1900 : ' If ten thousand 
 Frenchmen, or Russians, or Germans were to land in Bantry Bay, 
 with a supply of arms for the people, they would walk over the 
 country and drive the English garrison into the sea.' The same 
 worthy exclaimed at a monster meeting in Dublin in September, 
 1 English rule in Ireland was so bad that they would be justified in 
 chasing the English out of Ireland bag and baggage. What was 
 wanting to them, unfortunately, were the guns and artillery to do it.' 
 Mr. Michael Davitt, of Land League renown, speaking in the Queen's 
 County about the same time, said, ' England is unquestionably the 
 greatest empire of liars (loud cheers and laughter), of hypocrites, 
 and of poltroons, judged by its achievements in South Africa, that has 
 ever postured before mankind with a civilising mission.' Because the 
 Corporation of Dublin voted, by a small majority, an address to Queen 
 Victoria when she paid her last visit to Ireland, Mr. John Redmond, 
 the chairman of the ' Irish Parliamentary Party,' said, in January, 
 1901, ' It rests with the people themselves to say whether they will 
 redeem the reputation of Dublin from the stain that has been cast on 
 it.' So Mr. John Dillon, M.P., spoke in the same sense, a few months 
 ago, ' The voice of the capital will be the voice of the rest of Ireland 
 (applause), that we will not tolerate in this old city that new type of 
 politics which thinks it consistent with Irish nationality to cringe and 
 crouch before a foreign queen.' At least two County Councils in 
 Ireland, and more than one Local Board, refused to vote an expression 
 of condolence when the Queen died. It is painful to contrast these 
 sentiments with the loyalty of O'Connell when the Queen ascended 
 the throne. 
 
28 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 War there would have been a great commemoration of 
 the rebellion of 1798 ; even the visit of the late Queen to 
 Ireland was made an occasion for seditious speeches ; if 
 her death was very generally mourned, public bodies were 
 found to refuse an expression of regret. 
 
 Irish administration, I have remarked, is in many 
 respects faulty ; this is mainly because it is dependent on 
 British parties ; it fluctuates as one or the other prevails 
 in Parliament. It sometimes represents completely 
 opposite principles ; besides, as Lord-Lieutenants and 
 Chief Secretaries usually hold office for a short time only, 
 they are tempted to adopt a hand-to-mouth policy, and 
 to govern with little thought of the morrow. A marked 
 change, however, has, in the course of time, passed over 
 the ordinary system of administration carried on at the 
 Castle. The aristocracy and the leading Irish gentry had 
 still, even at the beginning of the Victorian age, much 
 influence in directing local affairs ; their authority was not 
 nearly as great as it had been ; but they were still looked 
 up to and consulted by the central government. This 
 state of things has long ago ceased to exist ; this order of 
 men has long ago lost all political, and nearly all social, 
 power ; it has been superseded by a bureaucratic regime, 
 depending mainly on paid officials and police, which rules 
 Ireland from the Castle, with little external support. This 
 mode of government is imposing and apparently strong ; 
 but it is essentially weak, and has little real hold on the 
 country ; the information, with which it is amply supplied, 
 is often false, and occasionally causes grave mistakes ; it 
 forms an administrative system resembling that of the old 
 centralised monarchy of France, of which Tocqueville has 
 exposed the defects and the vices. Under this regime, 
 however, the law of the land has certainly been vindicated 
 more successfully than had been the case before ; the 
 Government has acquired decidedly increased power in 
 dealing with disorders dangerous to the State, and perhaps 
 
IRELAND IN 1901 29 
 
 in holding the scales of justice even between divided 
 classes ; it has not diminished the strife of hostile Irish 
 factions, but it has maintained order more completely than 
 of old ; and this unquestionably is a great advantage, and 
 a real set-off against some mischiefs and failures. It would 
 be untrue to assert that this system of rule has been the 
 paramount and even a main cause of the great decline in 
 agrarian crime and trouble which Ireland has happily 
 witnessed of late years ; other and far more potent causes 
 have concurred ; but it may fairly be said that it has con- 
 tributed to it. It would, however, be a complete mistake 
 to suppose that agrarian disorder, even in its worst aspects, 
 has become permanently a thing of the past in Ireland, 
 or that this destructive curse of Irish social life has not 
 immense influence even at this moment, though its out- 
 ward manifestations have been greatly changed. It was, 
 so to speak, only yesterday that, under the auspices of 
 the Land and the National Leagues, there was the most 
 frightful outbreak of agrarian crime that had been seen 
 since the great tithe conflict ; it assumed the proportions, 
 in fact, of a horrible servile war ; and shallow, indeed, the 
 understanding must be which imagines that this state of 
 things can never recur. If open agrarian disorder, too, has 
 been largely diminished, the spirit of agrarian disorder is 
 still strong ; and it is doing infinite mischief in many parts 
 of Ireland. Steadily adhering to the precepts laid down 
 by Parnell, the United Irish League has brought the 
 detestable system of 'boycotting' to a hideous perfection 
 in several counties ; whole districts are subject to this 
 secret but villainous tyranny ; the results are seen in 
 numbers of derelict farms, in hundreds of victims writhing 
 under ever-present terror, in an infamous interference with 
 trade and industry. This malignant influence is more 
 or less felt through nearly the whole of the southern 
 provinces, and even to a considerable extent in Ulster ; 
 it should be added that the United Irish League, for the 
 
3 o PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 present, discourages active agrarian crime, though its 
 agents hold this force in reserve ; it believes it can compass 
 its ends without making use of this weapon.* 
 
 A few words must be said, in this short survey, on the 
 organisations that uphold the Christian faith in Ireland. 
 The disestablished Anglican Church has certainly made 
 progress in spiritual life ; it has more moral and even, 
 perhaps, social influence than when it was an appurtenance 
 of the Erastian Castle. It has been admirably administered 
 and ruled ; the uses of adversity have been sweet to it, and 
 it has been successfully launched on its new career ; this is 
 a strong proof of the inherent energy and capacity of the 
 Anglo-Protestant Irish people. Very different, too, from 
 what had been expected, moderation and wisdom prevail 
 in its councils ; its clergy are sincerely pious, but not given 
 to extreme doctrines ; its members are for the most part 
 free from the narrow sectarian views which had formerly, 
 not without reason, been laid to their charge. Its funds, 
 amassed by good management, are, for the present, ample ; 
 but the rapid impoverishment of the landed gentry, the 
 class from which it chiefly obtains support, and the con- 
 fiscation with which they are threatened, no doubt expose 
 it to future dangers ; and it must always be the Church of 
 a small minority, surrounded by influences hostile to it, 
 but a Church which the State is bound to protect. The 
 Presbyterian Church of Ireland has but little changed ; it 
 has felt the effect of the great religious movement, which 
 has stirred the Three Kingdoms in the last half-century, and 
 it is less rationalistic than it once was ; but it is still what 
 it always was, a powerful centre of the faith of John 
 Knox, with a communion of strong democratic sympathies. 
 The Catholic Church of Ireland still rests on the old 
 
 * Since the above lines were written, there has been a serious out- 
 break of agrarian crime in Ireland in the form of incendiary fires, 
 which may be distinctly traced to the operations of the United Irish 
 League. 
 
IRELAND IN 1901 31 
 
 foundations ; but it is hardly the unshaken structure it was 
 in the last generation. Its material resources have enor- 
 mously increased ; its fine edifices spread over the land ; 
 it still exercises immense influence over probably nine- 
 tenths of Catholic Ireland. But a party has been growing 
 up within it which resents, and has even defied, its pre- 
 tensions ; and though the power it possesses is, in the 
 main, beneficent in the extreme, this has too often been 
 abused in the domain of politics, and especially of late in 
 Irish landed relations. The priesthood still largely direct 
 their flocks, but they are more dependent on them than 
 they once were ; had it been otherwise, they would have 
 hardly conformed to the bidding of the Land and the 
 National Leagues, as unhappily they did in too many 
 instances. Their leading men perceived from the first 
 that these conspiracies were destructive of their moral 
 influence ; and had the whole body of the clergy received 
 a just provision from the State, it would all but certainly 
 have condemned the methods of the Leagues as these were 
 decisively condemned by Rome, For the rest, the Catholic 
 Church of Ireland is no friend of Protestant England, and 
 of many of the institutions that exist in Ireland ; but this 
 has been inevitable from the events of Irish history ; and 
 whatever may be said, it has been essentially an ally of 
 the State, by reason of its great religious authority. And 
 if properly understood, it is a mighty conservative power, 
 which ought if possible to be won over to the side of order 
 and law ; this is an ample, if there were no other, reason 
 that statesmen should comply with its most reasonable 
 demand, and remove the grievance, in high Catholic 
 education, that only blind bigotry can deny. 
 
 The administration of justice in Ireland is better, on the 
 whole, than it was in the early Victorian era. It is not 
 only that the law's delay has been to a considerable 
 extent, remedied, as it has been, in England, by an 
 improved procedure. Traces of Protestant ascendency 
 
32 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 were to be seen on the Irish Bench sixty years ago, 
 though these were evanescent and few ; such a trial as 
 that of O'Connell in 1844, marked by partiality and 
 even by wrong, would be simply impossible at the present 
 time. Trial by jury, however, in Ireland too often reflects 
 the animosities and prejudices of class, and is liable to 
 grave perversion and errors ; it is sometimes necessary, 
 in causes where religious or political feeling is engaged, to 
 make a careful selection in forming juries, in order that 
 common right should be done ; this inevitable, but 
 invidious, process, held up to execration by the name of 
 ' packing,' is certainly a matter that causes regret. The 
 fairness seen in the administration of the law in Ireland 
 has been strikingly illustrated of late years ; leaders and 
 agents of the Land and the National Leagues have had to 
 answer for their offences in the inferior courts ; but 
 despite rabid clamour against what is called ' coercion,' 
 the conduct of these inquiries has not been really impugned. 
 A laudable attempt, however, to make the magisterial 
 bench more popular, has lately placed on it an order of 
 men, of whom some have abused their power ; these 
 instances, nevertheless, have not been frequent ; the ex- 
 periment cannot be pronounced a failure. The intellect 
 of Ireland is not so fruitful as it was in the generation 
 before the union ; she has no political thinkers to be 
 named with Burke, no writer of fiction equal to Maria 
 Edgeworth, no dramatist to be compared to Sheridan, no 
 orators who have reached the heights of eloquence reached 
 by Grattan, Curran, Plunket, and other glories of her 
 defunct Parliament. But there has been progress in this 
 respect within the last sixty years ; Ireland cannot boast 
 of such public men as O'Connell, Sheil, and even Spring 
 Rice ; but she possesses Dufferin in the diplomatic sphere, 
 and Lecky, and one or two others of repute in that of 
 letters ; she has only recently lost Lord Cairns and Lord 
 Russell. The improvement of primary education in Ireland 
 
IRELAND IN 1901 
 
 has been immense ; the land is full of elementary schools, 
 which, in the last generation, were, comparatively, very few, 
 and though a considerable part of the population is still 
 illiterate, the greater part, whose fathers were sunk in 
 ignorance, has felt the good influence of the light of 
 knowledge. High education, too, has advanced in Ireland ; 
 Trinity College is greater than before as a place of 
 learning ; if two of the Queen's Colleges have certainly 
 failed, the Royal University has been, in a sense, successful. 
 But, as I shall point out, in subsequent pages, University 
 education in Ireland remains defective ; a University for 
 the Irish Catholic upper middle class is a requirement 
 rightly demanded from Parliament. As for Irish secondary 
 education, it is still backward, but there is hope of improve- 
 ment in this respect ; the general standard of Irish educa- 
 tion, it should be added, is, except at Trinity College, low, 
 though this has been inevitable if we look back at the 
 events of history. Irish opinion generally still embodies 
 the deep-seated animosities and strife of race and faith, at 
 least as fully as it ever did ; with few exceptions this 
 appears in the tone of the newspaper press. The utter- 
 ances of many of the self-styled ' Nationalist ' journals 
 have been far more hostile to the State, and are conceived 
 in a much worse spirit, than those of the same class of 
 journals in O'Connell's day. 
 
 If we examine the condition of Ireland, as a whole, we 
 see that there has been some material progress, but with 
 retrogression in important respects ; and if a certain measure 
 of good has been done, great wrong and evil have been 
 accomplished, in the principal and the most far-reaching 
 of her social relations. Her moral and political progress 
 has been at least doubtful ; notwithstanding immense and 
 searching reforms, the mass of the population is more dis- 
 affected than of old ; discontent largely pervades the 
 classes most loyal to the State ; if the mere power of govern- 
 ment has increased, its beneficent influence is but little 
 
 D 
 
PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 recognised ; the great body of the community maintains 
 a hostile attitude. The crooked has not been made straight 
 in Ireland, nor the rough places plain ; a state of society 
 exists, in which, as the Greek poet said, ' the fountains flow 
 backwards, and things are out of joint.' An old order has 
 nearly passed away ; but the new order that is replacing it 
 is but of little promise ; a type of society has been well-nigh 
 broken up, but a strong and solid type is not being formed 
 in its stead ; at all events, in the phrase of Bacon, the time 
 is still distant ' when the strings of the Irish harp will all 
 be in tune ;' many respond to the player's hand in discord. 
 ' The Constitution in Ireland,' Peel once exclaimed, ' is not 
 the British Constitution, but its ghastly image ; ' let us see 
 what it is in Ireland at the present time. The Sovereign 
 is, in England, a main pillar of the State ; he is a great 
 political and social force ; the Monarchy is enthroned in 
 the heart of the nation. In Ireland he is almost an unknown 
 name, associated with not a few evil memories ; his influence, 
 which ought to be immense over a Celtic race, has never 
 made itself sensibly felt. In England Parliament responds 
 to the national will, and has gathered the reverence of 
 ages around it ; in Ireland it is a foreign and alien assembly, 
 with which the mass of the people has no sympathy. In 
 England the aristocracy is at the head of public affairs, 
 leads society, commands universal respect ; in Ireland it 
 has lost all authority ; has no weight in the National 
 Councils ; has no popular support, is even disliked at the 
 Castle. In England the middle class is enormously strong, 
 and is the best bulwark of order and law ; in England the 
 democracy is almost wholly free from revolutionary ideas, 
 as regards property, and seeks reforms by constitutional 
 methods. In Ireland, it is unhappily quite otherwise ; the 
 middle class is comparatively weak, and, in its lower strata, 
 is opposed to the existing order of things ; the democracy 
 is an easily led multitude, ready at its leaders' bidding 
 to rush into socialistic courses. In England, too, the 
 
IRELAND IN 1901 35 
 
 Commonwealth is completely secure ; in Ireland there is 
 literally no Commonwealth ; and such organisations as the 
 Land, the National, and the United Irish Leagues, are 
 dangerous symptoms of a kind of Jacobin antipathy to 
 the State. The words of Peel are still unhappily true ; 
 but painful as the contrast he pointed out is, even this is 
 not the worst circumstance in the present condition of Irish 
 affairs. What, I think, most alarms a reflecting mind, is 
 the restlessness that pervades the mass of the people, an 
 eagerness for some undefined change, a demand for the 
 universal spoliation of a class, a sense of insecurity spread- 
 ing far and wide, a neglect of the pursuits of calm industry 
 in the hope of what a revolution may effect, an instability 
 in the social fabric from top to bottom. The agitation, 
 the disorder, and, I will add, the vicious legislation of late 
 years, will, however, largely explain these phenomena. 
 
 Lord Salisbury's Ministry came into office, six years ago, 
 at the head of the most powerful majority that had been 
 returned to the House of Commons since the great Reform 
 era. The time was singularly opportune to consider the 
 state of Ireland, and to deal with the Irish questions that 
 required sound and wise treatment. The Opposition was 
 paralysed by a rout at the polls ; the National League 
 conspiracy showed few signs of life ; the ' Nationalist ' 
 party was rent asunder ; the community was more quiescent 
 than it had been for years. It would be unfair to deny 
 that, since it acquired power, the Government has been beset 
 by many and grave obstacles in legislating on domestic 
 subjects ; it has been encompassed by a sea of foreign 
 troubles ; it has had to conduct the protracted war in South 
 Africa. It would be absurd, too, to expect that it could, 
 once for all, have placed Irish affairs permanently on a 
 secure basis ; this can only be the result of the wisdom of 
 years aided by the healing influence of time. But it has 
 disappointed enlightened Irish opinion ; it has not done, 
 or even tried to do, what it might have accomplished. 
 
36 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Undoubtedly parts of its policy have been good ; it has 
 effected something, if not much, in developing the material 
 resources of the west of Ireland, and in mitigating the 
 danger and the stress of Irish poverty ; it has carried on 
 the excellent work of Mr. Arthur Balfour in this respect ; 
 the Department of Agriculture it has lately formed will, 
 not improbably, be of real use in promoting industry and 
 self-reliance among the peasantry, on the principles advo- 
 cated, a century and a half ago, by Berkeley. But com- 
 mendation, I think, must here end ; the Government, I 
 believe, has made grave mistakes ; it has assuredly not 
 successfully dealt with the great ' Case of Ireland,' greater 
 now than in the days of Molyneux and Swift. It has 
 not reduced the excessive representation of Ireland in the 
 House of Commons ; until this is done the Union will not 
 be secure. It has disregarded the verdict of the important 
 Commission which has declared that Ireland has been 
 immensely overtaxed for years ; here it defies universal 
 Irish opinion ; and having pledged itself to make a further 
 inquiry, it has not hitherto taken a step to redeem its 
 pledge. It is divided on the question of high education in 
 Ireland, and professes that this must be an 'open question,' 
 as if this was not unwise and perilous ; and though it has 
 appointed a Commission to report on the subject, Catholic 
 Ireland very possibly may not obtain the place of learning 
 which it is entitled to demand. Above all, on the capital 
 question of the Irish land, the Government has certainly all 
 but ignored the recommendations of a Commission chosen 
 by itself, and has refused to lessen the injustice proved to 
 have been done wholesale ; like its predecessors, in the 
 case of the Encumbered Estates Act, it is still bent on 
 agrarian legislation that has done infinite mischief. Its 
 administration, too, up to this has not been successful ; it 
 has allowed the United Irish League to grow up and to 
 gain strength, with far-spreading evil results ; its conduct 
 of Irish affairs has been weak and empirical, and notably 
 
IRELAND IN 1901 
 
 marked by false optimistic fancies. Of late there has 
 been improvement in this respect ; we can only hope it 
 will not be abortive. 
 
 1 In this gigantic body/ Macaulay exclaimed fifty-seven 
 years ago, 'there is one vulnerable part near the heart.'* 
 The Empire has expanded into ampler proportions than 
 those described by the orator ; its subject kings, domina- 
 tions, princedoms, powers, above all, its myriads of many 
 races and tongues, are united by far more durable ties 
 than those which held it together in a generation that has 
 passed away. Four years ago, Canada sent messengers 
 from her great lakes, Hindustan representatives of her 
 ancient dynasties, the great island continent envoys from 
 her free nations, to do homage to Queen Victoria ; the 
 pageant, gathered 'within London's streaming roar,' was 
 a magnificent spectacle of world-wide loyalty. England 
 has seen another and a still more wonderful sight ; the 
 martial sons of our great self-governing colonies have 
 flocked in thousands to do battle in her cause, in the 
 distant and ill-known wastes of South Africa ; in a long, 
 bloody, and sometimes disastrous conflict, they have 
 proved themselves to be worthy companions in arms of 
 the offspring of the soldiery of Blenheim and Waterloo ; 
 they have fought and bled for England as if she was their 
 common country. But Ireland, as regards the mass of 
 the people, has, on both occasions, stood sullenly aloof; 
 her heart has gone out in sympathy with the Boers ; she 
 remains, for the most part, hostile to our rule and disloyal. 
 It is mere foolishness to shut our eyes to plain facts ; still 
 more so to join in the false pseans of interested partisans, 
 and ignorant scribblers, who announce that because Ireland 
 is, on the surface, comparatively at peace, she is in every 
 sense a contented or a happy land, free from grave elements 
 of political and social danger. She is still the ' vulnerable 
 part at the heart of the Empire ; ' the spectre at the great 
 * Speech in the House of Commons, February 19, 1844. 
 
33 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 national festival ; the warning token, as in the case of the 
 Oriental despot, that human grandeur and power are, in 
 the nature of things, mortal. She is still, as she was in the 
 day of Spenser, a malign influence across the path of our 
 greatness, a riddle difficult to understand and interpret ; 
 the many problems she still presents to the statesman are 
 perplexing in the extreme, and await solution. That any 
 policy will suddenly remove the many evils apparent in 
 her organic structure is a delusion a rational mind rejects ; 
 the deep-seated ills in that distempered frame may never 
 be completely and finally cured. Something effectual, 
 nevertheless, may, I think, be done ; I proceed to examine, 
 in the following chapters, the ' Present Irish Questions ' 
 that confront our rulers ; and to consider what the amend- 
 ing hand may accomplish. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 
 
 The question of Home Rule not extinct — The reasons — Butt's scheme 
 of Home Rule — It is denounced and ridiculed by Mr. Gladstone, 
 and defeated in the House of Commons — Death of Butt — The 
 Home Rule movement becomes allied with a foreign conspiracy 
 — Davitt and Parnell — The Land League — Mr. Gladstone's sur- 
 render to it — The movement makes no progress in the Parliament 
 of 1880-85 — The General Election of 1885 — Mr. Gladstone 
 suddenly adopts the policy of Home Rule — The probable reasons 
 — The Home Rule Bill of 1886 — Its nature and tendencies — 
 Decisive objections to the measure — It is rejected at the General 
 Election of 1886, having been previously rejected in the House of 
 Commons — Policy and conduct of Mr. Gladstone — The Home 
 Rule movement makes some progress in England, and why — The 
 Home Rule Bill of 1893 — It is much worse than that of 1886 — 
 The reasons — It is rejected by the House of Lords — Home Rule 
 under different forms — The Union must be maintained — Proposal 
 that Parliament should occasionally sit in Dublin — The over- 
 representation of Ireland should be redressed. 
 
 HOME RULE, it is very generally assumed, has vanished 
 into the domain of extinct politics. Unlike what had 
 been the case from 1886 to 1895, when this was the main 
 of our domestic questions, Home Rule was scarcely referred 
 to at the late election ; it will receive little countenance at 
 the hands of the present House of Commons, however 
 Irish Nationalists may persist in urging their demand. It 
 would, nevertheless, be imprudent to believe that this 
 policy, as has been said, 'is as dead as Queen Anne,' as 
 impossible as a return to Protection or to an unreformed 
 
 39 
 
40 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Parliament. Isaac Butt's scheme of Home Rule was 
 treated with scorn and ridicule by Mr. Gladstone during 
 many years ; Mr. Gladstone was the author of the Bills of 
 1886 and 1893, embodying Home Rule in forms few will 
 now approve of; and he left nothing undone to convert 
 them into law. At the General Election of 1880, Home 
 Rule was regarded as a mere Irish craze, and hardly a 
 candidate could be found, in England and Scotland, to 
 consent to an inquiry upon the subject ; within six years 
 Home Rule was a Ministerial measure; and though the 
 House of Commons pronounced against it, and its decision 
 was emphatically ratified at the General Election of 1886. 
 still, on this occasion, the votes in favour of Home Rule 
 were not much less numerous than those cast against it.* 
 In 1892 England condemned Home Rule, if not as 
 decisively as six years before ; but Ireland, Scotland, and 
 Wales declared for it; and a Home Rule Bill received the 
 sanction of the House of Commons, which, but for the 
 resistance made by the House of Lords, would now be a 
 fundamental law of these realms. It deserves notice, too, 
 that not one of the Liberal leaders, although, as a rule, 
 they avoided the subject, repudiated this policy at the late 
 election ; two or three, indeed, gave it a qualified support ; 
 and it is evident that they keep the question in reserve, in 
 the hope of turning it to account at a more convenient 
 season. Nor can it be denied, as long as Ireland can send 
 more than eighty Nationalists into the House of Commons, 
 pledged to insist on Home Rule as their country's right, 
 that the subject must command more or less attention ; 
 for many reasons it is impossible to ignore the claims of 
 a representation so large in numbers. It must be added 
 that, under our system of party government, especially as 
 this has existed of late years, a considerable group of 
 politicians, with a fixed purpose, can effect much by 
 
 * The figures were 1,238,342 against 1,316,327 : Dicey, 'England's 
 Case against Home Rule,' p. 35. 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 41 
 
 throwing its weight indifferently into the Ministerial or the 
 Opposition scale, and giving its support to either side, in 
 order to compass its own ends ; it has, sometimes with 
 successful results, swayed majorities by these means, and 
 not in vain. This is the hope of the Irish Nationalist 
 leaders; Met parties in the House of Commons,' they 
 cynically argue, 'be equally divided, as must at some time 
 happen,' and 'we shall gain Home Rule from either 
 Tories or Whigs, if we assist either by our votes to keep 
 them in office.' It cannot be said, if we look back at 
 some political events within the last twenty years, that 
 this expectation is wholly groundless ; and though I am 
 convinced it will not be realised, its existence alone 
 suffices to prove that Home Rule cannot yet be dismissed 
 as outside the sphere of practical politics. 
 
 Home Rule, therefore, is a ' Present Irish Question,' and 
 if not at this moment urgent, it remains the most important 
 of Irish questions, for it directly affects the fortunes of the 
 Three Kingdoms. It is necessary, accordingly, to examine 
 it, in its principles at least ; and an inquiry is opportune, at 
 this juncture, for the subject can be fairly discussed in its 
 different bearings, apart from the obscuring influences of 
 national and party prejudice, and especially of political 
 passion. Isaac Butt was the true author of the conception 
 of Home Rule ; for though a movement in favour of a 
 Repeal of the Union had become dangerously active in 
 1843-44, and had been feebly intermittent since that 
 period, this peculiar modification of the arrangements 
 made at the Union, in fixing the relations between Great 
 Britain and Ireland, was wholly an idea of that dis- 
 tinguished lawyer. The occasion, on which this scheme 
 was put forward, was not a little remarkable for various 
 reasons. Mr. Gladstone had just disestablished the 
 Anglican Church in Ireland, and had disendowed it, to a 
 considerable extent ; this policy was angrily resented by 
 a party of Irish Protestants ; for the maintenance of the 
 
42 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Established Irish Church had been made an essential 
 condition of the Treaty of Union. These men, who were 
 not without energy and parts, declared that a great inter- 
 national compact had been broken; and they gradually 
 obtained the support of leaders of the ( Young Ireland ' 
 following, of survivors of the 'Tail' of O'Connell, and 
 even of adherents of the Fenian cause, all, in different 
 degrees, opposed to the Union. Butt became the head 
 and spokesman of this curiously assorted band, composed 
 of essentially discordant elements ; but he endeavoured to 
 combine it into a strong Parliamentary force, by propound- 
 ing a plan of Home Rule for Ireland, which he had thought 
 out with patience and care, his hope being that this would 
 unite his followers, and that his project would at least be 
 entertained in Parliament, and would not be as hopeless 
 as an attempt to repeal the Union. His views are set 
 forth in his ' Irish Federalism,' a long-forgotten work, but 
 which, even now, may be read with profit. Butt professed, 
 and I have no doubt sincerely, that he did not seek to 
 disturb the Union, and that the Imperial Parliament was 
 to remain as it was ; but he proposed to give Ireland a 
 Parliament of her own, with full powers of legislation on 
 Irish affairs, and an Executive practically appointed by 
 this, which would have the government of Ireland in its 
 hands. Having thus called into existence an Irish State, 
 possessing State rights of supreme importance, he sought 
 to connect Ireland with Great Britain by a Federal tie ; 
 representatives from Ireland were to repair to the Imperial 
 Parliament, and to vote in that assembly on Imperial 
 questions, but not, as I believe Butt meant, on those which 
 belonged to England and Scotland.* 
 
 The cry of Home Rule was welcomed in Ireland by her 
 Catholic masses ; at the General Election of 1874, sixty 
 men were returned to the House of Commons to support 
 
 * Butt maintained, in his place in Parliament (Hansard, March 20 
 1874), that this was the true import of his project. 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 43 
 
 this policy, a party formidable in numbers, if not in essential 
 strength. Butt brought forward his plan, in outline, on 
 three or four occasions ; but the question was not dis- 
 cussed with the fulness of knowledge and the breadth of 
 view it certainly required ; on the whole, it was superficially 
 treated. Neither Butt nor his opponents thoroughly 
 perceived that his proposals virtually repealed the Union, 
 for if the Imperial Parliament was, nominally, to be left 
 intact, a real Parliament was to be placed in its stead, in 
 Ireland, which would practically annul its effective autho- 
 rity, from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear ; and they 
 seem not to have understood that ' Irish Federalism ' 
 implied Federalism for Great Britain to a great extent, and 
 introduced into the Constitution the Federal principle 
 with its far-reaching and dangerous effects. Butt's scheme, 
 however, was powerfully attacked in its details ; by no 
 one so powerfully as by Mr. Gladstone, who had lately 
 announced, to an approving multitude, that Home Rule 
 was sheer folly or worse, and had exultingly asked, ' Can 
 any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that, at 
 this time of day, in this condition of the world, we are 
 going to disintegrate the great capital institutions of the 
 country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in 
 the sight of all mankind, and crippling any power we 
 possess for bestowing benefits, through legislation, on the 
 country to which we belong ? ' * Little knowing what the 
 future was to bring forth, Mr. Gladstone declared that 
 Home Rule was not to be even thought of, until it could 
 be proved that the Irish affairs, to which the Irish Parlia- 
 ment was to be confined, could be separated from Imperial 
 and British affairs, a partition he evidently deemed im- 
 possible ; and he insisted that the introduction of Irish 
 members into the Imperial Parliament, which, according 
 to this plan, was to have nothing to do with Ireland, was 
 
 * Speech on receiving the freedom of Aberdeen, September 26, 
 1871. 
 
44 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 not only essentially unjust, but involved the absurdity that 
 these men 'were to judge as they might think fit of the 
 general affairs of the Empire, and also of exclusively 
 English and Scotch questions,' an interpretation not, I 
 believe, correct. Home Rule was rejected by overwhelm- 
 ing majorities in the Parliament of 1874-80; and at the 
 General Election of the last-named year, it found no 
 countenance, I have said, in England or Scotland. The 
 subject was scarcely referred to by Mr. Gladstone, 
 wholly preoccupied by his Midlothian campaign, and 
 by his persistent efforts to deprive Lord Beaconsfield 
 of power. 
 
 Butt had sincere reverence for the Constitution and the 
 Law ; the Home Rule movement, as long as he was at its 
 head, was a constitutional and a lawful movement. But 
 this eminent man had been supplanted, by degrees, by a 
 politician of a very different nature ; and when he had 
 passed away in the spring of 1879, Parnell, and what was 
 called the ' active Irish party,' which had baffled and 
 incensed the House of Commons, became the directors of 
 the Home Rule policy. The character of the movement 
 was almost wholly changed ; it became associated with a 
 conspiracy hatched in the Far West, which aimed at the 
 separation of Ireland from Great Britain ; Butt's moderate 
 followers fell away from it, especially the band of Pro- 
 testants who had first set it on foot. Meanwhile, American 
 Fenianism, which had in vain attempted open rebellion 
 in Ireland in 1865-67, had, at the instigation perhaps of 
 Michael Davitt, made another effort to compass its ends ; 
 the ' New Departure ' in treason was made ; the Land 
 League was formed with the avowed purpose of overthrow- 
 ing ' Irish Landlordism,' as it was called, as being the 
 mainstay of British power in Ireland, and then of wresting 
 Ireland by force from her British rulers. But Davitt was 
 not well fitted for his work ; Parnell became the leader of 
 the Home Rule and the Land League movements ; and 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 45 
 
 during a short visit to the United States, he openly pro- 
 fessed that his ultimate aim was ' to break the last link 
 between Great Britain and Ireland,' though he was still the 
 chief of an apparently constitutional cause. Ere long the 
 Land League, availing itself of a season of distress, and 
 subsidised by Fenians across the Atlantic, had taken root 
 in different parts of Ireland ; and gradually a reign of 
 terror, marked by detestable crime, and essentially of the 
 Jacobin type, had acquired a frightful ascendency in ten 
 or eleven counties. By this time, Mr. Gladstone had become 
 Minister : how he denounced the League in passionate 
 language ; endeavoured, for a few months, to hold it in 
 check ; succumbed to it, when he made the ' Kilmainham 
 Treaty ; ' and, finally, how, after declaring that Parnell 
 and his adherents were ' aiming at dismemberment through 
 rapine,' he became the author of the Land Act of 18S1, 
 and threw the Irish landed gentry as a sop to Cerberus, — is 
 sufficiently known, but I shall recur to the subject. During 
 these years, Parnell, artfully playing the double game, 
 which this born conspirator especially made his boast, and 
 linking what he called ' a constitutional with an illegal 
 movement,' had more than once spoken on behalf of Home 
 Rule in the House of Commons, his moderate and even 
 statesmanlike language being in marked contrast with his 
 treasonable harangues in Ireland. But Parliament had 
 been otherwise engaged with Irish affairs ; it had become 
 more averse to Home Rule than ever ; it had learned what 
 the movement had begun to involve, veiled, if not open, 
 rebellion against the State, and it voted down the question 
 by immense majorities. Statesmen of all parties, Tory, 
 Whig, and Radical, without exception, concurred in this 
 view ; Lord Salisbury, Lord Spencer, and John Bright 
 alike condemned the very idea of Home Rule. Mr. Glad- 
 stone indeed asserted afterwards that he had a policy of 
 this kind in his thoughts ; but if he had, he kept it to him- 
 self ; it cannot be gathered from his speeches of the time ; 
 
 baM 
 
46 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 he never breathed to his colleagues a word about it ; he 
 allowed them to pronounce against Home Rule with his 
 full apparent sanction.* 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's Ministry fell in 1885 ; Majuba, Gordon, 
 and his Irish policy had set the best sense of the country 
 against him. Lord Salisbury's Government came in his 
 place ; for a short time the tendency, too often seen in 
 British parties, to temporise with sedition and even crime 
 in Ireland was exhibited with untoward results ; the 
 negotiations between Parnell and Lord Carnarvon have 
 not yet been explained. At the General Election of 1885, 
 Parnell openly took the Conservative side, denounced the 
 Liberals in the bitterest language, and perhaps, through 
 the influence of the Irish vote, deprived them of a few 
 seats in England. His principal object certainly was to 
 increase his own power and that of his band by weakening 
 the strongest of British parties ; but this association with 
 the Conservatives probably lessened the antipathy of their 
 opponents to Home Rule, and was not without effect on 
 the events that followed. Ireland, however, was by no 
 means a prominent question in this electoral contest ; the 
 Tory, Whig, and Radical leaders dealt, for the most part, 
 with different topics ; and though Mr. Gladstone dropped 
 ambiguous phrases, which, he ere long contended, indicated 
 his conversion to Home Rule, his lieutenants continued to 
 declare against this policy, their chief remaining openly in 
 accord with them ; indeed, all that could be collected, from 
 what he wrote and said, was that he called upon the country 
 to give him such decisive support as would make him 
 independent of all Irish factions. The result of this General 
 Election, taken as a whole, was to gain for the Liberals 
 a majority of some eighty seats in Great Britain ; but in 
 Ireland it effected a notable change in politics. By a recent, 
 
 * See Mr. Gladstone's 'History of an Idea,' an apology for his 
 attitude towards Home Rule at this time, which seems to me to be 
 his condemnation. 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 47 
 
 and, for Ireland, a most unwise statute, the electoral 
 franchise had been assimilated in the Three Kingdoms ; 
 political ascendency had, for the first time, been secured 
 for the masses of Catholic Ireland, largely an ignorant and 
 superstitious multitude ; property and intelligence were 
 overwhelmed at the polls ; and Parnell and his satellites, 
 now called Nationalists, won more than eighty seats out 
 of a total of one hundred and three. The Liberal majority, 
 therefore, would be effaced should the Irish leader and his 
 men give the Conservatives their votes ; a weak Govern- 
 ment would be the inevitable result ; Mr. Gladstone, now 
 in his seventy- sixth year, could hardly expect to return to 
 office. In these circumstances, it became gradually known 
 that Mr. Gladstone had accepted Home Rule in principle, 
 and was even prepared to legislate upon the subject. It 
 would be unfair to assert that personal motives alone 
 determined this sudden resolve ; though obviously should 
 the Liberal chief retain the allegiance of his party, and 
 draw Parnell and the Nationalists to his side, by inaugura- 
 ting Home Rule as a practical measure, he would inevitably 
 be restored to power with a great majority. Mr. Gladstone, 
 ever ready to yield to a popular cry, may have believed 
 that five-sixths of Ireland were passionately eager for Home 
 Rule ; he may have been convinced himself that, as affairs 
 now stood, Parliament would well-nigh be reduced to a 
 deadlock should nothing be done to redress the balanced 
 state of parties, and that Home Rule was the condition 
 of a stable Government ; he may have thought that since 
 the Conservative dalliance with Parnell, it had become 
 impossible permanently to resist this policy; yet these 
 considerations form no apology for the conduct of the 
 aged, but most impulsive, statesman. Only a few years 
 before large parts of Ireland had been in a state of frightful 
 anarchy ; a rebellious and socialistic movement against 
 British rule and Irish landed property had acquired great 
 force ; even at the present time, the National League, 
 
48 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 replacing the Land League, kept disorder prevalent in 
 many counties. Was this the moment to effect a revo- 
 lution in Ireland, to tamper with, and to impair, the Union, 
 to hand over the loyalty, the property, and the worth of 
 the island to the classes and the men against whom but, 
 as yesterday, it had been necessary to put the severest 
 coercion in force ? 
 
 Lord Salisbury resigned office in the first months of 1886 ; 
 Mr. Gladstone became Prime Minister in his stead. Had 
 parties in the House of Commons remained unchanged, 
 the prospect for the old statesman would have been 
 auspicious ; the Liberals and Nationalists combined would 
 have been supreme ; Home Rule would have been the 
 fruit of the new alliance. But the most distinguished 
 men of the Liberal party, resenting a coalition far worse 
 than that of Fox and North, and convinced that Home 
 Rule would be ruinous to the State, fell off from their 
 leader in large numbers ; the powerful Press of Great 
 Britain, with few exceptions, emphatically condemned the 
 Minister's conduct. Mr. Gladstone, however, did not 
 pause in his violent course ; he introduced his first Home 
 Rule Bill in April, 1886. I can only glance at the main 
 features of this famous measure, and devote to it a passing 
 comment.* A Parliament was to be established in the 
 Irish capital ; this, subject to the limitations set forth in 
 the Bill, was practically to exercise supreme power in 
 Ireland. This Parliament was to be composed of two 
 Orders, the first containing one hundred and three members, 
 and formed of a few Irish peers and of men of some 
 substance ; the second comprising two hundred and four 
 or two hundred and six members elected on the existing 
 democratic franchise. The two Orders were ordinarily to 
 sit together ; but should differences in legislative measures 
 
 * For an admirable analysis of the Bill, see Dicey's ' England's 
 Case against Home Rule/ pp. 223-273. The text of the Bill will be 
 found in the Appendix to this volume. 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 49 
 
 arise, the first Order was, for a short time, to have a sus- 
 pensive veto on the decisions of the second Order, which, 
 however, possessing an immense majority, would almost 
 necessarily in the long run completely prevail. The Irish 
 Parliament was precluded from legislating on many 
 subjects, for the most part Imperial, but partly domestic; 
 it was notably to have no control over the Customs and 
 Excise of Ireland, which were to be kept in the hands of 
 the Imperial Parliament ; and though it was permitted to 
 impose any other taxes, the whole revenue of Ireland was 
 to pass through the hands of a British official, who was to 
 pay into the Imperial Treasury a sum of about four millions 
 sterling, as a contribution from Ireland, for Imperial 
 purposes, before the Irish Treasury could receive a farthing. 
 Bills voted by the Irish Parliament might be annulled by 
 the veto of the Lord-Lieutenant and perhaps of the British 
 Ministry; and the Judicial Committee of the English 
 Privy Council, reinforced by a small body of Irish judges, 
 was to have the power to pronounce Acts of the Irish 
 Parliament void, if inconsistent with its constitutional 
 rights. Subject, however, to these restrictions and checks, 
 the Irish Parliament was to be a sovereign power in Ireland ; 
 it could practically appoint or displace the Irish Executive 
 Government ; it could enact, change, or repeal any laws 
 it should think fit ; it could pass any resolutions it pleased ; 
 if an assembly partly subordinate, it would be largely 
 supreme. Ireland was to have no representatives in the 
 Imperial Parliament, though this could dispose of the 
 Irish Customs and Excise ; no Irish protest could be 
 made at Westminster against unjust fiscal exaction, by no 
 means impossible. For the rest, the Union was nominally 
 not disturbed, and the Imperial Parliament was nominally 
 left intact ; but it was declared that the Irish Parliament 
 was to possess the rights secured to it, unless these were 
 annulled by an Act of the Imperial Parliament, to which 
 the Irish had given its consent, or by an Act of the Imperial 
 
 E 
 
5o PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Parliament, in which representatives from Ireland should 
 have a voice. 
 
 The Bill was debated with great force of argument, but 
 hardly in its high constitutional aspects. Like the plan 
 of Butt, and every plan of the kind, it impliedly, if not 
 expressly, repealed the Union, for the very creation of an 
 Irish Parliament destroyed the real authority of the 
 Imperial Parliament, the symbol and guarantee of the 
 Union, in one of the main parts of the Three Kingdoms. 
 It effected a radical change in our polity as a whole, for 
 practically it gave birth to three Parliaments, the Irish 
 sitting in College Green in Dublin, the British at West- 
 minster without Irish members, and the Imperial, properly 
 to be only so-called, when assembled upon one great 
 occasion ; and, even more distinctly than the scheme of 
 Butt, it let the principle of Federation into the constitution 
 of the State. And it did all this obscurely, indirectly, and, 
 so to speak, with reserve ; the hand of a veiled prophet 
 appeared in his work ; this must have led to endless con- 
 troversies dangerous in the extreme. Nor did the Bill 
 even attempt to mark out the distinction between Irish, 
 British, and Imperial affairs, which its author had declared 
 was a sine qua non ; this distinction, in fact, cannot be 
 drawn, as Mr. Gladstone acknowledged afterwards ; Irish, 
 British, and Imperial affairs so run into each other, 
 that they cannot be divided into separate heads, to be 
 under the jurisdiction of different Parliaments. The con- 
 ditions, too, which Mr. Gladstone described, as essential 
 to a measure of Home Rule, were, in no sense, fulfilled. 
 1 The Unity of the Empire,' that is, of Great Britain and 
 Ireland, as Mr. Gladstone no doubt had in his mind, was 
 not secured, or, even in name, preserved ; the subordinate 
 Irish Parliament and its superior might, and probably 
 would, come in serious conflict ; this was absolutely incon- 
 sistent with the unity to be maintained. The 'political 
 equality of England, Scotland, and Ireland' was not 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 51 
 
 assured ; the Bill placed Ireland in a degraded position, 
 especially in all that dealt with taxation, and through the 
 exclusion of Irish members from the British House of 
 Commons. It did not 'produce an equitable distribution 
 of Imperial burdens,' for the financial arrangements were 
 thoroughly unjust, and subjected Ireland arbitrarily to a 
 most galling tribute, without giving her the means of 
 making a complaint. It did not 'provide safeguards for 
 the minority,' that is, for the loyal classes of Protestant 
 and Catholic Ireland ; it handed them over to an Irish 
 Parliament, certain to be for years an instrument of their 
 avowed enemies ; and its supplement, a Land Purchase 
 Bill, did not furnish a third part of the funds required to 
 buy out the Irish landlords, a class which, Mr. Gladstone 
 declared, it was 'an obligation of duty and honour' to 
 save harmless, and which he admitted an Irish Parliament 
 would, probably, plunder and destroy. Lastly, the Bill 
 did not secure ' finality ; ' it was in no sense in the nature 
 of a 'permanent settlement,' as subsequent events have 
 conclusively proved.* 
 
 It may be urged, however, that even if this measure 
 made a fundamental change in the constitution of these 
 realms, and did not satisfy the conditions its author laid 
 down, still the real question was, would it bring peace to 
 Ireland, and improve the relations in which she stood 
 towards Great Britain ? Mr. Gladstone and his followers 
 assumed that this would be the case ; the ' Union of 
 Hearts ' was to accomplish marvels ; but this assumption 
 was without the slightest warrant. The most favourable 
 way to consider the subject, from the point of view of the 
 Home Rule party, is to suppose that Great Britain and 
 Ireland were two communities, in no sense estranged from 
 each other, and that Ireland was not a widely divided 
 people ; and that both were not unwilling to accept the 
 
 * For a full statement of Mr. Gladstone's 'conditions,' see his 
 speech in the House of Commons, April 8, 1886. 
 
52 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Bill, as a kind of modification of the partnership made by 
 the Treaty of Union. This supposition would be obviously 
 contrary to the facts ; but, even on this supposition, the 
 proposed measure would have completely failed to attain 
 its objects, and, on any ordinary view of human nature, 
 would have exasperated Great Britain and Ireland alike, 
 and could not have been a ' message of peace ' to Ireland. 
 The Parliament at Westminster would soon have found 
 out that its real sovereignty in Ireland had been practically 
 destroyed ; that the Irish Parliament could, in many ways, 
 interfere with British and Imperial affairs ; that most of 
 the checks on its powers were of little avail ; this would 
 certainly deeply offend the deceived British nation. The 
 Irish Parliament, on the other hand, would necessarily 
 resent the harsh limitations by which it had been bound ; 
 yet as it had most of the powers of a real Parliament, 
 it could very effectually evade or impair these ; could, 
 through its Executive, largely annul them ; could, at least, 
 make continual and powerful protests. Discord, and 
 perhaps conflict, between Great Britain and Ireland, from 
 the nature of the case, would be the result ; and, besides, 
 there were special provisions in the Bill which would be 
 deemed intolerable by five-sixths of Irishmen. Even 
 loyal Ireland would not endure the banishment of Irish 
 representatives from the British House of Commons, which 
 would have power to impose the Irish Customs and Excise ; 
 this would be taxation without representation, in the very 
 worst sense. It was monstrous that Ireland was to 
 contribute a large sum for the charge of the Empire and 
 yet was to have no voice in the Empire's affairs ; it was 
 humiliating that a British official was to have absolute 
 control over the whole Irish revenue. All this was subject- 
 ing Ireland to a degrading tribute ; it should be added 
 that the prerogative of the English Privy Council, to set 
 aside practically Acts of the Irish Parliament, would have 
 provoked the deepest and most widespread discontent. 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 
 
 The Bill, in a word, revealed strange ignorance of the 
 feelings of mankind; it would have worked on the assump- 
 tion only that human beings in Great Britain and Ireland 
 were without passions and wills of their own ; it would have 
 been blown to the winds, when put to the test. 
 
 But ' the circumstances,' to adopt the words of Burke, 
 'are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial 
 or noxious to mankind ; ' * what were the circumstances 
 in the present instance ? England and Catholic Ireland 
 had been long opposed ; the Land and the National 
 Leagues formed a conspiracy against our rule in Ireland ; 
 England had interests in Ireland of the first importance ; 
 she had a large community of her own blood and faith in 
 Ireland, attached to the Union and the old mother country. 
 Ireland had been distracted for ages by feuds of race and 
 religion ; Protestant and Catholic Ireland stood apart 
 from each other ; the Irish Parliament, created by the Bill, 
 would certainly be an instrument of the heads of the 
 Catholic masses, supported by Parnell and his band, and 
 by Fenians across the Atlantic. Under these conditions, 
 Home Rule would have been a fatal gift, ruinous to Great 
 Britain and Ireland alike. Suppose, for example, that an 
 Irish Parliament, established in College Green, since 1886, 
 had ruled Ireland during the war in South Africa. It 
 would unquestionably have taken the side of the Boers, as 
 the Nationalist leaders have openly done ; and it would 
 have possessed the means of doing infinite mischief. It 
 could have passed resolutions condemning the war ; have 
 called on Irishmen to keep aloof from the British army ; 
 have discouraged recruiting throughout Ireland ; have sent 
 messages of good will to the Boer Government. But 
 probably it would have gone far beyond these, its constitu- 
 tional, rights ; it could have winked at the preparation of 
 an armed force in Ireland to be despatched to the aid of 
 
 * 'Reflections on the Revolution in France,' vol. i. p. 384, ed. 
 1834. 
 
54 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 the Boers ; it could have invited Foreign Powers to put a 
 stop to the conflict ; nay, it could have laid hands on the 
 Irish taxes, and refused to ' pay tribute to an alien Govern- 
 ment ; ' and what, in these cases, would have been England's 
 means of obtaining redress, save by the power of the 
 sword ? In the instance of other wars, the same course 
 would be followed ; we cannot forget that at Nationalist 
 meetings, the Mahdi, the Dervishes, nay, all our enemies, 
 were the objects of the applause of shouting Irish multi- 
 tudes. And as the Irish Parliament could injure England 
 in war, so it could embarrass and annoy her, in a hundred 
 ways, in peace. There was nothing in the Bill to prevent 
 Protection in Ireland, for the Irish Parliament could vote 
 bounties on Irish exports ; there was nothing to prevent 
 the issue of Irish assignats, to mask confiscation of different 
 kinds ; and recourse would not improbably be had to 
 these very expedients. It is unnecessary to dwell on 
 what would be the legislation of the Irish Parliament at 
 home, and the administration of the Executive it would 
 have a right to set up. Composed as it would be, it would 
 abolish ' landlordism ' by a stroke of the pen, or by merely 
 preventing the recovery of rent ; it would simply turn 
 society upside down, and establish a Catholic ascendency 
 by many degrees worse than Protestant ascendency ever 
 was ; it would, in a word, let revolution loose in the 
 island. Protestant Ireland would, as a matter of course, 
 resist ; a savage war of race and creed would certainly 
 follow ; the scenes of 1690 and 1798 might well be 
 repeated ; and the struggle would end in general bank- 
 ruptcy. England, in her own interest, and in that of her 
 friends in Ireland, would assuredly intervene, under con- 
 ditions like these ; and the concession of Home Rule 
 would probably lead to reconquest. 
 
 The Home Rule Bill of 1886 — apart from the fatal evils 
 it must have caused — placed Ireland in such an inferior 
 position, that every Irishman of spirit ought to have 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 55 
 
 treated it with contempt ; it was so dangerous to Great 
 Britain, and, indeed, to the Empire, that John Bright 
 declared that not twenty English members approved of it 
 at heart. Mr. Gladstone himself, it should be remarked, 
 regarded it with no doubtful misgivings ; he presented it to 
 the House of Commons as 'but a choice of evils;' his 
 measure itself, in many passages, revealed the profoundest 
 distrust of the Parliament he proposed to create. Parnell, 
 imposing his imperious will on his followers, accepted the 
 Bill with professions of delight ; this was effusively 
 welcomed by the emotional statesman, deceived by an 
 unscrupulous plotter, over and over again ; it is now known 
 this was a mere pretence ; Home Rule, under the con- 
 ditions of the scheme, would have been made a stepping- 
 stone only for larger demands ; and this, indeed, might 
 have been easily foreseen. The Bill was rejected by a 
 majority which did not express the true sense of the House 
 of Commons, and showed how strong may be the ties of 
 party ; the great body of the Liberals, as, doubtless, they 
 now bitterly regret, threw in their lot with Mr. Gladstone 
 in his most reckless venture. It is of more importance to 
 observe what the views on the subject were of the con- 
 spirators in America, who had set the Land and National 
 Leagues on foot, and had supplied almost the whole of 
 their funds ; without their assistance the movement led by 
 Parnell would probably have never struggled into life. The 
 prospect opened by the Home Rule Bill was thus welcomed 
 by the Clan na Gael, the most energetic and daring of the 
 Fenian parties ; it will be noted that it was to be a means 
 only to a very decisive end. 'The achievement of a 
 National Parliament gives us a footing on Irish soil ; it 
 gives us the agencies and instrumentalities of a govern- 
 ment de facto, at the very commencement of the Irish 
 struggle. It places the government of the land in the 
 hands of our friends and brothers. It removes the Castle's 
 rings, and gives us what we may well express as the plant 
 
56 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 of an armed revolution.' * And at a great Fenian meeting 
 held after the rejection of the Bill, one of the leading 
 speakers dropped these significant words : ' We have no 
 desire to force the hand of Parnell, or to drive the Irish 
 people into war unprepared. All that we demand is this, 
 and we will be satisfied with nothing less — that no leader of 
 the Irish people, who is supposed to speak for them, shall 
 commit himself, or them, to accepting as a final settlement, 
 bills of relief unworthy of the dignity of Ireland's national 
 demand. We are perfectly willing to see them accept 
 such bills as that of Gladstone, as a settlement on account, 
 but that must not be accepted as closing the transaction. 
 We see no wisdom in it. It lowers the tone of the national 
 cause. It lowers the spirit of the true people. To ask 
 them to subside to a species of mere provincialism is an 
 outrage on their struggle of seven hundred years for 
 liberty. We admit that it may be good policy on the part 
 of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Davitt to be what is called moderate 
 in tone ; but for us, who represent the national idea of the 
 Irish people, it would be worse than folly to conceal our 
 sentiments. We recognise that Ireland is incapable of 
 fighting at present' f 
 
 Mr. Gladstone dissolved Parliament when it had thrown 
 the Bill out ; he appears really to have believed that the 
 nation would give its sanction to Home Rule. At the 
 General Election of 1886, he exerted himself 'in the sacred 
 cause of Ireland,' with the energy he had shown in his 
 Midlothian Campaign ; he associated his new Irish policy 
 with appeals to the multitude ; the opposition to him was 
 that 'of the classes against the masses;' in a word, the 
 enthusiastic, and perhaps sincere, convert played, with little 
 scruple, the part of a mere demagogue. But England 
 pronounced against him, with no uncertain voice; 'men 
 of education and property,' as he sadly acknowledged, 
 
 * Report of the Special Commission, vol. iv. p. 542. 
 t ' The Queen's Enemies in America,' p. 24. 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 57 
 
 resisted him with the steadfastness of the English nature ; 
 a great majority was sent into the House of Commons 
 pledged against Home Rule; Lord Salisbury's Government 
 came again into office. It deserves special notice that the 
 rejection of the Bill did not, as was predicted would be the 
 case, arouse anything like real discontent in Ireland, or 
 cause her Catholic community to stir ; this spectacle, 
 which has been seen over and over again, proves how 
 little the main body of the Irish people care for a political 
 revolution of the kind ; and how Home Rule, as Parnell 
 and his band conceived it, was the work of a conspiracy of 
 foreign origin, seeking, through it, to subvert British rule 
 in Ireland. The real purpose of these men was very 
 clearly shown at a Convention assembled at Chicago, in 
 the summer of 1886; speeches of the most incendiary 
 nature were made ; and two of Parnell's envoys, despatched 
 to collect funds 'for the cause,' announced that, after the 
 failure of Mr. Gladstone's measure, their 'duty was to 
 make the government of Ireland by England impossible.' 
 Two or three years of trouble in Ireland followed ; it is 
 unnecessary to refer to these at any length. A season 
 of agricultural distress and of a fall in prices made the 
 payment of Irish rents difficult ; the occasion was seized 
 by the heads of the National League, which had gradually 
 been acquiring formidable strength ; the ' Plan of Cam- 
 paign ' was set afoot ; and another attack was made on the 
 Irish landed gentry, with the ultimate object of paralysing 
 the Irish Government, as had been solemnly proclaimed 
 at Chicago. The social disorder of this period was not so 
 deeply marked with horrible deeds of blood, as the Satur- 
 nalia of the Land League were ; but the movement was, 
 perhaps, not less dangerous ; the cruel practice of 'boycot- 
 ting' was reduced to a system, and caused widespread 
 misery and distress ; an agrarian war was carried on in a 
 few counties; judges, magistrates, and juries were terrorised 
 in the administration of the law ; and there were too 
 
58 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 numerous instances of atrocious crimes. But a firm hand 
 was at the helm of the Irish Government ; Mr. Balfour did 
 not palter with sedition and treason ; the conspiracy was 
 before long put down ; and it should be added that 
 ' boycotting ' and ' the Plan of Campaign ' were unequivo- 
 cally condemned at Rome. 
 
 In this struggle between the forces of disorder and law, 
 the Rump of the Liberal party, which had accepted Home 
 Rule, freely declared itself on the side of the National 
 League and of anarchy. Mr. Gladstone, however, towered 
 over his fellows ; his vehement and, when aroused, un- 
 scrupulous nature, has never been more unfortunately dis- 
 played. He had been three times at the head of the State, 
 charged with the administration of Irish affairs ; the 
 Government in office was engaged in a conflict with a 
 conspiracy of no contemptible strength ; yet Mr. Gladstone 
 did not shrink from throwing his full weight into the scale 
 against it, and giving his sanction to the movement led by 
 Parnell and his creatures. His conduct was so flagrantly 
 at odds with his former self, that, but for the gravity of the 
 situation, it would have been ludicrous ; it consisted in 
 adoring what he had burned, and burning what he had 
 adored ; nothing like it had been seen since Fox, breaking 
 away from the traditions of British statesmen, flung him- 
 self into the arms of Jacobin France, and rejoiced at every 
 reverse that befell England.* A remarkable episode in 
 the politics of the day was not without real effect on events 
 that followed. The acts of the Land and, in part, of the 
 
 * For a scathing condemnation of Mr. Gladstone's public conduct 
 in these years, see several great speeches of Lord Hartington and 
 Mr. Goschen. See also 'The Memoirs of Lord Selborne,' Part II. 
 vol. ii. pp. 261, et seg., and note in Appendix to this volume. See, too, 
 Dicey's ' Leap in the Dark,' p. 190. Lord Selborne's sketch of Mr. 
 Gladstone's character as a statesman, ' Memoirs,' Part II. vol. ii. pp. 
 339-359, deserves careful study. Mr. Lecky's admirable account, 
 ' Democracy and Liberty,' introduction to vol. i., second edition, is well 
 known. 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 59 
 
 National Leagues, and of the leaders of the revolutionary 
 movements which had convulsed Ireland, were investigated 
 by the judges of the Special Commission appointed by 
 Parliament for the purpose ; the inquiry, which lasted 
 many months, was of supreme importance ; such a damning 
 sentence was never pronounced on a body of public men, 
 as that pronounced on Parnell and his followers, though 
 the accusation of treason was not brought into question.* 
 This decision was sufficient for well-informed and sensible 
 men ; but Parnell was acquitted on a personal, but minor, 
 charge, that of having been the author of the well-known 
 forged letters all but approving of the assassinations in the 
 Phcenix Park ; Mr. Gladstone and his adherents welcomed 
 him as an injured martyr ; the House of Commons rang 
 with their plaudits when he re-entered its walls. For a few 
 months Parnell became a popular personage in democratic 
 England ; he had negotiations with Mr. Gladstone with 
 respect to Home Rule, the tenor of which has not trans- 
 pired; his satellites appeared at many public meetings, 
 and split the ears of the groundlings with plausible talk 
 about 'self-government' for Ireland and the 'Union of 
 Hearts.' This mystification and falsehood were not without 
 effect ; the cause of Home Rule made a kind of progress 
 in England ; and, strange to say, the fall of Parnell 
 which ere long followed — I shall not dwell on its squalid 
 and grotesque incidents — had an influence in the same 
 direction. Ireland had been brought into a state of com- 
 parative repose ; the power of the National League appeared 
 broken ; the formidable leader of the conspiracy had left the 
 stage ; his adherents were scattered sheep, which had not 
 a shepherd. With the ignorance of Irish affairs so common 
 to Englishmen, and the desire, partly selfish, but partly 
 generous, to 'get rid of the Irish difficulty/ by any tolerable 
 means, thousands in the constituencies, even in England, 
 
 * Report of the Judges, vol. iv. pp. 544, 545. See the note at the 
 end of this volume in the Appendix. 
 
6o PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 lately bitterly hostile to it, were gradually won over to the 
 idea of Home Rule. 
 
 The General Election of 1892 followed; a number of 
 causes, in addition to that I have set forth, contributed to 
 favour the Home Rule movement. The ' swing of the 
 pendulum,' seen in British politics, since Democracy has 
 gained the ascendant, very distinctly appeared ; the ' idea 
 that each side ought to have its innings ' was widely spread ; 
 many Unionist seats were lost by these means. The 
 extraordinary energy shown by Mr. Gladstone, at an age 
 far beyond the ordinary span, had considerable influence 
 on the masses ; and though his real authority had been 
 long on the wane, he was still the popular figure in England 
 and, above all, in Scotland. He had, also, carefully kept 
 his Home Rule scheme to himself; it was announced by 
 his followers that his next measure for securing ' self- 
 government,' as it was called, for Ireland, would be free 
 from the manifest faults of that of 1886, and would finally, 
 and happily, settle the question. A large part of the 
 electorate was gained in this way ; but the influence that 
 most effectually assisted Mr. Gladstone was, essentially, 
 of a very different kind. The Anti-Unionist Liberals had 
 been out of power for many years ; though they had long 
 been split into separate groups, they resolved to combine 
 against the common enemy, and to drive the Unionist 
 Government from its seat, by appeals to the ideas they 
 assumed were dominant in democratic England and Scot- 
 land. The Newcastle programme was ostentatiously 
 published ; the question of Home Rule was mixed up with 
 projects for disestablishing the Church in England and 
 Wales, for the destruction or the emasculation of the 
 House of Lords, for enforcing temperance by the tyranny 
 of the Local Veto, for extending the suffrage and raising 
 the labourer's status ; in this way they satisfied themselves 
 they ' would sweep the country.' They knew, indeed, that 
 Mr. Gladstone had no heart for much of their policy ; but 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 61 
 
 his passionate eagerness to accomplish Home Rule was 
 notorious; they believed that by giving him a cordial 
 support on this question, they would secure his powerful 
 aid for the others, and that by the process known as 
 1 log-rolling,' they would attain their objects. The Unionist 
 party was weakened at the election ; but the sanguine 
 hopes of its opponents were not fulfilled. Many of the 
 Radical cries were far from popular ; they nearly all com- 
 bined large classes against them ; England returned a 
 large majority to the House of Commons pledged against 
 Home Rule, if not so considerable as six years before ; 
 and though Scotland and Wales were, in the main, favour- 
 able to Mr. Gladstone's policy, still the electorate of Great 
 Britain, as a whole, pronounced against it. The election 
 in Ireland presented features which, with respect to Home 
 Rule, were of marked significance. In 1886, as in 1885, 
 the educated and upper classes were swamped at the polls, 
 by the flood of illiterate and indigent multitudes ; the 
 Irish Catholic Church used, nay, abused, its immense 
 authority, to secure votes for Mr. Gladstone's coming 
 measure. The same spectacle was beheld in 1892; but an 
 element of confusion and disorder came in; the leaders 
 of the factions, divided by the fall of Parnell, though 
 Nationalists, ferociously flew at each other's throats ; the 
 election was marked by disgraceful scenes of lawlessness. 
 These certainly prefigured what would be the character 
 of a future Irish Parliament sitting in College Green. 
 
 This election gave Mr. Gladstone a majority of some 
 forty seats in the House of Commons, but a majority 
 composed of not well-united elements ; and the best 
 opinion of England was strongly averse to his policy. 
 But the veteran statesman — he was in his eighty-third 
 year — did not pause for a moment in his headlong venture, 
 though ominous sounds were being already heard ; after 
 the resignation of Lord Salisbury, through a weak adverse 
 vote, his rival became Prime Minister for the fourth time. 
 
62 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 He had staked everything to obtain the success of the 
 cause to which he had passionately devoted his declining 
 years ; he brought in his second Home Rule Bill in the 
 first months of 1893. The measure had much in common 
 with that of 1886; but in some respects it was very 
 different, especially in one feature of supreme importance. 
 An Irish Parliament was again to be set up in Dublin ; 
 but it was to be a much smaller body than that proposed 
 by the previous Bill ; it was to be composed of a Legislative 
 Council of forty-eight members only, and of a Legislative 
 Assembly of only a hundred and three ; these were 
 analogous to the First and Second Orders of 1886, but 
 were not to be even half in numbers ; and no Irish peers 
 were to have a place in the new Parliament. The Legisla- 
 tive Council and Assembly, differing here from the original 
 scheme, were to sit, not together, but apart ; but the 
 Legislative Council, like the First Order, was to have a 
 temporary suspensive veto on the Assembly's acts ; the 
 Assembly, too, like the Second Order, possessing a 
 majority which would place real power in its hands ; and 
 both bodies, it should be added, being more democratic 
 than the two which were to have been created in 1886. 
 The new Irish Parliament, like that to be formed seven 
 years before, was restricted by limitations — these much 
 the same as those contained in the former Bill — in a 
 number of Imperial and domestic matters ; it was, like its 
 predecessor, to be subjected to the same kind of veto, and 
 to nearly the same authority of the English Privy Council. 
 In finance, the 'tribute,' which had been loudly condemned 
 by all parties in Ireland, was given up ; there was to be 
 no British official to lay his hands on Irish revenue, and 
 to divert it from its legitimate uses ; but the Irish Customs 
 were to be appropriated to the Imperial charge, which 
 Ireland was declared to be justly liable to pay ; and this 
 was a sum of about two millions and a half, with an 
 addition for a time of one million, a sum less than the 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 63 
 
 estimate made in 1886. The Irish Parliament, however, 
 if thus made largely subordinate, was like the Parliament 
 of the preceding Bill, to be in many, and most important, 
 respects supreme. It was to rule Ireland as a sovereign 
 power, subject to the limitations by which it was to be 
 bound ; it could make, change, and repeal laws, as regards 
 the Irish community, almost as it pleased ; it could, in a 
 word, do nearly everything within the province of a real 
 Parliament. Above all, it could appoint and control the 
 Irish Executive Government, to which the administration 
 of Irish affairs would belong ; and it would thus have 
 complete power over the most important machinery of the 
 State. 
 
 The Bills of 1886 and of 1893 so far resembled each 
 other, with some distinctions ; but, in other respects, they 
 markedly differed. The supremacy of the Imperial 
 Parliament, implied but not expressed in the first scheme, 
 was unequivocally asserted in the second, though this 
 supremacy could not be effective, as respects Ireland. The 
 Imperial Parliament was nominally left untouched by both 
 Bills, though this was a play on words only ; but it was to 
 hold a position in the second it was not to hold in the 
 first ; the Union was not in terms repealed by either 
 measure, though virtually it was repealed by both, through 
 the mere creation of an Irish Parliament. The Bill of 
 1886 had, as its complement, a Land Purchase Bill; in 
 fact, both were made parts of the same policy ; a sum of 
 ;£ 50,000,000 was to be an indemnity for Irish landlords 
 who should think fit to part with their estates ; for Mr. 
 Gladstone, we have seen, had declared that it was 'an 
 obligation of duty and honour' to protect this order of 
 men ; and he asserted that Parliament would, doubtless, 
 vote any further sums required, a singular exhibition of 
 credulous hope, for these would have amounted to 
 ^"150,000,000 at least; and he had himself, in a speech 
 addressed to Lord George Hamilton, valued the lands of 
 
64 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Ireland at ^300,000,000. But what was to be deemed 
 sacred, in 1886, had a very different aspect in 1893 ; 
 the settlement of the Irish land was, indeed, withheld 
 for three years from the Irish Parliament, but, after this 
 brief space of time, this was to be certainly left to a body, 
 which Mr. Gladstone had evidently thought would make 
 short work of the Irish landed gentry, and would drive 
 them, in beggary, out of their own country. These 
 differences, however, between the two Bills, sank into 
 insignificance compared to a vital distinction which made 
 them essentially unlike each other, and made their projects 
 of Home Rule completely dissimilar. The exclusion of 
 Irish representatives from the House of Commons at 
 Westminster, under the measure of 1886, was palpably 
 unjust, and had been condemned with much force of 
 argument. Mr. Gladstone proposed to redress this wrong 
 by summoning eighty Irish members into the Imperial 
 House of Commons ; these were to have no cognisance of 
 British questions, but were to have a right to vote on 
 Imperial and even Irish questions, though the Imperial 
 Parliament was to have little or no power in Ireland, and 
 an Irish Parliament was practically to fill its place, and to 
 have all but supreme authority over Irish affairs. This 
 strange expedient obviously made the Home Rule schemes 
 of 1886 and 1893 altogether different; but Mr. Gladstone 
 never saw the essential distinction ; he maintained that 
 the inclusion of the Irish members was little more than 
 a detail of the measure. It would be perhaps unfair to 
 insist that he introduced this immense change in order 
 only to strengthen his already enfeebled party, which 
 would be greatly in want of Irish votes at Westminster ; 
 more probably his intellect, yielding to old age, did not 
 thoroughly grasp all that was involved in his project* 
 
 * For a very able analysis of and commentary on the Bill of 1893, 
 see Professor Dicey's ' Leap in the Dark.' For the text of the Bill, 
 see the Appendix to this volume. 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 65 
 
 The Bill of 1893, from a purely constitutional point of 
 view, was infinitely more objectionable than that of 1886. 
 It not only, I have said, virtually repealed the Union ; 
 it created a kind of Federalism in these realms to which 
 there has never been a parallel. The Irish Parliament 
 was practically to rule Ireland ; no British members were 
 to show their faces in it ; it was to be all but the sove- 
 reign of the Irish State. The British Parliament was 
 nominally to be sovereign of the British State ; represen- 
 tatives from Ireland were not to appear in it, and, in 
 theory, they were not to deal with British questions. The 
 Imperial Parliament was to be analogous to a supreme 
 Federal Council ; this ought to have jurisdiction over 
 Imperial affairs alone ; but eighty Irish members were to 
 have seats in it, and they were to have a right to vote on 
 Imperial and Irish questions, though Ireland was to have 
 a separate Parliament of her own. This arrangement, in 
 conception, was simply monstrous ; it gave Ireland powers 
 to which she had no pretence to a claim ; it really sub- 
 jected Great Britain to her ; it formed a Federation in 
 which a weak and small State was to have immense 
 authority over another tenfold as strong ; it might be 
 described as one-sided Federalism run mad. Passing 
 from the main principles to the details of the Bill, this, 
 like its predecessor, did not satisfy the conditions Mr. 
 Gladstone had deemed to be essential. It did not separate 
 British, Irish, and Imperial affairs ; its author admitted at 
 last that this was not possible. It asserted the supremacy 
 of the Imperial Parliament, and gave it a more imposing 
 position than it had under the Bill of 1886 ; but it did not 
 maintain the Unity of the Three Kingdoms ; the mere 
 creation of an Irish Parliament placed this in jeopardy. 
 It did not provide for the ' political equality ' of Great 
 Britain and Ireland, for, in contradiction to the measure of 
 seven years before, it practically gave Ireland a kind of 
 ascendency ; her representatives were to possess rights in 
 
 F 
 
66 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 no sense to be justified. It did not provide an ' equitable 
 distribution of Imperial burdens ; ' in this province it 
 would have done wrong to Great Britain ; for, while it 
 abandoned the odious Irish tribute of 1886, and an 
 effective control over Irish revenue, its expedient of allo- 
 cating the Irish Customs, and nothing else, as the only 
 source for the payment of Imperial charges, would, in all 
 probability, have caused the Imperial Treasury a great 
 loss ; the Customs would have been enormously reduced 
 by smuggling, to which Irishmen have always been much 
 addicted, which the Irish Parliament would have no 
 interest to prevent, and which, very likely, it would directly 
 encourage. Again, it did not create 'safeguards for the 
 minority ; ' as we have seen, it threw the Irish landed 
 gentry, after a brief respite, to the wolves, that is, to the 
 tender mercies of the Irish Parliament ; and, like the 
 measure of 1886, it took no heed of Protestant and loyal 
 Catholic Ireland, as a whole, though this assuredly was ' a 
 minority' that required protection. Finally, it could not 
 have effected a ' permanent settlement ' of the affairs of 
 Ireland; a 'lopsided' and iniquitous arrangement like 
 this would certainly have had a very short existence. 
 
 The measure of 1893, in short, would have effected 
 a complete revolution in the polity of these realms ; it 
 would have given the least important of the Three 
 Kingdoms an iniquitous authority over the most impor- 
 tant ; it would unnaturally have placed weakness in 
 superiority to power ; it would have subjected the domi- 
 nant to the lesser partner ; all this, it will be observed, 
 followed from the inclusion of Irish representatives in the 
 Imperial Parliament, who, though a Parliament in Dublin 
 was to rule Ireland, were to have a right to deal with 
 Imperial and Irish questions. Mr. Gladstone, I repeat, 
 seems never to have understood the strange and ruinous 
 consequences this would involve ; but this can be made 
 manifest by one or two examples. The Irish members 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 67 
 
 would be excluded from the British Parliament, and would 
 have no right to vote on purely British questions, say 
 upon the extension of the British railway system, or 
 the disfranchisement of an English or Scottish borough. 
 But they would have eighty seats in the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment ; and as it was impossible to separate a number of 
 British questions from those of an Imperial or Irish 
 character, they would have a most potent influence over 
 British affairs ; for example, they could legitimately vote 
 upon such subjects as the confidence to be placed in a British 
 Ministry, the financial relations between Great Britain and 
 Ireland, or the validity of British incumbrances affecting 
 Irish estates. The exclusion, however, of Irish members 
 from the British Parliament, and their introduction into 
 the Imperial Parliament, would have led to even more 
 disastrous results ; it must, in many instances, have caused 
 a complete paralysis of the State. This in-and-out plan, 
 as it was derisively called, must have made Parliamentary 
 government well-nigh impossible ; if Irish members were 
 to have a right to vote in the same House of Commons on 
 Imperial and Irish questions, but were not to have a right 
 to vote on British questions, to vote, say, upon a war with 
 a Foreign Power, and upon the domicile and status of 
 Irish subjects, but not to vote on matters of purely British 
 commerce, there might, and very often would be, two 
 conflicting majorities in the leading House of Parliament ; 
 Parliamentary affairs would be brought to a stand ; the 
 tenure of even the strongest Ministry would be utterly 
 insecure. It is needless to point out that the relations 
 between Great Britain and Ireland would almost certainly 
 have been more strained, under the Bill of 1893, than they 
 would have been under that of 1886 ; and that the govern- 
 ment of Ireland by the Irish Parliament, would, under 
 both, have been much of the same character. The British 
 nation would have been indignant at the humiliation of 
 their ancient Parliament, which would be sometimes placed 
 
68 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 at the mercy of Irish members ; it would have condemned 
 the weakening in Ireland of its authority, through the 
 mere establishment of an Irish Parliament ; it would have 
 been sorely vexed that Irish smuggling would filch away a 
 large part of British revenue. It should be borne in mind, 
 too, that the Irish members, who would have been let into 
 the Imperial Parliament, would have been more difficult to 
 deal with, by many degrees, more openly disloyal, more 
 obstructive, than Irish Nationalists could be, as affairs stand 
 at present ; they would have the support of the Irish 
 Parliament ; the Imperial Parliament could hardly impose 
 a check on them. As for the rule of the Irish Parliament, 
 within its proper domain, it would have been the same, or 
 much the same, under either measure ; that is, it would have 
 been a succession of angry wranglings with England and 
 oppression in Ireland, leading to anarchy and general ruin. 
 The Home Rule Bill of 1886, in a word, bad measure 
 as it was, was innoxious compared to the Home Rule Bill 
 of 1893. The fatal tendency of the scheme was quickly 
 perceived ; the sound mind of England was profoundly 
 stirred ; the Bill was publicly burned in the City of 
 London ; innumerable petitions against it flowed in ; an 
 immense assembly, representing loyal Catholic and Protes- 
 tant Ireland, met in the capital, and denounced this whole 
 policy in most determined language. As had happened, 
 too, seven years before, the Press of Great Britain, all but 
 universally, condemned the new measure as hopelessly 
 bad ; it was significant that the Liberal Press was well- 
 nigh silent, and that Mr. Gladstone was supported by 
 very few petitions. The Opposition simply tore the Bill to 
 shreds in the House of Commons ; but the self-deluded 
 Minister desperately held his course ; the Radical groups 
 servilely gave him their votes ; the process of ' log-rolling,' 
 never before so recklessly displayed, kept his petty majority 
 almost intact, a crying disgrace to any party in the State. 
 At last, whether afraid of the country rising against him. 
 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 69 
 
 or yielding to the instigation of his Irish allies — his sub- 
 serviency to their truculence had been most painful — Mr. 
 Gladstone forced the measure through the House of Com- 
 mons by a method never employed before ; ' closure by 
 compartments/ rightly compared to the ' guillotine,' put an 
 end to resistance by iniquitous means. The Bill passed 
 the Lower House by thirty-four votes only ; not half of it 
 had been examined or discussed ; the part that had, had 
 been so completely transformed, that its parent could 
 hardly have known his own offspring. The most notable 
 of these changes was that the in-and-out plan was given 
 up ; its ruinous effects had been fully dragged into the 
 light, but an arrangement, perhaps even worse, had been 
 placed in its stead. Ireland was to retain her Parliament 
 in College Green ; but the eighty Irish members were to 
 have a right to sit in the Imperial Parliament, and to vote 
 on all questions, not only Imperial and Irish, but strictly 
 British alike. A philosophic and calm-minded writer has 
 indicated what this would involve : ' Irish members may 
 disestablish the Church of England, though England is 
 to have no voice in the pettiest of Irish affairs. Irish 
 members are to be allowed to impose taxes on England, 
 say, to double the income tax, though of these taxes no 
 inhabitant of Ireland will pay a penny ; the Irish delega- 
 tion, and this is the worst grievance of all, is to be enabled, 
 in combination with a British minority, to detach Wales 
 from England, or to vote Home Rule for Scotland, or to 
 federalise still further the United Kingdom by voting that 
 Man, Jersey, and Guernsey shall send members to the 
 Imperial Parliament.' * To say that this proposal would 
 be unconstitutional would be to do it too much honour ; 
 it was scandalous in the existing situation of affairs ; it 
 implied that heads of the National League, leaders of 
 a rebellious and socialistic movement, would have the 
 power, without restriction or check, to rule the Imperial 
 * Dicey's ' Leap in the Dark,' p. 57. 
 
70 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Parliament, in many instances, with reference to exclu- 
 sively English and Scottish questions ; it practically 
 bound Great Britain hand and foot in fetters to Ireland ; 
 it was rightly called 'an absurd piece of infamy.' It is 
 unnecessary to say that the system it would have estab- 
 lished could not have stood a trial of even three months ; 
 England, whenever crossed, would have indignantly swept it 
 away. But Nemesis had commended the poisoned chalice to 
 Mr. Gladstone's lips ; the project, on which he had staked 
 his fortunes, was that which he had incorrectly ascribed to 
 Butt, and had declared to be impossible and worse. 
 
 The Bill, it was notorious, could not have passed the 
 House of Commons had not its rejection by the House 
 of Lords been assured beforehand. It received its quietus, 
 in that assembly, by a majority of about ten to one ; the 
 mind of England felt unquestionable relief; a great 
 national peril had been averted. Exactly as had happened 
 in 1886, scarcely a sound of discontent was heard in 
 Ireland ; the demand for Home Rule, in fact, is largely a 
 fictitious cry, with which the great body of Irishmen has 
 little or no sympathy ; the evidence of this can be no 
 longer doubtful. Mr. Gladstone retired, within a few 
 months, from public life ; one of his last acts was to shoot 
 a Parthian arrow at the House of Lords, which, happily 
 for these realms, had wrecked his policy ; since that time 
 he has disappeared from the scene ; few eminent statesmen 
 have been so soon forgotten. Home Rule was scattered 
 to the winds at the General Election of 1895 ; it has not 
 been a prominent question at that of 1900; but if Ireland 
 has sent more than eighty of its supporters into the House 
 of Commons, the best elements in her community remain 
 angrily hostile ; and the opinion of Great Britain is dis- 
 tinctly adverse. For many reasons, however, as I have 
 remarked, it is impossible to ignore the subject ; in the 
 strange chances and changes of British politics, and under 
 our system of party government, a minister may again 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 71 
 
 become an advocate of Home Rule, though certainly not 
 in the present Parliament. Mr. Gladstone's Bills, it is 
 likely, will not be heard of again ; but Home Rule may 
 be embodied in other forms ; I may briefly refer to, and 
 comment, on these. The project of restoring the Parlia- 
 ment of 1782-1800, an ideal of O'Connell during many 
 years of his life, will hardly be revived in these times ; the 
 conditions in Great Britain and Ireland have so completely 
 changed. The centripetal forces which, a hundred years 
 ago, held the British and Irish Parliaments, in the main, 
 together — they differed, however, on important questions — 
 have long ago been all but completely destroyed ; the 
 present Irish Parliament could not be an assembly identi- 
 fied in race and faith with England ; its House of Com- 
 mons could not be elected by a small body of Protestants, 
 and latterly by masses of Catholic peasants, the serfs of 
 their landlords. The centrifugal forces, on the other hand, 
 those which would keep the two Parliaments utterly apart, 
 would probably be overwhelmingly strong; the Irish 
 House of Commons would practically, at least for years, 
 be ruled by the nominees of the National League and of 
 the Irish Catholic priesthood ; its electorate would, for the 
 most part, be subject to these dominant powers ; and 
 Protestant Ireland would alike be swamped and incensed. 
 Nevertheless, the restoration of what has been called 
 Grattan's Parliament, would, in my judgment, be a much 
 better project than either of Mr. Gladstone's schemes of 
 Home Rule. The Irish Parliament would be bound by 
 known and fixed precedents, which it would be difficult 
 wholly to disregard ; an Irish House of Lords would exist 
 as a check on the House of Commons ; above all — and this is 
 of the very first importance — the Irish Executive would not 
 be subject to the Irish Parliament ; it would be appointed 
 from Westminster by British statesmen. A Parliament of 
 this type could hardly effect the ruinous mischiefs which 
 Mr. Gladstone's Irish Parliaments could certainly effect. 
 
yt PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Ireland, it has been urged, would obtain Home Rule, if 
 she were assimilated to one of our self-governing colonies. 
 These nations, as they may fitly be called, are by no 
 means, as is commonly supposed, wholly independent of 
 the Crown and the Imperial Parliament; they have 
 Parliaments and Executives of their own ; but these in 
 theory, and partly in fact, are subordinate. No Act passed 
 by the Parliament of a self-governing colony can in any 
 way contravene an Imperial statute ; the governor of a 
 self-governing colony is a real governor ; appeals run to 
 the English Privy Council from colonial Courts of Justice, 
 Nevertheless, self-governing colonies are practically all but 
 independent ; they pay no contribution to Imperial charges ; 
 they maintain their own garrisons, without a British army 
 in their midst — at least, in a great many cases ; they are 
 hardly ever interfered with by the Imperial Parliament, or 
 by the men in power at Westminster. Why, it may be 
 argued, should not the same liberties belong to Ireland, 
 for centuries the peccant part of these kingdoms ; would 
 not the concession make her as loyal as most of our self- 
 governing colonies? The answer is short, but amply 
 sufficient ; the circumstances of our self-governing colonies 
 and of Ireland are altogether different. In none of these 
 settlements is there the profound estrangement which has 
 long divided Great Britain from Ireland ; in none is there 
 a community in which a loyal minority is separated from 
 a disaffected majority by long-standing discords of race 
 and faith ; Ireland is at our doors, our self-governing 
 colonies distant. Give Ireland a Parliament like that of 
 Victoria, and Ireland would break off from the British 
 connection ; the Irish Parliament would possess ample 
 power to trample on and oppress hundreds of thousands 
 of law-abiding men, of whom the protection was England's 
 duty ; the Irish Parliament and Executive, within a few 
 leagues of our coasts, could, in innumerable ways, do infinite 
 mischief. The supposed analogy, therefore, completely 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 73 
 
 fails ; it would be treason to the State, and to loyal 
 Irishmen, to make Ireland a self-governing colony ; and 
 no British politician has as yet countenanced this mode of 
 Home Rule. It has been hinted again, but with bated 
 breath and humbleness, that the relations of Great Britain 
 and Ireland have been so long unfortunate, such a dreary 
 record of disputes and miseries, that we should say to our 
 intractable partner, ' Depart in peace ; ' in a word, separation 
 is a conceivable Home Rule policy. This proposal has 
 never been discussed in Parliament ; the interest, the self- 
 respect, the pride of Englishmen almost forbid the thought. 
 Yet separation, strange as it may appear, would be a 
 better and more safe expedient than either of Mr. Glad- 
 stone's schemes of Home Rule. The Imperial Parliament 
 would have complete liberty to exercise its sovereign 
 power in Great Britain ; it would have a free hand to 
 prevent injustice in Ireland, either by the strong arm, or 
 by fiscal and other expedients, say, by laying an embargo 
 on Irish products ; it would not be subject to the ex- 
 asperating but often effective checks which Home Rule 
 would in any form involve ; and the Imperial Executive 
 would possess ample means to protect the interests of 
 England and of her friends in Ireland. Let it not be 
 forgotten that in perhaps the ablest speech ever made, in 
 the House of Commons, on this subject, Peel declared that 
 he would infinitely prefer separation to a repeal of the 
 Union, by no means so evil a policy as Home Rule. 
 
 A few politicians, however, have put the theory forward 
 that ' Home Rule all round ' will meet the ' national 
 demand ' of Ireland, and give her what they are pleased 
 to call ' self-government.' England, Scotland, Ireland, and 
 perhaps Wales are to have local Parliaments to deal with 
 their own affairs ; Imperial affairs are to be directed by 
 an Imperial Council. I am willing to admit that a scheme 
 of this kind would be better than Mr. Gladstone's Home 
 Rule Bill of 1893 ; it would be less illogical, possibly not 
 
74 PEES EXT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 more disastrous. But I must be permitted to doubt 
 whether these sages understand what their project certainly 
 involves ; this, indeed, seems to be rather in the nature of 
 a device to angle for Nationalist votes, without scruple, 
 and then to propose a plan which England. Scotland, 
 Ireland, and Wales have never asked for, and which 
 England and Scotland, at least, would indignantly reject. 
 This scheme is pure Federalism, in the proper sense of the 
 word ; let us briefly consider what this means from the 
 very nature of the case. England, Scotland, Ireland, and, 
 I —ume, Wales would form separate States; they would 
 have separate Legislatures and Executives to manage their 
 local affairs, separate local forces, separate Courts of 
 Justice ; they would be, essentially, separate countries. 
 The Imperial Parliament and its Executive would be the 
 only link between them ; there would be an Imperial 
 army, and navy, and Imperial tribunals ; but the Imperial 
 Parliament and its Executive would only have jurisdiction 
 over Imperial affairs, and would be only the head of the 
 separate States as respects Foreign Powers. But as it 
 would be difficult in the extreme, under these conditions, 
 to distinguish local from Imperial affairs, an arbiter of 
 some kind, armed with sufficient powers, would be necessary 
 to say what affairs were local and what Imperial, and 
 decisively to pronounce on the subject, on the innumerable 
 occasions when the question would arise ; and it would 
 be necessary, too, that there should be some means, 
 perhaps a Referendum to a popular vote, to effect any con- 
 stitutional change, to reform or to abolish the Constitution 
 itself. This scheme obviously would be complex, intricate, 
 and difficult to carry into effect ; it would be a huge system 
 of divided, and probably conflicting, powers, not easy to 
 reconcile with each other ; for this, and other reasons, it 
 would require a formal Constitution reduced to writing, 
 and setting forth, under distinct heads or articles, the 
 conditions of the Federation that had been established, 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 75 
 
 the spheres of the authority of the separate States, and 
 the sphere of the authority of the Imperial Council. Is it 
 possible to suppose that the Parliament of the United 
 Kingdom would ever break up this ancient and undivided 
 Monarchy ; would tamely surrender its sovereign rights, 
 and would substitute a new-fangled fabric of this kind 
 for the venerable and unwritten constitution of these 
 realms — a majestic temple that has grown up in silence ; 
 and that the British people, at all events, would not rise 
 up in wrath at the very thought of such a change ? For 
 Federalism 'amounts to a proposal for changing the whole 
 constitution of the United Kingdom. It is, in fact, the 
 most " revolutionary " proposal, if the word " revolutionary " 
 be used in its strict sense, which has ever been submitted to 
 an English Parliament. The abolition of the House of Lords, 
 the disestablishment of the Church, the abolition of the 
 Monarchy, might leave the English Constitution far less 
 essentially changed than would the adoption of Federalism.'* 
 It should be observed, too, with respect to this subject t 
 that the conditions, under which Federalism would have 
 a chance of success, would be absolutely wanting in the 
 present instance. England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales 
 have long been moulded into a single sovereign State, 
 and united under a supreme Monarchy ; no Federation, I 
 venture to assert, has been formed out of communities that 
 have had a government of this kind. Federations, in fact, 
 have almost always grown out of an association of existing 
 States, which desire to remain separate, and yet to be a 
 nation for some purposes ; they have not been evolved out 
 of the fragments of one State artificially rent asunder. 
 Again, Federalism requires that no single State should be 
 enormously more powerful than the other partners ; there 
 must be something like equality between the different 
 States ; f it is unnecessary to remark that England has 
 
 * ' England's Case against Home Rule,' p. 168. 
 
 f The German Empire, in which Prussia is the leading State, may 
 
76 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 tenfold the resources and strength of Scotland, Ireland, 
 and Wales ; and, in truth, would annihilate the Federation 
 were her will really crossed, and break through the arbitrary- 
 limitations imposed on her. Suppose, for example, that 
 England had set her heart on a great foreign war, and had 
 the support of her own Parliament ; does any one suppose 
 that, if she were outvoted, by deputies from Scotland, 
 Ireland, and Wales, in the Imperial Council, even though 
 backed by their own Parliaments, the people of England 
 would submit to be thwarted in this way ; was Samson 
 bound by the withs of the Philistines ? Something like 
 this, indeed, was seen in the great Civil War ; the result 
 was the subjugation of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and 
 the complete ascendency of England, under Cromwell ; an 
 attempt to federalise the Three Kingdoms might lead to 
 a similar issue. Let us assume, however, that, through 
 some evil stroke of destiny, Federalism were made the 
 constitution of these realms, and that this strange arrange- 
 ment could be made to work even for a few years ; the 
 inevitable consequences, from the nature of the case, would 
 follow. The omnipotence of the Imperial Parliament, the 
 mainstay of the Empire, would be gone ; so would the 
 omnipotence of the Imperial Executive Government, 
 the best security for justice and for equal liberties. Their 
 powers would be parcelled out and subdivided ; they would 
 not survive anywhere in their complete fulness ; they would 
 be distributed in fractions between separate States, and 
 would be transformed and impaired in the process ; real 
 Imperial unity and sovereignty could have no existence. 
 General national weakness would be the probable result, 
 leading, perhaps, to despotism within a short time ; for 
 Federalism is essentially weak ; I have no sympathy with 
 Jacobin France, but the Committee of Public Safety rightly 
 
 seem an example to the contrary ; but the German Empire is hardly 
 a Federation properly so called ; it is a great military monarchy ruling 
 subject kingdoms. 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 77 
 
 put Federalism down, when they were engaged in their 
 death-struggle with Europe ; and Napoleon — perhaps the 
 ablest ruler of the nineteenth century — approved of their 
 conduct. But weakness would not be the only conse- 
 quence ; the dissemination of different powers would cer- 
 tainly produce disputes and conflicts between the Federal 
 and the State authorities ; above all, the very existence of 
 separate States and of a Federal Government would divide 
 allegiance, and powerfully tend to disruption, as was seen 
 in the great Civil War in America. As regards Ireland, the 
 establishment of ' Home Rule all round ' would necessarily 
 be attended by all the evils inseparable from Mr. Gladstone's 
 schemes ; but Federalism, having been thus made manifest, 
 would probably increase, and in some sense justify, the 
 alienation of Ireland from the other parts of these kingdoms. 
 Home Rule, therefore, whatever the form it may assume, 
 would be, it is my firm conviction, incompatible with the 
 welfare of the Three Kingdoms, injurious to Great Britain, 
 a curse to Ireland. In the peculiar circumstances which 
 exist in Ireland, and to which I have adverted before, 
 separation, I believe, would be an expedient less disastrous 
 than Home Rule of any description, this involving the 
 creation of an Irish Parliament, and of an Irish Executive, 
 which would be its instrument. Home Rule, in fact, gloss 
 it over as you please, has been forced to the front by an 
 Irish faction, hostile to a man to the existence of British 
 rule in Ireland, and depending on Fenianism in the United 
 States ; this party would be all-powerful in an Irish Parlia- 
 ment ; and Home Rule would be made the means to a 
 ruinous and disgraceful end. Thousands of Irishmen, 
 indeed, honestly think Home Rule would do their country 
 good, and have little or nothing to do with this bad con- 
 spiracy ; this too, doubtless, is the case with the followers 
 of Mr. Gladstone ; but Home Rule is an Irish Nationalist 
 movement, and Irish Nationalist movements are dangerous 
 to the safety of the State. The Union, therefore, must be 
 
78 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 maintained in the interest of Great Britain and Ireland 
 alike ; and the Union is an international settlement that 
 has endured for a century. But no candid student of Irish 
 history, no impartial observer of Irish affairs, from 1800 
 to the present time, can deny that the Union has been 
 in many respects a failure. It has been an incident, perhaps 
 a result, of the Union, that Presbyterian Ireland, rebellious 
 from 1795 to 1798, has, we have seen, become attached to 
 the British connection, and is now devotedly attached to 
 England. The power of the Imperial Parliament and of 
 its Executive have kept lawlessness and disorder down in 
 Ireland, and has restrained the evil passions of Irish factions 
 more than was ever the case under the rule of the Irish 
 Parliament. The Imperial Parliament, too, has accom- 
 plished reforms in Ireland, if often unwise, in the main 
 beneficent; and, under the Imperial Executive, justice in 
 Ireland has been administered, for many years, in a very 
 different way from that which was seen a century ago ; 
 its tribunals are perfectly free and impartial. But the 
 Union was, in itself, a bad half measure, tainted with 
 iniquity and false promises ; it did gross wrong to Catholic 
 Ireland ; the evil consequences are felt to this hour. The 
 Union has not fulfilled the sanguine hopes of Pitt; Ireland, 
 as I have pointed out, is far more behind Great Britain in 
 wealth than she was sixty years ago ; she is perhaps the 
 poorest country in Europe at the door of the richest. The 
 Union, too, has not reconciled the feuds of religion and race 
 in Ireland ; they are as marked as they were a century ago, 
 if not attended with such deeds of violence ; above all, the 
 Union has not made the chief part of the Irish community 
 attached to England, as Pitt confidently predicted would 
 certainly happen. Nor can it be denied that the Irish 
 reforms of the Imperial Parliament have too often been 
 ill-designed and faulty, especially, as we shall see, as re- 
 gards the land ; and they have unfortunately, in many in- 
 stances, been concessions to agitation and dangerous social 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 79 
 
 movements, and have been effected too late to do real good. 
 The administration of Ireland reveals the same defects ; it 
 has been marked by good intentions, which, sometimes, 
 have proved gross mistakes ; and notably it has, over and 
 over again, been shifty, vacillating, without principle, and 
 showing a curious disregard of sound Irish opinion. Unques- 
 tionably, too, Ireland has, on many occasions, to the 
 indignation of true-hearted Irishmen, been made the mere 
 plaything of British faction, with the worst results to her 
 best interests ; this has been perhaps the most pernicious 
 incident that has followed the Union ; and in the immense 
 revolution which has transformed Ireland, within the last 
 hundred years, the effects that may be traced to the Union 
 have by no means been wholly on the side of good. 
 
 These evil consequences cannot be really questioned ; it 
 is very advisable to consider their causes, and if possible 
 to see how they can be removed or lessened. They are 
 partly to be ascribed to the fact that Great Britain and 
 Ireland are countries differing from each other in most 
 important respects, and standing, so to speak, on different 
 planes of existence ; this alone makes British rule in 
 Ireland difficult, and perplexes and embarrasses British 
 statesmen. They are partly due to defects in the English 
 national character, essentially just in intention, and even 
 generous, but with no sympathy with races of a character 
 unlike its own, self-asserting, obstinate, sometimes rude 
 and offensive ; this has had marked and evil effects in the 
 affairs of Ireland. They are largely to be attributed to 
 the nature of Irish administration, seldom consistent, and 
 changing with party changes : British statesmen appear 
 at the Castle ; rule for a few years ; and then depart and 
 give place to successors, who probably carry out a very 
 different policy. They are largely due to the nature of 
 the representation of Ireland, notably of late years ; the 
 Nationalist party — and the same remark applies, in some 
 degree, to the ' Tail ' of O'Connell — have shown such an 
 
So PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 aversion to England, have used such seditious and even 
 criminal language, have been so extravagant and wild in 
 their demands, and have been such a dangerous element in 
 the House of Commons, that Englishmen and Scotchmen 
 turn away from Irish questions with disgust, and Ireland 
 unfortunately has often been the sufferer. But the most 
 important of these causes, one which may be traced 
 throughout Irish history, and has been scarcely less 
 evident since the Union, has been the strange but signal 
 ignorance of Irish affairs — of all, in a word, that relates to 
 Ireland — which has been but too characteristic of the 
 British people, and, in a lesser degree, of many British 
 statesmen. This capital fault aroused the sosva ifidignatio, 
 of Swift ; it was exposed by Grattan, O'Connell, even by 
 Lord Clare ; it was condemned in severe but thoughtful 
 language by Burke ; it has been conspicuous during the 
 events of the last twenty years.* The resulting mischiefs 
 
 * I feel obliged to refer to these authorities ; not in order to stir 
 up resentment against England in Ireland, but to point out a most 
 important, if unfortunate, fact in the relations between the two 
 countries. Swift, in his 'View of the State of Ireland,' Works, vol. ii. 
 8vo ed. 1890, says, 'We are in the condition of patients, who have 
 physic sent them by doctors at a distance, strangers to their consti- 
 tution and the nature of the disease.' Burke, ' Correspondence,' vol. iii. 
 p. 438, has remarked, ' I have never known any of the successive Govern- 
 ments of my time influenced by any other feeling relative to Ireland 
 than the wish that they should hear of it and of its concerns as little 
 as possible.' So Grattan, cited by Mr. Lecky, vol. vii. p. 108, exclaimed, 
 'It is a matter of melancholy reflection to consider how little the 
 Cabinet knows of anything relating to Ireland. Ireland is a subject 
 it considers with a lazy contumely, and picks up here and there, by 
 accident or design, interested and erroneous intelligence.' I quote 
 this passage from one of the speeches of Lord Clare : ' The people 
 of England know less of this country than of any other nation in 
 Europe ;' and this passage from one of the speeches of O'Connell : 
 ' We are governed by foreigners ; foreigners make our laws. ... As 
 to Ireland, the Imperial Parliament has the additional disadvantage 
 springing from want of interest and total ignorance. I do not exag- 
 gerate ; the ministers are in total ignorance of this country.' This 
 want of knowledge of Ireland, too often associated with indifference, 
 has, I repeat, been distinctly made manifest of late years. 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 81 
 
 have been numerous and grave in the extreme ; can nothing 
 be done to mitigate these and to make them less, consistently 
 with maintaining the Union in its full completeness ? I, for 
 one, have long thought that much could be effected were 
 the Imperial Parliament occasionally to hold its sessions 
 in Dublin, and to govern Ireland directly, so to speak, on 
 the spot. This very measure was proposed by many 
 distinguished Irishmen, during the agitation for Repeal in 
 1S43-44 ; it was made the subject of an eloquent eulogy by 
 Sheil at O'Connell's trial ; it was seriously entertained by 
 the Whig opposition of the day, as we know from a remark- 
 able letter of Lord Waveney. This policy unfortunately 
 passed out of sight ; but even now, I believe, it would do 
 the greatest good in Ireland. It would be something that 
 the proposed change would cause the wealth of England 
 and Scotland largely to flow into a poor country ; that 
 Irish absenteeism would be diminished ; that Ireland 
 would become, more than she is now, an attractive place 
 of resort to the traveller. But it would be far more that 
 the presence of the Imperial Parliament in College Green 
 would necessarily largely remove the ignorance of Irish 
 affairs I have just referred to ; it would make English and 
 Scotch members familiar with the requirements, the feel- 
 ings, the wishes of Irishmen ; as has happily been said, it 
 would render our Irish legislation and administration 'racy 
 of the Irish soil.' And probably more than any other 
 expedient, it would exorcise the weak phantom of Home 
 Rule by bringing Irishmen in contact with the majesty of 
 the Sovereign Assembly of the British Empire. I shall not 
 comment on the petty inconveniences the scheme might 
 cause ; really they are not worthy of serious attention. 
 
 The occasional presence of Royalty, too, in Ireland, as 
 was made manifest during the late Queen's visit, unques- 
 tionably would have beneficent results. It would gratify 
 a sentiment of Celtic nature, always attached to persons 
 rather than to institutions and laws, and especially attached 
 
 G 
 
82 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 to rulers and chiefs, which, in Ireland, has been scarcely 
 gratified before ; it would spread far and wide a happy 
 and good influence ; it would certainly improve the social 
 life of Ireland, and add something to her scanty material 
 wealth. The maintenance of the Union, however, is the 
 first requirement of a sound Irish and Imperial policy ; 
 one means of strengthening that fundamental law of these 
 realms, consistently with strict constitutional justice, nay, 
 if constitutional wrong is not to continue, has long been 
 apparent to impartial minds. The over-representation of 
 Ireland, in the House of Commons, is a flagrant anomaly, 
 acknowledged for years ; as I have remarked, it was largely 
 expected that this important subject would have been 
 taken up before this by Lord Salisbury's Government, and 
 have been settled in the Parliament of 1 895-1900. Taking 
 the test of population alone, Ireland has, compared to 
 England, Wales, and Scotland, an excess of twenty-three 
 members ; taking the test of population and property 
 combined, she has an excess probably of from thirty to 
 forty. I am willing to allow that, in this matter, we ought 
 not to follow arithmetic only ; Ireland, a poor country, far 
 away from Westminster, may have a claim to a representa- 
 tion somewhat more numerous than mere figures would 
 give her. But can anything be more unjust, nay, absurd ( 
 than that Ireland should have one hundred and three 
 members, and that the world of London, with a population 
 about the same as that of Ireland, and probably possessing 
 tenfold wealth, should have little more than half that 
 number ? This excessive representation must be reduced, 
 and Irish Nationalists cannot here appeal to the Union ; 
 the Union did not save the Established Church of Ireland, 
 secured by the Treaty in emphatic terms ; and the Union 
 must not be wrested to work gross injustice. The 
 anomaly can be only removed by a large scheme for the 
 redistribution of seats, founded on sound constitutional 
 principles ; and should this become law, as I confidently 
 
THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE 83 
 
 hope will be one of the achievements of the existing 
 Parliament, the Union will acquire a new security, for the 
 Nationalist vote in the House of Commons would be 
 greatly reduced, and the Irish Unionist vote would be 
 greatly increased. A very few figures will prove this : the 
 rural populations of the Unionist counties of Antrim and 
 Down are upwards of four hundred and thirty thousand 
 souls ; the rural populations of the Home Rule counties of 
 Kildare, Kilkenny, King's, Longford, Wicklow, and Louth 
 have a population less than three hundred and ninety- 
 eight thousand ; * yet Antrim and Down have only eight 
 members, the other six counties have no less than twelve. 
 The same disparity runs through all the Irish counties ; in 
 the boroughs of Ireland it is even more visible. Protestant 
 and Unionist Ireland, in a word, has probably fifteen or 
 sixteen members too few ; Catholic and anti -Unionist 
 Ireland fifteen or sixteen too many ; it is high time this 
 plain wrong should be redressed ; it is unnecessary to 
 point out how this would strengthen the Union. And 
 what probably is not less important, it would make the 
 representation of Ireland, not, what it is now, an utterly false 
 index of Irish opinion, but a reasonably fair and trustworthy 
 index ; were the Irish representation cut down to eighty 
 members, the Nationalists would probably command not 
 more than fifty seats ; the Unionists would command about 
 thirty ; and this, taking all things into account, would be a 
 proportion approaching what is just. The 'doing' of 
 right, in this matter, has been too long deferred ; loyal 
 Ireland feels strongly upon the subject ; the reform would 
 be altogether in the interest of the State. 
 
 * These figures are taken from the Irish census of 1891. By the 
 census of 1901, the population of Antrim and Down has increased, and 
 that of every other county in Ireland, except Dublin, has declined. 
 The over-representation of Ireland has thus become more than ever an 
 unjust anomaly. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND — SKETCH OF THE 
 HISTORY OF THE LAND SYSTEM OF IRELAND TO 
 THE YEAR 1 8/0 
 
 Great importance in the history of Ireland of the conditions of land 
 tenure — The ancient Celtic land system and its characteristics — 
 The Norman conquest of Ireland — Norman feudalism in the Irish 
 land — The policy of Henry VII., and especially of Henry VIII. 
 — The era of the conquest and confiscation of the Irish land — The 
 possessions of the O'Connors of Offaly wrested from them — 
 Forfeiture of the domains of Shane O'Neill, and of the Earl of 
 Desmond — Attempts at colonisation — All Ireland made shire land 
 —The extinction of the old Celtic land system — The Plantation 
 of Ulster — Progress of confiscation during the reigns of the two 
 first Stuarts — The Civil War — Immense confiscations made by 
 Cromwell — His scheme of colonisation a failure — The era of 
 confiscation closes after the battle of the Boyne and the fall of 
 Limerick — The Penal Code of Ireland — Its fatal effects on the 
 Irish land — Dismal period in Irish landed relations — Gradual 
 improvement — The period described by Arthur Young — Evil 
 traces of the past remain — Whiteboyism and agrarian disorder — 
 State of Irish landed relations up to the rebellion of 1798, and 
 after the Union — Over-population and the results — Distress after 
 the Peace — State of Irish landed relations up to 1844 — The Report 
 of the Devon Commission — The Famine and its effects on the 
 Irish land — The Encumbered Estates Acts — State of Irish landed 
 relations from 1848 to 1868. 
 
 The fortunes of many communities, it has truly been said, 
 have been decisively affected by the conditions of the 
 ownership and the occupation of the soil. The social, even 
 the political, life of modern Europe has been, in a great 
 
 s 4 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 85 
 
 measure, moulded by the land tenures that have grown 
 out of the feudal system ; I need only refer to the history 
 of England, of France, and of Germany. This remark, 
 however, especially applies to the events that make up 
 the annals of Ireland ; that long and unhappy tale of mis- 
 fortunes and errors is intimately associated, all through, 
 with the land, and with the relations connected with it. 
 Modern research has shown how grotesque and mischievous 
 was the ignorance of the Tudor lawyers and statesmen, 
 who described the ancient organisation of the Irish land 
 as a medley of barbarian and pernicious usages ; it was an 
 archaic and imperfect specimen of the feudal system, with 
 differences indeed, but marked with its essential features. 
 Norman feudalism, lawless and ill-ordered, was for centuries, 
 after the first Conquest, placed beside this primitive form 
 of society, in parts of a country not half subdued ; the 
 results were seen in incessant strife and discord, and in 
 social anarchy, which prevented civilisation growing up. 
 The Irishry had well-nigh driven the Englishry into the 
 sea, when Henry VII. tried to make his authority felt in 
 Ireland ; his successor, partly a Celt in blood, and a real 
 statesman, devised a noble scheme for bringing an ill- 
 governed dependency within the domain of order and 
 law, by planting an Anglo-Norman and native aristocracy 
 in the soil, subject to a strong monarchy that would have 
 protected the community as a whole. Most unfortunately 
 the policy of Henry VIII. was not carried out; in the great 
 conflict of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, 
 Ireland was drawn into a long struggle with England, and 
 was repeatedly made a place of arms for her foes ; an era 
 of savage conquest, accomplished piecemeal, with ruthless 
 confiscation following in its train, was protracted during 
 nearly a century and a half; and at the close of the reign 
 of William III., nine-tenths probably of the land of Ireland 
 had been wrested from its former possessors, and the old 
 Celtic land system had been destroyed by the sword and 
 
86 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 by law. Race and religion made this position of affairs 
 much worse ; the age of Protestant ascendency in Ireland 
 began ; in infinitely the greatest part of the island the land 
 was parcelled out among a caste of owners distinct in 
 blood and faith from the children of the soil, and lording 
 it over an oppressed peasantry ; and the system was 
 propped up by a code of cruel laws, which maintained and, 
 so to speak, stereotyped these evil divisions. The lines of 
 the land system of Ireland were thus finally laid down ; 
 a variety of economic and social causes increased and 
 deepened their extreme harshness ; and though they have 
 gradually been softened, and are now all but effaced, their 
 traces and the results are still to be seen. The last thirty 
 years have witnessed repeated attempts to effect radical 
 changes in the modes of the ownership and the occupation 
 of the land in Ireland ; they have wrought a revolution in 
 Irish landed relations, and have well-nigh turned them 
 upside down ; but the consequences have assuredly not 
 been fortunate. The land system of Ireland has been 
 made a chaos of economic disorder, of dissensions of class, 
 of legalised wrong, absolutely incompatible with social 
 progress and the general welfare. 
 
 I must glance, for an instant, at the distinctive features 
 of the land system of Ireland in the Celtic age, for despite 
 the effects of confiscation and conquest, faint traces of it 
 may still be seen, and have a kind of influence.* As was 
 the case in all communities of the Aryan stem, the land 
 originally was largely held in collective ownership; but 
 agriculture developed individual ownership by degrees, 
 though less so in Ireland than in more progressive countries. 
 The people were settled on the soil in tribes, clans, and 
 
 * For an admirable account of the ancient land system of Celtic 
 Ireland, see Maine's ' Early History of Institutions.' I may be allowed 
 to refer to an article on this work, from my pen, in the Edinburgh 
 Review of July, 1875, and to the first chapter of my ' History of 
 Ireland,' in the Cambridge ' Historical Series.' 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 87 
 
 septs, these being the larger and the smaller units; the 
 modes of the tenure of the land, misinterpreted by Eliza- 
 bethan sages, differed widely from each other, but revealed 
 the traditions of old patriarchal usage and power, especially 
 in their canons of descent and succession. The feudalisation 
 of the land, as it has been significantly called, a process 
 which took place in nearly the whole of Europe, was also 
 witnessed in Ireland, to a certain extent ; but this was 
 not so complete and strongly marked as in France and 
 England. The land, nevertheless, was, throughout the 
 island, held ultimately from a supreme monarch ; it was 
 divided, under him, among families of princely chiefs, who 
 ruled vast tracts with scarcely controlled authority ; in- 
 ferior chiefs were subject to these ; the organisation of the 
 land had much in common with the organisation of the 
 Anglo-Norman manor, and with the position of the Lord 
 Paramount of every manor, the head of the English State. 
 The Irish kings and chiefs had lands in demesne ; they had 
 a landed and a personal noblesse ; the territories they ruled 
 were held by classes strongly resembling the free tenants, 
 the villeins, and the serfs of the feudal system. All this, 
 however, was not as perfectly defined as it was in lands 
 feudalised to a higher degree; and though the Davieses 
 and Spensers were wholly in error in representing the 
 dependents of the Irish kings and chiefs as little better 
 than a horde of fighting men and slaves, Ireland never 
 fully possessed the liberties feudalism secured. The Ceile 
 of substance, who had lands of his own, seems to have been 
 in an inferior position to the English freeholder ; the Saer 
 stock and Daer stock tenants held their lands by a tenure 
 like that of the metayers of France; the Fuidhirs were 
 kept in complete subjection, and had not even the rights of 
 the villein. The land, too, was still largely held in collective 
 ownership ; in its occupation this is even now seen in back- 
 ward and poor districts ; and, curiously enough, distinctions 
 were drawn between what was a 'fair* and a 'rack rent,' 
 
88 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 words still common in the mouth of the Irish peasant, and 
 to which recent legislation has given its sanction. 
 
 As in the case of most lands where anything resembling 
 feudalism prevailed, with the single exception of England, 
 under her strong Monarchy, Ireland in these circumstances 
 was torn by continual discord, increased by the recurring 
 struggles with the Dane. The Celtic kings and chiefs, 
 nevertheless, were beloved by their people ; the land 
 system fell in with Celtic tribal ideas and sentiments. I 
 pass over the incidents of the first Norman Conquest ; 
 in the course of time, an Anglo-Norman colony was 
 established, within a Pale ever-varying in extent, and held 
 parts of the country under feudal conditions, the remaining, 
 and by far the greatest, parts being left in the possession 
 of the Celtic kings and princes. Anglo-Norman feudalism, 
 however, was completely different, in Ireland, from what 
 it was in England ; it was not subject to vigorous kingly 
 rule ; it was confined within comparatively small limits. 
 In these circumstances the Pale fell into the hands of a 
 few leading and great families ; these, as had been largely 
 the case in Scotland, formed a domineering and oppressive 
 noblesse, continually engaged in quarrels between them- 
 selves, and in petty wars with the Celtic chiefs, and 
 completely superior to the royal power in England. The 
 Geraldines, the Butlers, the De Burghs, and other great 
 houses, had no law but their own wills in their vast 
 lordships ; their exactions and tyranny became a by- 
 word ; their lives were spent in savage feudal strife, and 
 in 'hostings against the Irish enemy.' Strange to say, 
 too, these scions of a mighty conquering race fell under 
 the spell of the Celtic genius, and, as it was said, ' became 
 more Irish than the Irish themselves ; : they were at least 
 largely assimilated to a Celtic model, and they adopted 
 many of the usages of the Celt. It was not much other- 
 wise in the Celtic region outside the Pale ; the Irish chiefs 
 often blended in marriage with the Anglo-Norman settlers ; 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 
 
 but they were continually at war with them, and with 
 each other. Under these conditions, feudalism, in its best 
 aspects, could take no root, in the land, in Ireland ; and 
 there is much reason to believe that the archaic Irish land 
 system was gradually changed and almost broken up, the 
 power of the kings and chiefs being greatly increased, and 
 the position of their dependents being made essentially 
 worse. It is obvious that in a land, a scene of such dis- 
 order and misrule, civilisation and all that the word 
 implies could not exist ; Ireland was probably more 
 barbarous at the close of the fifteenth century than she 
 had been when she first saw Henry of Anjou. The Pale 
 had been restricted within ever-narrowing bounds ; genera- 
 tions of colonising ' Englishry ' had entered the country, 
 and had left it in angry despair ; the ' Irishry ' had en- 
 croached on their conqueror's domain ; the work of 
 Strongbow and Fitzstephen appeared to be undone. 
 Especially it was observed that nothing like a middle 
 class, even then the best element in the social life of 
 England, had been able to develop itself in Ireland, and 
 that the humbler classes were always in a state of 
 wretchedness, ground down by exaction, and exposed to 
 incessant wrongs of all kinds. ' What common folk of all 
 the world ' — these were the words of a State paper of the 
 age — 'is so poor, so feeble, so evil be seen in town and 
 field, so greatly oppressed and trodden underfoot, fares 
 so evil, with so great misery, and with so wretched a life, 
 as the common folk of Ireland ? ' 
 
 Henry VII. strengthened the authority of the Crown in 
 Ireland ; the Viceroyalty of Poynings marks an epoch in 
 her chequered annals ; but the conduct of the king was 
 shifting and weak ; the land fell under the control of the 
 great House of Kildare ; the Irishry were driven back, but 
 in no sense subdued. Surrey, the victor of Flodden, 
 intreated Henry VIII. to make the country his own by 
 sheer force of arms ; but his master refused in striking 
 
9o PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 language ; and proposed a scheme for bringing Ireland 
 under the control of the Monarchy, for encouraging 
 civilisation and promoting order, the wisest that has ever 
 suggested itself to a British statesman. He made several 
 of 'the degenerate' Norman noblesse peers; he extended 
 the same dignity to several Irish chiefs ; he assembled 
 representatives of Ireland in a Parliament composed of 
 both races ; he appointed commissioners to go through 
 the country and to punish crime ; above all — and this 
 deserves special notice — he tried to conciliate the Celtic 
 community by bringing their usages within the cognisance 
 of the law, and giving them effectual legal sanction ; and 
 he condemned the attempts being already made to force 
 laws on them peculiar to England. Had this enlightened 
 policy been steadily pursued, the history of Ireland would 
 have run a wholly different course ; but destiny, that has 
 played so sinister a part in Irish affairs, interfered to 
 thwart the admirable designs of the king. The great 
 Geraldine rebellion broke out, supported by irregular Celtic 
 risings ; from this time forward, during five generations 
 of man, the era of cruel but intermittent conquest, ac- 
 companied by wholesale confiscation, set in. The powerful 
 tribe of the O'Connors of Offaly, closely associated with 
 the fallen House of Kildare, was the first to feel the weight 
 of the arm of England ; its territories were forcibly over- 
 run and annexed, given the name of the King's and the 
 Queen's Counties, and peopled with a colony of settlers 
 from England. Celtic Ireland ere long was brought into 
 the conflict between Elizabeth and Philip II., the repre- 
 sentatives of the faiths that were dividing Christendom ; 
 the princely chief, Shane O'Neill, fell a victim to the 
 English conquerors, though their quarrel with him was 
 not wholly one of seeking the assistance of a foreign 
 enemy ; his vast domains were, also, in part forfeited, in 
 part handed over to a puppet of English power. The 
 frightful Desmond rebellion followed ; it was directly 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 91 
 
 encouraged by the Pope and by Spain ; after a protracted 
 struggle approaching a real civil war, the immense lord- 
 ships of the great Geraldine House were confiscated, and 
 granted to a colony of English blood. Tyrone, the real 
 successor of his kinsman, Shane O'Neill, a soldier and 
 statesman of no ordinary parts, seeing, as he bitterly said, 
 that his 'lands were marked down by the spoiler,' en- 
 deavoured, not without partial success, to combine a great 
 Irish League against England ; he entered into an alliance 
 with Spain ; a Spanish army landed on the southern coast 
 of Munster ; after a long and sanguinary contest, Tyrone 
 yielded, but his resistance had been so formidable that he 
 was allowed to retain his possessions. 
 
 The subjugation of a large part of Ireland, in the 
 Elizabethan wars, was marked by incidents of a most 
 atrocious character. The Government had no regular 
 army to act in the field ; it was compelled largely to rely 
 on armed levies of the Englishry, and on bodies of the 
 Irishry attached to the conqueror's standards ; for in this, 
 as in nearly all instances throughout their history, the 
 Irish Celts were at feud with each other ; Celtic Ireland 
 was a house divided against itself. The queen, it has 
 been written, ' ruled over blood and ashes,' when Mount- 
 joy sheathed his victorious sword ; the memory of this 
 period still lives in Irish tradition. A season of exhaustion 
 and repose ensued after James I. had ascended the throne ; 
 but the time, in the phrase of Tacitus, had an evil aspect 
 in peace itself. The Pale had long before this been effaced ; 
 conquest and confiscation had spread over nearly the 
 whole island ; the domination of England was felt almost 
 everywhere. As the result, the whole of Ireland was 
 made shire land ; the old Celtic land system, which still 
 widely prevailed, was swept away by decisions of the 
 Anglican Courts of Justice ; it was declared to be 'a lewd 
 and not law-worthy thing ; ' all the Irish land was subjected 
 to English modes of tenure ; they were imposed on a 
 
92 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 people which detested these gifts of the stranger ; in- 
 numerable tribal rights were destroyed. Ere long the 
 work of confiscation began again ; the domains of Tyrone 
 and of his kinsman O'Donnell were pronounced forfeited 
 for reasons that have never been ascertained ; the Crown 
 was placed in possession of nearly six counties of Ulster. 
 Up to this time the settlements of English colonists, 
 which had been made in Ireland by Tudor conquest, 
 had failed ; the colonists had been almost lost in the 
 midst of the Irishry, who hemmed them around. This 
 immense confiscation was, however, in part successful ; it 
 was carried out on comparatively enlightened principles ; 
 it has produced the famous Plantation of Ulster ; and 
 this, with other settlements in the counties of Antrim and 
 Down, has established, in a large part of the northern 
 province of Ireland, a hardy and thriving community, in 
 the main, of Scottish blood. Confiscation, nevertheless, 
 did not stop here; 'the ravages of war,' in Burke's language, 
 were 'carried on amidst seeming peace;' enormous tracts 
 were torn from their former owners on pretexts usually of 
 the flimsiest kind, and were flung to Court favourites, to 
 jobbing speculators, to greedy adventurers of the baser 
 sort. By this time three-fourths probably of the soil of 
 Ireland had passed into the hands of a new race of pos- 
 sessors ; the descendants of Anglo-Norman nobles and of 
 the Celtic princes had been sufferers well-nigh in the same 
 proportion. At last Strafford marked out the whole 
 province of Connaught, for what has been called 'his 
 majestic rapine ; ' this and other innumerable acts of 
 spoliation and wrong unquestionably were the paramount 
 cause of the great Celtic rising of 1641. Another and 
 soon to be a most potent element of evils and troubles had 
 already begun to make its sinister presence felt in Ireland. 
 In the great religious schism of the sixteenth century, 
 England had become Protestant, Ireland had remained 
 Catholic, and each had taken opposite sides in the conflict 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 93 
 
 that followed ; though the Elizabethan wars were rather 
 struggles of race than of faith. But as conquest and con- 
 fiscation progressed in Ireland, the Anglican Church, a 
 scion of the Norman Church of the Pale, was erected on 
 the ruins of its Celtic Catholic rival ; the land more and 
 more became possessed by settlers alien in creed from the 
 old owners, and from the vanquished children of the soil ; 
 and harsh laws had begun to deepen the distinctions 
 between them. Nevertheless, though its signs had in 
 some measure appeared, the era of Protestant ascendency 
 and Catholic subjection had not been developed in Ireland, 
 as yet, in its worst aspects. 
 
 The wild Celtic rising of 1641 was followed by a rising 
 of the old Englishry of the Pale — the descendants of the 
 first Anglo-Norman settlers ; both movements were pro- 
 bably encouraged from France ; though widely different, 
 they ran into each other. The great Civil War was now run- 
 ning its course in England ; Ireland, for the most part, took 
 the side of the king ; the majority of Englishmen were 
 certainly on the side of the Parliament. I cannot retrace 
 the scenes of the contest in Ireland ; after a fierce and 
 protracted struggle, in which an envoy of the Pope became 
 the representative of an ill-united Irish League ; in which 
 Preston and Ormond led the forces of the Pale, and Owen 
 Roe O'Neill was at the head of the Irish Celts, — the whole 
 island was subjugated by the sword of Cromwell, as it 
 never had been subjugated before. Drogheda and Wex- 
 ford are names of woe in the annals of Ireland ; but the 
 conquest of the Protector, ruthless as it was, was not so 
 cruel as that of the Elizabethan soldiers ; if deeply stained 
 with blood, it was rapid and completely decisive. The 
 colony in Ulster had begun to flourish ; Cromwell designed 
 a scheme for the colonisation of the vanquished country 
 more thorough and extensive than any which had been 
 designed before. Three-fourths of Ireland had been in 
 arms against the Parliament ; that assembly had made 
 
94 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 grants by anticipation of Irish forfeited lands to 'adven- 
 turers ' who had advanced it moneys ; an opportunity for 
 immense confiscations had arisen ; the Protector was not 
 slow to take advantage of it ; his Puritan fanaticism, his 
 hatred of the Irish people, especially of its 'idolatrous 
 Papists,' his strong English and religious sympathies, 
 united to confirm him in his purpose. The forfeited lands 
 in four of the Irish counties were appropriated to the 
 Commonwealth and its uses; those in eighteen were to be 
 granted to the 'adventurers' and the soldiery of the late 
 conquest ; those in seven were to be allotted to the army 
 in England. The grants were to be either free, or to be 
 purchased at nominal prices ; the owners, who had lost 
 their lands, were to be deported to Connaught — ' Hell ' was 
 the alternative, the tradition runs — and ' Courts of Claims,' 
 as they were called, were to be set up, to adjudicate on the 
 conduct of those who were to be dispossessed — they were 
 to be subjected to a test which scarcely one could satisfy — 
 and practically to measure confiscation out under the 
 pretence of law. By these means Cromwell calculated 
 that some forty thousand colonists, of English blood and 
 of the Puritan faith, would be poured into the millions of 
 acres which the sword had placed in the hands of his 
 Government ; these would form a prosperous settlement 
 loyal to England ; would keep rebellion in Ireland for 
 ever down; and would regenerate a land taken from a 
 race akin to the Amalekites of old. As a foretaste of 
 the new and glorious order of things, Sir William Petty, 
 a very able man, remarkably skilful in feathering his own 
 nest, made a cadastral survey of Ireland, which still 
 remains. 
 
 Cromwell's scheme of confiscation was thoroughly carried 
 out, spite of much angry wrangling between the Puritan 
 warriors. The remains of the defeated Irish armies went, 
 in thousands, into exile in foreign lands ; they were the 
 heralds of the renowned soldiery who, for a century and 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 95 
 
 a half, were deadly, but honourable foes of the British 
 name. The rule of the Protector in Ireland was stern but 
 enforced peace ; Ireland was prostrate in the exhaustion 
 of despair ; there is much proof that, under the Crom- 
 wellian settlement, the country made a kind of material 
 progress. But Cromwell's great scheme of colonisation 
 failed, as such schemes had failed in many instances 
 before; a large majority of the 'adventurers' and the 
 soldiers sold their possessions, usually for a mere nothing : 
 many ' degenerated ' like the old Norman families, and, won 
 over by the spells ' of the daughters of Heth,' had, in one 
 or two generations, become 'mere Irish.' The ultimate 
 result of the Cromwellian conquest was to establish in 
 Ireland three or four thousand owners of the soil, of 
 English blood and Puritan leanings, without the support of 
 inferior dependents, in the midst of a vanquished popula- 
 tion hostile in race and faith ; the sentiments thus engen- 
 dered have never died out ; to this day ' a Cromwellian 
 landlord ' is a name of reproach in Catholic Ireland. At 
 the Restoration hope for a moment revived in the hearts 
 of the ruined owners, who had been dispossessed by 
 Cromwell, and of whom hundreds had fought for the 
 Crown ; but this was dashed by the perfidy of Charles II. 
 and his courtiers ; the Cromwellian forfeitures were, in the 
 main, confirmed ; large tracts were given back to favourites 
 of the Stuarts, but thousands of beggared families lost 
 their estates for ever through a policy of cruel baseness 
 and wrong. Ireland remained quiescent for nearly thirty 
 years ; she even prospered under the wise rule of Ormond 
 — one of the noblest figures in her unhappy history ; but 
 the bitter memories of the past lived in the conquered 
 people, though, as has repeatedly been seen in a Celtic 
 race, they were treasured in silence, and caused little 
 apparent trouble. James II. ascended the throne in 1685 ; 
 he had a great opportunity to mitigate many of the 
 wrongs of Ireland ; he might have removed some of the 
 
96 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 evils of the Cromwellian conquest, and have effected 
 changes in the settlement of the land, which, at least, 
 would have done partial justice. But the unfortunate 
 king was a bigot, and, in no sense, a statesman ; like his 
 father he tried the desperate policy of making use of 
 Ireland in his designs against English liberties ; he sent 
 Tyrconnell to Dublin, and, in a few months, revolution 
 had broken out through the country ; English and Pro- 
 testant Ireland was well-nigh trampled underfoot ; Catholic 
 and Celtic Ireland rose up in a wild hope of revenge. I 
 cannot even glance at the stirring events that followed ; 
 the descendants of ruined barons of the Pale and of Celtic 
 princes driven from their lands and their homes, joined in a 
 great effort to raise a large armed force ; the rising almost 
 assumed a national aspect ; but after the Boyne and the 
 fall of Limerick, it was finally quelled by William III. 
 The process of confiscation was once more renewed ; 
 thousands of acres were taken forcibly from those who had 
 resisted in the field, and were handed over to a new race 
 of colonists belonging to the blood and the creed of the 
 victors ; and the shameful violation of a solemn Treaty 
 made all that was cruel in spoliation worse. 
 
 The era of conquest in Ireland and of confiscation by 
 force — an agony prolonged for a century and a half — was 
 brought to an end in the reign of William III. This is 
 not the place to examine the question on which side, 
 as between England and Ireland, the balance of the 
 wrongs that were done inclines ; but if much that is cruel 
 and shameful is to be laid to the charge of England, 
 Ireland, it cannot be forgotten, crossed her path repeatedly 
 in an age of grave national perils and troubles, and, 
 moreover, wrecked her own cause by her wretched dis- 
 sensions. The Irish land had now nearly all fallen into 
 the hands of a caste of owners, of English and Scottish 
 descent, and in faith Protestant, divided from a people of 
 Catholic occupiers for the most part of the Irish race ; 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 97 
 
 wide lines of demarcation had been drawn between them ; 
 and there was no middle class to bridge over the gulf. In 
 a part of Ulster alone where the proprietors and the holders 
 of the soil were largely of the same religion and blood, was 
 there the promise of a more auspicious order of things ; 
 even here causes of disunion were not wanting. Nor 
 were these the only vices and dangers of a land system 
 which has scarcely had a parallel. Enormous tracts had 
 been bestowed on owners who never saw their estates ; 
 absenteeism existed to an immense extent ; their lands, 
 too, had, in thousands of instances, been underlet to a class 
 of intermediate owners, who were to form a body of most 
 oppressive landlords. In addition, the representatives of 
 numbers of ruined families still vegetated on the domains 
 which had been their own ; the few families which had 
 escaped from the spoilers, were held in reverence by the 
 peasantry around ; elements of disorder and trouble con- 
 tinued to fester. The destruction, too, of the old Celtic 
 modes of land tenure, and the substitution of the English 
 system, had unjustly annihilated tribal rights wholesale ; 
 the free, and other dependents of the Irish chiefs, had sunk 
 into the position of mere tenants at will, that is, at the 
 mercy of foreign and often unknown masters. One of 
 the worst, if not the most apparent evil, of the gigantic 
 confiscations which had taken place, and on which the 
 land system had, so to speak, been founded, was that the 
 respect which attaches to the ancient ownership of land, 
 and which forms, perhaps, its surest support, could hardly 
 exist in any part of Ireland ; the disastrous consequences 
 may be traced to the present hour. Landlords, with titles 
 of yesterday, won by the sword, could not feel the interest 
 in their estates and in the inhabitants on them, naturally 
 felt by owners of gentle and ancient descent ; the land 
 which, as has been said, had been flung like a fox to 
 ravening hounds, could not attract to it happy and 
 peaceful memories ; the very Government had learned to 
 
 H 
 
98 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 think it could deal with the land as it pleased, and treated 
 the rights gained by confiscation with contempt. Pre- 
 scription, the strongest cement of property, had no place in 
 this ill-compacted land system.* 
 
 The era of Protestant ascendency bringing Catholic 
 subjection with it, had now set in for many years in 
 Ireland ; its evils were aggravated by harsh divisions of 
 race, and by more than a century of bitter memories ; its 
 effects were more conspicuous in the land than in other 
 social relations. This unnatural and calamitous position 
 of affairs might, however, have been replaced ere long by 
 a better order of things, had it not been artificially main- 
 tained and made enduring by legislation unexampled for 
 
 * In the case of this, as of all the chapters, a list of the principal 
 authorities and sources of information will be found in the preface to 
 this book. For the conquest and confiscations of the Irish land, from 
 the Norman Conquest to the end of the reign of William III., see 
 ' The Statute of Kilkenny,' edited by James Hardiman ; ' The Dis- 
 coverie of Sir John Davies ; ' ' The Carew Papers,' edited by J. S. 
 Brewer and William Bullen ; Spenser's ' View of the State of Ireland ; ' 
 Holingshead's 'Chronicles of Ireland;' Carte's 'Life of Ormond ; ' 
 Lord Clanricarde's ' Memoirs ; ' Sir William Petty's ' Political Anatomy 
 of Ireland ; ' ' Macarias Excidium ; ' and King's ' State of the Pro- 
 testants of Ireland.' As regards modern authorities, numerous, and 
 some very valuable, the reader may be referred to Froude's ' History 
 of England,' vol. ii. ch. viii. ; vol. v. ch. xxviii.; vol. viii. chs. vii., xi. ; 
 vol. x. ch. xxiv. ; vol. xi. ch. xxvii. ; to Mr. Lecky's ' History of Eng- 
 land in the Eighteenth Century,' vol. ii. ch. vi. ; and to the Irish 
 chapters in Mr. Gardiner's ' History of England,' from the Accession 
 of James I. to the outbreak of the Civil War ; to his ' History of the 
 Great Civil War,' vol. i. chs. vi., xi. ; vol. ii. chs. xxvii., xxxvii., xliv. ; 
 and to the Irish chapters of his ' History of the Commonwealth and 
 Protectorate.' Other modern works on the subject are Sigerson's 
 ' History of Land Tenure in Ireland • ' ' An Historical Account of the 
 Plantation of Ulster,' by the Rev. George Hill ; 'The Cromwellian 
 Settlement of Ireland,' by John P. Prendergast ; and the ' Life of Sir 
 William Petty,' by Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice. See a review by me 
 of this last work in the Edinburgh Review of July, 1895 ; and also 
 chs. iii., iv., and v. of my ' History of Ireland, 1494-1868,' referred to 
 before. There are innumerable minor authorities ; and Hallam's 
 1 Chapter on Ireland,' vol. iii., may be studied. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 99 
 
 its far-reaching cruelty. I cannot attempt to describe the 
 Penal Code of Ireland ; in the emphatic words of Burke, 
 'it was a complete system, full of coherence and con- 
 sistency ; well digested and well composed in all its parts ; 
 it was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance ; and 
 as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and 
 degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of 
 human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted 
 ingenuity of man.' * The objects of these execrable laws 
 were threefold : to exclude the Irish Catholic whether of 
 Anglo-Irish or Celtic descent — misfortune had well-nigh 
 effaced the distinction — from every office of trust in the 
 State, from every profession, almost from every walk of 
 life ; to persecute and proscribe the Catholic Church of 
 Ireland, and to place its priesthood under a humiliating 
 ban, and finally to ruin and degrade the few remaining 
 Catholic owners of the soil ; to prevent the Irish Catholic 
 from acquiring any real interest in it ; and, above all, to 
 keep the Catholic peasantry in a condition of thraldom.f 
 The Code was only too successful in compassing its ends ; 
 I pass from its operation as regards the two first, to point 
 out how it sought to attain the third, and how its provisions 
 affected the Irish land and the manifold relations con- 
 nected with it. The estate of the Irish Catholic owner 
 was not to follow the ordinary courses of descent ; it was 
 * to gavel,' and to be divided among many persons ; this 
 was for the avowed purpose of making 'the landed property 
 of Papists crumble away, and disappear.' The Irish 
 Catholic owner was subjected to cruel enactments that 
 literally set his household against him ; his wife and 
 children were bribed to become his foes ; law sate at his 
 
 * ' Letter to Sir Hercules Langriche : ' { Works,' vol. i. p. 560, ed. 
 1834. 
 
 f For an account of the penal laws of Ireland, see Vincent Scully 
 on 'The Irish Penal Laws ; ' Howard's ' Popery Laws ; ' and Burke's 
 ' Tracts on the Popery Laws,' a short but masterly work. 
 
I oo PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 hearth to make his existence wretched. The Irish Catholic, 
 too, was forbidden to acquire land by purchase or even to 
 possess an incumbrance on it ; as far as possible the owner- 
 ship of land was strictly confined to the Protestant caste. 
 But the wrong that, in its consequences at least, was 
 perhaps the worst, was that the Catholic occupier of the 
 Irish soil could not obtain anything like an advantageous 
 tenure ; he could not have a lease for a period beyond 
 thirty-one years, and this, too, at an excessive rent ; and, 
 in the great mass of instances, he was a serf holding merely 
 at will. 
 
 The forty years that succeeded the death of William III. 
 are certainly the most mournful period in Irish history. 
 The memories of conquest and confiscation were still fresh ; 
 the Penal Code kept Catholic Ireland in its chains ; society 
 was fashioned on the type of the domination of a class, 
 separated from a whole community in race and faith. 
 Nothing was left undone to perpetuate this evil order of 
 things ; the Irish Parliament was a mere oligarchy of the 
 sons of the colonists of Elizabeth, Cromwell, and William, 
 apart from a few leading men in Ulster ; its legislation 
 for the vanquished race was barbarous ; Lords-Lieutenant 
 spoke of the Irish Catholics as of 'the common enemy;' 
 a ' Papist was presumed not to exist ' in the Irish Courts 
 of Justice. Meanwhile the penal laws were relentlessly 
 carried out for years ; the Irish Catholic was placed under 
 a universal ban ; the Catholic Church of Ireland lay, as it 
 were, in the valley of the shadow of death. But the direst 
 consequences appeared in the land, and in the social life 
 of the landed classes ; these were most calamitous and 
 have still left their traces. Many of the few Catholic 
 owners abandoned their estates, and carried their swords 
 into foreign lands, where some rose to well-deserved 
 eminence ; a small number conformed to the dominant 
 faith in order to exist in comparative peace at home ; the 
 majority clung to their lands and bowed their heads to 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 101 
 
 oppression. The Protestant lords of the soil were what 
 their antecedents and the law had made them ; they were 
 long a harsh and exacting order of men, filled with bigotry 
 and the pride of a conquering race ; they regarded the 
 inferiors they ruled as pariahs and helots. But, as usually 
 happens, when society is in an unnatural state, they did 
 not prosper amidst the ruins around them ; their lands 
 were kept on a kind of pernicious mortmain, as they could 
 not mortgage or sell them freely ; absenteeism with all its 
 mischiefs greatly increased ; and middleman tenures largely 
 multiplied, subjecting the peasantry to a detestable breed 
 of landlords, Protestants and of English descent, like their 
 superiors, but much worse tyrants. As for the mass of the 
 Catholic occupiers of the soil, they were kept down in the 
 lowest state of serfdom ; but multitudes found their way into 
 foreign armies ; ' the wild geese,' as they were pathetically 
 called, flew to Austria and, above all, to France, where, in 
 the ranks of the celebrated Irish Brigade — ' ever and every- 
 where' true to the Bourbon lilies — they won renown at 
 Dettingen, Fontenoy, and other fields of fame. The aspect 
 of Ireland bore too faithful witness to the misery engendered 
 in this evil order of things. The country was still covered 
 with the wrecks of the late wars ; the habitations, even of 
 the Protestant gentry, were squalid and mean ; the towns 
 were, in many instances, sinking into decay ; the peasantry 
 were huddled together into villages of huts ; the traveller 
 roamed through vast wastes of unfenced pasturage, evidences 
 of a land almost left in a state of nature. Hideous famines 
 were of repeated occurrence ; one, that of 1739-41, swept 
 the population away in tens of thousands ; the Irish Parlia- 
 ment characteristically did nothing to help the sufferers ; 
 it met the emergency by strengthening the means to en- 
 force the payment of rent. The miserable condition of 
 Ireland was made worse by the legislation of the British 
 Parliament, which treated the country as a conquered 
 colony ; and, true to the principles of the mercantile 
 
102 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 system, impeded or prevented the growth of several Irish 
 industries. This was, of course, most injurious to the 
 Protestant settlers ; but these were held down by the ruling 
 power ; as was finely said, ' they knelt to England on the 
 necks of their countrymen.' The state of things in the 
 colonised parts of Ulster was somewhat better ; but 
 the Scottish and Presbyterian population of this corner of 
 Ireland had not a few causes of serious complaint.* 
 
 In the next generation a great but gradual change passed 
 over the state of the Irish community. The Penal Code 
 was not in letter relaxed ; but the evil spirit which had 
 conceived it lost much of its force. The men who had 
 fought at the Boyne and at Aghrim had passed away ; the 
 human conscience, moved by the influences of the eigh- 
 teenth century, revolted from the barbarous legislation of 
 a half-fanatical age. The Irish Catholics slowly began to 
 make themselves felt in the State ; many amassed large 
 fortunes in foreign commerce; shut out as they still were 
 by law from almost every profession and office, they made 
 their way into the medical calling, and especially at the 
 Bar, where their disabilities were evaded or ignored. The 
 Catholic Church was no longer proscribed ; its worship, 
 indeed, was still carried on under degrading conditions; 
 but its priesthood were permitted to perform their sacred 
 functions in peace ; its dignitaries were even countenanced 
 
 * For the state of Ireland and of the Irish land at this period, see 
 the Irish Statute Book from 1700 to about 1750, and especially the 
 writings of Swift and Berkeley on Irish affairs. Swift, however, is not 
 just to the Irish landed gentry, many as were their faults. See also the 
 ' Letters' of Archbishop Boulter, the virtual ruler of Ireland during a 
 series of years, and of Archbishop Synge. Reference, too, may be 
 made to Molyneux's 'Case of Ireland,' and to Hutchinson's and 
 Caldwell's ' Restraints on the Trade of Ireland.' For modern autho- 
 rities, consult Lecky's ' History of England in the Eighteenth Cen- 
 tury,' vol. ii. ch. vii. ; vol. iv. chs. xvi., xvii. Froude's ' English in 
 Ireland' is very inaccurate and one-sided for this period ; but his fine 
 romance, the 'Two Chiefs of Dunboy,' contains a brilliant, and, in the 
 main, a true account of the state of Irish social life in those days. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 103 
 
 by the men in power at the Castle. This great social 
 change was conspicuously seen in the land ; landed relations 
 were markedly improved, and partly transformed. The 
 Catholic owners were permitted to hold their estates free 
 from the cruel vexations of the past ; they began to live on 
 terms of friendship with the Protestant caste; legal fictions 
 annulled the laws which had made their lives wretched ; 
 their lands were, in many instances, held by the Protestant 
 gentry on secret trusts ; and these, though contrary to law, 
 were, as a rule, most honourably fulfilled. The principal, 
 however, and most decisive change appeared in the position 
 and the sentiments of the Protestant lords of the soil. As 
 time rolled on, and threw its kindly growths over the settle- 
 ment of confiscation and the sword, these men began to 
 feel that Ireland was their country and home ; they became, 
 to a certain extent, Irishmen ; they felt sympathy, by 
 degrees, with the conquered serfs in their midst. This 
 feeling was strengthened by the tyrannous selfishness of 
 the British Parliament, which treated Ireland as if she were 
 its footstool, and of the official class, nearly all Englishmen, 
 who lorded it over the land they despised ; an ' Irish 
 interest ' grew up in the Parliament at College Green, 
 composed very largely of the Protestant landlords ; this 
 became patriotic, in a certain sense, and a protector of the 
 scanty rights of Ireland. As social order, too, was seldom 
 disturbed, the wealth of the country had considerably 
 increased ; the gentry acquired a greater interest in their 
 estates, and became more and more attached to them ; 
 absenteeism, as the result, perceptibly lessened ; and middle- 
 man tenures, though still prevalent, diminished remarkably 
 in the more progressive counties. The deep lines of 
 demarcation which kept apart the owners and the occupiers 
 of the soil were thus to a certain extent bridged over ; the 
 Irish landlord, especially if resident, became a kindlier 
 superior than his fathers had been; the Irish peasant 
 became less a stranger to him. 
 
104 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 The evidences of this better order of things became 
 manifest on the face of the country. Agriculture, though 
 still backward, made real progress ; the breeds of farming 
 animals greatly improved ; the huge breadths of pasturage 
 had a less deserted aspect. The country towns had 
 generally advanced ; the land had been opened by good 
 roads ; the means of locomotion had been largely multi- 
 plied. The rental of Ireland had doubled within living 
 memory ; in some counties, indeed, it was nearly as high 
 as it is now ; the land was at a price of more years' purchase 
 than it is at the close of the nineteenth century. It was 
 at this period that the great country houses of Ireland were 
 built, and their vast demesnes laid out; the wages of 
 labour were low, but had distinctly risen ; the peasant hind, 
 Arthur Young tells us, in point of food and clothing, was 
 as well off as his fellow in England. The land was largely 
 parcelled out into considerable farms ; but small holdings 
 were on the increase; and the cottar system, in the course 
 of time to become a source of manifold evils, was not yet 
 a cause of much mischief ; the pressure of population on 
 the soil was not severely felt. Many of the great landlords, 
 too, were excellent men ; they ruled the country well, and 
 greatly improved their estates ; in numberless instances 
 they had won the hearts of dependents, who regarded them 
 as kind masters. Yet the picture was not without a dark 
 side ; this land system still had evil, nay, repulsive, features. 
 Except in the best part of Ulster the deep divisions of race 
 and faith continued to be profoundly marked ; the Penal 
 Code had made these, to a great extent, indelible. There 
 was still much oppression and exaction in landed relations ; 
 the class of small landlords and the class of middlemen were 
 too generally tyrannical and harsh; complaints of over- 
 renting were not infrequent; and if the great landlords, as 
 a rule, were not severe superiors, many were extravagant, 
 addicted to excess, and reckless duellists ; they bore a 
 strong resemblance to the seigneurie of the old French 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 105 
 
 Monarchy. The peasantry, too, remained serfs, illiterate, 
 ignorant, and superstitious ; the good feelings they often 
 had for their lords had too much of the submissiveness of 
 the slave; and virtuous as their women ordinarily were, 
 they too generally yielded to the lusts of their masters 
 The habitations, besides, of this population were still 
 wretched ; if their lot had assuredly become better, it was 
 often hard, above all, degraded. They had begun to feel 
 more acutely the ills they suffered; in many counties they 
 had banded themselves together into lawless leagues, to 
 protect themselves and to resist authority. These associa- 
 tions, known by the general name of Whiteboys — perhaps 
 taken from the Camisards of the Cevennes — had as their 
 objects the preservation of rights of commonage, the 
 extinction of tithes, and the reduction of rents ; they may 
 be traced back to the great confiscations of the past ; they 
 were held together by secret leaders and passwords ; and 
 they often kept whole districts in a state of terror. A 
 Draconic Code was directed against them ; though often 
 put down they have risen to life again ; Ireland has never 
 since been completely free from them ; their influence 
 still is distinctly apparent. Associations of somewhat a 
 similar kind, known as Steelboys and Oakboys, were formed 
 even in the good parts of Ulster ; but they were much less 
 dangerous and were not permanent. It is a characteristic 
 of Whiteboyism, as it has ever since been called, that it has 
 always had a political side, and lends itself to revolutionary 
 movements against government itself.* 
 
 Though Protestant ascendency was still supreme at 
 
 * By far the best account of the state of Ireland, at this period, is 
 to be found in the celebrated 'Tour' of Arthur Young, who wrote in 
 1776-78. See also Mr. Lecky's 'History of England in the Eigh- 
 teenth Century,' vol. vi. chs. xxiv., xxv. ; vol. vii. ch. xxvii. The 
 ' Irlande, Sociale, Politique, et Religieuse ' of Gustave de Beaumont 
 may also be consulted ; but though a very able work, it is that of a 
 democratic doctrinaire. For the Whiteboy movements, see the Irish 
 Statute Book, and Sir George Lewis on ' Irish Disturbances.' 
 
ro6 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 this period, the confiscations of the past had not been 
 forgotten ; they were treasured in the minds of the de- 
 scendants of the old Catholic families, and of the population 
 among which they lived. The extinction, too, of the 
 tribal Irish tenures, had, we have seen, been a cause of 
 grievous wrongs ; this was a tradition, also, handed down 
 from father to son, and was still fresh in the remembrance 
 of a whole race. The land system, though to outward 
 seeming secure, nevertheless rested on unstable founda- 
 tions, as was to appear in the course of time ; another 
 element of disturbance was being formed, which ultimately 
 was to have immense force. Under the modes of land 
 tenure, which prevailed in England, since the system of 
 small holdings had been broken up, the land had generally 
 been laid out in large farms ; partly from this circumstance, 
 and partly owing to custom, the charge of making per- 
 manent improvements of the land had almost everywhere 
 devolved on the owner of the soil ; a tenant, who rented a 
 farm, took it, so to speak, equipped with the buildings and 
 other things of the kind that were suitable to it. But in 
 Ireland, partly because small farms were numerous, and 
 partly because the custom had never grown up — the history 
 of the past fully accounts for this — the permanent im- 
 provements were very seldom made by the landlord ; the 
 tenant, who held land, had to add, as it were, its plant to 
 it ; he had to do much that gave it any real value. As 
 the inevitable result, the Irish occupier of the soil felt that 
 he had acquired a concurrent right in it; this, if the im- 
 provements were solid and lasting, might almost amount 
 to a partial joint-ownership, at least give him, in equity, 
 a real hold on the land. But a right of this kind was not 
 recognised by the law, founded as this was upon notions 
 of English tenure ; it was liable to be destroyed should 
 the tenant be dispossessed ; and as the tenure of the 
 immense majority of the occupiers of the soil in Ireland 
 was either at will, or for a short term at a high rent, this 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 107 
 
 right, essentially of a quasi-proprietary kind, was made 
 precarious, and had no legal protection. With the pre- 
 science of genius, Burke perceived the evils that might 
 grow out of this state of things, though, as yet, these were 
 not much felt ; he saw that it discouraged improvement 
 of almost every kind ; especially he saw that the denial of 
 legal sanction to the rights in the land a tenant might 
 have, and the fact that his tenure was short and uncertain, 
 might become a source of grave wrong, and of far-reaching 
 discontent. In a word, he detected an economic vice in 
 the land system of Ireland which, in the long run, was to 
 do great mischief; and curiously enough he indicated the 
 remedies that ought to be applied, and pointed out the 
 true principles of a reform of Irish land tenure. It would 
 have been well had British statesmen adopted these ; his 
 simple, just, and statesmanlike plan puts to shame the 
 ill-designed and unsuccessful attempts that have been made 
 to recast the Irish land system of late years, and the 
 false, reckless, and socialistic theories at present current on 
 this important subject.* 
 
 I must pass over even the main events of the history of 
 Ireland, after this period, up to the close of the eighteenth 
 century. The ' Irish interest,' mainly composed of the 
 great landed gentry, and turning to account the American 
 War, compelled the Parliament at Westminster to relax 
 many of the commercial restraints on Ireland, and to con- 
 cede her a partial free trade ; under the guidance of the 
 illustrious Grattan it obtained legislative independence for 
 the Irish Parliament. At the same time the Penal Code 
 was largely repealed ; the Irish Catholic was permitted to 
 acquire the ownership of the soil ; before long he received 
 the electoral franchise, though he was still excluded from 
 the Irish Houses of Lords and Commons. In these circum- 
 stances, Ireland made real material and social progress ; 
 
 * See Burke's 'Tracts on the Popery Laws,' vol. ii. pp. 445, 446. 
 Arthur Young, too, often dwells on this subject. 
 
io8 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 the wealth of the country rapidly increased ; the Protestant 
 and Catholic upper classes began to unite in marriage ; 
 a commercial middle class, if still very weak, grew up. 
 Ireland seemed about to enter a happier era ; yet there 
 were drawbacks to this partial welfare, especially as regards 
 the land system. Middleman tenures were becoming much 
 less frequent ; absenteeism was markedly on the decline ; 
 but partly owing to their contact with the Parliament in 
 College Green, and to the brilliant social life it created in 
 Dublin, the landed gentry became more extravagant than 
 their fathers had been ; they began to raise their rents 
 and to encumber their estates ; over-renting became more 
 common than before ; Whiteboy movements and agrarian 
 disorder prevailed in many districts. Ireland, however, 
 probably would have made a great advance but for the 
 evil passions which the French Revolution engendered in 
 the frame of a society still deeply diseased. I cannot 
 dwell on the unhappy years that followed, leading to the 
 Rebellion of 1798 ; I must confine myself to their influence 
 on the Irish land system. The object of Tone and of the 
 United Irish leaders was to combine Scottish and Presby- 
 terian Ulster, and the great mass of the Irish Catholics, 
 into a league against British rule and for ' Irish freedom ; ' 
 unhappily, they were but too successful. They appealed, 
 not in vain, to thousands of farmers and traders in the 
 Northern Province, who had long had solid grounds of 
 discontent, and had been deeply stirred by the Revolution 
 in France; they laid hold on the elements of disorder and 
 of division of race and faith, abounding in Catholic Ireland, 
 but largely concealed, and called on the peasantry to over- 
 throw their Protestant tyrants, and to strike a decisive 
 blow in 'the cause of Ireland.' Evil incentives were 
 recklessly employed to arouse popular passions ; maps 
 of the old confiscated lands were made ; and active emis- 
 saries went through the country, reviving dangerous tradi- 
 tions of the past, and stimulating the worst sentiments of 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 109 
 
 hatred, greed, and revenge. As the result, sedition ran 
 riot in Ulster ; in the Southern Provinces there was a 
 great outburst of Whiteboy crime, and a widespread rising 
 against the payment of rent ; and thousands of the occu- 
 piers of the soil were swept into the United Irish ranks, 
 scarcely conscious of the perils to which they were ex- 
 posed. How the movement led to the bloody rebellion 
 of 1798, and how this was put down after a desperate 
 struggle, it is unnecessary to consider here ; the con- 
 sequences in Irish landed relations were most unfortunate. 
 It is untrue that the large majority of the owners of the 
 Irish soil were guilty of the crimes that have been laid to 
 their charge ; but they bitterly resented the allusions to 
 the confiscations of a bygone past ; they became more 
 estranged from their inferiors than they had been for 
 years.* 
 
 This terrible outbreak shook society in Ireland to its base, 
 revived the old divisions of race and faith which had been 
 disappearing to a considerable extent, and left memories 
 behind which have not been forgotten. Its inevitable 
 result was to lead to the Union, a measure long in the 
 contemplation of British statesmen, and especially of Pitt, 
 and perhaps necessary in the most critical circumstances 
 of the time. I cannot even refer to the events attending 
 this great constitutional change ; a large majority of the 
 leading Irish landlords disliked it at heart ; but a minority, 
 alarmed for their possessions, gave it support ; how strong 
 this feeling was may be seen in a famous speech of Lord 
 Clare, who described the whole order of men as ' the heirs 
 of confiscation hemmed in by enemies brooding on their 
 wrongs.' The Union greatly weakened the influence of the 
 
 * For an account of this period nothing can be compared to Mr. 
 Lecky's ' History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' vols, vii., 
 viii. These contain all the information that can be obtained, collected 
 from every available source. I may refer to my ' Ireland,!; 1 798-1 898,' 
 chs. i., ii. 
 
no PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Irish landed gentry, which had been very powerful in the 
 defunct Parliament ; the ' Irish interest,' for many years a 
 real force, was almost subverted ; English officials became 
 again supreme at the Castle ; a bureaucracy gradually 
 began to supplant the aristocracy of landlords in every 
 sphere of government. As respects the land and landed 
 relations, the class of Catholic owners slowly augmented ; 
 but the consequences were trivial and not marked ; middle- 
 man tenures continued steadily to disappear ; but absen- 
 teeism certainly increased, though absentee estates were 
 usually better managed than before. Meanwhile causes 
 of grave importance, tending to momentous social results, 
 were profoundly affecting the whole land system, and the 
 position of the classes dependent on it. Partly owing to 
 the corn laws of the Irish Parliament, partly to the 
 extension of the Parliamentary franchise, in 1793, to the 
 great mass of the Catholic peasantry, but principally to 
 the effects of the long war with France, Ireland, it may be 
 said, was well-nigh changed from a pastoral to an agri- 
 cultural country ; large farms were generally replaced by 
 small ; the land in most districts was divided into little 
 tillage holdings ; the cottar system multiplied apace ; the 
 population, about three millions of souls in the day of 
 Arthur Young, increased to more than six millions at the 
 Peace of 181 5 ; and this population becoming every year 
 more dense, for the most part eked existence out on a 
 precarious root. The economic and social consequences 
 were very great, and continued in operation during a long 
 series of years. The competition for the possession of land 
 became intensely keen ; rents were unnaturally forced up 
 in thousands of cases ; the value of landed property 
 enormously rose ; all this encouraged extravagance among 
 the landed gentry, and especially induced them largely to 
 encumber their estates. At the same time the wages of 
 labour distinctly declined ; the condition of the Irish labour- 
 ing peasant, when Edward Wakefield, a very industrious 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND ill 
 
 and able observer, wrote on the state of Ireland in 
 1 812, was markedly worse than it had been in the time 
 of Arthur Young. Yet these were not the most serious, 
 at least, the most lasting, effects of the revolution taking 
 place in landed relations. As the large farm system was 
 being broken up, as the small farm system had come in its 
 stead, and as population had rapidly grown, the occupiers 
 of the soil had more and more made the permanent 
 additions to their holdings ; they had built, fenced, and 
 reclaimed land, more and more ; and in the general 
 eagerness to obtain the possession of land, considerable 
 sums were often paid for farms on their transfer. The con- 
 current rights of the tenant classes in Ireland had thus 
 become enormously increased ; they often amounted, 
 equitably, to a real joint-ownership ; yet these rights were 
 without the support of law, and were liable to be extin- 
 guished often at the mere will of the landlord. In Ulster 
 alone, in its Presbyterian and Scottish parts, where the 
 landed classes had been less disunited than in the South, 
 a custom, now of considerable strength, had for a long 
 time made the tenure of the peasant comparatively secure ; 
 yet even this was not under the segis of law.* 
 
 Made wise, after the event, we now clearly perceive 
 what ought to have been done for Ireland in this position 
 of affairs. There never had been an Irish poor law ; 
 Protestant property was not to be charged for Catholic 
 want ; but the population was fast increasing ; a mass of 
 wretched poverty was being formed ; this should have been 
 supported, and yet checked, by a poor law. At the same 
 time legislation, as Burke had contended, should have 
 vindicated the moral rights of the occupier of the soil, 
 
 * There is no complete history of Ireland from the Union to the 
 present time, though the materials for such a work are abundant. I 
 may refer to my ' Ireland, 1798-1898,' from the second chapter to the 
 end. An excellent and elaborate description of Ireland from 1800 to 
 1812 will be found in the volumes of Edward Wakefield. 
 
ii2 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 should have made what really was his property his own, 
 should have rendered his tenure profitable and secure. 
 Nothing of the kind, however, came into the minds of 
 British statesmen, or even, it must be said, of the best 
 Irishmen of the day — the age was one of Toryism harsh 
 and unfeeling ; the abuses of the poor law in England 
 were great ; it was not contemplated to apply it to 
 Ireland ; above all, the equitable claims of the Irish 
 tenant were not understood or deemed worthy of notice ; 
 English tenure, utterly unfitted to his true position, was 
 good enough for him. The land system, nevertheless, was 
 not much disturbed while the high prices of the war 
 prevailed ; there was a good deal indeed of disorder 
 connected with the land, but society was not deeply 
 affected. And it is only just to observe that the landlords, 
 as a class, did respect the concurrent rights of their 
 tenants in the soil ; the conclusive proof is that these 
 could not have grown up had they been generally, or even 
 largely, set at nought. But a great and calamitous change 
 passed over Ireland when the comparative wealth caused 
 by the war collapsed, and when the return to cash pay- 
 ments made the effects worse. Rents suddenly fell 
 greatly, and even disappeared ; the wages of labour, which 
 had usually been paid through what may be called a 
 wretched truck system, were reduced to a remarkable 
 degree ; hundreds of thousands of the cottar peasantry 
 sank to the lowest depths of indigence. A great social 
 convulsion, in a word, took place ; this culminated in 
 famine in several counties ; a miserable population was 
 deprived of the means of subsistence. In these circum- 
 stances the owners of the soil acted as a class would 
 ordinarily act ; many, impoverished themselves, let things 
 drift ; many made themselves conspicuous for good works 
 of charity ; a minority had recourse to severe measures, 
 like the English landlords of the sixteenth century, to get 
 rid of a mass of poverty clinging in despair to the land. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 113 
 
 The old divisions of race and faith unquestionably aggra- 
 vated this state of things ; but the Government of the day 
 showed little forethought, and, in fact, was infinitely the 
 most to blame ; it met the emergency, not by wise and 
 healing measures, but by legislation, which made the eviction 
 of the peasant from his holding easy and cheap, and by 
 having recourse to repression unjust and severe in the 
 extreme. In too many instances, ' clearances ' of estates, 
 an evil word, were witnessed ; hundreds of families were 
 driven from their homes and cast on the world ; as the 
 necessary result, in numberless cases, the equitable rights 
 of the Irish tenant were ruthlessly destroyed. As a matter 
 of course, Whiteboyism, never completely suppressed, 
 broke out in formidable agrarian disorder ; the peasantry, 
 deprived of the protection of law, leagued themselves 
 together to enforce a law of their own ; crime multiplied 
 to an immense extent ; all the machinery of coercion 
 could not wholly keep it under.* 
 
 I must pass rapidly over the next twenty years, though 
 a very important period in Irish history. Catholic emanci- 
 pation was wrung by O'Connell, from a reluctant Ministry, 
 through violent agitation, which distracted Ireland for years ; 
 the Irish Catholic was admitted into Parliament at last. 
 This great event was followed by the savage Tithe War, 
 a movement against the Anglican Church in Ireland 
 stained with detestable deeds of blood ; the representation 
 of Ireland passed largely into O'Connell's hands, the head 
 of what was called ' his Catholic Tail.' Protestant 
 ascendency in Ireland received a mortal blow ; the 
 influence of the Irish landed gentry still further declined ; 
 that of the bureaucracy at the Castle increased. From 
 this time forward the Irish landlord began to feel his 
 
 * The best account of this period — the forerunner of one even more 
 calamitous — will be found in the proceedings of a Parliamentary Com- 
 mittee on the state of Ireland in 1824-25, and in the mass of evidence 
 collected by it. The evidence of O'Connell is full of interest. 
 
 I 
 
H4 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 position really insecure ; it is remarkable how few large 
 mansions and demesnes have ever since been designed or 
 completed by this order of men. After the disastrous 
 period which came to an end about 1826, the wealth of 
 Ireland perceptibly grew ; a kind of prosperity existed in 
 many parts of the country. The age, too, had become 
 more liberal and humane ; the middleman was got rid of 
 in not a few districts ; the absentee landlords devoted more 
 attention to their estates than they had ever devoted before. 
 The process of eviction, moreover, became much less fre- 
 quent, though too frequent for social order and peace; a 
 considerable number of Irish landlords expended large 
 sums in improving their lands ; farms were consolidated, 
 with good results, in many parts of the country. But 
 the essential features of the land system were not much 
 changed ; its economic conditions became, in important 
 respects, worse. The landed gentry, if much less extrava- 
 gant than their fathers had been, were, nevertheless, as a 
 class, much involved in debt ; and, as usually has been 
 seen in cases of the kind, they became less really prosperous, 
 as their authority declined. Meanwhile, the population 
 had continued rapidly to increase ; by the close of this 
 period it exceeded eight millions of souls, a total far too 
 great for the resources of the land. The phenomena, 
 already critical, became more sinister; rents were again 
 forced up as the wealth of the country augmented, and 
 reached the highest level they have ever attained ; the 
 wages of labour did not fall, indeed, they could hardly 
 fall lower ; but the cottar population had become more 
 than ever dense ; the competition for the possession of 
 the soil grew fierce ; as necessarily followed, the quasi- 
 proprietary rights of the tenant in his holding had been 
 enlarged, and yet these were still outside the pale of the 
 law. A Report, made in 1837-38, disclosed the appalling 
 fact that two millions and a half of the Irish community 
 were for months in every year on the verge of starvation, 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 115 
 
 and always in a condition of extreme misery. Though 
 Ireland had made, in a sense, progress, her economic state 
 had thus become dangerous, and very bad ; and a poor 
 law, enacted at last in 1838, was utterly unable to cope 
 with the evil. Whiteboy crime and disorders continued 
 to abound; in 1844, an average year, there were more than 
 a thousand instances of offences in landed relations. 
 
 The year 1843 was that of the great Repeal movement, 
 of which O'Connell was the master spirit. Peel had been 
 Prime Minister for two years ; his attention had been 
 already turned to the vices and the perils of the Irish land 
 system. He had been Chief Secretary for Ireland from 
 1812 to 1818; but he had been identified with the Tory 
 misrule of that time ; and though, like Chesterfield in 
 another age, he had been too sagacious not to see that 
 poverty made the social ills of Ireland more acute and 
 worse, he had been the ablest opponent of the Catholic 
 cause, had supported Protestant ascendency in many ways ; 
 and had not been in any sense an Irish reformer. A strong 
 Conservative of the great middle class in England, he 
 looked on Ireland as an almost foreign land, and had 
 scarcely any knowledge of her real needs ; and though his 
 severe administration at the Castle had been wise and just, 
 he carried out coercion with a steady hand, and is supposed 
 to have been the author of the code of cheap ejectment, a 
 cause of a great deal of evil and wrong. But his mind, if 
 slow in moving, was moved at last ; he saw that Ireland 
 largely required the amending hand ; the conduct of 
 O'Connell, no doubt, had quickened his purpose. I cannot 
 dwell on Peel's other Irish measures; at the close of 1843 
 he appointed a Commission charged to inquire into the 
 state of Irish landed relations ; had he continued long at 
 the head of the State, he would probably have done much 
 to improve the Irish land system. The Commission had, 
 as President, the chief of the great House of Courtenay ; 
 it was almost wholly composed of Englishmen, more or 
 
n6 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 less associated with land in England ; it was, therefore, 
 ill constituted to deal with what may be called the Irish 
 Land Question. But it investigated the subject it treated 
 with most praiseworthy care ; entering into every detail of 
 Irish landed relations, their history in the past, the state 
 of land tenure, the condition of the different classes seated 
 on the land, the working of the law with respect to tenant's 
 improvements, the means of diminishing the wretched 
 millions squatting on the soil, agrarian crime and all that 
 it involved ; the mass of evidence it collected is still of the 
 greatest value. The Report it made, if somewhat over- 
 cautious and timid, was very instructive in many respects ; 
 especially it showed how the Irish land system grew out 
 of the conquests and confiscations of the past, and still 
 bore the marks of its ill-omened origin, notably in the lines 
 drawn between the owners and the occupiers of the soil 
 marked by a profound division of race and faith ; and 
 many of the suggestions it made were wise, nay, excellent. 
 But on the capital subject of land tenure, by many degrees 
 the most important, the Report only too clearly revealed 
 the ignorance of Englishmen as regards Ireland, and, above 
 all, as regards her landed relations. The Commission 
 ought to have fully recognised the concurrent rights in the 
 soil, which the Irish occupier had acquired in tens of 
 thousands of instances, rights often equivalent to more 
 or less joint-ownership ; it ought to have insisted that the 
 Tenant Right, as it was now called, of the Ulster Custom, 
 and the claims arising from improvements, the work of 
 the tenant, and from sums paid on the transfer of farms, 
 should be made law-worthy, and effectually secured. 
 With a want of insight which would have made Burke 
 gnash his teeth, it took exactly an opposite course ; it 
 warned the Irish landlord that these concurrent rights were 
 creating against him ' an embryo copyhold,' and eating 
 away his freehold ownership ; it plainly hinted that he 
 would do well to get rid of them. It even refused to 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 117 
 
 acknowledge that the tenant had a claim to any improve- 
 ments if made in the past ; but it proposed a scheme for 
 compensating him for improvements made in the future, 
 so limited and fenced round with restrictions, that it was 
 quite illusory, and indeed deceptive. The Report caused 
 intense indignation in Ulster, and was not well received in 
 any part of Ireland.* 
 
 Bills, founded on the Report of the Devon Commission, 
 as it was called, were brought into Parliament, but never 
 became law. Within a few months Ireland was in the 
 throes of an agony, the most terrible, perhaps, that has 
 befallen any land in the nineteenth century. In the 
 autumn of 1845, the potato, which formed the only food 
 of the indigent multitudes fastened on the land, failed, to 
 a considerable extent, in many districts ; in the following 
 year the crop was all but completely destroyed. Famine, 
 far more general and appalling than that of twenty-five 
 years before, had soon held a wretched population in its 
 grasp ; the results may almost be compared to those of 
 the Black Death, and of the famines of the Middle Ages. 
 The land system went to wreck in whole counties, especially 
 in the west and along the seaboard ; hundreds of the 
 landed gentry were involved in ruin ; thousands of farmers 
 of the better class became bankrupt ; the dense cottar 
 multitudes were literally lifted up from the soil, and cast 
 adrift, the waifs and strays of a far-reaching tempest. 
 This is not the place to review the measures adopted to 
 meet the dread visitation ; if not free from errors, inevi- 
 table in a situation of the kind, they were, essentially, and, 
 in the main, successful. Peel was still in office in 1845 ; 
 well knowing what poverty in Ireland was, he introduced 
 supplies of food into the remote and backward districts, 
 which the energies of commerce could hardly reach ; this 
 wise policy saved tens of thousands of lives ; as is notorious, 
 
 * I perfectly recollect, though quite a boy, this strong and wide - 
 spread expression of sentiment. 
 
u8 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 he repealed the corn laws in the interest of the afflicted 
 country. The Government of Lord John Russell had 
 succeeded him in 1846; it had to confront an emergency 
 infinitely worse ; it followed, in many respects, the example 
 of Peel, who had established ' relief works ' in many 
 counties ; but it did not assist the most impoverished 
 parts of Ireland with food through the agency of the 
 State ; this possibly was a real mistake. Nevertheless, 
 it manfully and humanely met the tremendous crisis ; it 
 is easy to censure some of its acts, for instance, the wasteful 
 and useless public works it set on foot, and the gigantic 
 outdoor relief it was compelled to lavish ; but millions in 
 starvation were thrown on its hands ; and the poor law, 
 only lately in operation, could not cope with universal 
 distress. On the whole, the statesmen in power did their 
 duty wisely and well ; thousands of unhappy victims 
 succumbed, indeed, to famine, and to dire diseases follow- 
 ing in its train ; but Ireland as a people was saved ; 
 assuredly she could not have saved herself. A word, too, 
 must be said on the magnificent charity which flowed in 
 from many lands into the community in its woe. England 
 had turned in sympathy towards Ireland in the season of 
 distress which had followed the Peace ; she bestowed great 
 sums on her, in 1845-46, through private subscription. The 
 United States, France, Germany, and Italy joined in the 
 good work ; even the Ottoman Empire was not behindhand. 
 I must dwell for a moment on the conduct and the 
 position of the classes connected with the land during 
 this appalling trial. The attitude of the landed gentry was 
 much the same as it had been at an infinitely less dis- 
 astrous crisis ; but, on the whole, it was marked by nobler 
 and more attractive features. The charity of the great 
 landlords of Ireland was most praiseworthy ; many devoted 
 large sums for the support of the poor on their lands by 
 instituting fine works of enclosure and drainage ; some, 
 I know, even mortgaged their estates for this very purpose. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND ng 
 
 Hundreds of the lesser gentry, stricken down as they 
 were, imitated their superiors as well as they could ; 
 old divisions were forgotten in the common misfortune ; 
 spite of the interested lies of a calumnious faction, as an 
 order of men they acted extremely well. One of their 
 bitterest enemies, who wrote at the time, has placed it on 
 record, ' that the resident landlords and their families did, 
 in many cases, devote themselves to the task of saving these 
 poor people alive. Many remitted their rents or half their 
 rents ; and ladies kept their servants busy and their 
 kitchens smoking with continual preparation of food for 
 the poor.' * Many, however, of the Irish landlords, as was 
 to be expected, looked hopelessly on at the misery around 
 them ; this was the case with feeble and incapable men, 
 and the sight has always been seen in grave social crises ; 
 it was but in conformity with our frail and imperfect 
 nature. A certain number, moreover, of the class had 
 recourse to severe measures to remove from their lands the 
 masses of wretchedness crowded upon them ; the process 
 of eviction became too frequent ; hundreds of families 
 were in this way dispossessed of their holdings. These 
 acts of harshness were certainly to be deplored ; but it was 
 almost universally believed that the cottar in Ireland 
 could not live from the land after the failure of almost 
 his only means of subsistence ; it must be added that, in 
 this very matter, the conduct of Parliament and the 
 Government was by many degrees more severe. A strict 
 test of destitution had to be applied ; a law was passed that, 
 as a condition of obtaining relief, no person possessing 
 more than a quarter of an acre of land should be entitled 
 to support from the State ; thousands of families abandoned 
 their homes, through the effects of this measure ; for one 
 evicted by a landlord, fifty perhaps were practically evicted 
 
 * Mitchel's 'History of Ireland,' vol. ii. p. 213. Mitchel was a 
 rebel, but an honourable man, superior to the falsehoods disseminated 
 by later agitators against Irish landlords. 
 
120 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 by this stern policy. The law was possibly required in the 
 terrible circumstances of the time ; but it was condemned 
 by the Lord-Lieutenant, Lord Bessborough, a great Irish 
 peer, and an able man ; at all events, it justified, to a con- 
 siderable extent, all that could be laid to the charge of a 
 few Irish landlords whose acts were most unfairly de- 
 nounced by many writers, and were falsely described as 
 common to the great body of the class. For the rest, 
 as I have said, the land system was broken up in many 
 districts ; and not only the owners but the occupiers of the 
 soil suffered cruelly from the highest to the lowest grade. 
 
 After the first months of the famine, the immense 
 exodus of the Irish race, as it has fitly been called, began. 
 The population fled from the country in hundreds of 
 thousands ; some found a home in England and in our 
 Australian colonies ; nine-tenths, probably, in the great 
 Republic of the West. The sufferings of numbers of the 
 emigrants were terribly severe ; huddled together in the 
 ill-found vessels of the time, hundreds perished before 
 they beheld the lands they were seeking ; that some check 
 was not placed on the greed of the merchants, who sub- 
 jected these victims to horrors like those of the Middle 
 Passage, was certainly the worst mistake of the Government 
 of the day. During the agony of the famine there was 
 comparatively little crime ; the minds of men were en- 
 grossed by a dire calamity ; but in a few months White- 
 boyism had been again aroused ; there was a widespread 
 outbreak of agrarian disorder followed by the abortive 
 rising of 1848. The time was now ripe, in the judgment 
 of even leading statesmen, for making another of the great 
 experiments on the Irish land, which had been their policy 
 since the age of the Tudors. Many of the Irish landed 
 gentry had been ruined ; the estates of many were heavily 
 charged with debt, in part caused by extravagance in the 
 past, but chiefly by large provisions made for their families 
 in more prosperous times, especially during the period of 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 121 
 
 the high prices of the war.* The object of the Government 
 — and Peel concurred — was to make a clean sweep of the 
 embarrassed owners, and to transfer their lands to a new 
 order of men ; ' English and Scottish capital was to be 
 attracted to the Irish soil ; ' the Irish landlord was to be 
 ' sold out cheap ; ' his successor was to be a person fit ' to dis- 
 charge the duties of property ; ' the ' regeneration of Ireland ' 
 was to be the magnificent result.f The sale of encumbered 
 estates in Ireland had from various causes been a slow and 
 a costly process, an Act was run through Parliament with 
 scarcely an expression of dissent,]: making the process as 
 rapid and inexpensive as the wit of man could devise ; a 
 Commission was appointed to carry the law into effect ; 
 and intending purchasers were to be given an indefeasible 
 title to any lands they might acquire. This was a strong 
 measure, but it was not nearly all ; the concurrent rights 
 of the tenants in the estates to be sold were absolutely 
 ignored, and left without protection ; the new possessors 
 were empowered to destroy them if they pleased. The 
 results were such as might have been looked for when 
 lands were forced into the market wholesale, when Ireland 
 was still reeling from the strokes of a terrible famine, and 
 agricultural ruin was seen everywhere. The Commission 
 acted as such tribunals invariably act when skilfully selected 
 to carry out a policy ; it addressed itself to its task of 
 ' selling land cheap ; ' it was egged on by the Lord- 
 Lieutenant of the day ; and it sacrificed estates, in scores 
 of instances, at less than half their value. This iniquitous 
 proceeding went on for years, until the market for land 
 in Ireland righted itself at last ; but the Encumbered 
 
 * Every one acquainted with the history of Irish titles, from about 
 1790 to 1820, knows that this was the case. 
 
 t { Clarendon,' wrote Greville, ' told me he expected the Encumbered 
 Estates Act would prove the regeneration of Ireland.' 
 
 X That great lawyer, Lord St. Leonards, protested. He had been 
 Lord Chancellor of Ireland. 
 
122 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Estates Act was often renewed ; about a sixth part of the 
 lands of Ireland has been transferred by these means. 
 As the result many of the Irish gentry, who might have 
 tided over the crisis, were beggared and cast on the world 
 penniless ; and confiscation from above had its counterpart 
 in confiscation from below ; the partial joint-ownership 
 of thousands of the occupiers of the soil was ruthlessly 
 annihilated in numbers of cases. And what were the 
 consequences of this scheme of spoliation and wrong, which 
 English politicians would never have thought of but for 
 their traditional contempt of the rights of property in land 
 in Ireland ? English and Scottish capital, indeed, reached 
 the Irish soil ; but it reached it in the form of large 
 mortgages, a heavy drain on the country's resources ; the 
 English and Scottish purchasers of the Irish land were a 
 mere handful of men. The estates, in fact, transferred 
 under the Encumbered Estates Acts, as a rule, passed into 
 the ownership of jobbers, speculators, and mortgagees, 
 people without the associations old possession ensures ; 
 they have formed, as a class, harsh and exacting landlords, 
 the true successors of the almost defunct middleman ; they 
 are responsible for much that is bad in Irish landed relations 
 of late years. A huge confiscation, in a word, failed, as those 
 of Elizabeth and Cromwell failed before ; the fact ought to 
 be a warning to public men, who have been parading theories 
 about the Irish land — strewn as this has been with monu- 
 ments of misdeeds and errors — as false and more dangerous 
 than those which produced the Encumbered Estates Acts.* 
 The exodus had, by 185 1, reduced the population of 
 Ireland by nearly two millions of souls ; this decline has 
 continued ever since; the population which, in 1846, was 
 
 * For the state of Ireland during the Famine and the years that fol- 
 lowed, see ' The Irish Crisis,' by Sir Charles Trevelyan, reprinted from 
 the Edinburgh Review; and the ' Letters ' of Mr. Campbell Foster, 
 the Commissioner of the Times. Valuable information will also be 
 found in the Greville ' Memoirs,' vols, v., vi. I may refer to my 
 ' Ireland, 1798-1898,' chs. v. and part of vi. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 123 
 
 considerably more than eight millions, is now, we have 
 seen, only about four and a half millions. In 1852 an 
 agitation sprang up, which might have wrought a great 
 change in Irish landed relations, had it not been brought 
 by mere accident to an untimely end. The Report of the 
 Devon Commission, I have said, had troubled Ulster ; the 
 Famine had driven peasants, in tens of thousands, from 
 their homes ; the operation of the Encumbered Estates Act 
 was destroying their concurrent rights in their holdings. 
 At the General Election of 1852 Ireland returned a large 
 party of representatives to the House of Commons pledged 
 to vindicate the claims of the tenant farmers ; these were 
 expressed in a demand that has been called the ' Three 
 F's,' ' Fair Rent,' e Fixity of Tenure,' and ' Free Sale,' a 
 mode of occupation which had been largely secured by 
 the Custom of Ulster, and to which O'Connell had given 
 his sanction. The Government of Lord Derby was now 
 in office ; it had brought in measures which, in some 
 degree, would have legalised the rights of the Irish tenant ; 
 but the Ministry was defeated, partly through an intrigue ; * 
 the cause of the Irish farmer was baffled and kept in 
 suspense for years, largely owing to dissensions and 
 treachery on the part of some of the Irish members. By 
 this time the country had begun to revive, and to throw 
 off the worst effects of the Famine ; vast depopulated 
 tracts had been opened to new husbandry ; the land had 
 been set free, over an immense area, from the incubus of 
 a mass of wretchedness which had preyed on it, and had 
 completely disorganised the land system, unnaturally 
 forcing up rent and cutting down wages. Under these 
 conditions the statesmen in power, already expecting great 
 things from the Encumbered Estates Act, believed that the 
 Irish land system would right itself, and that it was un- 
 necessary to consider or to protect the rights of the tenant 
 
 * For an account of these machinations of party, see Greville, 
 ' Memoirs,' vol. vii. p. 33. 
 
124 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 classes ; these would either disappear, or would be fairly 
 adjusted in the improved landed relations that were being 
 formed. At all events, there was no legislation to secure 
 these claims ; the scanty legislation, that dealt with the 
 Irish land, was unfavourable, in many ways, to these, and 
 endeavoured to assimilate Irish to English tenures, as 
 Tudor lawyers had done three centuries before ; and Lord 
 Palmerston, for a long time the head of the State, dis- 
 couraged Irish tenant right, in more than one speech, 
 and declared that it only meant landlord wrong, unwise 
 utterances that showed he did not understand the subject. 
 At the same time, the policy of clearing the land for 
 cultivators of a capitalist class, able to occupy and do 
 justice to large farms, was generally advocated in high 
 places ; more than one Lord-Lieutenant announced that 
 nature had made Ireland a great grazing tract, and that her 
 petty occupiers were little better than a social nuisance.* 
 
 For some time it seemed as though the forecasts made 
 by the great majority of our statesmen would prove 
 correct. The immense emigration from Ireland to the 
 United States had important results, unfortunate in many 
 respects ; but the uplifting of redundant millions from the 
 soil greatly contributed to the country's welfare. Holdings 
 were consolidated over very large areas, a beneficent 
 process, if humanely carried out ; a certain number of 
 Englishmen and Scotsmen rented large farms ; the 
 progress of husbandry of all kinds was distinct ; a vast 
 field for agriculture, really worthy of the name, was opened. 
 A new standard for the management of land was, in fact, 
 set up ; at the same time a few purchasers, under the 
 Encumbered Estates Acts, laid out considerable sums 
 in improving their estates ; the Treasury made large 
 advances to many Irish landlords ; these did much in works 
 of enclosure, draining, planting, and the like. Ireland 
 
 * I heard several of these most injudicious and ill-informed expres- 
 sions of a false opinion. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 125 
 
 began to wear a new aspect in several counties, especially 
 in the more thriving parts of the southern provinces ; the 
 ruins made by the Famine, indeed, caused hideous eyesores, 
 in wrecks of villages and the remains of peasant dwellings ; 
 but the mud hovels of the cottar population had largely 
 disappeared, and the habitations of farmers of the better 
 class very markedly improved. The economic conditions 
 of landed relations became more conducive to prosperity 
 than they had ever been before ; rents fell considerably 
 during a series of years, as the intense competition for land 
 diminished ; though they gradually rose in the course of 
 time, they never reached the excessive rates of 1840-45 ; 
 and the wages of labour greatly increased, and attained a 
 level that, happily, has since been preserved. Many 
 circumstances concurred to quicken and augment this 
 unquestionable social and material progress. Agricultural 
 prices were high from about 1852 onward ; Free Trade was 
 as yet adding to the wealth of Ireland ; and there was a long 
 succession of good harvests, the most important element 
 in her general welfare. The railway system, too, intro- 
 duced of late years, opened a number of new markets to 
 her products, and greatly facilitated their access to British 
 markets. At the same time the turnip replaced the 
 potato over hundreds of thousands of acres ; farm 
 machinery greatly improved in Ireland ; the importation 
 of the best stock from England and Scotland had excellent 
 results, and almost transformed the old breeds of Irish 
 farming animals. An era of prosperity, in a word, had 
 seemed to dawn on Ireland ; and though agrarian disorder 
 had not disappeared, the Whiteboy secret societies were 
 greatly broken up, and political agitation well-nigh ceased. 
 In these circumstances, it was a common belief in 
 England that ' the Irish difficulty,' as it was called, was 
 passing away, and that the ' Hibernia Pacata ' had at last 
 become a happy reality. Yet the progress and tranquillity 
 of this brief period were largely superficial and even 
 
126 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 deceptive ; fires were still alive beneath the smouldering 
 ashes. The partial prosperity of Ireland mainly depended 
 on good harvests and high prices ; it was interrupted, even 
 in these years, by two or three seasons of distress. Not- 
 withstanding the widespread consolidation of farms, and 
 the removal from the soil of indigent millions, the land 
 still, for the most part, remained in the possession of a 
 mere peasantry ; very few of the English and Scottish 
 capitalist farmers settled in Ireland, and really throve ; 
 the great majority left the country, like the ' Englishry ' 
 of a bygone age. And though things wore a serene 
 aspect, the inherent vices of the land system continued to 
 exist ; in some respects they increased, or were more pain- 
 fully felt. The old divisions of race and faith between the 
 owners and the occupiers of the soil remained ; they had 
 but little changed and even had perhaps widened ; much 
 had happened to keep the landed classes more apart than 
 before. The new purchasers, under the Encumbered 
 Estates Acts, were, we have seen, often hard-fisted and 
 grasping landlords ; they raised their rents, without scruple, 
 in too many instances ; standing on the letter of the law, 
 they too often ignored the partial joint-ownership in their 
 farms of their tenants ; they had sometimes recourse to 
 unjust and severe evictions. The old landlords, too, never 
 recovered from the effects of the Famine ; they were over- 
 shadowed by the bureaucracy of the Castle, which, for many 
 years, had been growing in power ; they thus became an 
 order of men with privileges, but without authority, in the 
 midst of inferiors, who had little sympathy with them, a 
 dangerous position like that of the French seigneurie in the 
 later years of the eighteenth century — a position described 
 by Tocqueville in very striking language. At the same 
 time the peasantry stood aloof from them more than in 
 the days of their fathers ; and though they remained 
 quiescent for years, as has often happened in Irish history, 
 there were causes for this increasing estrangement. They 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 127 
 
 were no longer the grossly ignorant multitude of fifty years 
 before ; education had made some way among them, though 
 in this respect they were still backward ; they felt more 
 acutely all that was hard in their lot, like the French 
 peasantry before the great Revolution of 1789-94. This 
 sentiment, however, owed its principal force to sentiments 
 engendered in far distant lands. The thousands of the 
 exodus had left their country with memories embittered 
 against some Irish landlords, and, notably, against the 
 British Government ; a new Ireland was rising across the 
 Atlantic ; the emigrants and their sons were in constant 
 communication with the old Ireland once their home ; 
 socialistic ideas as regards the land, blending with dislike 
 of the superiors and the rulers, under whom they lived, 
 were gradually diffused among the Irish peasantry. The 
 economic conditions, too, of landed relations by degrees 
 made these feelings more general and intense. Rents were 
 rising as the wealth of the country increased, though, 
 except in the cases of the new landlords, and of a very 
 few surviving middlemen, they were, as a rule, by no 
 means excessive. Simultaneously a concurrence of causes 
 had extinguished leasehold tenures in most parts of 
 Ireland, and had reduced the status of the Irish farmer to 
 that of a mere tenant at will, liable to be dispossessed by 
 a notice to quit, at the mercy, in fact, of the lord of the 
 soil. And, meanwhile, the equitable rights of the occupiers 
 as a class, due to improvements, and to sums paid for the 
 goodwill of farms, had been increasing to an immense 
 extent ; and yet a grievous wrong — they were not even 
 recognised by law. Law and fact had long been sharply 
 clashing in landed relations ; there was much that was 
 essentially bad in the land system ; and agrarian trouble 
 and crime was on the increase. 
 
 The mind of England had turned away from Ireland 
 after the petty outbreak of 1848 ; it charged the Irish 
 community with ungrateful folly, as it recollected the 
 
128 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 charity lavished during the Famine. This sentiment was 
 replaced by what was worse, indifference ; throughout this 
 period — from 1850 to 1868 — Parliament gave little atten- 
 tion to the affairs of Ireland. British statesmen continued 
 to pin their faith to their policy ; they disregarded ominous 
 symptoms on the increase ; Ireland was rapidly becoming 
 more prosperous ; the claims of the Irish tenant farmer 
 were a delusion, or worse. This apathy was augmented 
 by the state of the representation of Ireland in these years ; 
 this was in a feeble, even a degraded condition ; and largely 
 owing to the authority of Cardinal Cullen, who prohibited 
 the Irish priesthood from taking any part in politics, 
 agitation, I have said, had become a mere tradition of the 
 past. Yet the causes I have glanced at were silently 
 at work, which ultimately were to lead to grave social 
 troubles. The first sign of disturbance was seen in a little 
 outbreak, the result of a conspiracy hatched by one of the 
 rebels of 1 848, and supported to some extent from America ; 
 but the ' Phcenix plot,' as it was called, almost at once 
 collapsed ; the Government thought it hardly worthy of 
 notice. Another and much more formidable conspiracy 
 was matured in 1864-65 ; and though it was put down with 
 little difficulty in time, it showed that there was much that 
 was peccant in the state of Ireland : and it deeply affected 
 the minds of Englishmen, aroused as it were out of a fool's 
 paradise. The millions of the Irish race in the Far West 
 were passionately appealed to by leaders, not without parts, 
 to assist in a crusade against 'landlordism,' and British 
 rule in Ireland ; they gave the movement very general 
 support ; they found numerous allies in thousands of Irish- 
 men disbanded after the great conflict between the North 
 and the South. The Fenian conspiracy was launched on 
 its course ; its directors made skilful attempts to debauch 
 whole regiments, and to stir up the passions of the mob 
 in many of the towns of Ireland ; and they especially turned 
 their attention to the mass of the peasantry. Here, 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 129 
 
 however, their policy was injudicious and ill-conceived ; they 
 promised the Irish land as a spoil to those who would join 
 the ranks of the ' patriot Irish army ; ' but all this alarmed 
 the occupiers of the soil, whose only object was to acquire 
 a better mode of tenure for their farms, and who rightly 
 thought the Fenian movement made their possessions 
 insecure, a belief generally encouraged by the Catholic 
 priesthood. A short-lived rising, conducted by a few 
 American soldiers, and backed by the rabble of a few 
 villages and towns, found no real support in Ireland, and 
 was finally quelled in 1867; but in England there was a 
 spurt of Fenian disorder, and this, though easily quenched, 
 made a profound impression. It was generally felt in 
 England and Scotland that, notwithstanding the optimism 
 of a generation of public men, there was still much that 
 was rotten in the state of Ireland, and that this should be 
 removed by large and searching reforms. The chief sign 
 of this change in British opinion was seen in the result of 
 the General Election of 1868 ; Mr. Gladstone, who, hitherto, 
 had taken comparatively little part in Irish affairs, but who, 
 with his keen instinct of every turn in the public mind, had 
 been vehemently enlarging on the wrongs of Ireland, was 
 placed in power with a great majority, and at once addressed 
 himself to the task of Irish reform.* 
 
 * For the state of Ireland from the end of the Famine to 1868, refer- 
 ence may be made to 'Two Centuries of Irish History,' edited by 
 Mr. Bryce ; to the Greville ' Memoirs,' vols. vii. and viii. ; to Greville's 
 'Policy of England towards Ireland ;' to the 'Recollections and Sug- 
 gestions of Earl Russell ; ' to parts of the ' Life of Lord Palmerston ;' 
 to ' Journals, Conversations, and Essays relating to Ireland,' by Nassau 
 Senior; to the 'Young Ireland,' the 'Four Years of Irish History,' 
 and ' The League of the North and South,' by Sir C. G. Duffy ; to 
 the ' New Ireland' of Mr. A. M. Sullivan ; and to the ' Parnell Move- 
 ment ' of Mr. T. P. O'Connor. Valuable information as to this period 
 will also be found in Mr. Barry O'Brien's works, ' Fifty Years of Con- 
 cessions to Ireland ' and ' Irish Wrongs and English Remedies ; ' and 
 there are many other authorities. This period is dealt with in my 
 1 Ireland, 1798-1898,' ch. vi. 
 
 K 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND (continued) — THE 
 IRISH LAND ACT OF 1870 — THE LAND LEAGUE AND 
 THE NATIONAL LEAGUE — THE LAND ACT OF 1 88 1 
 — SUBSEQUENT LEGISLATION AS REGARDS THE 
 LAND SYSTEM OF IRELAND 
 
 State of landed relations in Ireland in 1869-70 — Mr. Gladstone 
 Prime Minister — The Land Act of 1870— Its merits and defects 
 — A short period of prosperity in Ireland — Ominous symptoms — 
 Michael Davitt — The teaching of John Finton Lalor in 1848 — 
 The ' New Departure ' in Fenianism arranged in America — Foun- 
 dation of the Land League — It was a foreign rebellious conspiracy, 
 with an agrarian side, under a constitutional mask — Parnell the 
 master spirit of the League — His visit to America and the results 
 — A short period of distress in Ireland — Conduct of the Irish land- 
 lords — Progress of the Land League — Mr. Gladstone again Prime 
 Minister in 1880 — The Compensation for Disturbance Bill rejected 
 by the House of Lords — Outburst of agrarian crime, as the Land 
 League increases in power — Rents at Griffith's valuation — Boy- 
 cotting — Frightful state of Ireland in 1881 — After a short attempt 
 to repress it, Mr. Gladstone surrenders to the Land League — The 
 Land Act of 1881 — Mr. Gladstone breaks the pledges he had 
 made in 1870 — His promise of compensating the Irish landlords 
 — The Land Act of 1881 a bad and unjust measure directly 
 inconsistent with that of 1870 — The ' No Rent Manifesto' — The 
 Kilmainham Treaty — The Phcenix Park tragedy — Coercion — 
 Parnell founds the National League, the successor of the Land 
 League — Renewal of agitation in 1886 — Struggle with law and the 
 Government — Subsequent agrarian legislation for Ireland — This 
 is really a concession to agitation, for the benefit of Irish tenants, 
 and to the injury of Irish landlords. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, after his conversion to Home Rule, 
 more than once declared that, almost from early manhood 
 
 130 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 131 
 
 he had given special attention to Ireland ; either his 
 memory was at fault, or he had kept the fact to himself. 
 He had been a conspicuous figure in politics, for many 
 years before 1868; but until he had been placed at the 
 helm of the State, he had shown little acquaintance with 
 Irish questions, and, indeed, had expressed few opinions 
 on them. In 1866 he had said in the House of Commons, 
 that the existence of the Anglican Irish Church would be 
 probably long ; he had been in high office almost since 
 1853, and, as a colleague of Lord Palmerston, had acqui- 
 esced in the philippics of that statesman against Irish 
 tenant right, conduct that revealed ignorance of the land 
 system of Ireland. But, in 1868, when the Fenian out- 
 break had caused the nation to demand large reforms in 
 Ireland, he suddenly abandoned his attitude of reserve ; 
 he threw himself into Irish affairs ; his zeal, it may be 
 remarked, as often happened, fell in with his interests, and 
 with those of the Liberal party, and gave him a leverage 
 to drive Disraeli from office. During months before the 
 General Election that ensued, the orator thundered on 
 Irish grievances, and on the manifold ills of Ireland; in 
 figurative and impassioned language, he said that the 
 island was blighted by a huge upas tree, the Church, the 
 land, and education being the three main branches. 
 These harangues, addressed to the new democracy, con- 
 tributed powerfully to the fall of the Conservative Ministry ; 
 it was little noticed, at the time, that one of the results 
 was ere long to compel Mr. Gladstone himself to subject 
 Ireland to severe repressive measures, for Whiteboy and 
 agrarian outrages became frequent. In 1869, the Minister 
 addressed himself to the task of hewing down the first 
 branch of the poisonous upas ; he disestablished and dis- 
 endowed the Protestant Church of Ireland. This is not 
 the place to comment upon that great measure; it was 
 well designed upon its professed principles ; it dealt liberally, 
 nay, generously, with the voluntary Church, which replaced 
 
132 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 the Church of the State it overthrew. But essentially it 
 was a scheme of destruction, formed in Nonconformist 
 not in Irish interests, and opposed to the views of genera- 
 tions of statesmen ; it made no provision for the clergy of 
 the Irish Catholic Church, a policy which Pitt, Castlereagh, 
 and Lord John Russell had had at heart, which had been 
 all but a condition of the Union, and which, if carried 
 into effect, would have done much to strengthen and main- 
 tain that fundamental law, and to promote tranquillity in 
 Ireland and her general welfare. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone now turned to the second branch of the 
 upas, the land system of Ireland and her landed relations. 
 His whole career, especially in its Home Rule phase, proves 
 that his knowledge of Ireland was not exact or profound ; 
 at this time he had had little experience of the Irish land 
 question. But the mind of England was still attracted 
 to Irish affairs ; a number of distinguished Englishmen 
 and Scotchmen went to Ireland, to investigate the state of 
 the country on the spot ; the British Press sent some of its 
 best contributors ; the time was singularly opportune for a 
 fair and complete inquiry ; no Minister has had, before or 
 since, such assistance in dealing with Irish problems. I 
 must glance at the state of the Irish land system in 
 1869-70, as this was fully explored and made manifest.* 
 
 * From the mass of literature on this subject reference may especi- 
 ally be made to ' The Irish Land,' by the late Sir George Campbell ; 
 Judge Longfield's essay in 'Systems of Land Tenure;' the 'Irish 
 Land and the Irish People,' by Butt ; and the ' Ireland, Industrial, 
 Political, and Social,' of the late Mr. J. N. Murphy. As Special 
 Commissioner of the Times, I went into the Irish land question at 
 length on the spot ; and it would be affectation to deny that my letters, 
 since republished, powerfully contributed to the legislation which ere 
 long followed. See, for further information, ' The Irish Land Ques- 
 tion ' of John Stuart Mill ; ' Emigration and the Tenure of Irish Land,' 
 by Lord Dufferin ; ' The New Ireland ' of the late Mr. A. M. Sullivan ; 
 parts of Mr. Barry O'Brien's ' Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland ; 
 'Ireland in 1868,' by the late Mr. G. Fitzgibbon, a Master of the 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 133 
 
 The material progress being made, since about 1854, had 
 been largely developed in by far the greatest part of the 
 island. The population was being still diminished by 
 emigration and other causes ; the area for real husbandry 
 had been greatly extended ; the rural community, at least 
 in its lower grades, was infinitely better off than it had 
 been before the Famine. The look of the country, in most 
 places, bore witness to a change beneficent in the main ; 
 it had been almost transformed since 1844-45. The cottar 
 system, no doubt, was to be found in backward counties ; 
 but even in these it had been largely effaced ; it was all 
 but passing away in the more thriving counties ; masses 
 of indigence were to be seen only in tracts west of the 
 Shannon ; and these were aggregated on an area com- 
 paratively small. The general consolidation of farms had, 
 meanwhile, gone on ; and though Ireland remained, on the 
 whole, a land of small farms, her land system had, from 
 top to bottom, ceased to depend for its support on a 
 perishable root. In every conceivable respect a marked 
 improvement was visible in the state of the peasantry • 
 they were by many degrees better clothed and fed than 
 their fathers had been ; the wages of agricultural labour 
 were still rising, and were now paid in money, and not 
 in plots of potatoes ; and though the habitations of this 
 whole class were, as a rule, still mean, the dwellings of the 
 class of substantial farmers had shown signs of distinct 
 social progress. At the same time agriculture had made 
 a marked advance, owing to the influences I have referred 
 to before ; fine specimens of extensive farming were very 
 commonly to be seen ; thousands of acres had been re- 
 claimed and enclosed of late years ; at no period certainly 
 had the landed gentry, in a great measure through moneys 
 borrowed from the State, expended such large sums in 
 improving their estates, especially in arterial drainage, and 
 
 Court of Chancery in Ireland ; and Mr. Lecky's ' Democracy and 
 Liberty,' vol. i. ch. ii. 
 
134 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 the introduction of the best breeds of stock of all kinds. 
 The wealth of Ireland, too, was increasing, if not rapidly ; 
 and a change for the better might be traced in what we 
 may describe as her general social life. Her middle class 
 was still weak and small compared to that of England and 
 Scotland ; but it had been growing in wealth and power ; 
 and this, to some extent, had had a good effect on a com- 
 munity still mainly dependent on the land. 
 
 The material and even the social progress of Ireland, 
 since the Famine, had thus been marked ; it had been 
 more decided than it has been, at any period, except, 
 possibly, that from 1782 to 1800. Her land system, too, 
 had become better in important parts ; but in many 
 respects it remained vicious ; some of its vices had been 
 aggravated, or were more sensibly felt. The hope that 
 the land would pass generally into the hands of large 
 farmers, able to develop its resources, had not been 
 realised, or had been realised only to a relatively trivial 
 extent; it was still held in the main by a peasantry of 
 small occupiers of the soil, though the consolidation of 
 farms had gone on over extensive areas, especially over 
 wide tracts of pasturage, in the eastern, midland, and 
 western counties, and this, in some instances, through a 
 process of harsh eviction. The profound divisions of race 
 and faith, the distinctive feature in the organic structure 
 of the whole community, were at least as visible as ever in 
 the land system ; from causes I have pointed out before, 
 they had, not improbably, been widened ; this tended to 
 increase the old dissension in landed relations, and the 
 long-standing separation between the landed classes. 
 Middleman tenures, with their mischievous effects, had, 
 since the Famine, well-nigh disappeared ; but the new land- 
 lord had largely replaced the middleman ; absenteeism 
 remained what it had been ; and though absentee estates, 
 as a rule, were under good agents, there was too much of 
 that 'absenteeism of the heart,' condemned by Tocqueville 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 135 
 
 as a grave social danger. The purchasers under the 
 Encumbered Estates Acts, with some honourable excep- 
 tions, no doubt, were too often oppressive landlords ; the 
 old landlords, as a class, had, certainly, done much for their 
 estates, but they had lost their political and largely their 
 social influence ; partly owing to apprehensions as regards 
 tenant right, partly to the assurances of statesmen that 
 their position was safe, they had become perhaps more 
 exacting in their dealings with their dependents ; in the 
 existing situation, they more and more resembled a weak 
 caste, controlled by the central Government, and isolated 
 amidst a community, to a great extent, not friendly. All 
 this tended to produce a want of stability and insecurity 
 in the land system, which was ominous of social strife and 
 trouble; but the most active element of disturbance was 
 to be certainly found in the contact with the rebellious 
 movement which Ireland had lately witnessed. Fenianism 
 had been scotched, but by no means slain ; and though 
 the peasantry had held aloof from it, Fenian emissaries 
 were going through the country, appealing to the passions 
 and the greed of the occupiers of the soil, for different 
 reasons not contented with their lot, hostile, in a great 
 degree, to the order of things around them, and more alive 
 to their grievances than in the past generation ; at this 
 very time a cry against the payment of rent, and against 
 'landlordism,' as it was called, was being heard in a 
 few counties. It was significant that agrarian crimes — 
 some of the worst type — and agrarian disorder were dis- 
 tinctly increasing; and it should be added, that, in spite 
 of Cardinal Cullen, the younger Catholic priests, in some 
 districts, were beginning to play the part of agitators 
 again. 
 
 Passing from the general state of landed relations, the 
 conditions of land tenure, briefly noticed before, had 
 not improved of late years, and were, in some respects, 
 worse. Rents had been rising for a considerable time : 
 
136 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 but except in comparatively few instances, they were not 
 excessive, as affairs stood ; whatever mendacious calumny 
 has since maintained, Ireland, on the whole, was in no 
 sense an over-rented land.* But the modes of occupation 
 were essentially bad ; they were open to the gravest 
 objections ; their vices had become more than ever 
 apparent. The tenant right, under the Ulster custom, 
 had, I have remarked, largely secured the tenant farmer, 
 in parts of the province, what was generally known as the 
 ' Three F's,' Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure, the power of 
 
 * This fact has been established by conclusive and impartial evi- 
 dence, which hardly admits of question. It should be steadily kept 
 in the reader's mind ; for an idea, largely countenanced by iniquitous 
 legislation badly administered, has prevailed of late years, that rack- 
 renting in Ireland was common, nay, general. Exactly the contrary 
 has been the case during the last half century. Butt, in his ' The 
 Irish People and the Irish Land,' published in 1867, hardly alludes 
 to over-renting ; he properly dwells on the insecurity of Irish land 
 tenure. Master Fitzgibbon, a great authority on the subject, in his 
 ' Ireland in 1868,' p. 268, pointedly remarked, '452 estates are under 
 my jurisdiction, in the Court of Chancery, the rents of which amount 
 to ,£330,809, paid by 18,287 tenants. I have been now nearly eight 
 years in office, during which time the rents have been paid without 
 murmuring or complaint worth noticing. ... It is well known that 
 my ears are open to any just complaint from any tenant.' The testi- 
 mony of Judge Longfield, another great authority, is nearly to the 
 same effect. In ' Systems of Land Tenure,' published in 1870, he 
 wrote thus (p. 21) : 'This complaint of high rents has been made 
 without ceasing for more than three hundred years. There was never 
 less ground for it than at the present day, although in some instances 
 the rent demanded is still too high ; but this chiefly occurs where the 
 landlords are middlemen, or where the property is very small.' These 
 views are fully confirmed by evidence of a later period, to which I 
 shall refer. I may add that, in 1869, I examined the rentals of many 
 scores of Irish estates, and was convinced that over-renting was very 
 rare. See my ' Letters on the Land Question of Ireland,' republished 
 from the Times, passim. I quote a single instance, from many to 
 the same purpose (p. 221) : ' It may be asserted, too, without fear of 
 contradiction, that if in some districts rents are too high, they are not 
 so as a general rule.' I have managed an Irish estate for upwards of 
 fifty years, and have some claim to be an agricultural expert. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 137 
 
 a Free Sale of the holding ; * though it should be especially 
 borne in mind that the fair rent was never adjusted by 
 an external agency, but was settled by what Adam Smith 
 would have called ' higgling ' between the owner and 
 occupier of the soil. The custom, however, had been 
 very powerful ; its violation, on anything like a great 
 scale, would have certainly caused a fierce war of classes ; 
 and it gave the Ulster tenant, in tens of thousands of 
 cases, a real proprietary right in the land, whatever might 
 be the terms of his contract ; a right equivalent to more 
 or less joint-ownership, and that might be described as a 
 precious peculium, subject to conditions that long had 
 made it practically secure. But this most important right, 
 involving property worth many millions, still remained 
 wholly unprotected by law ; and though its value had 
 enormously increased, as the wealth of Ulster had been 
 developed, of late years, it was being ' nibbled away ' on 
 not a few estates, and restricted by limitations of many 
 kinds that had greatly impaired it. An analogous right, 
 
 * For the characteristics of the Ulster tenant right, see Butt's 
 1 Landlord and Tenant Act, 1870,' ch. xv. pp. 296-310. As to the legal 
 authorities on the subject, reference may be made to the learned 
 treatise of Messrs. Cherry and Wakley, 'The Irish Land Law and 
 Land Purchase Acts,' pp. 150-152. A popular account of the Ulster 
 custom will be found in my ' Letters on the Land Question of Ireland,' 
 pp. 242-247, and a more technical account in a legal treatise from my 
 pen on the Land Act of 1870, pp. 30-56. The best definition I have 
 seen of the right is one made by the late P. J. Blake, Q.C., C.C.J, of 
 a northern county, ' Cherry and Wakley,' p. 150 : ' The right or custom 
 in general of yearly tenants, or those deriving through them, to con- 
 tinue in undisturbed possession so long as they act properly as tenants 
 and pay their rents. The correlative right of the landlord periodically 
 to raise the rent, so as to give him a just, fair, and full participation 
 in the increased value of the land, but not so as to extinguish the 
 tenant's interest by paying a rack rent. The usage or custom of the 
 yearly tenants to sell their interest, if they do not wish to continue in 
 possession, or if they become unable to pay the rent. The correlative 
 right of the landlord to be consulted, and to exercise a potential voice 
 in the approval or disapproval of the proposed assignee.' 
 
138 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 like seed scattered by the winds, had partially spread 
 into the southern provinces, as the natural result of the 
 equitable claims, the occupiers of farms had repeatedly 
 acquired, though this had not been recognised on many 
 estates, and its efficacy was not as yet great ; but this 
 right, such as it was, like its fellow, was not law-worthy, 
 and depended wholly on the will of the lord of the soil. 
 In addition to the tenant right in the north and the south, 
 the concurrent claims of the tenant farmers, throughout 
 the country, in respect of improvements and of sums paid 
 on the transfer of farms, for ' good-will,' had been greatly 
 increasing of late years, especially as prosperity was 
 advancing ; and yet tenures had continued to become 
 more precarious ; leaseholds were being almost every- 
 where replaced by tenancies at will. These claims were 
 never so extensive before ; often equivalent to joint- 
 ownership, in no doubtful sense, and, in almost all cases, 
 of some value, they were, nevertheless, still outside the 
 aegis of the law, a fact that must ever be borne in mind ; 
 they could be destroyed or greatly reduced by the raising 
 of rent, they could be annihilated by a notice to quit, if 
 eviction followed. Unquestionably in the great mass of 
 instances, these rights, whatever their nature, were not 
 invaded ; but they certainly had been in a certain number ; 
 a single case of invasion created alarm and distrust, 
 and had a bad effect on landed relations ; throw a stone 
 into a pond, and it makes a ripple ; it has a disturbing 
 influence far beyond the surface it strikes. No wonder, 
 then, that complaints of these modes of tenure had become 
 very general, and were loudly expressed, not only by those 
 who might suffer from them, but by intelligent minds 
 which had mastered the subject. It was an exaggeration 
 to assert, as was said at the time, that the peasant in 
 Ireland lived under a sword of Damocles ; but he lived 
 under a system in which law and right were very plainly 
 opposed. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 139 
 
 Only a revolution, which Parliament would not have 
 sanctioned, could have effaced the inveterate ills of the 
 Irish land system, running up to the conquests and the 
 confiscations of the past, and the divisions of race and 
 faith in the Irish land ; the remark is as true now as it 
 was thirty years ago ; and a revolution of the kind, I am 
 firmly convinced, would, even under the best conditions, 
 make infinitely worse whatever was already bad. But it 
 was possible for legislation to remove or mitigate the 
 essential vices in the modes of Irish land tenure ; Mr. 
 Gladstone rightly confined himself to this object. He 
 brought in his first Irish Land Bill in the early spring of 
 1870; he had to address a House of Commons not much 
 in sympathy with a project of the kind. Many of the 
 members were ignorant of the subject ; many thought 
 English land tenure perfect, and could not understand 
 why it would not do for Ireland, a prejudice at least three 
 centuries old ; some believed Irish tenant right to be a 
 violation of Free Trade, then in the ascendant in every 
 phase of commerce. The Minister's speech was adapted 
 to those who heard it ; it was tentative, moderate, not 
 striking ; he drew, indeed, very plain distinctions between 
 British and Irish land tenure, and showed how the first 
 could be no rule of right for the second ; but if he enlarged 
 on the just claims of the occupier of the Irish soil, he did 
 not venture to maintain, what he probably felt, that these 
 were often equivalent to a joint-ownership more or less 
 developed. He was, in short, dexterous, but not pro- 
 found ; very inferior to Burke, who, a century before, had 
 grasped the essential facts in this province, though the 
 question was still in the remote future. The most im- 
 portant parts of Mr. Gladstone's speech, and indeed, of 
 those of his leading followers, regard being had to events 
 by no means distant, were those in which he repudiated, 
 with no doubtful censure, the whole theory of the ' Three 
 F's/ the extreme demand, at this time, of the tenant class 
 
140 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 in Ireland. ' Fair Rent,' he argued, especially if adjusted 
 by the State, deprives a landlord of his first proprietary 
 right, and involves his expropriation in the long run ; 
 ' Fixity of Tenure ' means a perpetuity for the tenant, to 
 which he has no just claim, and involves confiscation 
 hardly disguised ; ' Free Sale ' was but a corollary to 
 legislation on these principles.* At the same time, Mr. 
 Gladstone protested, with marked emphasis, that the Bill 
 he was introducing was to be absolutely a final measure ; 
 it was to effect a permanent settlement of the Irish land ; 
 Irish landlords would have nothing more to apprehend, 
 Irish tenants to expect. In this instance, as in that of 
 Home Rule, the orator was to belie himself, and to be a 
 curious example of the irony of Fate ; within a few years 
 he was to legislate on the lines he had denounced as 
 dangerous and false ; to carry into effect a scheme for 
 dealing with the Irish land, infinitely worse than that of 
 the ' Three F's ; ' to scatter the ' finality/ to which he had 
 pledged his word, to the winds. 
 
 The Bill thus launched was a comprehensive and wise 
 measure, if not free from real, even grave, defects ; it 
 remains the only statesmanlike scheme for the settlement 
 
 * I quote a few passages from the speeches of Mr. Gladstone, and 
 others, on this subject. Mr. Gladstone said, March u, 1870, ' If you 
 value rents you may as well, for every available purpose, adopt per- 
 petuity of tenure at once. It is perpetuity of tenure only in a certain 
 disguise. . . . The man who becomes a mere annuitant loses all 
 general interest in the prosperity of the land.' And again, February 
 15, 1870 : " Perpetuity of tenure on the part of the occupier is virtu- 
 ally expropriation of the landlord. . . . The mere readjustment of rent 
 can by no means dispose of all contingencies the future may produce 
 in his favour.' Sir Roundell Palmer, afterwards Lord Selborne, said, 
 March 10, 1870, 'Fixity of tenure, in plain English, means taking 
 away the property of one man and giving it to another.' So Lord 
 Granville, June 14, 1870, said in the House of Lords, 'They might 
 have introduced a Bill — which they were determined not to do — 
 adopting fixity of tenure, taking away his property from the landlord, 
 and establishing a valuation rent.' Passages of this kind, at least as 
 strong, might be multiplied a hundred-fold. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 141 
 
 of Irish landed relations that hitherto has received the 
 assent of Parliament.* It made the tenant right of 
 Ulster, in its various forms, as these existed in different 
 estates, law-worthy, and protected to the fullest extent ; it 
 gave the same sanction to the inchoate tenant right of 
 the southern provinces. This was, in itself, an immense 
 reform ; but the Bill properly had a far wider sweep ; it 
 extended, with the exception of certain kinds of lands, 
 such as demesnes, town parks, holdings of a residential 
 type, and, in most cases, large pastoral holdings, to nearly 
 all the occupiers of the Irish soil ; even the excepted lands 
 were partially within its scope. The first great object of 
 the measure was to secure to the Irish tenant the rights 
 he had acquired to improvements he may have made on 
 his farm, a right hitherto not within the pale of the law ; 
 its provisions, in this respect, were, I think, excellent. 
 With a true perception of the unquestionable fact that, 
 though the Irish landlords, especially of late years, had 
 expended considerable sums on their estates, still, as is 
 inevitable under the small-farm system, the Irish tenant, 
 as a general rule, had made the greatest part of the 
 additions to the land, Mr. Gladstone provided that, subject 
 to limitations by no means severe, in order that the law 
 should not run wild, improvements made on farms, in the 
 absence of proof to the contrary, should be deemed to be 
 the tenant's property, thus reversing the presumption of 
 English law, iniquitous when applied to Irish tenures, that 
 what is annexed to the soil belongs to the owner, and not 
 to its occupant. The ground being, so to speak, cleared, 
 
 * It is impossible, in a sketch like this, to describe in detail the 
 agrarian legislation for Ireland, which Parliament has enacted from 
 1870 to this time. The work of Butt referred to before is an admir- 
 able commentary on the Bill of 1870, which soon became law. A 
 brief account of all this legislation will be found in Mr. Lecky's 
 ' Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. ch. ii. The legal treatises of 
 Messrs. Cherry and Wakley, pp. 149-448, and of Mr. Justice Barton, 
 are elaborate and complete. 
 
H2 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 the Bill declared that, in almost all cases, a tenant should 
 have a right, when leaving his farm, even though dis- 
 possessed for the failure to pay his rent, to claim compen- 
 sation, from his landlord, for his improvements ; and 
 facilities were offered to landlords to discharge these 
 claims through loans from the State. In order, however, 
 reasonably to secure right being done, in a complex and 
 very difficult matter, the Bill proceeded to define improve- 
 ments, and to impose restrictions on claims, to which 
 objection could fairly be made. Apart from unexhausted 
 tillages and manures, an improvement was to be a work 
 ' suitable to a holding, and adding to its letting value,' a 
 description as equitable and precise as could well be desired. 
 And, speaking generally, claims in respect of improve- 
 ments were not to be preferred were the improvement 
 twenty years old, except in the case of buildings and the 
 reclamation of waste land ; nor if the improvement were 
 prohibited by the landlord, under the conditions laid 
 down ; nor if it were made under a contract for value ; nor 
 if it were forbidden by a special contract ; nor if, in certain 
 cases, the landlord had agreed to make it ; nor if the 
 claim was barred by express written contract, in the case 
 of improvements made before the Bill became law ; nor, in 
 the case, with some exceptions, of certain classes of leases ; 
 nor if the landlord, under certain conditions, permitted a 
 tenant to dispose of his interest in his farm. 
 
 This measure, therefore, gave the Irish tenant farmer 
 complete property in his improvements, within reasonable 
 bounds, and yet did not here invade the just rights of the 
 landlord ; it was only to be regretted that it had not been 
 proposed many years before. It proceeded, however, a 
 great deal further, and asserted a principle, for the behoof 
 of the tenant, which has since been very generally con- 
 demned,* though in my judgment, it was essentially right, 
 
 * Judge Longfield and Mr. Lecky are much the most distinguished 
 of these numerous censors. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 143 
 
 if carried somewhat beyond proper and safe limits. Except 
 in the case of leases granted before the Bill, and of a class 
 of leases granted when it was to become law, Mr. Gladstone 
 engrafted on the great mass of Irish tenancies what really 
 was a new tenant right ; he was probably convinced, though 
 he did not say so, that this was to be an equivalent 
 for the joint-ownership, more or less manifest, which, in 
 innumerable instances, the Irish occupier had acquired in 
 the soil. This tenant right was given the rather ambiguous 
 name of ' Compensation/ in the event of ' Disturbance ; ' a 
 sum varying in amount from seven to one year's rent, 
 according to the size of the holding, but in no case to 
 exceed £250, was to be paid to a tenant when dispossessed 
 by a notice to quit, and, in some circumstances, by other 
 means ; this was to be over and above any sum due in 
 respect of improvements ; but this, too, as in the case of 
 the last-named sum, was to be paid only when the tenant 
 was ' quitting ' the land. Obviously this was a potential 
 tenant right, if to be realised only in one way ; it practi- 
 cally gave a quasi-proprietary right in the fee, as, when 
 commenting on the Bill, I pointed out at the time ; and I 
 certainly thought that the compensation was very large, 
 and introduced a principle into the Bill which might be 
 abused. Two other provisions of the measure, with 
 respect to the position of the Irish tenant, may be briefly 
 noticed. No attempt was made to adjust rents, through 
 the agency of the State, Mr. Gladstone having expressly 
 denounced the idea ; but in the case of petty occupiers, 
 subjected to ' exorbitant rents,' compensation for disturb- 
 ance might be adjudged to them, even if evicted for not 
 paying the rent, that is, the landlord might be mulcted in 
 very heavy penalties. In nearly all instances, too, the 
 tenant was declared to be entitled to 'his away-going 
 crops,' another privilege, sometimes of no little value, and 
 analogous to that secured by usage in many parts of 
 England. So far the Bill dealt with the Irish land on 
 
144 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 the side of occupation ; but it dealt with it, also, on the 
 side of ownership. John Bright had urged the expediency, 
 during several years, of facilitating the transfer of the fee 
 simple, in his holding, to the Irish tenant ; this policy had 
 been carried out, to some extent, by the Act disestablish- 
 ing the Anglican Church in Ireland. The Bill of 1870 
 extended the principle ; it provided that the State might 
 advance moneys to Irish tenants, to enable them to become 
 owners of their farms ; but — and this should especially be 
 kept in mind — the tenant was to supply a third part of the 
 purchase money at least ; and the transaction was to be 
 effected by free contract, that is, by the voluntary act of 
 the landlord disposing of his land. It remains to add, that 
 the administration of the measure, was, for the most part — 
 subject to an appeal to the Superior Courts — entrusted to 
 the County Courts of Ireland, that is, to long-established 
 tribunals of repute. 
 
 The Bill passed through both Houses with little change ; 
 it has long been known as the Irish Land Act of 1870. It 
 was, in the main, I repeat, a great reforming measure ; 
 it effected a far-reaching improvement in the tenure of 
 land in Ireland, and that without any marked infringe- 
 ment of the just rights of property. No impartial mind 
 can fairly object to the protection given to the tenant 
 right of the north and the south, or to the compen- 
 sation secured for tenants' improvements ; if ' Compen- 
 sation for Disturbance ' was a bold experiment, still this 
 Parliamentary tenant right, as it may be called, was in 
 harmony with fact in nearly all instances. Nevertheless, 
 the Act had three marked defects ; these largely detracted 
 from its practical value. It bristled with such exceptions 
 and limitations that it was difficult even for the learned to 
 understand ; it seemed to the unlettered peasant a dan- 
 gerous puzzle, involving him, perhaps, in lawsuits and 
 costs ; it did not strike his imagination as a substantial 
 boon. Though, too, it annexed a real tenant right to 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 145 
 
 nearly all farms, and thus secured to the Irish tenant, in 
 almost all cases, any joint-ownership he may have acquired 
 in the land, still this was intelligible only to educated men ; 
 ' Compensation for Disturbance ' was to be given only 
 when an occupier was about to leave his holding ; but 
 this was exactly what he could not bear to do ; he was, 
 therefore, ready to accept almost any terms, rather than 
 face consequences he dreaded to think of. Mr. Gladstone, 
 again, had, in this measure, shown that he wished to 
 assimilate Irish to English land tenure in the long run ; he 
 sought to vindicate the just claims of the Irish tenant ; but 
 he desired ultimately to give him the status of his fellow 
 in England, a long-standing, false conception of British 
 statesmen. The Land Act, therefore, provided that most 
 of the rights it conferred on the tenant might be commuted 
 by the grant of a lease for thirty-one years or upwards ; 
 and it further enacted that tenants of the larger kind might 
 ( contract themselves out ' of the privileges it gave, by volun- 
 tary agreements made with their landlords. The object of 
 this was to place the Irish land, by degrees, no doubt, under 
 rather long leases, discharged from the tenant right and 
 other claims ; but in the circumstances of Ireland this was 
 a mistake. This part of the Act was a temptation to 
 landlords, to persuade or even to force tenants to accept 
 leases under conditions which might be too severe, with 
 respect to rent and many other things, and to forego rights 
 they would otherwise have enjoyed, by a process which 
 might not be a free contract ; it encouraged, in a word, 
 unfair evasion of the law. This flaw in the measure was 
 pointed out from the first ; Mr. Gladstone, however, denied 
 its existence, and characteristically shut his ears to other 
 schemes of reform, notably to an ingenious proposal of the 
 late Judge Longfield to extend the Ulster tenant right 
 to all Irish tenancies by a very simple and self-acting 
 process, and to a proposal of Butt to convert tenancies at 
 will into long leaseholds, at the rents then current. These 
 
 L 
 
 
146 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 projects certainly deserved attention ; and, whatever their 
 shortcomings, were easy to understand. 
 
 The Act of 1870, like the Act dealing with the Protestant 
 Church, was followed by a short-lived outbreak of agrarian 
 crime put down only by severe coercive measures. This 
 phenomenon has been common in Irish history, from the 
 days of Tyrconnell to the present time ; disorder has been 
 the immediate result of concessions ; peccant humours dis- 
 charge themselves if you touch the head of an ulcer. There 
 is some reason, too, to believe that in a few instances — and 
 they were very few — wrongheaded landlords, alarmed at 
 the prospect before them, began to harass and even to 
 dispossess tenants ; they aimed at 4 clearing ' their estates, 
 in order to evade the law ; conduct of this kind naturally 
 provoked indignation in some places.* Nevertheless, the 
 Land Act of 1870 was generally well received in Ireland, 
 though it fell short of the popular demand, and it was ill 
 understood by the tenant classes ; f many farmers availed 
 themselves of its benefits, especially those holding under 
 the Ulster custom. Five or six years of prosperity 
 followed, the brightest perhaps ever seen in Ireland ; agri- 
 cultural prices were high, harvests extremely good ; the 
 material progress of the country was decided ; the peasantry 
 seemed, as a rule, contented ; agitation abandoned, as it 
 were, the land, and concentrated itself on the Home Rule 
 movement. Mr. Gladstone, always optimistic, and proud 
 of his own offspring, boasted, towards the close of his first 
 Ministry, that his recent legislation had done wonders ; the 
 Land Act had reconciled Irish landlords and tenants, and 
 had greatly increased the selling price of land : he refused 
 to see how much of all this was due to a cause wholly 
 
 * By this time I was an Irish County Court Judge ; and I had 
 some experience of reprehensible acts of this kind, extremely few as 
 they were. 
 
 f It is very remarkable that the stringent provisions of the Act against 
 exorbitant rents seem to have been almost unknown to the peasantry, 
 though exorbitant rents were, no doubt, existing here and there. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 147 
 
 independent of himself, the comparative well-being of 
 nearly all Ireland. As had happened in the period from 
 1854 to 1870, this tranquillity was not deeply founded or 
 complete ; as then, it was, in a great degree, deceptive. 
 The peasantry were living fast in a good time ; banks and 
 traders had made large advances to them on the security 
 of tenure the law had created ; their position became such, 
 in some districts, that a season of distress might reduce 
 many to sudden poverty, and be productive of the neces- 
 sarily resulting evils. Rents, again, were rising as the 
 country grew in wealth, though except in comparatively 
 few cases — a fact that should be steadily kept in view — 
 they were still, as a rule, by no means excessive ; they were 
 far below the rents of thirty years before ; but this gradual 
 rise was of course not popular. In some instances, too — 
 but these were very rare, as was conclusively proved at 
 a subsequent time — tenants, under more or less pressure 
 on the part of their landlords, had accepted leases excluding 
 them from the advantages of the law, and not equitable 
 in some respects, or had wholly ' contracted themselves 
 out' of the Act; this naturally caused alarm and distrust 
 in many peasant dwellings. But the principal reasons that 
 content was really less than it seemed to be in landed 
 relations were altogether of a different nature. Like too 
 many even excellent reforms in Ireland, the Land Act of 
 1870 became law too late; twenty years before it would 
 have been hailed as an extraordinary boon ; it was now 
 regarded as almost a half measure, in view of the socialistic 
 ideas about the land afloat. At the same time, Fenianism 
 continued to make its influence felt ; Irish-Americans con- 
 tinued to flit through the country denouncing British rule 
 and Irish landlords, and calling upon the peasantry, as in 
 1798, to rise. Even in these years of prosperity, though 
 rents were well paid, there was a secret movement against 
 rent beneath the surface of things, so well concealed that 
 it was absolutely unknown by the Government, 
 
148 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Meanwhile, in the midst of apparent peace, the elements 
 of trouble in Ireland, still quiescent, were to come to a 
 head, and to give rise to a movement, the most formidable 
 to British rule, though skilfully masked, which had been 
 seen since the rebellion of 1798. Revolutionary schemes 
 in Ireland have always fastened on the land, as the chief 
 source from which they could derive strength ; the United 
 Irish movement, as I have pointed out, was connected with 
 a peasant movement against the payment of rent. This 
 idea had been brought into marked prominence by John 
 Finton Lalor, one of the rebels of 1848, a comparatively 
 unknown, but a sagacious man; 'you must associate,' he 
 wrote, 'the cause of Irish liberty, for which the people 
 really care little, with a cause for which they care a great 
 deal ; an inert mass must be yoked to a powerful engine ; 
 the Irish landlord must be driven from the land, and the 
 peasant masses be made its owners ; and the fall of English 
 power will follow that of its landlord garrison.' These 
 words fell for the moment on unheeding ears; but the 
 tradition has continued from that day to this; the destruc- 
 tion of Irish 'landlordism' was one of the objects of the 
 Fenian leaders of 1865-67, and they denounced the Irish 
 gentry in atrocious language, though they did not know 
 how to carry out their policy. This teaching was eagerly 
 adopted by Michael Davitt, a Fenian, who had been con- 
 victed of a crime against the State ; during a long im- 
 prisonment at Dartmoor, he brooded 'on his country's 
 wrongs,' but satisfied himself that if the independence of 
 Ireland was a patriot's first object, this could be attained 
 only by uprooting the existing land system, by hounding 
 on the occupiers of the soil against its owners, and by 
 handing it over as spoil to the peasantry. Davitt was 
 released from Dartmoor at the close of 1877 ; he attended 
 a meeting in Dublin at which Parnell was present, and two 
 of the assassins of the Phoenix Park tragedy ; and he 
 became supreme in the ranks of the Fenian societies, 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 149 
 
 known as ' the Irish Republican Brotherhood,' which still 
 retained a feeble life in Ireland, and even in England and 
 Scotland. A short time afterwards he made his way to 
 the United States, where he found the Fenians divided 
 into two parties, known under the general name of the 
 Clan na Gael, but having different objects, though with 
 a common purpose. Both parties were for liberating 
 Ireland ' from the Saxon yoke ; ' but the most violent and 
 the most active sought to attain this end by expedients of 
 desperate force; a 'skirmishing fund ' had been established ; 
 'England was to be invaded' by small bodies of 'resolute 
 men ; ' her capital and chief towns were to be destroyed 
 by dynamite. The other party, more prudent, but with 
 similar aims, had been struck by Parnell's attitude in the 
 House of Commons, and by the success of his un- 
 scrupulous tactics ; its leaders began to think that some- 
 thing might be done by 'constitutional means;' they 
 gradually came to an agreement with Davitt, that 'the 
 overthrow of English domination ' was to be their ultimate 
 end ; but that efforts in this direction were to be linked 
 with energetic efforts to subvert ' the landlord system, 
 a disgrace to humanity and to the civilisation of the 
 present century;' to banish the Irish landed gentry from 
 their country, and to secure their estates for their tenantry. 
 This movement, though rebellious in no doubtful sense, 
 was nevertheless to have a legal disguise ; the wolf was to 
 wear sheep's clothing ; the ' formation of a peasant pro- 
 prietary, and the abolition of arbitrary evictions,' were to 
 be its proposed objects.* 
 
 Treason, seeking support from socialistic greed, was 
 thus the origin of the Land League conspiracy, for this 
 was its only legitimate name. I have glanced at this 
 movement, on its political side, as it was associated with 
 the cause of Home Rule ; I must here consider it on 
 
 * Report of the Judges of the Special Commission, vol. iv. pp. 478- 
 480. 
 
ISO PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 its agrarian side, the most prominent, if not the most 
 dangerous, to the State.* The compact between Davitt 
 and the moderates of the Clan na Gael was called the 
 1 New Departure ; ' Davitt returned to Ireland to stir up 
 what became known as the ' Land War ; ' Fenian emissaries 
 went to Ireland, about the same time, in order to collect 
 arms and to drill peasants, with a view to a possible rising 
 should the occasion be found. Meanwhile, Davitt had 
 addressed himself to what was more immediately at hand ; 
 in the spring of 1879 he got a meeting together, in his 
 native county, Mayo, at which ' landlordism ' and all its 
 works were savagely denounced ; during the following 
 months other meetings of the same sort were held, but as 
 yet only in the western province of Connaught. At these 
 gatherings the crusade against the landed gentry went on ; 
 rebellious utterances were blended with ferocious diatribes 
 againstf landlords sometimes marked out for vengeance by 
 
 * By many degrees the best account of the Land League move- 
 ment will be found in the ' Report of the Proceedings of the Special 
 Commission of 1888-89,' republished by the Times in four volumes. 
 Reference may also be made to ' Parnellism and Crime,' a series of 
 essays in the Times ; to the ' Truth about the Land League,' by 
 Mr. Arnold Foster ; to ' The Continuity of the Irish Revolutionary 
 Movement,' by Professor Brougham Leech ; and to a pamphlet called 
 ' The Queen's Enemies in America.' A kind of apology for the 
 conspiracy will be found in ' The Parnell Movement,' by Mr. T. P. 
 O'Connor, M.P. ; but the Irish 'Nationalists' have judiciously been 
 reticent on the subject. I may refer to my 'Ireland, 1798-1898,' 
 ch. viii. 
 
 t These infamous speeches, worthy of Marat and Hebert, were 
 continued for years, and fill a large part of the evidence in the pro- 
 ceedings of the Special Commission. I select a sample or two taken 
 at random. Mr. M. Harris said, ' If the tenant farmers of Ireland 
 shoot down landlords as partridges are shot in September, Mat 
 Harris would never say a word against them' (vol. ii. p. 38). The 
 same worthy, afterwards an M.P., exclaimed on another occasion (vol. 
 i. p. 26), ' Mrs. Blake of Keenoyle is no better than a she-devil. . . . 
 Mr. Robinson called the people of Connemara vermin ; the people of 
 Connemara ought to treat him as vermin. Leonard of Tuam I will 
 say nothing about. I will denounce him at his own door.' So, too, 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 151 
 
 name ; and the peasantry were called on to keep 'a firm grip 
 on their lands ; ' these would become their own should they 
 only be steadfast. The Land League movement was now 
 launched on its course ; but it was known to be an 
 essentially Fenian movement ; it was subsidised from Clan 
 na Gael funds ; it was supported by a murderous Clan na 
 Gael print ; it was condemned in the severest language 
 by an aged Catholic prelate, one of the few of O'Connell's 
 surviving friends. The movement, however, as yet was 
 not of much strength ; Davitt had opinions about 
 the 'nationalisation of the land/ which, like those of the 
 Fenian leaders of 1865-67, were not to the mind of the 
 peasantry ; his efforts, hitherto, had not had much success. 
 In this position of affairs he addressed himself to Parnell, 
 who had had Fenian sympathies and associations for 
 years, and had, we have seen, attracted Fenian admiration 
 abroad ; what passed between the two men has not 
 transpired ; but Parnell, if with reluctance, consented at 
 last to become the head of the Land League and to direct 
 the movement. The measures he adopted were skilfully 
 designed, in harmony with the 'New Departure,' and 
 with the double-dealing nature of a true conspirator. A 
 Central Land League was established in Dublin ; it was 
 to have ' branches ' extending through the country ; it was 
 to make a steady attack on the land system. Its professed 
 objects, however, were constitutional, nay, fair; it was 'to 
 agitate against rack-rents and unjust evictions,' and to 
 * facilitate the ownership of the soil by its occupants.' 
 The ultimate purpose of the League, nevertheless, was 
 that of the Fenian chiefs ; of its seven high officers four 
 
 a Mr. Boyton said (vol. iv. p. 277), 'We have seen plenty of them, 
 landlords and agents, that deserve to be shot at any man's hand. I 
 have always denounced the commission of outrages by night, but 
 meet him in the broad daylight, and if you must blow his brains out, 
 blow them out in the daytime.' Multiply such speeches addressed to 
 an excitable peasantry, and the results which followed can easily be 
 understood. 
 
152 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 were Fenians ; it was wholly supported by Fenian moneys ; 
 its most prominent members made a boast of their Fenian 
 sentiments.* It was, in a word, a rebellious organisation in 
 a constitutional garb ; it was the embodiment of what 
 Parnell avowed afterwards: 'A true revolutionary move- 
 ment in Ireland should, in my opinion, partake both of a 
 constitutional and an illegal character. It should be both 
 an open and a secret organisation, using the Constitution 
 for its own purposes, but also taking advantage of its 
 secret combination.' f 
 
 The Land League established, under these auspices, 
 gradually made some progress in the western parts of 
 Ireland, always centres of poverty more or less developed. 
 It had not, however, as yet, become a power in the land ; 
 Parnell went to the United States, as I have mentioned 
 before, in order to obtain support for the ' New Departure.' 
 He was the grandson of a distinguished American ; the 
 elections for a President were near ; it was necessary to 
 bid for the Irish vote ; the chief of the League was invited 
 
 * This has been established by conclusive evidence, and should be 
 carefully borne in mind. Mr. Egan, one of the treasurers of the 
 League, said, ' On my own behalf, and on behalf of my friends of 
 the League, both in prison and outside) I can say that we regard the 
 land question only in the light of a step towards national indepen- 
 dence, which is, and shall continue to be, the goal of all our efforts.' 
 Mr. Healy, M.P., said, 'This is a movement to win back from 
 England the land of Ireland, which was robbed from the people by 
 the confiscating armies of Elizabeth and Cromwell. . . . But I would 
 remind you that Mr. Parnell . . . explained the basis of the move- 
 ment when he told the Galway farmers that he would never have 
 taken off his coat in this movement were it not with Irish nationality 
 as its object.' Parnell occasionally let out the truth ; he said, ' Let 
 every farmer, while he keeps a firm grip of his holding, recognise also 
 the great truth that he is serving his country and the people at large, 
 and helping to break down English misrule in Ireland' (Report of 
 the Proceedings of the Special Commission, vol. iv. pp. 203, 204). 
 These speeches were, in hundreds, imitated and followed by other 
 speakers. 
 
 f Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 486. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 153 
 
 to say what his Irish policy was in the Representative 
 House of the people ; and this he did in moderate and 
 carefully chosen language. His real attitude, however, 
 was very different ; he associated with well-known Fenian 
 leaders, became acquainted with a contributor to the Irish 
 World, the worst journal of the Clan na Gael press ; and 
 more than once gave utterance to what was plain treason, 
 notably to the ' last-link ' speech already referred to. He 
 obtained considerable funds for the League in Ireland, and 
 before long founded a similar League in America, which 
 became a Fenian organisation of the very worst type. 
 Meanwhile a season of distress had visited Ireland ; this 
 quickened the elements of disorder being already let loose. 
 The harvest of 1878 was not good ; that of 1879 was tne 
 worst known since the Great Famine ; the prosperity of the 
 country suddenly came to an end. There was a universal 
 calling in of demands, especially from tenant farmers, 
 who, I have said, had been rather extravagant, and had 
 become involved in debt ; * the whole class suffered more 
 or less, though there was very little extreme indigence, and 
 Lord Beaconsfield's Government was not slow in providing 
 relief, which private charity largely increased. In these 
 circumstances the landed gentry acted as any class would 
 naturally act ; a considerable number made remissions of 
 rent ; if a large majority, as certainly was the case, insisted 
 upon their legal rights — conduct which must be pronounced 
 unfortunate — it must be recollected that an agitation of 
 extreme violence had been directed against the whole 
 order ; and that Mr. Gladstone had declared that, after 
 the Land Act, there were to be no more concessions. The 
 League now acquired new power ; its branches spread over 
 large parts of the west ; its directors, from members in the 
 House of Commons, to its avowed agents, and to the 
 1 village ruffians,' who carried out its bidding in many 
 
 * I was at this time judge of the County Kerry ; these demands 
 increased more than twofold at a single Quarter Sessions. 
 
154 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 places, rioted in atrocious threats against landlords whether 
 good or bad ; and a movement against the payment of 
 rent began. The teaching which had been spread abroad 
 during many months, bore the fruits which were to be 
 expected from it ; there was a sudden outbreak of agrarian 
 crime, and of Whiteboyism in its worst aspect ; it deserves 
 special notice that this was confined to the counties where 
 the League was in real force. The landlords, under these 
 conditions, were often driven to enforce their claims ; 
 attempts were made to show that the evictions that 
 followed were the sole causes of this social disorder. But 
 it is absolutely certain that this was not the case ; it was 
 the Land League which provoked the evictions, and was 
 responsible for the incidental crime.* 
 
 The spring of 1880 had come ; Lord Beaconsfield had 
 been driven from office, in an evil day for the renown of 
 England ; Mr. Gladstone had been returned again to 
 power, on the flood of a tide of democratic sympathy. 
 Lord Beaconsfield was not an author of any very large Irish 
 reform, but he understood Ireland much better than his 
 impetuous rival ; he had seen from the first the real nature 
 of the Land League movement ; in his address to the 
 nation, when he dissolved Parliament, he declared that an 
 'attempt scarcely less dangerous than famine and pesti- 
 lence' was being made to separate Ireland from Great 
 Britain, words treated by Mr. Gladstone with scornful 
 ridicule, but words of real truth. The incoming Minister 
 had of late taken little heed of Irish affairs ; he had been 
 engaged in his crusade in Midlothian, and in stirring up 
 the multitude on the Eastern question ; but he had clung 
 to his optimistic Irish faith ; he had solemnly announced 
 that Ireland was ' contented and happy,' when the country 
 was suffering from unquestionable distress ; he had even 
 refused to renew a measure for the repression of agrarian 
 crime, when agrarian crime was formidably on the increase, 
 * Report of the Judges, vol. iv. pp. 522-525. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 155 
 
 and the Land League was rapidly growing in strength. 
 At last, however, partly opening his eyes to the facts, he 
 appointed a Commission charged to report on Irish land 
 tenure ; and he introduced a Bill slightly to amend the 
 Land Act of 1870, showing thus from the outset that he 
 choose to regard a conspiracy against the State on its 
 economic side mainly, and not in its far more grave 
 political aspect. A word must be said on this measure, 
 which had its origin, to a great extent, in sheer and 
 audacious falsehood. By this time Parnell was at the 
 head of some sixty adherents in the House of Commons ; 
 he had linked the Home Rule and the Land League 
 movements ; his followers were, in many instances, chiefs 
 of the League ; they induced Mr. Gladstone to listen to 
 them, on representations characteristically untrue. Evictions 
 were on the increase in Ireland, owing to the onslaught 
 made by the League on the landed gentry ; Parnell and 
 his band unscrupulously exaggerated the number, perhaps 
 twenty-fold, by confounding ejectment decrees of the 
 Courts with evictions actually carried out ; Mr. Gladstone 
 appears to have accepted this shameful statement. The 
 new ' Compensation for Disturbance ' Bill, as it was called, 
 provided that in the case of certain classes of tenants, 
 although they had failed to pay their rents, compensation, 
 withheld, we have seen, under the Act of 1870, might be 
 afforded them, under rather strict conditions ; this was 
 certainly an innovation of a startling kind, but something 
 was to be said for it, in the existing position of affairs. 
 The House of Commons, however, disliked a measure 
 nicknamed 'payment by reason of non-payment,' and limited 
 its application in many ways ; and the House of Lords, 
 unfortunately, I think, threw it out. 
 
 This Bill, closely circumscribed as it was, would not have 
 extended, perhaps, to many tenants ; it was condemned by 
 Parnell and his satellites as a sham. Its rejection, however, 
 gave an opportunity to the League ; its leaders proclaimed 
 
156 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 at meetings, never so frequent before, that Ireland had 
 nothing to expect from a foreign Parliament ; the attack 
 on ' landlordism ' became more intense ; treasonable and 
 predatory harangues increased in vehemence. The in- 
 fluence of the conspiracy spread beyond Connaught, over 
 nearly all Munster, and parts of Leinster ; wherever it was 
 felt it was attended with agrarian crime; 'crime,' as 
 Mr. Gladstone exclaimed, 'always dogged its footsteps.' 
 Offences of this kind portentously multiplied ; they had 
 been eight hundred and sixty-three at the close of 1879 '> 
 they were two thousand five hundred and eighty-nine at 
 the close of 1880;* and these included a number of 
 barbarous murders, and of other atrocious deeds of 
 outrage and blood, especially of the mutilation of the 
 cattle of those opposed to the League. A kind of servile 
 war springing from the land had set in ; and during this 
 whole period the spokesmen of the League, whether in the 
 highest or the lowest grades, continued to denounce the 
 landed gentry, though they knew that their utterances 
 were the direct incentive to far-spreading crime. Parnell, 
 however, infinitely the ablest of the conspirators, perceived 
 that this brutal disorder would incense Parliament, and, 
 besides, could not have decisive results ; the cool, calcula- 
 ting schemer laid down a plan of operations for the 
 League, which he hoped would be less openly detestable, 
 and much more effective. Orders were issued that 
 tenants should, in every part of Ireland, repudiate the 
 rents they had agreed to pay, and should pay only such 
 sums as had been assessed on land by a valuation made 
 by the State for rates, a standard long acknowledged to be 
 much too low ; every landlord who should reject these 
 terms was to incur the vengeance of the League. By 
 these means Parnell expected, and not without reason, 
 that a great combination for the forcible reduction of rent 
 would be formed, and that numbers of farmers would flock 
 
 * Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 157 
 
 in to the League, but he knew that his proposal was 
 simply a defiance of the law, and that it would be resisted 
 by many of the landed gentry ; he hit on an expedient 
 through which he believed he would attain his end. 
 Should any landlord refuse to accept the sum offered 
 instead of the proper rent, and should proceed to dis- 
 possess the defaulting tenant — and practically he could 
 have "no other remedy — the evicted farm was to be left 
 derelict ; it was to be smitten, as it were, by the interdict 
 of the League ; and any wretch who should dare to take 
 it was to be banned by the whole neighbourhood ; he and 
 his, and those who dealt with him, ' were to be shunned as 
 lepers,' and ' treated as traitors to the cause.' * In this 
 
 * Some of the cynical and wicked utterances of Parnell in pro- 
 claiming and expounding the new policy of 'boycotting' must be 
 quoted. These, it is needless to say, were exaggerated in scores of 
 speeches by orators of the League. In view almost of the corpse of 
 a land agent who had been foully murdered, the arch-conspirator 
 coolly remarked (Proceedings of the Special Commission, vol. iv. 
 p. 257) : ' I had wished in referring to a sad occurrence which took 
 place lately, the shooting or attempted shooting of a land agent in 
 the neighbourhood (uproar) — I had wished to point out that recourse 
 to such measures of procedure is entirely unnecessary and absolutely 
 prejudicial where there is a suitable organisation amongst the tenants 
 themselves.' The methods to be adopted in 'boycotting' — the word 
 was so named from a Captain Boycott, who was one of the first sufferers 
 — were those set forth by Parnell (Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 
 498) : ' Now, what are you to do to a tenant who bids for a farm from 
 which his neighbour has been evicted ? (Various shouts, among 
 which, " Kill him ! " " Shoot him ! ") Now, I think I heard somebody 
 say " Shoot him " (" Shoot him ! ") ; but I wish to point out to you a 
 very much better way, a more Christian and charitable way, which will 
 give the lost sinner an opportunity of repenting. (Hear, hear.) When 
 a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted, you must 
 show f him on the roadside when you meet him, you must show him 
 in the streets of the town, you must show him at the shop counter, 
 you must show him in the fair and in the market-place, and even in 
 the house of worship, by leaving him severely alone, by putting him 
 
 t In other, possibly more correct, reports, the word is 'shun,' not 
 ' show.' 
 
153 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 way, the crime of ' boycotting,' as it has ever since been 
 called — its origin may be traced to the great Tithe War 
 in Ireland — was made part of 'the unwritten law' of the 
 League ; and Parnell professed, whether sincerely or not, 
 that through this device the League would baffle the law, 
 and the landlords, as a class, as unhappily it did, in too 
 many instances. Having thus armed the conspiracy with 
 increased power, he cynically began to deprecate crimes 
 of violence: the device of 'boycotting' was a more ex- 
 cellent way ; it would before long ' bring landlords to their 
 knees,' and would ultimately ' plant the tenant in his farm 
 to be held at a nominal rent,' should he only be true to 
 the League. At the same time the astute plotter found 
 other means to extend his authority and that of the con- 
 spiracy he ruled. He appealed to the elective Local 
 Boards in each county, composed for the most part of 
 tenant farmers, to join the League, and to carry out his 
 policy ; and continuously but steadily he brought the force 
 of the League to bear upon the administration of the law, 
 by the intimidation of juries, magistrates, and even judicial 
 persons. 
 
 The teaching of Parnell was disseminated by the League 
 and its agencies, especially at gatherings of peasant mobs ; 
 it was largely followed wherever the League prevailed. 
 In hundreds of instances tenant farmers were compelled or 
 induced to tender sums, ' at Griffith's valuation,' as it was 
 called, in lieu of the rents they were bound to pay ; and on 
 the rejection of the offer, refused to pay anything. A 
 widespread combination against rent was thus set on foot, 
 sustained by a principle of greed which held it together ; 
 
 into a moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of his kind as 
 if he was a leper of old. You must show him your detestation of the 
 crime he has committed, and you may depend upon it, if the popula- 
 tion of a county in Ireland carry out this doctrine, that there will be 
 no man so full of avarice, so lost to shame, as to dare the public 
 opinion of all right-thinking men within the county, and to transgress 
 your unwritten code of laws.' 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 159 
 
 the League was more completely organised than it had 
 been before ; it made its way into ten or eleven counties, 
 the only centres in which it was formidably strong. In 
 these circumstances the landed gentry acted, as an order 
 of men so assailed would act ; not a few accepted 
 the terms imposed on them, and took their rents at the 
 reduced scale, the majority resisted the mandates of the 
 League, and appealed to the law to enforce their rights. 
 The terrors of the League were at once directed against 
 those who had dared to defy it ; in a certain number 
 of instances landlords and agents were brutally murdered, 
 for popular passions had been let loose for years ; 
 in many more 'boycotting' was carried out with such 
 fatal effect that scores of families were driven out of 
 Ireland, banned, persecuted, deprived even of the neces- 
 saries of life ; in many others the demesnes of gentlemen 
 were ravaged by ' Land League hunts/ overrun and half 
 destroyed by savage mob gatherings. Evictions of course 
 increased as the law was being trampled under foot ; it is 
 hardly necessary to say that Parnell's doctrine was here 
 ruthlessly applied ; evicted farms were left deserted and 
 waste over thousands of acres ; the fears caused by 
 ' boycotting ' had become so intense, that no ' land-grabber,' 
 as the name was, would dare to take them ; the success of 
 the League was in this respect remarkable. The vengeance 
 of the conspiracy, too, was extended universally to another 
 class of persons. Tenants in numbers of instances paid 
 their rents, either from an honest motive, or through dread 
 of eviction ; the payment was often made at night, and 
 under a pledge of secrecy ; but wherever they were dis- 
 covered the League marked ' the traitor's doom ; ' they 
 were sometimes ' boycotted ' almost to death ; sometimes 
 murdered, often visited by gangs of ruffians — significantly 
 known as Parnell's police ; the victims were shot in the 
 legs, or the hair of their women was cut off, or their cattle 
 were cruelly mutilated and maimed. It deserves special 
 
160 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 notice that, as was to be expected, Parnell's warning 
 against open crime was but little heeded ; ' boycotting,' as 
 Mr. Gladstone said, truly ' was but a passive thing ; ' it 
 ' required assassination as its sanction ; ' the peasantry had 
 been stirred up, in places, to frenzy ; although Parnell 
 made few violent speeches at the time, his satellites still 
 gave a free rein to their wicked licence. Agrarian crime 
 increased to an appalling extent ; it had reached in 1881 
 a total of four thousand four hundred and thirty-nine cases, 
 nearly two thousand more than those of the preceding 
 year.* 
 
 In the spring and summer of 1881, the power of the 
 League was at its height ; in its organisation and working 
 it bore a strong resemblance to the Jacobin societies of the 
 Revolution in France. It was directed by a council from 
 a central office in Dublin ; its orders were sent thence to 
 the bodies connected with it ; these, scattered over many 
 parts of the country, enforced its decrees through 'boy- 
 cotting,' crime, and terror. ' Obnoxious ' persons, landlords, 
 agents, ' land-grabbers,' and tenants who had paid their 
 rents, were denounced and exposed to the League's 
 vengeance ; orBcersJof the law and of justice were especially 
 banned ; even those thought to be ' luke-warm ' in the 
 cause were declared ' suspected.' In some districts 
 the regular government was practically superseded by the 
 government of the league, described by Mr. Gladstone as 
 ' a scheme of anarchic oppression ; ' in these a Reign of 
 Terror was really supreme. It will never be known to 
 what extent the League made use of Whiteboyism and its 
 secret conclaves in order to carry out its purposes ; the 
 central body, controlled by Parnell, probably did not, but 
 the affiliated bodies certainly did ; it is impossible to 
 account otherwise for the enormous increase of agrarian 
 crime ; the branches of the League, it is generally supposed, 
 overshadowed, so to speak, the Whiteboy societies ; these 
 * Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 161 
 
 were active agents in the atrocious deeds that were done. 
 It is scarcely necessary to refer to what the condition of 
 social life was wherever the influence of the League was 
 great ; despair settled on the hearts of thousands, who felt 
 themselves exposed to unseen perils, and existed, as it 
 were, in an atmosphere of crime ; and it must be borne in 
 mind that for one member of the better class, fifty probably 
 of the humbler, who had transgressed the law of the 
 League, were kept in a state of moral dread and torture. 
 By this time the Fenian League in the United States, 
 formed by Parnell, but ruled by the Clan na Gael, had 
 completely joined hands with the League at home ; its 
 emissaries were found in many parts of Ireland ; its organ, 
 the Irish World, 'spread what it called the light,' the 
 teaching of treason, murder, and dynamite ; and it supplied 
 the parent League with, probably, nine-tenths of its funds, 
 for it is a significant fact, deserving special notice, that the 
 contributions of the peasantry to the League were, from 
 first to last, small. Large parts of Ireland were thus in a 
 deplorable state ; but it is a complete mistake to suppose, 
 as has been asserted, that the authority of the League was 
 general throughout the whole island. Protestant Ulster, 
 with a true instinct of what the conspiracy was, a move- 
 ment against British rule in Ireland, kept aloof from the 
 League, in angry contempt ; and though its influence was 
 more widely diffused, it was confined, I have said, to 
 comparatively few counties if regarded as a dangerous and 
 formidable power. It is also absolutely untrue that the 
 movement was the uprising of an injured peasantry against 
 oppressive landlords. There was little distress in 1880 and 
 1 88 1, when the League was rapidly growing in strength, 
 for the harvests of those years were above the average ; 
 and the Commission lately appointed by Mr. Gladstone had 
 reported that over-renting in Ireland was not common, 
 though instances of over-renting were of course to be found.* 
 * It is very important to bear this in mind, regard being had to the 
 
 M 
 
1 62 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 The centre of disturbance formed by the Land League 
 was, I have said, comparatively small ; and it was, for the 
 most part, limited to backward and poor districts ; its 
 wicked and sordid teaching did not command thesympathies 
 of the more intelligent and better parts of Ireland. Its 
 influence, however, spread, in different degrees of strength, 
 over nearly the whole of Catholic Ireland, and it was more 
 or less supported by the Catholic priesthood, in many 
 instances yielding to the pressure of their flocks. Within 
 the bounds where it did not create a Reign of Terror, it 
 was joined by thousands who thought it a constitutional 
 movement, especially by peasants only seeking an im- 
 proved tenure ; and it is not pretended that even a majority 
 of those who took part in it had treasonable or rebellious 
 objects in view. But it was not the less a conspiracy 
 hatched abroad, and aiming at the subversion of British 
 power in Ireland ; this was the policy its leaders avowed ; 
 and a conspiracy must be judged by the acts and words 
 of those who direct it. The state of anarchy in Ireland had 
 become such, in the spring of 1881, that the Government 
 was compelled to try to put it down ; a prosecution against 
 Parnell and his chief lieutenants had failed ; a Bill, resisted 
 by obstruction, more persistent than had been ever known 
 before, passed through Parliament with the object of 
 
 circumstances of the time, which have been shamefully misrepresented, 
 and to subsequent legislation and its administration. I quote a few 
 words from the Report, p. 3 : 'It was unusual in Ireland to exact 
 what in England would have been considered as a full or fair com- 
 mercial rent. Such a rent over many of the larger estates, the owners 
 of which were resident, and took an interest in the welfare of their 
 tenants, it has never been the custom to demand. The example has 
 been largely followed, and is, to the present day, rather the rule than 
 the exception in Ireland.' M. de Molinari, a very competent foreign 
 observer, wrote to the same effect in 1881 : ' Le taux general des 
 rentes est mode're' ; autant que j'ai pu en juger, il est a qualite e'gale 
 de terrain de moitie plus bas que celui des terres des Flandres ' 
 (' L'Irlande, le Canada, Jersey,' p. 138). See for further authorities, 
 Mr. Lecky's ' Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. p. 179. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 163 
 
 repressing the Land League. The measure, however, 
 was not well designed ; minor agents of the League, 
 ' village ruffians,' ' Parnell's police,' and the like, were im- 
 prisoned in large numbers, no real punishment ; but the 
 chiefs of the conspiracy were not brought within the law ; 
 the funds of the League were removed to Paris ; the move- 
 ment went on in its destructive course. ' Coercion,' never- 
 theless, was beginning to produce its effects, as it has 
 always done in Irish disorders, when Mr. Gladstone made 
 a sudden change in his policy, never made before by a 
 Minister at the head of the State. He had denounced the 
 conspiracy in passionate language ; he had partly at least 
 seen what its objects were ; 'it aimed at dismemberment 
 through rapine ; ' but always a man of phrases and not of 
 action, he had shrunk in every passage of his career from 
 facing difficulties where popular feelings were involved ; 
 and while Ireland was still in a terrible state, he resolved 
 to make a great concession to the League, and to effect 
 a complete revolution in the Irish land. It was a sur- 
 render akin to that of Majuba, made with little information, 
 and without mature reflection ; whether its author believed, 
 as I have remarked, that the conspiracy was most danger- 
 ous on its agrarian side, or was willing to propitiate 
 Parnell, at the expense of the Irish landed gentry, he 
 inaugurated the legislation, ever since pursued, which has 
 resulted in destroying the property of the Irish landlord, 
 without gaining the sympathy of the occupier of the Irish 
 soil, has reduced the land system of Ireland to a ruinous 
 chaos, and has, in essential respects, been an absolute 
 failure. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's position was difficult when he introduced 
 his new Irish Land Bill ; his speech in the House of 
 Commons, lucid as regards details, was apologetic, am- 
 biguous, often beside the subject. He went out of his way 
 to praise Irish landlords, ' acquitted,' he declared, by the 
 late Commission ; he deeply regretted a new experiment 
 
1 64 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 on the Irish land. He retained his admiration for the 
 Act of 1870, but insinuated that it had been injured in the 
 House of Lords ; had this not been the case, it would 
 have settled the Irish land question. He passed over 
 his solemn pledges, on the faith of which millions had been 
 lent on Irish estates, that the legislation of eleven years 
 before was final ; here he took refuge in appeals to ' Divine 
 Justice,' in the ' light of which ' a statesman must walk, as 
 if Divine Justice was an excuse for a gross breach of faith. 
 He then unfolded his plan of reform ; he endeavoured, 
 with an ingenuity all his own, to distinguish it from the 
 schemes he had emphatically condemned in 1870; but in 
 this respect mystification was at fault ; the measure was a 
 clumsy imitation of the 'Three F's,' and where it differed, 
 it differed greatly for the worse. Anticipating objections 
 certain to be made, the orator dismissed ' political economy 
 to Saturn ' with a confident gesture ; for some untold 
 reason the philosophy of Adam Smith could not possibly 
 apply to the order of things in Ireland. But by many 
 degrees the most important part of the speech, in view 
 of events which have since happened, was that in which 
 Mr. Gladstone announced that should the measure really 
 injure the Irish landlord, the State was bound to provide 
 an indemnity. He denied, indeed, that the Bill could 
 have any such effect ; it would be a boon, he gravely said, 
 to the Irish landed gentry ; but should the contrary be the 
 case, ' compensation ' would be clearly their right. ' I do 
 not hesitate to say ' — these were his very words spoken after 
 the Bill had made much progress — ' that if it can be shown, 
 on clear and definite experience, at the present time, that 
 there is a probability, or if after experience shall prove 
 that, in fact, ruin and heavy loss has been brought on any 
 class in Ireland by the direct effect of this legislation, that 
 is a question which we ought to look very directly in the 
 face.' The same meaning was even more clearly ex- 
 pressed : ' I should certainly be very slow to deny that 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 165 
 
 where confiscation could be proved, compensation ought 
 to follow,' and several of Mr. Gladstone's lieutenants spoke 
 in the same sense.* 
 
 The Bill, I have said, applied the principle of the ' Three 
 F's ' to the relation of landlord and tenant in by far the 
 greatest part of Ireland. As in the case of the Land Act 
 of 1870, it excluded certain classes of lands from its scope, 
 demesnes, residential holdings, town parks, and large 
 pastoral farms ; it extended also only to tenants at will, 
 that is, subject to a notice to quit ; it left tenants under 
 leases outside its purview. It was confined, too, to ' present 
 tenants in occupation,' at or near the existing time ; it had 
 no reference to ' future tenants,' that is, to tenants holding 
 by contracts made after the Bill should pass, or a few 
 months afterwards. Subject, however, to these exceptions, 
 on the whole not large, the measure placed tenancies in 
 Ireland under the ' Three F's,' but with conditions of 
 tenure peculiar to itself, and hitherto unknown in Ireland, 
 or in any part of Europe. • Fair Rent,' which, under the 
 Ulster Custom, was settled by a bargain between landlord 
 and tenant, was to be adjusted through the intervention of 
 the State, legislation akin to the mediaeval statutes regu- 
 lating the price of bread, and the wages of labour. ' Fixity 
 of Tenure ' was not to be a perpetuity in name ; Mr. Glad- 
 stone feared that the speeches would be thrown in his 
 teeth, in which he had declaimed against the idea ; it was 
 to be a lease for fifteen years, but capable of being renewed 
 for ever, as a rule, through a periodical and costly lawsuit. 
 1 Free Sale ' was to be conceded under somewhat strict 
 conditions ; and the landlord was to be afforded a right of 
 pre-emption in the case of such sales, in accordance with 
 the analogy of the Ulster Custom. An estate virtually 
 perpetual, at a State-settled rent, was thus to be carved out 
 
 * Mr. Gladstone, speeches in the House of Commons, July 22, 
 1881, and May 10, 1881. Lord Carlingford, and notably Lord Sel- 
 borne, said nearly the same. 
 
1 66 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 of the landlord's fee, and given to tenants actually in pos- 
 session of the land ; it was created in absolute derogation 
 from the landlord's rights ; it was a large if partial ex- 
 propriation, in no doubtful sense. As to the interest of 
 landlords in what was left of their property, they were to 
 retain what are usually known as ' royalties ' — timber, 
 minerals, mines, and privileges of sport ; they were to have 
 the ordinary remedies for enforcing payment of rent ; and 
 the statutory leases were to be subject to certain conditions, 
 taken, for the most part, from the Ulster Custom, the viola- 
 tion of which might lead to their forfeiture. A tribunal, 
 called the Land Commission, was to be set up to carry the 
 law into effect, that is, to ' fix fair rents,' and to make 
 tenures ' fixed ; ' it was to be assisted by dependent 
 agencies, known as Sub-Commissions, which, Mr. Glad- 
 stone intimated, were to be quite subordinate, and from 
 which appeals to the Land Commission were to run ; but 
 a sinister feature of an untried revolutionary scheme — the 
 decision of the Land Commission as respects * fair rent ' — 
 was to be final. Subject to an appeal to the Land Com- 
 mission, the Irish County Courts were empowered to 
 administer the law ; but it was foreseen that they would 
 not do much in this province. The new modes of tenure 
 might be applied to lands, by agreements between land- 
 lords and tenants carefully guarded ; and Mr. Gladstone 
 believed that this would be the ordinary course of dealing. 
 The Bill, he thought, would not cause litigation to any 
 great extent ; it would operate as a self-acting force to 
 lead to friendly contracts.* 
 
 So much for the scope of the Bill and the classes of 
 tenants to which its benefits were to extend. A most 
 important change was made in the measure, which con- 
 tained, originally, nothing of the kind ; this has been 
 attended with far-reaching results. As we have seen, 
 tenants were to be compensated for their improvements, 
 * This I know to be the fact on the very best authority. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 167 
 
 under the Act of 1870; but the compensation was to be 
 paid only when they were leaving the land ; Mr. Healy, 
 one of the ablest of Parnell's lieutenants, induced Parlia- 
 ment to accept a provision exempting tenants' improve- 
 ments from rent, when the adjustment of ' fair rent ' was 
 to be made. However equitable in principle this might 
 appear to be, it was, in the peculiar state of Irish land 
 tenure, unjust in the extreme to landlords, as I shall 
 endeavour to point out afterwards ; and it has been a 
 source of litigation, as mischievous and demoralising as 
 can well be conceived. The Bill, like the Act of 1870, 
 prohibited the subdivision and subletting of farms — an 
 inveterate evil practice of the Irish peasant — under condi- 
 tions possibly rather too strict ; and it made changes, in 
 that statute, which require attention. It added weight, so 
 to speak, to the law, in the tenant's interest ; it increased 
 the amount of compensation in respect of disturbance ; it 
 limited the power of ' contracting out,' to a smaller class 
 of tenants than had been the case before, in fact, to large 
 capitalist farmers ; and it provided that tenants, who had 
 accepted leases excluding them from the benefits of the 
 Act of 1870, through illegitimate conduct on the part of 
 their landlords, should be exonerated from such unfair 
 contracts. It thus greatly amended the original Land 
 Act ; but it left many of its defects untouched ; it is only 
 right here to add that despite the lying clamour raised by 
 the subsidised Press of Parnell — lying has ever since been 
 part of its stock-in-trade — the instances were exceedingly 
 few in which ' forced leases,' as they were called, were set 
 aside by the Courts. A remarkable feature of the Bill has 
 yet to be noticed : Mr. Gladstone, as was the case eleven 
 years before, had still the wish, so characteristic of British 
 statesmen, to assimilate Irish to English land tenure ; for 
 this reason, as I said, he deprived ' future tenants ' of the 
 advantages of the Bill ; these were to hold their farms on 
 the footing of pure contract. This was a shortsighted and 
 
PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 bad arrangement ; it tempted directly ill-conditioned land- 
 lords to dispossess tenants, whenever a chance offered, and 
 to create ' future ' tenants so as to discharge their estates 
 from a burden ; it revealed marked ignorance of the affairs 
 of Ireland. The Bill dealt, also, with the land on the side 
 of ownership ; it gave additional facilities to tenants to 
 purchase their holdings ; the State was empowered to 
 advance three-fourths of the moneys ; but the tenants were 
 to find the remaining fourth ; the transaction was to be 
 still a purchase, and not in the nature of a gift* 
 
 The Bill became law, with very little change ; the House 
 of Lords, though fully alive to its evils, did not amend it 
 in any important respect ; the Peers had in mind, perhaps 
 too much, what had followed the rejection of the Bill of 
 the year before. Mr. Gladstone and his followers main- 
 tained at the time, and the statement has been ever since 
 repeated, that the Land Act of 1881, its popular title, was 
 but a natural development of the original Act of 1870 ; 
 but this assertion is not only untrue, but absolutely con- 
 trary to the truth. The Act of 1870, no doubt, considered 
 as a whole, annexed a large tenant right to the estate of 
 the landlord, and to that extent placed a burden on it ; 
 but it preserved for the landlord the ownership of the land ; 
 it did not interfere with his rent, his first proprietary right ; 
 above all, it was, in the main, in accord with fact, and 
 just. The Act of 188 1 was almost the exact opposite ; it 
 deprived the landlord of the ownership of his land, and 
 nearly converted him into a mere rent-charger ; it created 
 aga'nst him a perpetuity at a State-settled rent ; it really 
 all but made the tenant the owner of the land ; it was, in 
 short, inconsistent with fact, and essentially unjust. The 
 Act of 1 88 1, too, established a principle, never heard of 
 before in civilised countries, that tribunals of the State 
 
 * A good popular account of the law of 1881 will be found in Mr. 
 Lecky's 'Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. pp. 182-197. See for an 
 elaborate and technical description, ' Cherry and Wakley,' pp. 217-343. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 169 
 
 were to fix the rate of rent ; this not only annihilated the 
 most important of landed contracts, entirely to the land- 
 lord's detriment, it inevitably tended to cut down rents 
 wholesale, as Judge Longfield had predicted would be the 
 case. ' It is probable,' wrote that great authority, ' that the 
 value of land, as fixed by any tenant-right measure, would 
 be less than half the rent, which a solvent tenant would be 
 willing to pay ; ' * the prediction has been too well verified. 
 The Act of 1870, in a word, was a remedial law, fairly 
 adjusting the rights of landlord and tenant; the Act of 
 1 88 1 was a socialistic law, despoiling the landlord of his 
 property wholesale, and handing it over to a dependent 
 who had no claim to it ; it was sheer confiscation hardly 
 disguised ; and it should be added that the exemption of 
 tenants' improvements from rent, as affairs stood in Ireland, 
 was a grave wrong to the landlord. The Act of 1881, to 
 speak plainly, transformed the Irish land system iniqui- 
 tously for the benefit of a single class ; and it directly 
 promoted litigation of the very worst kind, on an enormous 
 scale, embittering, and still further dividing, the classes 
 connected with the land. The evils of this legislation, a 
 monument of reckless unwisdom, were at once manifest to 
 well-informed persons ; the Duke of Argyll and Lord 
 Lansdowne resigned office rather than take part in a 
 measure of the kind ; Lord Ashbourne, the present holder 
 of the Great Seal in Ireland, caustically remarked that 
 Parliament would do much better should it deprive Irish 
 landlords of a fourth part of their rents on the spot. The 
 verdict of enlightened and impartial opinion in Ireland was 
 very much the same. 
 
 I shall comment on the administration of this law in 
 another chapter ; enough to say here that what was bad 
 was made, by many degrees, worse. The conduct of 
 Parnell, as regards the measure, was characteristic ; he 
 assumed an attitude of moderation, and proposed to make 
 * ' Systems of Land Tenure,' p. 59. 
 
i;o PEESEXT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 ' a trial of the Act by test cases ; ' he wrote to his Fenian 
 friends in the Far West that the Act was a mockery ; he 
 allowed the Land League to riot in lawlessness as before. 
 Mr. Gladstone, always incensed when his will was crossed, 
 shut him up in prison under the recent statute, with several 
 prominent leaders of the League ; the reply was a 
 manifesto against the payment of any rent, unhappily 
 obeyed in some districts, though every symptom of 
 exceptional distress had passed away. A brief but violent 
 struggle was the result ; the peasantry refused to pay a 
 shilling in several counties ; and as the principal agents of 
 the League were within four walls, flights of viragoes, 
 like those of the French Revolution, were let loose to 
 preach, far and near, the evangel of ' no rent' This 
 conflict, however, was not lasting ; agrarian crime and 
 disorder, indeed, still continued frequent ; but the Govern- 
 ment was too strong for the ' Ladies' Land League ; ' 
 by the spring of 1SS2 its triumph appeared to be certain. 
 But Mr. Gladstone, ' unstable as water ' in view of what he 
 deemed popular movements, would not steadily persist in 
 vindicating the law ; the imprisonment of the chiefs of the 
 conspiracy and their subordinates, in large numbers, seems 
 to have made him feel sore if unworthy misgivings ; he 
 surrendered to the enemies of the State, for the second 
 time, and entered with Parnell into the famous ' Kilmain- 
 ham Treaty,' as shameful as the Glamorgan Treaty which 
 cost Charles I. his head. The ' Suspects,' as they were 
 called, were set free in scores ; the Lord-Lieutenant and 
 the Chief Secretary indignantly left their posts ; a new 
 Government for Ireland was formed, charged to carry 
 ' conciliation,' as the phrase was, out, that is, to make 
 fresh concessions to Parnell and his creatures. But the 
 auspicious prospect was suddenly darkened by the fright- 
 ful assassinations of the Phcenix Park ; these cannot 
 be justly laid to the charge of the League, indeed were 
 against ParnelPs interest, for it was generally expected he 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 171 
 
 would obtain high office ; but two agents of the League 
 were implicated in the crime ; and the Press of the League 
 began soon to plead for the murderers. The mind of 
 England was now thoroughly roused ; Mr. Gladstone, 
 bowing at once to England's will, carried through Par- 
 liament the severest repressive measure that has ever, 
 perhaps, been applied to Ireland. The battle with the 
 League was soon brought to a close ; the conspiracy 
 indeed resisted for a time, and crime, as always, was 
 attendant on it ; and the Clan na Gael gave it all the 
 assistance it could, in large subsidies which had never 
 ceased, in the dissemination in Ireland of its incendiary 
 journals, and especially by ' carrying the war into England,' 
 and fulfilling its threats to attack her chief towns by fire 
 and dynamite, outrages, however, that really came to 
 nothing. But ' coercion,' as has been invariably the case 
 in Ireland, produced its effects ; agrarian crimes, which, in 
 1882, if less than those of the year before, were, nevertheless, 
 three thousand four hundred and thirty-two in number, 
 had fallen to eight hundred and seventy in 1883.* 
 
 The Land League was paralysed, if not destroyed ; its 
 organisation was, in name, suppressed by its framers. 
 It reappeared, however, at once, in a new form ; the skill 
 of Parnell in masking a conspiracy was never more fully 
 displayed. He felt that the Land League could not cope 
 with the law ; that the crimes of violence and blood, which 
 attended its course, gave the Government opportunities to 
 put it down ; that its openly avowed purposes were a 
 danger to it. He set up, therefore, the ' National League ' 
 in its stead ; the professed object of the association was 
 to promote ' Home Rule,' while it upheld the rights of the 
 occupiers of the Irish soil, and kept the Irish land, so to 
 speak, in view ; it was thus apparently a mere centre of 
 a constitutional movement. Through these means, and 
 under these pretences, the astute and able plotter swept 
 * Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522. 
 
172 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 into his net thousands who had held aloof from the 
 Land League ; many of the middle classes joined the 
 National League, notably hundreds of the clergy of the 
 Catholic Church in Ireland ; the peasantry gave it increased 
 support ; its influence spread beyond its predecessor's 
 limits. The National League, however, was only the Land 
 League under another name ; * its leaders and officials were 
 the same men ; its ' branches ' were those of the League it 
 replaced ; its real objects were exactly the same, the 
 overthrow of British rule in Ireland, and the annihilation 
 of the Irish landed gentry. But the methods it employed 
 to work out its ends were, to a great extent, different ; 
 open agitation was kept down ; public meetings, likely to 
 be violent, were not held ; the perpetration of agrarian 
 crime was not encouraged. The movement, in a word, 
 was comparatively secret and below the surface ; but it was 
 essentially the successor of the Land League in its aims ; 
 we may say of it, with a slight change, in the words of the 
 poet — 
 
 ' Facies non una sororum, 
 Nee diversa tamen.' 
 
 'Boycotting' was now made the chief weapon of the 
 reformed conspiracy ; ' National League Courts ' were held 
 regularly in many districts, at which this barbarous inter- 
 dict was systematically pronounced on persons violating 
 1 the unwritten law ' of the old League ; the persecution 
 against landlords, agents, ' land-grabbing ' peasants who 
 were 'disloyal and traitors,' and traders suspected of 
 dealing with ' rotten sheep,' was carried on with a perti- 
 nacity and ingenuity hardly known before ; the number of 
 derelict farms augmented ; and the Government found it 
 far from easy to deal with these crimes. At the same 
 time, ' the Nationalist Press,' as it had been named, fully 
 
 * Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 532: 'We consider that the 
 National League, like the Ladies' Land League, was substantially the 
 old Land League under another name.' 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 173 
 
 revealed the purpose of the conspirators ; trusting to 
 impunity, under the law of libel, which depended upon the 
 will of juries, it was even more treasonable and seditious 
 than before ; and it gave infamous license to defamation of 
 personages in high places, worthy of the abominations of 
 the Pere Duchesne.* Ireland, however, remained in com- 
 parative peace while the recent measure of repression 
 continued in force ; but this was injudiciously allowed to 
 expire in 1885 — a strange act on the part of a Conserva- 
 tive Ministry ; and in a short time agrarian disorder broke 
 out afresh. Crimes of this class had fallen, in 1884, to 
 seven hundred and sixty-two in number ; they were one 
 thousand and fifty-six in 1886; and 'boycotting' had 
 increased fourfold. t 
 
 * I quote a few words from hundreds of these detestable writings, 
 which should be studied. Mr. William O'Brien, the editor of one of 
 Parnell's newspapers, and now the leader of the ' United Irish League,' 
 published this in United Ireland, April 18, 1885: ' It would be still 
 more gratifying if the Irish millions, scattered over the globe, should 
 wake up one of these mornings to hear the war chimes joyfully ringing 
 the declaration that would drive England on to downfall and destruc- 
 tion.' And again, September 19, 1885 : 'We cannot fight England 
 in the open. We can keep her in hot water. We cannot evict our 
 rulers neck and crop. We can make their rule more insupportable 
 for them than for us. ... It is no fault of ours if we cannot organise 
 Waterloos to decide our quarrels.' As to personalities, I quote two 
 passages. December 15, 1883: 'Monstrous and incredible, surely, 
 six hundred Irish gentlemen could not eat their dinner without pouring 
 out libations to the adoration of an old lady who is only known in 
 Ireland by her scarcely decently disguised hatred of this country, and 
 by the inordinate amount of her salary.' Again, June 13, 1885 : 'With 
 all the stubborn force of a cruel, narrow, dogged nature, Lord Spencer 
 struck murderous blow after blow at the people under his rod. He 
 stopped at nothing ; not at subsidising red-handed murderers, not at 
 knighting jury-packers, not at sheltering black official villainy with a 
 coat of darkness, not at police quarterings, blood taxes, the bludgeon- 
 ing of peaceful meetings, the clapping of handcuffs and convict jackets 
 on M.P.'s, mayors, and editors, not at wholesale battues of hangings 
 and transportations by hook or crook.' 
 
 f Report of the Judges, vol. iv. p. 522. Mr. Gladstone in the 
 House of Commons, April 8, 1886. 
 
174 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 The National League remained quiescent, while Mr. 
 Gladstone was making another surrender, and endeavouring 
 to carry Home Rule through Parliament. Upon the rejec- 
 tion of the measure of 1886, its activity was renewed ; and 
 it found considerable support from the American Fenians, 
 who, from first to last, had been its chief paymasters. I 
 have referred to the Convention at Chicago graced by 
 Parnell's envoys, and to the wild boast that the English 
 ' government of Ireland was to be made impossible ; ' the 
 treasonable aspect of the conspiracy became at once 
 manifest. The League was assisted by another season of 
 distress, from 1886 to 1888 ; the number of its adherents 
 greatly increased ; it began, like its predecessor, to defy 
 the authority of the State. I have already dealt with this 
 movement on its political side ; I shall not repeat what I 
 have already written : how the League endeavoured to stir 
 up disorder in Ireland ; how it declared open war against 
 the Castle ; how it tried to terrorise the ministers of the 
 law ; how it made ' boycotting ' more effective than it had 
 ever been ; how, if responsible for many grave deeds of 
 blood, it mainly relied on this malign influence, which 
 tortured hundreds of victims in many districts, and was 
 fitly compared to ' the pestilence that walks in darkness ; ' 
 how Mr. Gladstone and the Opposition, to the disgrace of 
 both, gave the conspiracy their support and excused its 
 crimes ; and how it was ere long put down by Mr. Balfour 
 strongly seconded by Rome. But I must say a word on 
 the agrarian side of the movement ; for this illustrated the 
 increased ingenuity of the League. Some of its leaders 
 issued a mandate against the payment of rent, except 
 upon reductions to an enormous extent ; should the land- 
 lords refuse, the tenants, on every estate, were to lodge 
 their rents into what was called the ' War chest,' a common 
 fund to be held in trust ; the object of this being to prevent 
 the secret payment of rent, which had repeatedly, we have 
 seen, taken place, and to put a stop to ' defection from the 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 175 
 
 cause.' The ' Plan of Campaign,' as was its name, was 
 thus ushered on ; it was a criminal plot of the very basest 
 kind ; but though it proved successful in some instances, 
 and it caused much agrarian disorder and crime, it was, on 
 the whole, a comparative failure. The peasantry, close- 
 fisted and shrewd, distrusted the so-called ' trustees of the 
 War chest ; ' they generally declined to put their money 
 in it ; the ' Plan ' was only carried out on few estates, 
 though it compelled many landlords to make reductions of 
 rent ; it is remarkable that Parnell did not approve of the 
 swindle. Long, however, before the defeat of the League, 
 there had been a thousand instances of agrarian crime : 
 five thousand miserable beings had been 'boycotted,' in 
 many cases with frightful results ; a thousand had been 
 placed under the protection of the police. As had happened 
 during the regime of the Land League, these victims were 
 nearly all of the humble classes. 
 
 In 1887 another change was made in the Irish land 
 system, essentially a development of the Land Act of 1881. 
 That measure, I have said, applied to tenants at will only, 
 that is, liable to be dispossessed by a notice to quit ; it did 
 not apply to tenants under leasehold tenures. A sharp 
 distinction, therefore, was drawn between the two classes ; 
 a farmer, with land on one side of a ditch, could secure the 
 advantages of the ' Three F's ; ' his neighbour, on the other 
 side, could not ; the distinction was so palpably harsh, 
 that many landlords in Ireland saw its injustice, and enabled 
 leasehold tenants to obtain the benefits of the law. An 
 Act, prepared by Lord Salisbury's Government, brought 
 ordinary Irish leaseholders within the Land Act of 1881 ; 
 these were given a right to have ' fair rents ' fixed, and 
 c fixity of tenure ' and ' free sale ' under certain conditions. 
 The Act of 1887, also, empowered the Courts to set aside 
 perpetual leases unfairly obtained ; and it relaxed the 
 restrictions of the Act of 1881 with respect to subletting 
 and subdivision, and the exclusion of 'town parks.' It 
 
J 76 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 improved, moreover, the law of ejectment, facilitating the 
 vindication of the rights of the landlord ; and — a strange 
 provision — it enabled a middleman, in certain events, to 
 creep out of his contract, and to free himself from the rent 
 due to his superior landlord. In consequence of the fall of 
 prices that had lately occurred, and the depression of agri- 
 culture that had been the result, the Act, too, reduced, for 
 a short period of time, ' fair rents ' that had been already 
 fixed ; and it contained other enactments wholly in the 
 interest of the occupier of the Irish soil. Regarded as a 
 whole, something was to be said for the measure, on the 
 principles of the legislation of 1881 ; but the liberation of 
 the middleman from the payment of a debt has been 
 attended with grave wrong, and was an ominous precedent 
 leading to others of the kind. The new law was, of course, 
 another inroad on the rights of the Irish landlord, another 
 innovation made against his interests ; it has certainly 
 strengthened his claim to compensation for the loss of his 
 property, acknowledged by Mr. Gladstone to be unques- 
 tionable, should it be reasonably made out. For the rest, 
 the National League made a boast that the Act had been 
 wrung by its efforts from a foreign Parliament ; the Act 
 certainly, like that of 1881, was a concession, derogating 
 from the rights of a powerless class, in the hope of weaken- 
 ing a conspiracy against the State, by detaching from it 
 large classes supported by it, and handing over to these 
 what had belonged to the Irish landed gentry.* 
 
 The Land Act of 1887, it has been alleged, was the 
 principal cause that disorder in Ireland was suppressed, and 
 that comparative peace was restored. The measure may 
 have had effects in this direction ; but these assuredly 
 were not great ; the number of leaseholders was not large ; 
 the reductions made in ' fair rents ' were temporary and 
 
 * For an elaborate account of the Act of 1887, see 'Cherry and 
 Wakley,' pp. 367-420. Reference, too, may be made to Mr. Lecky's 
 ' Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. pp. 198-200. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 177 
 
 small. In truth, as agrarian war, stirred up by the Land 
 League, did not diminish when the Act of 1881 was passed, 
 but was brought to an end by what is called coercion, the 
 agrarian war, stirred up by the National League, was 
 quelled, not by the Act of 1887, but by resolute govern- 
 ment, assisted by a repressive measure infinitely less 
 stringent than that of 1882, and, in some degree, I have 
 said, by Rome. It is worse than unwise to ignore plain 
 facts ; grave outbreaks of disorder and crime in Ireland 
 can only be put down by severe means, and invariably 
 have been put down by these ; that ' force is no remedy ' 
 is mere false sentiment. The violence, nay, the power, of 
 the National League decreased rapidly and greatly after 
 about 1889; the conspiracy seemed well-nigh to have 
 dwindled away. This was partly because Parnell, nego- 
 tiating with Mr. Gladstone, in the hope of obtaining Home 
 Rule, discouraged agitation of every kind in Ireland, and 
 in order to hoodwink the English people, and to bring 
 about the ' Union of Hearts,' represented, with his followers, 
 that Ireland was at perfect peace, and only awaited 'self- 
 government ' to be completely happy. But infinitely the 
 most potent reason was that the fall of Parnell almost 
 broke up the League ; his creatures split into angry 
 factions, exasperated against each other by furious discord ; 
 as the result the organisation of the League was shattered ; 
 the peasantry and the Catholic priesthood fell away from 
 it. At the same time the Fenians in the United States, 
 much its best supporters, withdrew the subsidies they had 
 hitherto lavished ; the League became penniless and almost 
 powerless. By 1895 the conspiracy showed scarcely a 
 sign of life ; agrarian crime had sunk to a very low ebb ■ 
 there was no sign of a movement against the payment of 
 rent ; order prevailed, it may be said, throughout the com- 
 munity. The conspiracy, nevertheless, was not dead ; its 
 leaders, if quiescent, had not disappeared ; well-informed 
 observers knew that the end had not come. I have 
 
 N 
 
178 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 described in another chapter, by what means, and through 
 what conditions, it revived gradually under Lord Salisbury's 
 third Government, and acquired strength that may be on 
 the increase ; it is not yet formidable, in any real sense, 
 and its leaders are not to be named with Parnell ; it is not 
 receiving funds as yet from America ; but the United Irish 
 League is its true successor ; and this commands eighty 
 votes in the House of Commons. Time only can show if 
 a period of agrarian strife and crime may not be about to 
 open again for Ireland ; it is foolish optimism to assert that 
 this is impossible, or to contend that the agrarian legislation 
 of the last twenty years, as regards the Irish land, will 
 necessarily, or even probably, produce this fortunate result. 
 In 1 89 1 another change was effected in Irish landed 
 relations, as usual in the interest of the tenant, and against 
 his landlord. Middleman tenures had well-nigh been 
 extinguished ; but some hundreds, probably, were still to 
 be found ; and as a middleman, through the legislation of 
 1887, was enabled to repudiate his contract, in certain 
 cases, and to escape the payment of rent to his superior 
 landlord, he was now to obtain an advantage in other 
 instances. The large majority of this class of inter 
 mediate owners, originally created in the eighteenth century, 
 held, at least, in present times, by perpetual leases, which 
 had long ago, as a rule, been converted into estates in 
 fee farm, that is, estates in fee, subject to a perpetual rent ; 
 Parliament passed an Act in 1891, enlarged and amended 
 five years afterwards, declaring that, in cases in which 
 tenants of this kind were ' in bond fide occupation ' of lands, 
 under rents which, in the judgment of the Land Com- 
 mission, should be 'a full agricultural rent,' they might 
 either agree with their landlords to redeem the rent at a 
 price to be determined by that tribunal, or, should the 
 landlords refuse their consent, might have 'fair rents' 
 fixed as in the instance of common farming tenants.* The 
 * For an account of this legislation, which has not received the 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 179 
 
 application of this law could not extend far, for tenants of 
 this description were very few ; but it asserted a strange, 
 and, I think, a most vicious principle. The Act practically 
 forced a superior landlord, often a poor man, either to 
 accept a price assessed by a Court over which he had no 
 control, in lieu of a rent, in all probability reasonably well 
 secured, or, as an alternative, to submit to have a 'fair 
 rent' fixed on the land, the rent to be discharged from 
 improvements made by the tenant. If, therefore, a tenant 
 of this kind had built, say, a valuable house, on his holding, 
 which would thus largely add to the security for the rent, 
 this — at least, so it is generally believed — was not to be 
 taken into account in fixing ' the fair rent ; ' and this 
 principle, it may confidently be predicted, will be extended 
 further. Should a tenant, at a 'fair rent,' in this pre- 
 dicament, be evicted for the failure to pay the rent, a law, 
 in all human probability, will be made, to obtain for him 
 compensation, under the Act of 1870, from the benefits of 
 which he would be, as affairs stand, excluded. The result 
 might be that if, as would often happen, the improve- 
 ments he had made were of great value — his interest, in 
 the land, being a perpetual interest — the sum the landlord 
 would be adjudged to pay, might swallow up the whole 
 value of the rent, and practically confiscate his whole 
 property.* 
 
 In 1896 another inroad was made on the rights of Irish 
 
 attention it deserves, as it is limited in its scope, see ' Cherry and 
 Wakley,' pp. 468-472, and ' Barton,' pp. 104-106. 
 
 * Upwards of thirty years ago, when the question of compensating 
 Irish tenants for their improvements was coming fully to the front, a 
 wealthy middleman, who held a large demesne in perpetuity, at a 
 rather high rent, and had built a valuable mansion on it, in addition 
 to planting hundreds of acres of woodland, asked me ' if I thought 
 Parliament would compensate him, for, in that case, he could make 
 his landlord pay him ,£30,000.' My reply was that ' Parliament would 
 not be so insane.' I should be sorry to make such a reply now, having 
 regard to recent legislation. 
 
PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 landlords, and another dole given to the tenant class in 
 Ireland ; the descent to Avernus had proved easy ; a Con- 
 servative Government had followed it since 1887. This 
 fresh legislation was mainly in the interest of the Presby- 
 terian farmers of Ulster, who had supported the Union 
 almost to a man, and possessed no little political weight ; 
 but who, always separated more or less from their land- 
 lords, had shown dissatisfaction with the fixing of 'fair 
 rents,' and had begun to cry out for what is called ' the 
 compulsory purchase' of the estates of their landlords, a 
 policy on which I shall comment afterwards. The Bill 
 contained just and well-devised provisions ; it improved 
 the procedure for fixing ' fair rents,' if not nearly as 
 thoroughly as it ought to have done; it protected the 
 leases creating 'fixity,' under the new tenure — Mr. 
 Gladstone, flying in the face of the ablest lawyers, had 
 passionately declared that these were sacrosanct — in in- 
 stances in which these might have been annulled ; it 
 proposed, what I had always considered right, that old 
 arrears of rent ought not to be allowed to hang over the 
 heads of tenants, and that rent could not be recovered on 
 eviction, if due for upward of two years.* But the Bill 
 abounded in principles dangerous and false; it was, 
 taken as a whole, a mischievous measure ; it was another 
 mine sprung upon the Irish landed gentry. Lands 
 hitherto excluded from the benefits of the ' Three F's,' 
 under the Acts of 1881 and 1887 — that is, demesnes, town 
 parks, residential, and pastoral holdings — were largely 
 brought within the scope of the Bill, that is, they were 
 made subject to ' fair rents,' and, if held by tenants, were 
 practically taken away from the landlords ; the provisions 
 of the Bill, as to demesnes, were especially harsh ; many a 
 
 * I believe I may claim some credit for having contributed to this 
 provision. I had had large experience of the injustice of keeping 
 tenants subject to long-standing arrears ; and, as a judge, had taken 
 strong measures to prevent and defeat the practice. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 181 
 
 mansion and demesne, which might happen to be let, 
 would really become the property of the tenant, the owner 
 being put off with a rent-charge. The worst proposals of 
 this measure, however, were those relating to improve- 
 ments made by tenants, exempted from rent, we have 
 seen, by the Act of 1881. The Courts of Justice in Ireland 
 had rightly declared with one voice, that improvements of 
 this kind were not to be discharged from rent, unless they 
 were the improvements treated by the Act of 1870, that 
 is, rents might be charged on tenants' improvements, if 
 these did not fall within the definition laid down by that 
 law, or if they were outside the limitations it had imposed, 
 in order to shut out obsolete and unjust claims, which 
 might harass and do grievous wrong to landlords. All 
 this was completely changed by the new measure; the 
 definition of improvements was wholly altered, in order 
 to secure their being exempted from rent ; the restrictions 
 in point of time, and many other matters, as regards claims 
 for improvements, were largely swept away, and the power 
 of 'contracting out' of such claims was still further 
 abridged. The whole law, in a word, as to tenants' im- 
 provements, as these were to create exemption from rent, 
 was placed on altogether a new basis; this was detri- 
 mental in every respect to the landlord, and gave advan- 
 tages to the tenant, in my judgment, utterly unjust* 
 
 The Bill contained other provisions, all in the same 
 direction, that is, for the advantage of the Irish tenant, and 
 to his landlord's loss, especially one relaxing the law as 
 to the subdivision and subletting of farms, an inveterate 
 and very pernicious practice. It introduced, also, a new 
 principle, on which I shall say some words afterwards, 
 with respect to another experiment on the Irish land, 
 that is, what is called Land Purchase, under conditions, not 
 
 * For an elaborate account of the Act which was the result of this 
 Bill, see the work of Mr. Justice Barton, 'The Land Law (Ireland) 
 Act, 1896.' 
 
1 82 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 thought of before, until they were laid down by a Con- 
 servative Government. The measure was hustled through 
 the House of Commons with such indecorous haste, that 
 Sir Edward Carson, now a law-officer of the Crown, 
 walked out of that Assembly to express his disgust; it 
 narrowly escaped defeat in the House of Lords, loyal as 
 the Peers to Lord Salisbury are; indeed, though hardly 
 debated, its vices were soon made manifest. It is un- 
 necessary to point out what the general character of the 
 Act is; it enlarged very considerably the sphere of the 
 ' Three F's,' greatly increasing the wrong done to the Irish 
 landlord, by doing away with the restrictions, placed by 
 Mr. Gladstone, in 1870, on illegitimate claims in respect 
 of improvements ; its direct tendency was to reduce rents 
 wholesale, and to promote more litigation between landlord 
 and tenant; and if it encouraged tenants to make im- 
 provements on their farms, its plain effect, I will not say its 
 purpose, was to ' improve the Irish landlords out of their 
 estates,' the contemptuous phrase of a great master of 
 Equity. Its mischief, however, went a great deal further ; 
 tenants making improvements are only exempted from 
 rent, in respect of these, by this Act ; they are not within 
 the protection of the Act of 1870, if improvements of any 
 kind are excluded by it ; if a tenant, therefore, makes an 
 improvement on his farm, which is not 'suitable' to it in 
 a real sense, say, builds a mansion upon a petty holding, 
 he will not be entitled to compensation, should he quit it, 
 even though dispossessed for non-payment of his rent. 
 But tenants, in these circumstances, like those I have 
 referred to before, would assuredly proclaim that they had 
 here a great and real grievance ; and they would be relieved 
 from it, doubtless, by another law, giving them compensa- 
 tion, perhaps, to their landlord's ruin. A dangerous 
 principle is thus hidden within the Act ; this will probably 
 be asserted against the owners of ground rents, not only 
 in Ireland, but in England and Scotland ; and the law, 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 183 
 
 taken as a whole, has strengthened the claim of the Irish 
 landed gentry to be indemnified, as was solemnly promised, 
 for what they have suffered from the legislation begun 
 in 1881. 
 
 While the Irish land system was thus being dealt with, 
 on the side of occupation, during many years, experiments 
 were made on it, likewise on the side of ownership. Resent- 
 ing the legislation that had produced the 'Three F's,' 
 Conservative politicians took it into their heads that Mr. 
 Gladstone had ' created ' ' dual ownership,' as they gave it 
 the name, in Ireland ; they insisted that this was simply 
 an intolerable thing. Unfortunately Mr. Gladstone had 
 no more ' created dual ownership ' than he had created the 
 mountains and lakes of Ireland ; he had only developed 
 the joint ownership, which the Irish tenant possessed in 
 his holding, in thousands of instances, if he had developed 
 it under the very worst conditions. This theory, however, 
 at which Burke would have laughed with contempt, and 
 which revealed the incapacity to understand Irish land 
 tenure, ingrained, it would appear, in the English mind, 
 was eagerly taken up and found much support ; it was 
 resolved to extend the process of converting tenants in 
 Ireland into owners of their farms, by a method hitherto 
 untried, and unknown in any part of Europe. Under 
 the Church Disestablishment Act, and the Land Acts of 
 1870 and 1 88 1, the State had advanced money to the 
 occupier of the Irish soil, in order to enable him to acquire 
 his farm ; but it had made it incumbent on him to con- 
 tribute part of the price ; the transaction, therefore, was, 
 in a real sense, a purchase. This, the only security for 
 honesty and thrift, was taken away in 1885; Parliament 
 passed an Act enabling the Irish tenant to become owner 
 of his holding without paying down a shilling ; the State 
 was to advance the whole price ; and the State was to be 
 repaid by a terminable annuity, charged on the land, and 
 extinguished at the end of less than half a century. This 
 
1 84 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 terminable annuity was to be much less than a true rent, 
 or even than a 'fair rent ' adjusted by the State ; the trans- 
 action, therefore, was not a purchase, but a gift, akin to a 
 bribe, another largess bestowed on the tenant class in 
 Ireland, and another injury, as I shall prove, inflicted on 
 the Irish landed gentry. This ' Land Purchase,' as it was 
 falsely called, was to be voluntary on the part of landlord 
 and tenant ; it was to be conducted on the footing of free 
 contract, as had been the case under the preceding statutes ; 
 the State was to obtain a guarantee from the landlord ; 
 and Parliament voted _£ 5,000,000 to carry out this policy. 
 Exactly as had happened in the case of the Encum- 
 bered Estates Act, this scheme of ' Land Purchase ' wa 
 pronounced successful ; some scores of landlords sold land, 
 some hundreds of tenants bought it ; the real nature of the 
 proceeding and its inevitable results were ignored ; it was 
 even boasted that ' dual ownership ' would be got rid of, 
 nay, that the Irish Land Question was being finally 
 ' settled.' But when the first sum of ^5,000,000 had been 
 expended, and Parliament was asked to vote a second 
 sum, it began to hesitate as to this dealing with the Irish 
 land ; the British taxpayer demurred and growled ; with a 
 true instinct he disliked the security ; it was found very 
 difficult to procure the funds required, large as the majority 
 was of Lord Salisbury's Government. His Ministry, how- 
 ever, adhered to the new policy ; and Parliament enacted 
 a measure in 1891, which I have always thought unconsti- 
 tutional in the highest degree, not to speak of the evils it 
 was certain to produce. By this Act a sum of about 
 ;£ 30,000,000 was made forthcoming to facilitate 'Land 
 Purchase,' to abolish 'dual ownership,' and to change Irish 
 tenants into owners of land ; this sum was to be secured 
 by the methods before referred to, that is, by terminable 
 annuities less than any equitable rent, and by guarantees 
 on the part of selling landlords ; but, furthermore, a whole 
 series of funds, devoted to Ireland, for Irish purposes, and 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 185 
 
 absolutely essential to her most important needs, were 
 appropriated to make good any default on the part of 
 'purchasing ' tenants, in the payment of annuities charged 
 on their farms ; and even the Irish counties were rendered 
 liable in the last resort. Should, therefore, tenants in 
 Ireland, who had acquired the ownership of their farms, 
 refuse to pay those annuities on any pretence, say, through 
 an appeal made by a Land League conspiracy — the 
 manifesto against all rent cannot be forgotten — this extra- 
 ordinary spectacle would then be seen : the State would 
 have a right to seize upon the grants made for National 
 schools and lunatic asylums throughout Ireland ; these 
 institutions would be shut up ; children and madmen 
 would be let loose through the country ; and the owner 
 of an Irish estate would have to pay for the dishonesty 
 perhaps of his former tenants. The late Lord Randolph 
 Churchill severely condemned this scheme ; I agree with 
 him it was utterly unjust, and but too characteristic of the 
 contempt of the rights of Ireland, unhappily often dis- 
 played by British statesmen. 
 
 Only a sum, it will be observed, of about £40,000,000, 
 that is, two of ,£5,000,000, and some £30,000,000 more, has 
 thus been made available for ' Land Purchase ;' this obviously 
 could not transfer even a fourth part of the Irish land, valued, 
 we have seen, by Mr. Gladstone at £300,000,000 — in a 
 remarkable speech in reply to Lord George Hamilton — and 
 almost certainly worth from £150,000,000 to £200,000,000. 
 The process of doing away with ' dual ownership ' and 
 making tenants in Ireland owners of their farms, having 
 been pronounced by its authors slow, the Act of 1896, 
 referred to before, enabled the landlord's guarantee to be 
 dispensed with, and provided that, in the case of hopelessly 
 embarrassed landlords, whose estates were being offered 
 for sale in the Courts, the tenants should virtually have a 
 right of pre-emption, thus asserting a principle, on which 
 I shall dwell afterwards, and known as the ' Compulsory 
 
1 86 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Purchase' of the Irish land. I shall point out, in another 
 chapter, the present and the inevitable future results of 
 this policy of so-styled ' Land Purchase ; ' suffice it to say 
 here, that, in my judgment, it betrays utter ignorance of 
 the Irish land system, and of the customs and inclinations 
 of the Irish peasant ; that it proceeds on an essentially 
 immoral principle, the bribery of a class to promote its 
 welfare ; that, from the very nature of the case, it cannot 
 abolish 'dual ownership;' that, human creatures being 
 what they are, it cannot, as is being already proved, estab- 
 lish a thriving body of occupying owners on the Irish soil ; 
 that it must create sharp and unjust distinctions in Irish 
 land tenure, iniquitous to the landlord and to every tenant, 
 who may be excluded from its benefits ; that it must 
 directly tend, as it is even now tending, to arouse a cry for 
 a wholesale confiscation of Irish estates, the most shameful 
 and wrongful Ireland has yet witnessed ; and that so far 
 from settling the Irish Land Question, it must necessarily 
 unsettle it from top to bottom. As respects the legislation 
 I have briefly described, on the side of the occupation of 
 the Irish land — by many degrees the most important — I 
 shall also comment upon its results in a subsequent chapter, 
 after examining its administration by the tribunal it has 
 set up. But a word may be said, in this place, on its 
 essential character: from 1881 to the present time, it is 
 absolutely without a precedent in civilised lands ; it has 
 trampled on economic science and the truths it teaches, as, 
 indeed, its chief author made his boast ; it has created a 
 mode of land tenure in Ireland not in accord with fact, 
 which has virtually deprived the Irish landlord of real 
 ownership in his estate, has turned him into a kind of 
 annuitant, and has virtually changed the Irish tenant into 
 a kind of owner, but under conditions absolutely bad ; its 
 inevitable tendency was to cut down rents wholesale, 
 without regard to the simplest justice ; it established a 
 system of mischievous litigation between landlord and 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 187 
 
 tenant, demoralising and increasing the division of classes ; 
 it exhibited, on an enormous scale, characteristic contempt 
 of Irish rights of property ; and finally, if Parliamentary 
 pledges are to be fulfilled, and gross wrong is not to be 
 consecrated by law, it has given the Irish landlord a great 
 and legitimate claim to compensation from the State. As 
 we survey this unwise and destructive medley of law, we 
 are forcibly reminded of the words of Burke : — ' I am un- 
 alterably persuaded that the attempt to oppress, degrade, 
 impoverish, confiscate, and extinguish the original gentle- 
 men, and landed property of a whole nation, cannot be 
 justified under any form it may assume.' * 
 
 * ' Letter to a Member of the National Assembly,' vol. i. p. 478. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND {continued) — THE 
 ADMINISTRATION OF THE IRISH LAND ACTS 
 
 The administration of the Land Act of 1870 in the main good — Diffi- 
 culty about claims for tenants' improvements — The administra- 
 tion of the Land Act of 1881, and of its supplements — The Land 
 Commission and its Sub-Commissions — Allowances to be made 
 for these tribunals — Principles which the Land Commission 
 should have adopted in fixing ' fair rents ' — The procedure and 
 practice it ought to have established — It made mistakes as to 
 both — The nature of the Sub-Commission Courts — This was 
 objectionable in the highest degree — These Courts have, however 
 unconsciously, done grave wrong to Irish landlords — Causes of 
 this — Characteristics of their proceedings — They disregarded the 
 principles they ought to have followed, and adopted faulty and 
 erroneous methods — Different illustrations of these grave mis- 
 takes — The Land Commission and appeals as to ' fair rent ' — 
 Importance of this subject — Faulty procedure of the Land Com- 
 mission in appeals — Valuers — The second Land Commission — Its 
 procedure worse than that of the first — Theory of occupation right 
 — This another wrong done to landlords — The Fry Commission 
 and its report — Confiscation of the property of Irish landlords — 
 The proofs of this — Apologies made for the Land Commission — 
 The administration of the Land Purchase Acts. 
 
 I TURN to the administration of the new Irish Land Code, 
 of which I have described the distinctive features. The 
 County Courts of Ireland, I have said, were entrusted with 
 the task of carrying out the Land Act of 1870 ; the prin- 
 cipal duty of the judges was to determine rights, under 
 the Ulster and analogous Customs in the south, and to 
 declare the sums to be paid to tenants, when leaving their 
 
 188 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 189 
 
 holdings, for compensation for improvements, and in respect 
 of disturbance. As evictions were by no means frequent, 
 in the period between 1870 and 1879, the litigation before 
 these tribunals, under these different heads, though by no 
 means trivial, was not excessive ; the applications on the 
 part of tenants were not very numerous ; there was ample 
 time to consider the law, whether in the subordinate or the 
 appellate Courts ; and though there was much difference 
 of opinion as to the amount of compensation to be given 
 to suitors, the administration of the Act was not seriously 
 impugned,* and, on the whole, was reasonable and just. 
 The most remarkable circumstance in the inquiries held 
 before the Courts was, certainly, the extravagance of the 
 claims put forward, on account of tenants' improvements, 
 circumscribed as these were by the limitations of the law ; 
 everything in the nature of an agricultural work was called 
 an improvement, from repairing an old fence to cleaning 
 an old drain ; hours and days were lost in endeavours to 
 disentangle the truth, and to arrive at sound and legal 
 conclusions. I could fill scores of pages with descriptions 
 of demands of this kind, usually pressed with reckless and 
 hard swearing ; they ought to have been a warning, as 
 unhappily they were not, not to break down the restrictions 
 contained in the Act of 1870, and not to extend legislation, 
 in this direction, against the rights of the landlord. I 
 confine myself to a single example : I tried a case, in 1895, 
 in which a tenant's claims, under the Act of 1870, were 
 ^"1130; I cut these down to £164; after deducting £155 
 found due to the landlord, I adjudged to the tenant a sum 
 of less than £10 ; and there was no appeal from the decision 
 I pronounced.t 
 
 The Land Act of 1870 has been well-nigh superseded by 
 
 * A Committee of the House of Lords sate, in 1872, to consider the 
 administration of the Land Act of 1870. The report and the evidence 
 were, in the main, in favour of the judges. 
 
 f Rushe v. Whitney, Roscommon Quarter Sessions, October, 1895. 
 
190 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 the great measure of 1881, and by the legislation which 
 has been its supplement. The administration of this part 
 of the new Land Code, by many degrees the most im- 
 portant, was given, as I have pointed out before, to a 
 wholly new tribunal, the Land Commission, and to Sub- 
 Commissions dependent on it ; a concurrent jurisdiction 
 was given to the Irish County Courts ; but they have had 
 very little to do in this province. The principal work of 
 the Land Commission has been to fix ' fair rents,' and to 
 make statutory leases, ' fixity of tenure,' in a word, in a 
 kind of disguise, and thus to give effect to the policy 
 adopted by Mr. Gladstone in 1881. The three original 
 members of the Land Commission, in all respects its 
 directors, were the late Mr. Justice O'Hagan, the late Mr. 
 E. F. Litton, and the late Mr. John E. Vernon ; Lord 
 Salisbury denounced these appointments in emphatic 
 language, as being against the just rights of Irish landlords ;* 
 the charge was not without plausible grounds at least, for 
 Mr. Justice O'Hagan had been one of the 'Young Ireland ' 
 party, and Mr. Litton had been a strong tenant-right 
 advocate. These two gentlemen, nevertheless, were most 
 honourable men, and capable, if not very distinguished, 
 lawyers ; Mr. Vernon was an excellent and experienced 
 country gentleman, if, in politics, of the Liberal faith ; and 
 as all three have long ago passed away, it would be unjust 
 to make charges of illegitimate conduct, even if they may 
 not have been wholly free from unconscious bias. Great 
 allowance ought to be made, in common justice, for the 
 Commissioners in the situation that had been made for 
 them, and regard being had to their most arduous duties. 
 
 * Lord Salisbury in the House of Lords, August 1, 1881 : 'They 
 are all three strong Liberals, with strong views of tenant right. . . . 
 There is no doubt that all three are appointed with a strong prepos- 
 session in favour of views which are advocated by the representatives 
 of the tenantry in Ireland, and which are deprecated by the landlords. 
 ... It is not the relegation of landlord and tenant to an impartial 
 tribunal.' 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 191 
 
 To fix 'fair rent,' even approximately, was difficult in the 
 extreme ; as Judge Longfield predicted many years before, 
 and every well-informed Irishman knew, the adjustment of 
 rent, through the agency of the State, would inevitably 
 cause a general lowering of rents. Again, the Commis- 
 sioners were, from the outset, harassed by a rush of appli- 
 cations to fix ' fair rents ; ' these came in, within a few 
 weeks, in thousands ; they were tempted, therefore, to set 
 about their work at once, without taking the careful pre- 
 cautions, or entering into all the considerations, the nature 
 of their duty required. Two circumstances, also, no doubt, 
 had effect on their minds ; the Land League was creating 
 a Reign of Terror, and destroying the property of the Irish 
 landlords ; the Commissioners probably hoped that they 
 would weaken the power of the League, by, so to speak, 
 bidding against it, and cutting rents down. Above all, the 
 Land Commission, like the Encumbered Estates Commis- 
 sion, was a tribunal set up to carry out a policy, that is, in 
 word, to abate rents ; and all experience, Irish experience 
 notably, proves that such a body of men usually fulfils its 
 mission. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, we have seen, had expressed a belief 
 that ' fair rents,' as a rule, would be fixed by contract ; 
 that the Act of 1881 would produce this result ; and that 
 this part of the work of the Land Commission, accordingly, 
 would not be very great. Unquestionably, too, with his 
 leading followers, he was convinced that rents in Ireland 
 would not be largely reduced ; * it is important to bear 
 
 * Mr. Gladstone, July 22, 1881 : 'I shall be bitterly disappointed 
 with the operation of the Act if the property of the landlords of 
 Ireland does not come to be worth more than twenty years' purchase 
 on the judicial rent.' Mr. W. E. Forster, same date : ' I think the 
 final result of the measure will be, within a few years, that the land- 
 owners of Ireland, small and large, will be better off than they are 
 at this moment.' Lord Carlingford, August 1, 1881 : ' My Lords, I 
 maintain that the provisions of this Bill will cause the landlords no 
 money loss whatever. I believe that it will inflict upon them no loss 
 
192 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 this distinctly in mind, regard being had to subsequent 
 events. These anticipations were to prove vain ; but the 
 Land Commissioners possibly may have shared his views, 
 and may have resolved to act upon them, before they first 
 addressed themselves to the task of ' fixing fair rents.' 
 After experience, it is easy to be wise ; but we can now 
 clearly discern what they ought to have done, considering 
 the heavy work they were soon to find imposed on them. 
 Their first duty should have been to establish some 
 standard, which would make a reasonable criterion of rent ; 
 the means to accomplish this end were not wanting. Mr. 
 Law, the Irish Attorney-General of Mr. Gladstone, one of 
 the most distinguished lawyers of his day, and afterwards 
 a holder of the Greal Seal of Ireland, had made a definition 
 of ' fair rent ' in the House of Commons ; ' a fair rent was 
 to be a competition rent minus the yearly value of the 
 tenant's interest in the holding ; that was what was in- 
 tended, and anything else would be monstrously unjust.' * 
 For some reason that has not transpired, this definition did 
 not find a place in the Act ; but the authority of its framer 
 was great ; it must have been known to the Land Com- 
 missioners ; had they adopted it, and based their decisions 
 upon it, things would have been very different from what 
 they are at the present time. But there were other tests 
 to indicate a standard of rent, to be regarded at least, if 
 not conclusive. The valuation of the lands of Ireland 
 made for the assessment of rates, Griffith's valuation, as it 
 was commonly called, which Parnell had made a measure 
 of ' fair rent,' would certainly have been of real use, though 
 it varied greatly in different counties ; and the Commission 
 appointed by Mr. Gladstone, only a few months before, 
 had, I have said, reported, that Ireland, as a whole, was in 
 
 of income, except in those cases in which a certain number of land- 
 lords may have imposed upon their tenants excessive and inequitable 
 rents.' 
 
 * Hansard, vol. 260, p. 1399. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 193 
 
 no sense an over-rented land. There was another con- 
 sideration, as regards Irish rents, which the Land Com- 
 missioners ought to have borne in mind. The rents on 
 the estates of the great landlords, and of the gentry of old 
 descent, were, as a rule, low ; the rents of the purchasers 
 under the Encumbered Estates Acts were high, nay, 
 excessive, in not a few instances. 
 
 Other circumstances, moreover, of great importance, 
 ought to have been taken into account, with respect to 
 this subject. The rental of Ireland was not as high as it 
 had been before the Great Famine ; where rents, therefore, 
 had not been increased, and had been regularly paid for a 
 long series of years, there was the strongest possible pre- 
 sumption that these would be ' fair.' Again, the material 
 progress of Ireland had been great during the forty pre- 
 ceding years : the wages of labour had, indeed, risen ; but 
 owing to the introduction of good farm machinery, the 
 cost of production, in agriculture, had diminished ; the 
 extension of the railway system had opened new markets, 
 and had brought even Connaught within a few hours of 
 Great Britain ; steam navigation had multiplied and 
 improved ; the modes of husbandry and the breeds of 
 stock of all kinds had become infinitely better than they 
 had been ; and prices of late had been very high. These 
 were all elements to be regarded in the determination of 
 ' fair rent ; ' they ought to have been examined with care ; 
 and inquiries on these matters should have extended over 
 a long space of time. Moreover, as the Land Act of 1881 
 discharged improvements made by tenants from rent, as 
 these were defined and limited by the Act of 1870, the 
 greatest pains ought to have been taken that claims for 
 exemption should be strictly dealt with, and not permitted 
 to run riot, especially as it was notorious that demands of 
 this kind, made under the law already in force, were 
 usually excessive, supported by untrue statements, and by 
 no means easy to resist and disprove. Another fact, also, 
 
 O 
 
19+ PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 of the gravest moment, ought to have been thoroughly 
 considered, as regards this question. As improvements 
 made by tenants were not to be charged with rent, it was 
 but equitable that the lands they might hold should be 
 valued as if in their normal state ; that if these had been 
 deteriorated, either through wilful misconduct, or gross 
 neglect, their occupiers were not to make profit of their 
 own wrong ; that deterioration, in a word, was not to be 
 allowed to work rent down, and was to be taken into 
 account, in adjudicating upon ' fair rent.' This was the 
 more necessary because it was well known that numbers 
 of farms in Ireland had been more or less run out ; and 
 especially because, as in the case of the ryot of Bengal, 
 under the Permanent Settlement of Lord Cornwallis, an 
 Irish tenant would be strongly tempted to injure his lands, 
 if he believed that, when ' a fair rent ' should be fixed on 
 them, he would be permitted to take advantage of his own 
 default. It should be added that, in the fixing of ' fair 
 rents,' the large sums which, in many instances, Irish land- 
 lords had laid out in improving their estates, notably since 
 the years that succeeded the Famine, ought, as a matter 
 of course, to have been kept in mind. 
 
 These were the general principles which should have 
 guided the Land Commission in approaching the question 
 of fixing 'fair rent' There was nothing in the Act of 1881 
 to prevent the Land Commissioners, as a Court of first 
 instance, adjudicating directly in cases of this kind, or to 
 compel them to refer these to their Sub-Commissions ; 
 indeed the plain intention of the law was in a contrary 
 sense. Had the Land Commissioners adopted this course 
 — and this, I venture to say, was their obvious duty — they 
 would, no doubt, have considered the questions before 
 them at length, and with close attention ; have made their 
 inquiries go back many years, and have laid down, in 
 elaborate judgments, the maxims and rules to be applied 
 in the fixing of ' fair rent' The evidence that would have 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 195 
 
 come before them would have been of two kinds : that 
 which depended upon the statements of valuers, on the 
 side of landlords and tenants alike ; this, of course, would 
 be of great importance ; but it should have been borne in 
 mind that it would be biassed evidence ; and that, in the 
 existing state of Ireland, and of Irish opinion, the state- 
 ments of tenants' valuers would require to be strictly- 
 watched. The other head of evidence was of a much 
 more trustworthy kind ; it was indicated by the circum- 
 stances of the cases being heard, and was necessarily 
 suggested by the inquiries themselves. This class of 
 evidence would be desired from a consideration of the rate 
 of rent in the neighbourhood or even of adjoining lands, 
 in a word, of what may be called the market price of rent ; 
 from an examination of what a reasonable rent would be, 
 payable by a solvent tenant to a fair-minded landlord ; 
 and even from a review of rent fixed by the competition 
 of bidders for land, these circumstances, in every given 
 case, being, of course, controlled by a due regard being 
 had, in the words of the law, for the ' tenant's interest' 
 There was another and very important test ; the sums 
 paid in Ulster and elsewhere on the transfer of farms were 
 usually large, sometimes not less than a third or even a 
 half of the value of the fee simple ; and as these sums 
 were always subject to the existing rents, the first charges 
 on the lands being sold, this would afford a strong pre- 
 sumption that such rents would be ' fair.' No doubt the 
 Act of 1 88 1 declared that such payments were not to be 
 taken into account, per se, and apart from other considera- 
 tions in the actual fixing of rent, so far as regards a given 
 farm ; but the law certainly allowed — and it has always 
 been so held — that payments of this kind might be kept 
 in view in forming, generally, an estimate of what a ' fair 
 rent ' should be.* 
 
 * The nature and character of these two classes of evidence 
 has been thus well described in the Report of the Edward Fry's 
 
PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 The Land Commissioners, but from a different point of 
 view, might have learned something from Parnell in this 
 matter. They were, no doubt, harassed by the prospect 
 of the task before them ; but had they taken a certain 
 number of 'test cases,' and investigated them as a Court 
 of first instance, they would have laid down principles to 
 be followed in the fixing of 'fair rent;' have explained 
 these in well-considered judgments, going over the whole 
 field of inquiry ; and, so far as in them lay, have tried to 
 do justice. Even if they had not adopted this course, one 
 of their members, as the Act of 1881 provided, might have 
 taken part for some time with their subordinates in the 
 
 Commission, p. 18 : 'If the matter were perfectly open, it appears to us 
 that two independent lines of evidence might be pursued by a person 
 inquiring what is the fair rent to be fixed for a holding. One class of 
 evidence may for shortness be called the popular evidence ;. the other 
 the technical. The popular evidence would comprise the prices 
 obtained by the tenant for a sale of his interest or bo7id fide offers 
 which he had received for it, evidence of the letting value or judicial 
 rents of similar holdings, evidence of the sums paid for conacre or 
 agistment, evidence of the long and punctual payment of a real rent, 
 or of the long arrears of a nominal rent, and evidence of the prosperity 
 or poverty of the persons who had successively lived off the produce 
 of the holding. The technical evidence would be that more familiar 
 to professional valuators. They would inspect the land, ascertain the 
 acreages of the different classes of land on the farm, and what they 
 would produce or carry ; they would consider the quantity and value 
 of the produce and the cost of production, and the shares of the 
 surplus remaining after the cost of production divisible between land- 
 lord and tenant respectively. The popular evidence would be affected 
 by all the motives which make men in Ireland desirous to occupy 
 land ; the technical evidence would assume the desire of making a 
 money profit out of the occupation of land as the sole motive of such 
 occupation. The eighth section of the Act of 1881 seems to admit of 
 both lines of evidence with a single exception. It provided that in 
 fixing the fair rent consideration should be given not to some but to 
 all the circumstances of the case, the holding and the district, with 
 the single exception that (sub-sec. 10) the price paid for the tenancy 
 otherwise than to the landlord or his predecessors was not of itself, 
 apart from other considerations, to be taken into account; though, 
 conjoined with other considerations, it still remains admissible.' 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 197 
 
 adjustment of rent; this would have been in accord with 
 Mr. Gladstone's assertions that the Land Commission was 
 to be the real arbiter of rent. Unfortunately the Commis- 
 sioners acted quite otherwise ; their conduct, palliate as 
 you may, was an abdication of a plain duty, on the plea 
 that they were overwhelmed by the work before them. 
 Not one of them ever sat in a Court of first instance to 
 fix ' fair rents ; ' they delegated this the most important of 
 all their functions to their Sub-Commissions, to which 
 they thus committed the charge of adjusting rent through- 
 out the whole of Ireland. These Sub-Commissions formed 
 Courts, each composed of three members, one a legal Com- 
 missioner and two laymen ; the Sub-Commissioners were 
 nominees of the Government, whether appointed on the 
 recommendation of the Land Commission or not is not 
 certain ; the only qualifications for the legal Commissioners 
 were that they should be barristers or solicitors of six years' 
 standing, and for the lay Commissioners that they should 
 have some knowledge of land. These were strange tribu- 
 nals to deal with property worth hundreds of millions ; 
 but this was only a part of what must be called a scandal 
 most discreditable to those responsible for it. The Sub- 
 Commissioners, one and all, were much underpaid ; their 
 salaries were inadequate to secure fitting men ; and, one 
 and all, they were at the sufferance of the men at the 
 Castle, liable to be dismissed at a moment's notice, and 
 without the independence which is the best guarantee of 
 justice. Some of the Sub-Commissioners, indeed, were 
 only paid for the job, by the day ; they had, therefore, a 
 direct personal interest to reduce rents, in order to make 
 work for themselves and to retain their places. Even in 
 Ireland such tribunals were never set on foot, since Crom- 
 well assembled his Courts of Claims to give their sanction 
 to his huge forfeitures ; that they were ever thought 
 of is one of the many proofs of the disregard shown 
 to property in land in Ireland. No wonder that it was 
 
198 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 significantly remarked : 'The whole spirit of our judicial 
 institutions suggests that officers with such extensive 
 powers should be selected with the greatest care and with 
 reference to their possession of high qualifications, and 
 that they should be placed in a position of independence, 
 and should, so far as possible, be lifted above the suspicions 
 that surround them.'* 
 
 Sixty or seventy officials of this type — the number was 
 afterwards largely increased — were thus, in the significant 
 words of one, ' let loose over Ireland ' to deal with estates ; 
 it is very remarkable that they have never received instruc- 
 tions from the Land Commission how to perform their 
 duties. The procedure of the Courts of the Sub-Commis- 
 sions was, under existing conditions, as well devised as 
 could be fairly expected. The three Commissioners, who 
 formed a Court, nearly always sate together, and heard the 
 evidence brought before them as to what were ' fair rents ; ' 
 the legal Commissioner decided questions of law ; and, 
 this evidence having been taken, the two lay Commissioners 
 inspected the farms, the subjects of the previous inquiries, 
 and having conferred with their legal colleague, determined 
 with him what should be their ' fair rents.' This was the 
 ordinary if not the universal practice ; if some deviations 
 have been made from it, these cannot be deemed of very 
 great importance. Grave complaints have been made, in 
 not a few instances, of the lay Commissioners, when 
 engaged in examining lands ; it has been said that they 
 often neglected and ' scamped ' their work ; but these 
 charges have been hardly, if at all, sustained ; my own 
 experience — and it is tolerably large — is that the Commis- 
 sioners performed their functions with diligence and care, 
 and sometimes gave proof of real knowledge of husbandry.! 
 
 * Report of the Fry Commission, p. 13. 
 
 f Ibid., p. 14 : ' Some specific charges of misconduct or negligence 
 have been made against lay Assistant Commissioners and Court 
 valuers ; as e.g. visiting the land without due notice to the landlord ; 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 199 
 
 But it was utterly impossible that tribunals of this kind, 
 not composed of experts of a high order, dependent upon 
 the breath of the Castle, without regulations to direct their 
 conduct, and acting, without concert, in many districts, 
 could adjust rent in a satisfactory way, and in conformity 
 with true methods, especially as the work they had to do 
 was excessive ; indeed, they sometimes fixed ' fair rents ' 
 by dozens in a day. It was equally impossible that the 
 Sub-Commissions — and to do their members justice they 
 never made the attempt — could take into account all the 
 manifold and far-reaching elements which enter into the 
 question of ' fair rent,' and could set forth, in exhaustive 
 judgments, the principles applicable to a most intricate 
 problem. On the contrary, as a rule, and no doubt wisely, 
 they avoided topics which might have tasked the highest 
 judicial powers ; they decided the cases before them sum- 
 marily, and with little reflection, certainly without the pro- 
 tracted examination required to establish settled rules and 
 doctrines. And the result has been that they disregarded, 
 and even set at nought, a whole series of considerations, of 
 supreme importance, with reference to the fixing of ' fair 
 rent;' and, however unconsciously and innocently, they 
 have been the authors, in the first instance at least, of the 
 gravest injustice, and of wrong, done wholesale, to the 
 landed gentry of Ireland. 
 
 To make this plain, let us glance back at the principles 
 which assuredly ought to have been kept in view, in coming 
 to sound conclusions on the subject of 'fair rent' It will 
 be seen that the Sub-Commissioners either gave little or 
 no attention to these, or directly violated them in, perhaps, 
 tens of thousands of cases. They have never attempted 
 
 visiting the holding when lying under snow or water, or when suffering 
 from prolonged drought, and refusing to wait whilst a trench was dug 
 to show the condition of the alleged drainage. We have investigated 
 many of these cases, and the explanations given have generally been 
 satisfactory to us.' 
 
loo PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 to establish some kind of standard, which would form a 
 general measure of ' fair rent ; ' they have completely 
 ignored the definition of Mr. Law, precise and most valu- 
 able as it was ; they have treated ' Griffith's valuation ' as 
 though it did not exist ; they have regarded the Report of 
 Mr. Gladstone's Commission, declaring that Ireland was 
 not excessively rented, as mere waste paper ; they have 
 apparently taken hardly any account of the well-known 
 distinction between the low rentals of the great and old 
 landlords, and the rack-rents too often exacted by pur- 
 chasers under the Encumbered Estates Acts. So, too, it 
 would seem, they have refused to consider the strong pre- 
 sumption that rents would be ' fair ' if not raised during a 
 long series of years, and if reasonably well paid, within 
 that period ; and they certainly have given no real weight, 
 as an element in adjusting rent, to the agricultural progress 
 made by Ireland since the Great Famine. Innumerable 
 complaints have been made against their decisions as to 
 the exemption of tenants' improvements from rent ; but 
 my belief is that they gave great attention to this subject ; 
 the wrong that has been done was owing to the difficulty 
 of the law, and of its application to given cases ; and the 
 law, besides, was not, I think, just. On the correlative 
 and most important question of the deterioration of farms 
 through the default of tenants, they have hardly ever 
 inquired into this ; they have repeatedly done the land- 
 lords wrong ; they have made grave and palpable mistakes ; 
 and in many instances they have made no allowances for 
 the expenditure of landlords upon their estates. Having 
 thus refused to follow the principles which ought to have 
 been their guide, they have widely deviated in the actual 
 fixing of ' fair rents ' from rules and methods they should 
 have observed and made effective. They have given too 
 much weight to the class of evidence that was least im- 
 portant and most open to question ; they have attached 
 little and sometimes no value to the class of evidence by 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 201 
 
 far the most trustworthy, and that ought to possess the 
 greatest influence. This has especially been the case, as 
 we shall see, with respect to the sums paid on the transfer 
 of farms, the strongest possible indication that their rents 
 must be 'fair,' on the ordinary principles of human nature, 
 and giving the purchasers credit for the simplest common 
 sense. 
 
 These are grave charges against quasi-judicial bodies ; 
 let us see if they are not completely justified. The Sub- 
 Commissioners, I have said, have taken no heed of Mr. Law's 
 definition of ' fair rent ; ' but they have acted as though 
 they set it at defiance ; they have ignored the principle of 
 competition in fixing ' fair ' rents. Unquestionably, as 
 Mr. Law pointed out, a deduction should be made from a 
 competition rent, regard being had to 'the tenant's interest,' 
 that is, to his rights in respect of improvements, and 
 perhaps to his rights on account of his tenure, a lease 
 renewable every fifteen years, when a ' fair rent ' is being 
 fixed on his farm ; but why the very idea of competition, 
 that is, of market value, was to be excluded as an element 
 in estimating ' fair rent,' is what men of common sense 
 have never understood. This, in fact, was a portentous 
 mistake, with consequences of a far-reaching kind ; you 
 might as well argue that because two partners had an 
 interest in a fee simple estate, or two peasants had each a 
 share in a cow, the price of the land or the cow was not 
 to depend on what would be given for it at an auction mart 
 or a county fair. Yet this was a position the Sub-Com- 
 missions have always taken ; they have always insisted 
 that competition had nothing to do with ' fair rent' The 
 evidence on this subject is conclusive ; I can only take a 
 few samples from the statements of a cloud of witnesses, 
 who really seem to make a boast of their faith. Colonel 
 Bayley, a Sub-Commissioner of large experience, has laid 
 it down that the ' difference between a competition rent 
 and the fair rent would be more than 20 per cent. ; it would, 
 
202 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 I think, be more than that ; there would be between 30 
 and 75 per cent, difference between the fair rent and the 
 competition rent.' * Mr. Roberts, another Sub-Commis- 
 sioner, has deposed to much the same effect : ' Decidedly, 
 I believe that if the land was put in the market it would 
 bring 25 per cent, more than the rent I put on.'t So, too, 
 Mr. Bailey, a legal Sub-Commissioner, very much respected, 
 has alleged : ' It would be most misleading to take the 
 evidence of letting value in the neighbourhood, thus 
 bringing in competition value, which we rigorously exclude 
 in fair-rent cases.' \ Mr. Bomford, a well-known Sub- 
 Commissioner, has said, in much the same sense : ' We do 
 not take the competition rent, and cannot take it into con- 
 sideration, when fixing what the fair rent should be. Then 
 you utterly exclude, when you come to the fixing of the 
 fair rent, the element of competition ? — Yes, except in one 
 matter, when we have town parks.' § 
 
 Let us now see what distinctions, in fixing c fair rents,' 
 the Sub-Commissioners have drawn between landlords 
 whose rentals were low and landlords whose rentals were 
 really high ; and how they have dealt with rents, paid for 
 a long space of time, without having been raised ; this is a 
 fair index of the equity of their proceedings. It should be 
 remarked, at the outset, that it soon appeared that rents 
 had only been increased in comparatively few instances, 
 going back over a series of years ; yet, as a rule, nearly all 
 rents were indiscriminately reduced. No attempt has 
 been made, by any official of the Land Commission, to 
 answer this damaging charge made, in 1897, at a judicial 
 inquiry held upon the subject : ' The result of that calcu- 
 lation, the accuracy of which cannot be challenged, shows 
 
 * Evidence taken by Mr. Morley's Commission on the Irish Land 
 Acts, p. 236. 
 t Ibid., p. 397. 
 
 % Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 131. 
 § Ibid., p. 208. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 203 
 
 that, as the result of all the cases that were heard, in only 
 8 per cent, of them was any increase of rent for many 
 years prior to 1881 proved. But whether the Sub-Com- 
 missioners are dealing with an estate on which for centuries 
 the rents had remained unchanged, and on which the 
 tenants had been fairly treated, or whether they were 
 dealing with estates that had come into the hands of 
 speculators by purchase in the Landed Estates Court, in 
 all cases the average result was the same. They deducted 
 something between 15 and 20 per cent, from the existing 
 rent, no matter how long it had existed, and no matter 
 upon what estate it was being paid.' * This significant 
 evidence, too, points to the same conclusion : ' There is 
 nothing to justify the reductions that have been made in 
 the rents of good landlords, who did not raise their rents 
 in the good years. In fact, the landlords who did raise 
 their rents got off a great deal better, at the hands of the 
 Sub-Commissioners, than the good landlords who did not 
 raise them.' f And Mr. Lecky, a calm-minded observer, if 
 there ever was one, has added these striking and pregnant 
 remarks : ' The landlords who have suffered least have 
 probably been those who simplified their properties by the 
 wholesale evictions, the harsh clearances, that too often 
 followed the Famine. Next in the scale come those who 
 exacted extreme rack-rents from their tenants. These 
 rents had been received for many years, and though they 
 were ultimately reduced more than rents which had been 
 always low, they still, in innumerable instances, remained 
 higher than the others. The large class who regarded 
 land simply as a source of revenue, and, without doing 
 anything harsh, or extortionate, or unjust, took no part in 
 its management, have suffered very moderately. It is the 
 improving landlord, who took a real interest in his estate, 
 who sank large sums in draining and other purposes of 
 
 * Evidence taken by the Fry Commission : Mr. Campbell, p. 41. 
 t Ibid., p. 682. 
 
204 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 improvement, who exercised a constant and beneficent 
 influence over his tenants, who has suffered most from the 
 legislation that reduced him to a mere powerless rent- 
 charger, and, in most cases, rendered the sums he had 
 expended an absolute loss.' * 
 
 The Sub-Commissions dealt with the subject of the 
 exemption of tenants' improvements from rent, on the 
 whole, as fairly, I think, as could be expected; and on 
 the different questions of law that arose, appeals ran from 
 them to the Land Commission, which usually investigated 
 these cases at length. But this part of the law, really an 
 excrescence on the Act of i88i,was unfair to the land- 
 lords, in the circumstances in which they were placed ; 
 they were confronted by innumerable and often obsolete 
 and worthless claims, which they had only seldom the 
 means of refuting ; and if the demoralisation and false 
 swearing under the Act of 1870 was bad, they were in- 
 finitely worse under the Act of 188 1. A witty Irishman, 
 indeed, once said that he could wish no severer punish- 
 ment for Mr. Gladstone than to see him in a Sub-Com- 
 mission Court listening to those wrongful statements ; 
 the mischief has, of course, been aggravated since the Act 
 of 1896 has made the basis for the exemption larger and 
 more ill-defined. The Sub-Commissions, I have said, were 
 gravely in error, almost, as a rule, with respect to the 
 deterioration of land, as an element to be considered in 
 fixing rent ; in this respect gross injustice has been done 
 to landlords. There is scarcely any proof that, even in a 
 single instance, the Sub-Commissioners valued land ' for 
 fair rent,' as in its normal state ; and yet, assuredly, this 
 was what ought to have been done, if a premium was not 
 to be put on misconduct, and because farms had been 
 injured and exhausted in hundreds, throughout Ireland. 
 The deterioration was usually of two kinds — wilful waste 
 committed in order to work down rent, and passive waste 
 * - Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. pp. 205, 206. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 205 
 
 caused by negligence and bad farming. Out of many 
 instances, under the first head, I shall refer to one ; the 
 Sub-Commissioners usually gave little or no attention 
 to wrongs of this kind ; in this instance they enabled the 
 tenant to make money by his own misdeeds ; they reduced 
 the rent nearly 30 per cent. : 'The dykes were full 
 of stuff and choked, and the sluice-gate, which we had 
 repaired at our own expense, was all choked up, and the 
 water had been left on the land as long as it could stay 
 on it. I complained and remonstrated with the tenant. 
 I sent for Madden, and in Mr. Lyle's presence I stated 
 this to him. His answer to me was that he was not such 
 a damned fool as to have his land looking well when the 
 Commissioners came to look at it. 
 
 ' Sir E. Fry : Did that case come before the Sub- 
 Commission Court ? — It did. 
 
 1 Did you give evidence of what the tenant said ? — Yes, 
 sir. . . . 
 
 ' Mr. Campbell : I will tell you, sir, what they did. 
 
 'How much did they reduce the first judicial rent? — 
 They reduced the first judicial rent ; they cut it down 
 from £70 10s. to £$1.' * 
 
 As for passive waste, that is, the bad cultivation of farms, 
 
 the proof is conclusive that it has been seldom, if ever, 
 
 considered by the Sub-Commissions in fixing ' fair rents.' 
 
 If we bear in mind that many thousands of acres in Ireland 
 
 have been well-nigh destroyed by the burning done by 
 
 tenants, and that hundreds of thousands have been run 
 
 out by slovenly farming, the injury thus done to landlords 
 
 has been enormous, especially as tenants' improvements 
 
 have been exempted from rent against them ; the ' candle,' 
 
 * Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 692. As a County 
 Court judge I have a concurrent jurisdiction, happily seldom exer- 
 cised, in fixing 'fair rents.' I had a somewhat similar case before me 
 some seventeen or eighteen years ago, and I adjourned the hearing 
 for four years to allow the land to recover. I believe I am the only 
 official who did anything of the kind until quite recently. 
 
206 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 it has been justly said, ' has been melted down at both 
 ends.' I cite two instances, out of hundreds, of the in- 
 justice thus done ; it has been proved over and over again 
 that, in the case of two adjoining farms, in all respects of 
 the same natural quality, the rent on that which was 
 deteriorated was fixed at a much lower rate than the rent 
 on that which was in good heart ; in other words, the land- 
 lord was despoiled of the difference, and the tenant had 
 the benefit of his bad husbandry. I take, almost at random, 
 a case in Ulster : ' The Commissioners always value the 
 land as they see it. I have two cases on my property in 
 one townland. One tenant was an industrious, hard-work- 
 ing man, who had his farm in very good order. The second 
 tenant, his wife had died, he was in poverty, with a lot of 
 young children, and he himself was not quite " all there." 
 These two holdings came at the same time before the 
 Sub-Commissioners, and the rents were cut down in each 
 case. When the thing was over, I said to Quinn, who was 
 one of the tenants, " Are you satisfied with your reduc- 
 tion ? " " How can I be satisfied," he said, " when my rent 
 is at the same rate as Hurson's rent ? " I looked at the 
 return and saw he was quite right. . . . The deteriorated 
 farm was cut down considerably more than the cultivated 
 farm.' Another remarkable case occurred in the west : 
 ' I had a case, I think decided this year ; a farm that was 
 divided between two sons fifteen or twenty years ago ; the 
 father divided the land before I came into the management 
 of the property. 
 
 1 Did they get an equal portion ? was it divided into 
 halves ? — Into halves, and paid an equal rent. 
 
 ' Before the Act of 1881 ?— Before the Act of 188 1. 
 
 'And was the land of uniform quality ? — Yes. 
 
 ' Had one of these men, before he went into Court, 
 greatly deteriorated the land ? — Yes. 
 
 1 Had the other attended to it ? — He had attended to it ; 
 he looked after the land very well indeed. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 207 
 
 ' What reduction did the man who had deteriorated his 
 half get? — The man who had deteriorated his half got 
 17^ per cent, reduction. 
 
 ' What did the other get ? — The other got 7^ per cent. 
 
 1 The industrious tenant got j\ ? — He got 7^.' * 
 
 This was obviously gross and crying injustice ; but two 
 apologies have been made for acts of this kind. It is said 
 that were a deteriorated farm rented as if it were in a 
 normal state, the tenant could not afford to pay the ' fair 
 rent,' in other words, the landlord is to be despoiled for 
 the tenant's neglect. It is said again that the Sub-Com- 
 missioners are bound to value the land as they find it, and 
 cannot estimate it at its intrinsic worth, that is, they are 
 under no obligation to ascertain the truth, and do their 
 duty. Yet this sophistry has been gravely put forward as 
 a justification for palpable wrong, through which the 
 property of landlords has been filched away wholesale : 
 ' The land to this day has suffered a very serious deteriora- 
 tion in value ; but we did not deal with that as against 
 the present tenant. . . .' f ' Have you frequently asked the 
 Sub-Commissioners why they do not attach sufficient im- 
 portance to deterioration ? — No, but I heard them saying 
 one reason was that if they put the rent of the farm as if 
 it had been fairly treated, the tenant would not be able 
 to pay that rent now in the deteriorated state.' J The 
 general result of these proceedings as regards exhausted 
 farms has been thus described : ' My view with reference 
 to deterioration is this. Bad tenants, who had ill-treated 
 and worn out their land, undoubtedly, in my opinion, have 
 obtained larger reductions than they would have got had 
 they farmed well. Probably the reason is that were the 
 Land Commissioners to put a rent on the land according 
 to its natural capacity, before a deterioration, it would be 
 
 * Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 836. 
 
 f Evidence taken by the Morley Commission, 1894-95, p. 333. 
 
 I Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 952. 
 
208 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 an impossible rent for a broken-down bad tenant to pay. 
 This stereotypes the rent in such cases at a figure unfairly 
 low to the landlord ; tends to lower the standard of fair 
 rent generally ; is a premium on bad farming ; and places 
 tenants under a serious temptation to ill-treat their land, 
 so as to secure a larger reduction from the Land Court 
 than otherwise could be obtainable.' * 
 
 The Sub-Commissions appear to have disregarded the 
 just rights of landlords in another important respect. 
 Unquestionably, in the great mass of instances, as is in- 
 evitable when the land is held in small farms, the Irish 
 tenant had made the improvements on his holding ; but 
 the landed gentry, as I have pointed out, had done a good 
 deal since the Great Famine. There is nevertheless cogent 
 evidence that, in ' fixing fair rents,' the Sub-Commissions 
 took hardly any account of the expenditure of landlords 
 under this head. In the case of the estate of the late Mr. 
 Talbot Crosbie, one of the best breeders of prize stock in 
 the Three Kingdoms, and a country gentleman of parts 
 and intelligence, these significant facts were conclusively 
 proved : ' Table E gives the cases of eight holdings upon 
 which there was an expenditure by the landlord of ,£1936? 
 —Yes. 
 
 ' The old rent was £688 ?— Yes. 
 
 ' That was reduced by the Sub-Commissioners to £493 ? 
 — Yes. A reduction of about 30 per cent. 
 
 'Notwithstanding the outlay by the landlord in the 
 interval of nearly £2000 ? — Yes, that is it. 
 
 1 Table F is a list of eleven farms, on which there was 
 practically no expenditure by the landlord ? — Quite so, 
 no recent expenditure. That is, between 1863 and 1887? 
 — There was a good deal done in the famine time, but I 
 did not take account of that. 
 
 * Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 607. The procedure 
 of the Sub-Commissions has, since 1896, been somewhat improved 
 with respect to deterioration and waste, but many years too late. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 209 
 
 'You had no evidence in these eleven cases of ex- 
 penditure for many years prior to the fixing of the rent ? 
 — No. In these cases the old rents tot up to £361 ? — Yes. 
 And the reductions only brought them to £280 ? — A re- 
 duction of 18 per cent. 
 
 ' In other words, on the unimproved farms the reductions 
 only average 18, while on the improved farms they went 
 as high as 30 per cent. ? — Quite so. 
 
 'Sir E. Fry: Were these two sets of farms different 
 classes of farms ? — They were practically of the same 
 class.' * In the same way, in the case of the estate of 
 Lord Leconfield, a great and excellent landlord in the 
 County Clare, the Sub-Commission made no real allow- 
 ance for a sum of £20,500 expended on twenty-seven 
 farms. 'Am I right in saying that from 1852 to 1881 
 there was spent by Lord Leconfield £20,500 in these 
 twenty-seven cases ? — The return speaks for itself. That is 
 the result of it.' ' No. 4 : As an example of the reductions 
 of the Sub-Commissioners were the rents put back to what 
 they had been in 1852 ? — Very nearly. There is a difference, 
 I think, of about \ per cent. ? — About I per cent. The 
 rent in 1852 was £2524, and the judicial rents on these 
 farms was £2632.' t 
 
 I pass on to the methods pursued by the Sub-Commis- 
 sioners in actually fixing ' fair rents.' As I have said, they 
 usually heard the cases at length in Court ; they usually 
 devoted attention to them. I do not think they set much 
 store on the reports of valuers, on the part either of land- 
 lords or tenants ; they formed their decisions, as a general 
 rule, on the inspections made by the lay Commissioners 
 of the lands they visited. This was a much better method, 
 as I shall point out afterwards, than that adopted by their 
 superiors ; but obviously inspections of this kind made by 
 officials without local knowledge of the farms, which they 
 
 * Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 677. 
 f Ibid., p. 842. 
 
 P 
 
2io PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 examined and valued, could not be a sufficient, or a satis- 
 factory, way to fix ' fair rents.' The great error, however, 
 made, in this matter, by the Sub-Commissions — and in this 
 respect they had the countenance of the higher tribunal — 
 was that they had little or no regard for the evidence which 
 in adjusting rent was assuredly of the greatest importance. 
 They rejected, we have seen, the principle of competi- 
 tion in adjudicating on rent ; in fixing the ' fair rents ' of 
 holdings before them, they refused to consider the rents 
 of the neighbourhood and of adjoining lands, that is, to 
 consider the price of the market. Yet this was but a 
 trifling compared to their capital mistake, one that, indeed, 
 can hardly be explained : in investigating the subject of 
 ' fair rent,' they would not take into account sums paid on 
 the transfer of farms, that is, their tenant right, in other 
 words, as an indication of what ought to be their ' fair 
 rents.' If we bear in mind, as I have said before, that 
 these sums were given subject to the existing rents, which 
 always formed the first charge on the lands, it is most 
 difficult to understand, as we have seen, how this circum- 
 stance did not create a very strong presumption that the 
 rents in question must be ' fair ' from the very nature of 
 the case, assuming the Irish tenant to be a rational being. 
 The sums paid for this tenant right were sometimes 
 enormous, not uncommonly equal to one-third or one-half 
 of the value of the fee ; I illustrate my meaning from the 
 evidence, taken with reference to the estate of Lord Down- 
 shire, one of the largest and best managed in Ulster : 
 ' What would you say the tenants' interest would be worth 
 on the Downshire estate ? — Well, judging from the average 
 prices obtained by tenants on transfers, my opinion is that 
 the tenants' interest would be worth ;£ 1,000,000. 
 
 ' On the Downshire estate alone ? — Yes. 
 
 1 Now, could that value in the tenants, or that interest 
 in the tenants, exist, unless the rents at which they were 
 holding were low rents ? — No, the prices of tenant right are 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 211 
 
 incompatible with high rents. Does it in your opinion 
 point to their being lower than the commercial rents? — 
 Yes, they are lower.' * And will it be believed that on 
 this very estate, in the case of thirteen farms, held at the 
 rents fixed by the landlords, the tenant right realised 
 ,£7296, and yet the Sub-Commission reduced the rents 
 more than 20 per cent. ? In other words, they declared 
 that the old rents were not fair, though these lands, when 
 transferred, fetched £7296 paid by their purchasers, subject 
 to the rents in question ! t 
 
 The Downshire was only one of many scores of estates 
 in which the tenant right was exceedingly high, that is, 
 the sums paid, at existing rents, on the transfer of farms, 
 were very great, yet in all these instances this striking fact 
 was not taken into account. It cannot cause surprise that, 
 at a judicial inquiry held afterwards to review the subject, 
 tenants' advocates endeavoured to exclude the evidence 
 which, in the judgment of plain men of sense, affords 
 almost a decisive indication as to whether given rents are 
 ' fair.' It has been argued, however, that the price of 
 tenant right, that is, the sums paid by incoming to out- 
 going tenants, on the sale of farms, at the current rents, 
 ought to form no element in the fixing of ' fair rent ; ' it is 
 only just to set forth the reasons. Mr. Bailey, the able 
 legal Sub-Commissioner, referred to before, has explained 
 them in this passage : ' Do you attend to tenant right in 
 considering the fair rent ? — No, we do not. The view we 
 take of it is this. The tenant right paid for land is paid 
 for something of an altogether different character from the 
 rent of the land. . . . When a tenant sells his interest in 
 his holding, he sells two things, first, the improvements on 
 the holding, and secondly, his goodwill or share of the 
 gross product of the holding. . . . When you put these two 
 items together, viz. improvements and goodwill, it seems 
 
 * Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, pp. 478, 476. 
 t Ibid., p. 476. 
 
212 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 to me that the prices paid for tenant right are not at all 
 remarkable. Then your view is that the price paid for 
 tenant right throws no light on what the fair rent ought 
 to be ? — No, no light at all.' Mr. Bailey has added these 
 significant words : ' The tenant does not buy at the rent 
 which the tenement at present stands at, but he buys with 
 a possible increase or reduction of the rent? — Quite so. 
 And in latter years with the fall of prices he was buying 
 with the expectation of a very considerable reduction ? — 
 Undoubtedly.' * 
 
 The first of these arguments appears to me to be wholly 
 irrelevant to the real question. Undoubtedly the tenant 
 right of a farm represents the tenant's improvements and 
 his interest in the land, and is completely distinct from 
 the rent ; and this is acquired on a sale by an incoming 
 tenant. But the purchaser buys the tenant right, subject 
 to the first charge, the rent ; if the rent were excessive, or 
 even high, either he would not buy at all, or he would pay 
 a low price ; when, therefore, we find the tenant right 
 commanding very large sums, the conclusion is inevitable, 
 that, taking human nature as it is, the rent must be in the 
 nature of a ' fair rent.' The Sub-Commissions rejected 
 a plain inference they ought to have drawn ; that they 
 refused to give weight to an all-important fact cannot be 
 justified in any sense ; and the result has been that in 
 hundreds of cases they have done grave wrong to land- 
 lords. As for the second argument, it is very probable 
 that in many instances tenants purchased farms in the 
 anticipation of a reduction of rent ; they speculated — a 
 significant fact — that the Sub-Commissions would ' bear ' 
 the market ; but even, on that supposition, this can hardly 
 explain the huge sums paid for tenant right while the exist- 
 ing rents were current. For the rest, I refer to part of my own 
 evidence given on this subject at the same inquiry ; readers 
 of ordinary intelligence may judge for themselves: 'The 
 * Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 129. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 213 
 
 first question I ask the tenant is, " How much will you 
 take for the land, £100, £200, ^"300 ; ten, fifteen, twenty, 
 or forty years' rent ? " But I never can get an answer. 
 They say, " Oh, your honour, I am here to look after a 
 ' fair rent,' and I am not going to tell your honour what I 
 am going to ask for the land." However, I have a very 
 shrewd notion. . . . You take into consideration in fixing 
 the fair rent the price paid by the tenants ? — Yes, the price 
 which an incoming tenant would give, because I am not 
 one of those who think that the Irish tenant is a fool ; and 
 when I find an incoming tenant giving ten, fifteen, twenty, 
 and thirty years' purchase for a farm, I have a very shrewd 
 suspicion that the rent is right.' * 
 
 It was under these conditions, and by proceedings of 
 this kind, that the Sub-Commissions, bodies of ill-paid 
 men, dependent upon the will of the Government, and 
 constituted to give effect to a policy, were sent throughout 
 Ireland to ' fix fair rents.' They had no assistance, we 
 have seen, from the Land Commission ; they often enter- 
 tained very different views ; but their uniform course was 
 in the same direction ; they indiscriminately abated rents, 
 as they would abate a nuisance. In fact, they might have 
 joined in the chorus of the doctors of Moliere : ' Et saignare, 
 et purgare, et clysteriasaire;' they applied the same remedies 
 to all their victims, and brought them nearly all into the 
 same weak and low condition. But there was a right of 
 appeal from the Sub-Commissions to the Land Commis- 
 sion ; and this tribunal, certainly designed to have absolute 
 power in the determination of rent, ought surely to have 
 been expected to redress injustice. I approach a part of 
 the subject on which the plain truth must be told, without 
 making personal imputations of any kind. Appeals from 
 the Sub-Commissions were numbered by many thousands ; 
 and, as I have said — an iniquitous provision of the Act of 
 1 88 1 — the decisions of the Land Commission on the subject 
 * Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 339. 
 
214 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 of ' fair rent ' was made final, at least as regards the rate 
 of rent ; there was to be no further appeal to a higher 
 tribunal. I quote these significant remarks on this restric- 
 tion : ' In an ordinary case, I need not tell you, sir, who 
 are conversant with the procedure of Courts of Justice, a 
 litigant, in a civil case, no matter how much the issue may 
 be involved, has the right, if he thinks fit, of taking the 
 case from one Court to another, until he reaches the 
 highest tribunal of the land, the House of Lords. And 
 as you know, there is a well-known case, which the House 
 of Lords had to decide, in which the amount involved was 
 one penny, an alleged overcharge on a railway ticket ; but 
 in these land cases, where there may be, and often is, a 
 sum of £200, £300, or £400 a year involved, because in 
 some of the large farms in this country there have been 
 reductions of £Z°° and even of ,£400 in the rent, under 
 the Act of Parliament they cannot go beyond the Head 
 Land Commission, upon any question of value. That is 
 the Act of Parliament whether it be right or wrong. There 
 it is, and I am not here to discuss the policy of the Act. 
 But when a rehearing is given by the Act of Parliament 
 to the Land Commission, and when the Land Commission 
 are constituted the final judges in such large and important 
 matters, it is obviously of great importance that the final 
 rehearing should be full, and in every respect what the 
 Act of Parliament says it is to be, namely, a rehearing.' * 
 
 The Land Commission sometimes heard these appeals 
 at length, though usually their proceedings were summary 
 in the extreme. The Commissioners occasionally pro- 
 nounced well-considered judgments, on the difficult 
 questions of law that came before them, especially as 
 regards the exemption of tenants' improvements from 
 rent ; in several instances the results were curious. The 
 lay Commissioner now and then dissented from his legal 
 colleagues ; his plain common sense rejected theories in 
 
 * Evidence taken by the Fry Commission : Mr. Campbell, p. 25. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAXD 215 
 
 tenants' interests ; his decisions were more than once con- 
 firmed, on these points of law, by the highest Court of 
 Appeal in Ireland, a circumstance of no slight significance. 
 Nineteen-twentieths, however, of these appeals were con- 
 versant only with the amount of ' fair rent,' as to which 
 the conclusions of the Land Commission could not be 
 challenged. The Land Commissioners undoubtedly heard 
 these cases, and sometimes had much evidence brought 
 before them ; in tolerably many instances they varied the 
 ' fair rents ' fixed by the Sub-Commissions, if these varia- 
 tions were seldom important. But the Land Commission 
 practically adopted, with scarcely a single exception, the 
 errors of principle and the faulty methods which had 
 marked the practice and the proceedings of the Sub-Com- 
 missions.* They excluded the element of competition 
 from the subject of ' fair rent ; ' they never attempted to 
 define ' fair rent,' or to establish a standard by which to 
 gauge it ; they disregarded, to a considerable extent at 
 least, the distinction between the rentals of the old and 
 the new landlords ; they paid little or no attention to the 
 fact that rents had been paid for many years without an 
 increase ; they hardly ever took deterioration into account, 
 or the expenditure made on their estates by landlords. 
 And in the actual fixing of ' fair rents ' they virtually 
 followed in the wake of their inferiors ; they rejected, as a 
 rule, the evidence that was most relevant ; they refused to 
 consider the rents of adjoining or neighbouring lands, in a 
 word, the price of the market, in determining rent ; above 
 all, they gave scarcely any heed to the enormous sums 
 paid for the tenant right of lands, as an indication that 
 their rents were ' fair.' On all these particulars, in a word, 
 supremely important as they were, they almost said ditto 
 to the Sub-Commissions ; in these respects the appeals 
 were well-nigh useless. It should be added that the 
 
 * Mr. Vernon, the lay Commissioner, was, of course, not responsible 
 for this. 
 
216 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 animus of the head of the Land Commission was signifi- 
 cantly exhibited on one striking occasion. When opening 
 the proceedings of the Land Commission, Mr. Justice 
 O'Hagan pointedly laid it down, that the object of the 
 Act of 1 88 1 was ' to make tenants live and thrive;' in 
 other words, as Lord Salisbury indignantly remarked, to 
 compel rent to gravitate to the level of the most indolent 
 and worthless Irish peasant, and practically to discourage 
 industry. 
 
 These considerations indicate, to some extent at least, 
 the nature and especially the value of these appeals. But 
 this was not all, or nearly all ; there was a grave mis- 
 carriage of the simplest justice in this important province. 
 Appeals, I have said, came in, in thousands ; the work 
 thrown on the Land Commissioners was immense ; as one 
 of their present successors remarked, ' If proper consider- 
 ation ' (had been) 'given to all the appeals you would '(have) 
 1 wanted ten Appeal Courts to do it ; ' * as was said again 
 substantially, ' Appeals would have crushed the Land 
 Commissioners, had they not been crushed by them.' f 
 In this position of affairs, the Land Commissioners, no 
 doubt with no bad or sinister purpose, adopted what must 
 be called a device, to enable them quickly to dispose of 
 appeals, nay, almost in a summary way. They were 
 empowered, under the Act of 1881, to appoint ' independent 
 valuers ' to examine lands, and to report on the subject of 
 their ' fair rents ; ' it was never contemplated that state- 
 ments of this kind were to dispense with the duty of hear- 
 ing appeals in detail, and pronouncing solemn judgments 
 upon them ; but, practically, the Land Commissioners, in 
 the great mass of instances, when adjudicating on appeals, 
 as regards ' fair rents,' almost wholly relied on the reports 
 of these valuers, who, be it observed, were in no sense 
 witnesses, and were not subject to examination on the 
 
 * Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 156. 
 t Ibid., p. 615. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 217 
 
 part of the suitors before the Court. In a word, the Land 
 Commissioners did not exclude other kinds of evidence ; 
 but unquestionably the dicta of the valuers, as a rule, 
 determined the decisions they made on 'fair rent.' This 
 expedient greatly accelerated appeals ; but it reduced the 
 right of appeal well-nigh to a sham ; and this procedure 
 was by many degrees more repugnant to justice than 
 that of the Sub-Commissions. In an inquiry held before 
 the House of Lords in 1882, an eminent member of 
 the Irish bar remarked, ' It was the most unsatisfactory 
 tribunal that I ever was before. What occurred was this : 
 they took up the figures of the old rent, which we will say 
 was ,£100, and the valuation £70, and the new rent ;£8o. 
 Then they took up the valuer's report, which was a docu- 
 ment concealed from the parties. It was entirely for the 
 information of the Court, and they turned round to me, as 
 the landlord's counsel, the landlord being the appellant, 
 and said, " Can you go on with this appeal in the face of 
 this document ?" and they would show me the document' * 
 And in the inquiry I have often referred to before, another 
 distinguished lawyer has said, ' I have been in cases 
 where, in order to overcome the difficulty, I marshalled a 
 perfect phalanx of witnesses, for the landlord, but it was 
 all no use. They listened to them, I admit, — they suggested 
 that I was wasting time, but I am not stating they did not 
 hear them, — but in the end, in the morning, the announce- 
 ment was made that the judicial rent was confirmed.' t 
 
 As the general result these appeals, as it has been said, 
 ' were strangled ; ' in thousands of instances they were with- 
 drawn, the decisions of the Land Commission being final ; 
 expedition was attained ; but it was only attained at the 
 cost of gross wrong done to the landlords, a singular exhi- 
 bition in a Court of Justice. I quote the following — and it 
 should be borne in mind that the Land Commissioners 
 
 * Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 33. 
 t Ibid., p. 30. 
 
218 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 have never attempted to explain this conduct, though 
 the amplest opportunity was afforded, a few years ago : 
 ' The extraordinary and anomalous state of things is 
 that the valuers, not being assessors, do not sit with the 
 Commissioners, and do not hear the evidence, and yet they 
 are not witnesses in the proper sense of the term, because 
 they are neither examined nor cross-examined. Common 
 sense and justice revolt at the idea, when it is the duty of 
 the Land Commissioners, upon the rehearing of a case, to 
 sit and go through the proceedings de novo, that they 
 should receive the evidence of valuers, which is not laid 
 before the parties, and that those valuers should not be 
 examined and cross-examined in the regular way. There 
 is another matter to which I would refer. You will find, 
 what is, indeed, what you might expect, that when the 
 Commissioners go to Dublin, or Cork, or elsewhere, with a 
 list of two or three hundred cases to be heard by them, 
 involving, it may be, thousands of pounds a year of rent, 
 that list is gone through in two or three days, and why ? 
 Because all the parties present know that they are taking 
 part in what really is a solemn farce, and that what will 
 happen in the morning after the hearing of their case is 
 just this: John Brown, landlord, James Fogarty, tenant; 
 judicial rent affirmed ; John Robinson, landlord, James 
 McNorth, tenant ; judicial rent affirmed.' * 
 
 The first set of Land Commissioners passed away ; they 
 were succeeded by a second Land Commission, the presi- 
 dent of which was Mr. Justice Bewley, an accomplished, 
 if not a very eminent, lawyer. This Commission, like the 
 other, was composed of honourable men ; it is only just 
 to remark that it was bound by the bad precedents made 
 by the tribunal which it had replaced. The procedure 
 of the Sub-Commissions was, in some degree, improved ; 
 but the methods of the second Land Commission differed 
 for the worse where they differed from the methods of its 
 
 * Evidence taken by the Fry Commission : Mr. Campbell, p. 30. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 219 
 
 predecessor. The Land Commissioners appear to have 
 not at all regarded the general principles in fixing 'fair 
 rent,' which ought to have had effect on their judgments ; 
 they gave less weight, than Mr. Justice O'Hagan, and his 
 colleagues did, to the most important evidence, in this 
 province, to which I have adverted before, and laid too 
 much stress on the least important evidence. As has been 
 truly remarked, ' We believe that much more attention 
 was paid in the early days of the Land Commission to 
 the remaining kinds of popular evidence than has been the 
 case of late years ; and we are assured by one of the 
 head Commissioners that the Act of 1896 has made a 
 great change in the fixing of fair rents by placing an 
 emphasis on the technical evidence, and throwing the 
 popular evidence into the background.' * The Commis- 
 sioners, too, followed the bad example of the first Land 
 Commission, in the province of appeals ; they practically 
 disregarded almost everything but the reports of their 
 valuers, unchecked statements made by men who were not 
 even witnesses, were not sworn, and were not examined — a 
 procedure worthy of the Council of Ten at Venice ; as before, 
 the result was that appeals were made all but fruitless, in 
 the Court of which the decisions were, in this respect, final. 
 There was, too, another grave miscarriage of justice 
 caused, perhaps, by a mistake made by the head of the 
 second Land Commission. The Act of 1881 provided 
 that ' fair rent ' should be fixed, having due regard to the 
 ' interest ' of the tenant on the land, that is, to his im- 
 provements, and perhaps to the mode of his tenure. Mr. 
 Justice Bewley seems to have decided that another element 
 ought to be taken into account, and should effect a reduc- 
 tion of rent ; the tenant had ' an occupation right ' in his 
 favour, over and above the ' interest ' the law gave him ; by 
 reason of this he had a right to have his rent cut down. 
 
 * Report of the Fry Commission, p. 18. I entirely dissent from 
 the above opinion of the head Commissioner. 
 
PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 The only plausible ground alleged for this doctrine was 
 that landlords would usually accept a lower rent from 
 a ' sitting ' tenant in possession than from an incoming 
 tenant ; in other Avords, their good nature was turned 
 against them, and was to be made a pretext for their being 
 despoiled. It is just to observe that Mr. Justice Bewley's 
 colleagues dissented from this curious view of the law ; 
 and the claim for ' occupation right ' has since been blown 
 to the winds in the superior Courts of Ireland. But 
 though many faint denials were made, some of the Sub- 
 Commissioners acted upon Mr. Justice Bewley's doctrine ; 
 the evidence is conclusive that this imaginary right was 
 made the means of considerably reducing rent. Mr. 
 Justice Bewley candidly admitted : ' From the commence- 
 ment, apparently, a number of the Sub-Commissioners 
 have acted on the principle that there is a certain occu- 
 pation interest, which every tenant has, varying according 
 to circumstances, not any fixed amount, but varying, and 
 that that is to be taken into account in fixing the fair 
 rent.' * This statement has been confirmed by a host of 
 witnesses by no means willing in not a few instances. 
 1 Would you make a difference between the assessment of 
 the fair rent in the case of a sitting tenant, and in the 
 case of an incoming tenant — a stranger ? Certainly. 
 Can you give us any idea what that difference is, expressed 
 in percentage ? — I could not very well answer that question. 
 It is a mental calculation, and a good deal would depend 
 upon the length of the tenure of the tenant' f And again : 
 ' In your experience of the Land Commission Court, do 
 you find the " occupation interest " has been taken into 
 account in fixing the fair rent ? — Yes, I cannot account 
 for the reductions that have been made, except on that 
 supposition.' % And again : ' As far as your experience 
 
 * Evidence taken by the Morley Commission, p. 507. 
 t Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 461. 
 % Ibid., p. 616. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 221 
 
 goes, do they invariably value the holdings on the prin- 
 ciple of giving an occupation interest to the sitting 
 tenant? — Yes, the tenants' valuers, as a rule, give 40 or 
 50 per cent, as the interest of the sitting tenant. . . . 
 Do you find that the Sub-Commissioners fix the rent 
 on what the valuers state? — Well, no; that would be 
 going too much out of the way.'* And again: 'Have 
 you any doubt that the rents are fixed on the basis of 
 the occupation interest in the sitting tenant ? — I have 
 none. I do not know how else the rents could have 
 been arrived at.' f And once more : ' Did the Sub-Com- 
 missioners invariably take the occupation interest of the 
 sitting tenant into account ? — I think so.' I conclude 
 with these remarks of Mr. Barnes, one of the best and 
 most impartial of Irish valuers : ' When I came to give 
 evidence in Court I found that nothing else would be 
 accepted as evidence unless based on occupation interest. 
 ... It was almost the first question. . . . Whenever there 
 was an answer made that the valuation was based on what 
 the landlord would get for the land in his own hands, it 
 was discounted at once.' % No wonder that it has been 
 alleged by the highest authority with respect to this claim, 
 since proved to have been unfounded, guarded and cautious 
 as the language is : ' There is, however, reason to believe 
 that this notion of an occupation interest existed in the 
 minds of some of the early valuers, and did, in fact, 
 influence them, and it is very possible that some cases in 
 which the reductions there made appear startling, may be, 
 in part, attributable to this doctrine.' § 
 
 What amount of the rental of Ireland was unlawfully 
 cut down owing to the theory of ' occupation right,' it is, 
 of course, impossible to ascertain. Reductions of rent, 
 too, were probably unjustly made through the ignorance 
 
 * Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 628. 
 f Ibid., p. 631. \ Ibid., p. 941. 
 
 § Report of the Fry Commission, p. 22. 
 
222 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 of the Land Commission as to agricultural matters. I 
 refer to a grotesque instance of this : ' You have marked 
 a passage there in the judgment, which, according to you, 
 shows that owing to their ignorance as experts they 
 entirely mistook what six-course rotation meant? — Yes. 
 The fact is they took it to be the same crop in the whole 
 seventy acres, that instead of having so many different 
 crops in this portion of the ground, it was to be put into one 
 crop for the year, and that is what they call " rotation " in 
 the Court of Rehearing. ... It is plain enough, from the 
 authorised report of the judgment, that they made that 
 mistake ? — It is clear as possible, and it was upon that 
 that they threw me out. The tenant himself knew 
 that it was all absurdity and mistake.' * 
 
 A remarkable incident occurred in 1897 which threw a 
 strong, if not a complete, light on the proceedings of the 
 Land Commission and its Sub-Commissions in the adjust- 
 ment of rent. In 1896 the time had come for renewing 
 the first statutory leases, under the Act of 1881 ; the 
 Commissioners suddenly made such enormous reductions 
 of rent that persons who knew Ireland were simply 
 astounded. The Irish landlords naturally were indignant ; 
 after some hesitation, and with plain reluctance, the 
 Government gave its consent to a very imperfect inquiry. 
 A Commission, presided over by Sir Edward Fry, a judge 
 of the highest eminence, retired from office, and composed 
 of four additional colleagues, two being well-known agri- 
 cultural experts, was appointed to investigate the subject 
 on the spot ; but the scope of the inquiry was limited in 
 the extreme ; it was confined, in this respect, to examining 
 the procedure and practice adopted in fixing ' fair rents ; ' 
 it did not extend to the conduct generally of the Land 
 Commission and its dependent tribunals. The Com- 
 mission was engaged nearly three months in its task ; it 
 held its sittings in different parts of Ireland ; it had before 
 * Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, p. 676. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 223 
 
 it 183 witnesses j and restricted as it was in this province, 
 it pronounced, in grave and judicial language, a marked 
 censure on the methods that had been followed in fixing 
 ' fair rents ' in Ireland. In fact, Sir Edward Fry and his 
 colleagues confirmed, in many respects, the charges which 
 I have made with regard to this whole system. No doubt 
 they reported, in very guarded words, ' that they were 
 unable to conclude that the machinery of the Land 
 Statutes has been uniformly worked with injustice 
 towards landlords ; ' * but as they pointedly refused to 
 rehear a single case, in which the Land Commission and 
 the Sub-Commissions had fixed a ' fair rent,' this state- 
 ment, ambiguous as it is, is of no real importance. In 
 other particulars the expression of these opinions cannot 
 be mistaken ; to impartial minds it will appear decisive. 
 They evidently thought that such wrong had been done 
 to landlords owing to the want of a definition of ' fair 
 rent,' that they actually framed a definition of their own, 
 in order to establish some kind of standard ; this did not 
 widely differ from that of Mr. Law, which, I have said, 
 would have made things very different had it been 
 adopted. f They pointed out that the Land Commis- 
 sioners should have assisted the Sub-Commissions in fixing 
 ' fair rents,' and should not have left them ' like ships 
 without a rudder or a compass on a stormy sea ; ' it is 
 4 a subject of regret,' they reported, 'that in the early days 
 of the system the Land Commissioners were unable to 
 take a part in the tribunals of first instance ; and that the 
 whole original business was left to Sub-Commissions.' % 
 They strongly condemned the nature of the Sub-Com- 
 mission Courts, as being composed of members inade- 
 quately paid and mere tenants at sufferance ; and they 
 put forward an elaborate scheme to make the adminis- 
 tration of justice in these tribunals more above suspicion.§ 
 
 * Report of the Fry Commission, p. 20. f Ibid., p. 21. 
 
 % Ibid., p. 9. § Ibid., p. 14. 
 
224 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 They evidently believed that the Land Commission and 
 the Sub-Commissions did not give due weight to the class 
 of evidence that was most important, and gave too much 
 weight to that which was the least ; and they made sig- 
 nificant observations on this subject* On the whole, they 
 arrived at the conclusion that the fixing of ' fair rents ' 
 'gives opportunity for dissatisfaction, and leaves much 
 more for improvement ; . . . and that the settlement of 
 fair rents has been effected in an unsatisfactory manner, 
 with diversity of opinion and practice, sometimes with 
 carelessness, and sometimes with that bias towards one 
 side or the other which exists in many honest minds.' f But 
 their strongest animadversion was found in the system, 
 through which, I have said, the Land Commission really 
 ' strangled ' appeals, though in this province its decisions 
 were final : 'An almost universal dissatisfaction is expressed 
 with regard to these appeals, a dissatisfaction felt by some 
 at least of the Commissioners themselves. No witness, 
 with, perhaps, a single exception, spoke in favour of the 
 existing system.' J 
 
 Mr. Justice Bewley has retired from office, and has been 
 replaced by Mr. Justice Meredith, a capable and experi- 
 enced lawyer. He has done, probably as much as in him 
 lay, to alleviate some of the wrong done to Irish land- 
 lords ; and for this he. has been subjected to violent abuse, 
 especially on the part of an advocate of Ulster farmers, 
 whose tongue is at odds with his trade in temperance. 
 But he is bound by the precedents set by those who have 
 gone before him ; and though the work of the Land Com- 
 mission is now better done than it was before the Report 
 of the Fry Commission appeared, and its general pro- 
 cedure has improved, little change has been effected in 
 the reduction of rent in Ireland. The Government, as I 
 have pointed out in a preceding chapter, has made a few 
 
 * Report of the Fry Commission, pp. 18, 19. 
 t Ibid., pp. 12-26. % Ibid., p. 15. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 225 
 
 administrative reforms in the composition and the arrange- 
 ment of the Sub-Commissions ; but it has not taken a 
 single step to give effect to the recommendations made by 
 the Fry Commission, so far as these are of real importance ; 
 it has refused to legislate on the subject, and to bring in 
 the measure that was required ; it has even refused to set 
 a further inquiry on foot. The general results of the 
 labours of the Land Commission and of its subordinate 
 tribunals in fixing 'fair rents' may be summed up in a 
 very few sentences. According to the Report of the Fry 
 Commission, the tenants of rural holdings in Ireland are 
 about 486,000 in number ; 328,720 of these have had ' fair 
 rents' fixed, between August, 1881, and the end of March, 
 1900.* The tenants, who have not had ' fair rents ' fixed, 
 are probably either tenants of lands not within the Land 
 Acts, or ' future tenants ' since 1881-82, or tenants too poor 
 to pay law costs ; but these, perhaps in nine cases out of 
 ten, have indirectly had the benefit of the law, and have 
 had their rents reduced like those of the large majority, 
 by voluntary concessions on the part of landlords. The 
 great mass of ' fair rents ' has been fixed by the Land 
 Commission and its dependents, and the proceedings of 
 these tribunals have, beyond question, formed a standard 
 for the adjustment of rent ; whether ' fair rents ' have been 
 fixed by the County Courts.f or by agreements between 
 landlord and tenant, they have, in the main, conformed to 
 the measure established by the Courts setup in 1881. The 
 reductions of rent made, in every way, in the first statutory 
 leases, were, on an average, rather more than 20 per cent. 
 on the old rental ; % but those on the second statutory 
 
 * Report of the Irish Land Commission to March, 1900, p. 64. 
 
 t It is but just to the Land Commission to state that the reductions 
 of rent made by the County Courts were somewhat higher than those 
 it made. But this was notoriously because rack-rented tenants, for 
 the sake of expedition, rushed first to these tribunals. 
 
 % Report of the Irish Land Commission, p. 64. 
 
 Q 
 
226 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 leases have been 22 per cent, more,* that is, the fixing of 
 ' fair rents,' so far as it has gone, has reduced rents rather 
 more than 42 per cent. It may be asserted, with some 
 confidence, that through the operation of the new Irish 
 land code, taking in tenancies of all kinds, Irish rents 
 have been cut down nearly 40 per cent. ; little doubt can 
 exist that they are now lower than they were in the day 
 of Wakefield, and in some instances in the day of Arthur 
 Young, when the price of Irish agricultural produce was 
 less than half what it is at the present time.f 
 
 The agricultural rental of Ireland, therefore, in all pro- 
 bability, has been reduced almost 40 per cent., or will be 
 in a short space of time ; and as long as the present system 
 of fixing 'fair rent ' continues, however it may be lowered, 
 it will certainly not be raised. The Act of 1881, I have 
 already said, would, by itself, necessarily reduce rents ; but 
 the faulty administration of it, on which I have dwelt, has 
 reduced them far more than ought to have been the case. 
 In fact, disguise it as you may, an immense confiscation, 
 gradual, indeed, and veiled, but not the less real, has been 
 made of the property of Irish landlords, even on the prin- 
 ciples of a bad law ; the evidence of this is, I believe, con- 
 clusive. Rents have been cut down indiscriminately in 
 the great mass of instances ; for example, rents in country 
 districts only opened to good markets of late years, have 
 been reduced quite as much as rents around Dublin, which 
 had almost a monopoly of the best market until about 
 1855-60. But the proof of this spoliation is made most 
 apparent by taking into account a single fact, and drawing 
 the natural inference from it. The value of the landlords' 
 interest in the land, before 1881, was from 20 to 25 years' 
 
 * Report of the Irish Land Commission, p. 3. 
 
 f See a remarkable instance in the Evidence taken by the Fry 
 Commission, p. 683 : 'The holding was let in 1771 at 30.?. the Irish 
 acre, equal to about £1 per statute acre. The Sub-Commissioners 
 have now cut it down to less than 12s. 6d. per acre.' 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 227 
 
 purchase; it is now between 15 and 18 ; at the same time 
 the value of the tenants' interest has, in thousands of 
 cases, enormously increased. I refer to a few examples 
 out of scores to be found in the evidence given to the Fry- 
 Commission. I take first an estate in Ulster : ' I only 
 remember one case of a holding before 1881 that went up 
 (in a sale of the farm) to anything like 20 years' purchase 
 of the rent, and I have several cases since then that have 
 gone beyond it. I remember one case that struck me very 
 forcibly because of the great amount the man got — 20 
 years' purchase. Since then I have known, 29, 35, 36, 34 
 years' purchase to be given.' I turn now to two estates 
 in the south of Ireland : 'Charles Bolster, 112 acres; rent 
 £79 $s. ; sold for £570 in 1889. Daniel Buckley, 9 acres, 
 at rent of £3 3J. ; sold in 1889 for £45. Christopher Crofts, 
 131 acres ; old rent, £86 ; judicial rent fixed in 1893, £80 ; 
 sold in 1889 for £120. Timothy Reefe, 5 acres; rent, 29s. ; 
 sold in 1 89 1 for £47.' I pass on to the second estate : 
 ' Next case, 65 acres ; old rent, £60 ; judicial rent, £$6 14s., 
 fixed in 1883 by agreement ; sold in 1883 for^330. Next, 
 76 statute acres; old rent, £115; judicial rent fixed in 
 1885 at £108 ; sold in December, 1885, for £1600.' * 
 
 This great fall in the value of the fee simple in the Irish 
 land, and this great rise in the value of the tenant 
 right, coinciding with the general fixing of ' fair rents,' 
 distinctly point to a plain conclusion : the interest of the 
 Irish landlord has been enormously reduced, a result 
 never contemplated by the author of the Act of 1881. 
 In truth, there has been little or no decline in the market 
 price of land in Ireland ; but property that ought to 
 belong to the landlord has been improperly taken from 
 him, and has been transferred to the tenant who had no 
 right to it. Excuses, however, have been made for this 
 wholesale abolition of rent ; they are worthless, but may 
 be briefly noticed. Ireland, it is said, is suffering, like 
 * Evidence taken by the Fry Commission, pp. 496, 609, 670. 
 
228 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 England, from the agricultural depression of late years ; 
 and rents in Ireland have not been cut down more by 
 the act of the State than they have been reduced in 
 England by the voluntary acts of landlords. But agri- 
 cultural depression in Ireland, a land of small holdings, 
 and of pasturage, to a considerable extent, is not, by many 
 degrees, as severe as in England, a land of large farms 
 and largely of cereal culture ; a signal proof of this is 
 that, while in England, tenants have, in hundreds of 
 instances, thrown up their farms, there has hardly been 
 a case of the kind in Ireland, as appears from the Report 
 of the Fry Commission. Besides, if agricultural prices 
 have fallen in Ireland, compared to what they were, say 
 twenty-five years ago, they are higher than they were 
 in the years, say, 1850-55, not to take into account the 
 progress made by Ireland, in the last half-century, in 
 crops, farm machinery, and the breeds of farming animals. 
 As to the reduction of rents in England and Ireland, the 
 supposed analogy completely fails. The rental of England 
 rose greatly from 1850 to 1880 ; there was no corresponding 
 increase in Ireland ; there was thus a margin for reduction, 
 in the greater island, which in the lesser did not exist. 
 Again, no comparison can be made between State-settled 
 Irish rents and English rents lowered by the voluntary 
 acts of landlords. ' Fair rents ' have practically been 
 reduced for all time ; the reduction of English rents is 
 temporary, and can be at once annulled ; this difference 
 makes a supposed resemblance a very striking contrast. 
 As to the argument that the Courts which have fixed 'fair 
 rents ' have been composed of honourable men, and that 
 it is extremely invidious to make charges against them, 
 mere leather and prunella may be brushed aside. No 
 one disputes the honour of the Land and the Sub-Com- 
 missioners, but it does not follow that they have not done 
 injustice ; no one has disputed the honour of the Com- 
 mission which carried out the Encumbered Estates Act, 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 229 
 
 and yet it repeatedly sold estates at less than half their 
 value. 
 
 The Irish landlords, I repeat, have been iniquitously 
 despoiled ; a huge confiscation has been made of their 
 property. If the simplest right is to be done in this 
 province, their claim to compensation has been rendered 
 complete — apart from the utterances of Mr. Gladstone ; 
 should this be disregarded, Parliament will have been 
 chargeable with a grave breach of faith, and a precedent 
 will have been set from trampling on the just rights of 
 property in the Three Kingdoms, which will be dangerous 
 in the extreme. I pass on to consider the Irish land on 
 the side of ownership, and the administration of the 
 system of so-called 'land purchase.' Of the total of 
 £40,000,000 alone available, some £20,000,000 appear to 
 have been expended ; some 50,000 tenants have been 
 made owners of their farms, without having paid a shilling 
 of their own, that is, rather more than one in ten of the 
 whole tenant class in Ireland. The politicians who declared 
 against ' dual ownership,' that bugbear of self-sufficient 
 ignorance, can find little consolation in these figures ; I 
 shall comment afterwards on what this state of things has 
 produced. The Government of Lord Salisbury still pro- 
 poses to seek to accelerate ' land purchase ' of this kind ; 
 and loud complaints have been made of the law's delay 
 in not having made the process more speedy. I have had 
 no experience in this matter, and shall, therefore, give no 
 opinion on it ; but it appears to me that there has been 
 some want of care in making advances to these so-styled 
 ' purchasers ; ' not a few were insolvent when they acquired 
 their farms, and many are now on the verge of bank- 
 ruptcy. This, however, was perhaps inseparable from the 
 system that has been pursued ; it is only an additional 
 proof of its essential vices. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND {continued) — PRO- 
 POSE D REFORM OF THE IRISH LAND SYSTEM 
 
 Retrospect of the present Irish land system — Position of the Irish 
 landlords — Position of the Irish tenant class — This not as advan- 
 tageous as might be supposed — The effects of the land code on 
 Irish agriculture injurious — The effects on the general Irish 
 community — Confiscation, violation of contracts, shock given to 
 credit, increased alienation of classes, and demoralisation — The 
 land system considered on the side of ownership — ' Voluntary 
 purchase' — Mischief of this policy — It sets up a false standard 
 against rent, and creates unjust distinctions between different 
 classes of tenants — The results it has produced already — An 
 instance of the system — The demand for the compulsory purchase 
 of the Irish land caused by ' voluntary purchase ' — Compulsory 
 purchase has some hold on opinion, but is an impossible, and 
 would be a disgraceful and ruinous policy — It would ruin Irish 
 landlords as a class — Instances — It would ultimately bring Ireland 
 into the state in which she was before the Great Famine — Proposed 
 plan for the reform of Irish land tenure — Questions as to the 
 means of compensating Irish landlords, a deeply wronged order 
 of men. 
 
 Haying traced the attempts that have been made to 
 reform Irish land tenure, in the last thirty years, and 
 noticed the administration of the new Irish land code, I 
 must, for the sake of clearness, take a short retrospect, 
 and consider the Irish land system as it exists at this 
 day ; I shall review it on the side of occupation first, that 
 is, in the relations of landlord and tenant. The agricul- 
 tural rental of Ireland, we have seen, has been, or is being, 
 
 230 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 231 
 
 reduced about 40 per cent, since 1881, through the opera- 
 tion of laws carried out by tribunals of the State ; this 
 proceeding, unexampled in civilised lands, has been the 
 means, I have proved, of doing gross wrong to the Irish 
 landed gentry. But this, if a signal, is only one of the 
 many acts of injustice perpetrated on a cruelly injured 
 body of men. The fee simple has been wrested from the 
 Irish landlord, where he has been subjected to the legisla- 
 tion of late years ; he has been deprived of the ownership 
 which had been his birthright. An estate, nominally for 
 fifteen years, but really capable of being renewed for ever, 
 has been created against him by an unjust law ; and this 
 has been vested in his former tenants, subject to the mode 
 of land tenure known as the ' Three F's,' the chief of these 
 being ' fair,' that is, State-settled rents, in the adjustment 
 of which he has no voice. He may, no doubt, retain frag- 
 ments of his old proprietary rights ; parts of his estate 
 may be excluded from the provisions of the law ; he may 
 be the lord of ' future tenants ; ' he is left ' royalties,' such 
 as minerals, mines, and timber ; he possesses most of his 
 former legal remedies ; and should the holders of the 
 lands, which had been his own, who have obtained the 
 benefits of the ' Three F's,' infringe the statutory condi- 
 tions imposed on them, they may be dispossessed, and he 
 may enter upon their farms again. But, notwithstanding 
 exceptions and possibilities like these, the Irish landlord 
 has, for practical purposes, been well-nigh assimilated 
 to a rent-charger, and his tenants have been nearly 
 converted into owners of the soil, an utter revolution in 
 the whole land system, in truth, turning it upside down. 
 The status, indeed, of the Irish landed gentry now bears a 
 strong resemblance to that of the chief landlords of the 
 eighteenth century, who, separating themselves altogether 
 from their lands, let them in perpetuity at low rents, and, 
 as a necessary consequence, produced the middleman, the 
 pest, as he has rightly been called, of Irish land tenure. 
 
232 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 The enormous and, as I believe, the unjust benefits 
 secured by recent legislation to the Irish tenant, are 
 not, however, so complete as they appear to be, and are 
 not without disadvantages attendant on them. Tenants 
 of holdings, to which the law does not apply, such as 
 tenants of demesnes and large pastoral lands, if rightly 
 excluded, nevertheless complain ; and ' future tenants,' 
 and petty occupants, who cannot afford to seek ' fair rents ' 
 from the Courts, have, from their point of view, solid 
 grounds of complaint. The scope of the new land code is, 
 therefore, to some extent, restricted ; and if the law has 
 actually caused a general reduction of rents, it has not 
 secured the ' Three F's ' for a considerable body of farmers, 
 not improbably a fourth or fifth part of the class as a 
 whole. And even the occupiers of the Irish soil, who have 
 obtained the advantages of the new mode of tenure, have 
 not obtained these without a certain kind of drawback. 
 Completely separated as they now are from their former 
 landlords, they cannot expect indulgences from a class 
 which considers itself to have been shamefully wronged ; 
 the allowances, which, whatever may be said, had been 
 made to them, in thousands of cases, have, as a rule, been 
 altogether withdrawn ; they get no help in making im- 
 provements ; they are usually obliged regularly to pay 
 their ' fair rents ; ' above all, landlords, of a strict or harsh 
 nature, are sometimes on the look-out to see if they do not 
 violate the statutory conditions to which they are subject, 
 in order to convert them into ' future tenants,' outside of 
 the protection of the law, and even to reacquire their lands. 
 These circumstances are not without adverse effects ; 
 though unquestionably they are far more than counter- 
 vailed by the change which has been wrought in Irish land 
 tenure, and has given the Irish tenant the benefits already 
 described. Yet, even from this point of view, the law does 
 not operate as unreservedly in his favour as might be sup- 
 posed. He has his 'fair rent,' probably much too low; 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 233 
 
 his ' fixity of tenure/ a perpetuity in all but name ; his right 
 to 'free sale,' sometimes worth thousands of pounds. But, 
 as a rule, he can only gain these advantages at the cost 
 of a lawsuit recurring at short intervals of time, with the 
 vexation and mischief this brings with it, a lawsuit, too, of 
 which the results may be more or less doubtful. If, too, 
 he is a saving and thrifty man he will hardly be able to 
 acquire lands for himself, as, in consequence of the right 
 of ' free sale,' the tenant right of these will have become 
 immensely high ; he will be confined, in most instances, to 
 the farm he holds. On the other hand, if he be dishonest 
 or imprudent, he will be tempted to run out and even to 
 injure his land, in order to effect a reduction of rent, or to 
 sublet or mortgage it should an opportunity be found. 
 
 The new Irish land code has thus had this special 
 feature : it has done infinite harm to the despoiled land- 
 lord, but the tenant has not gained the expected benefits. 
 Let us now see what effect it has had on the great industry 
 on which the Irish landed classes depend, the main source 
 of the wealth of their country. Unquestionably, as I have 
 remarked, over and over again, the tenant in Ireland 
 makes, for the most part, the plant of his farm a necessary 
 incident of the small-farm system ; but the Irish landed 
 gentry, in the last half century, have done a great deal in 
 the work of improvement. Whatever interested calumny 
 may falsely assert, they have expended millions, as un- 
 erring statistics show, in planting, enclosure, and, especially, 
 in arterial drainage, this last beyond the reach of the 
 common peasant ; they have, in thousands of instances, 
 made the breeds of stock better ; they have made large 
 allowances as regards farm buildings. All this is now a 
 thing of the past; the sometime landowner, in a real sense, 
 has been divorced from his former estate; law has pro- 
 hibited him from doing anything for it ; his only interest 
 is to collect the rent-charge called, in mockery, ' fair rent' 
 On the other hand, tenants in Ireland have, in a great 
 
234 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 many cases — I have briefly glanced at the conclusive 
 evidence — positively wasted or neglected their holdings, 
 for the express purpose of working rent down ; this shame- 
 ful expedient has been hardly checked ; the deterioration 
 of a large area of land has been thus accomplished. And, 
 at the same time, as ' fair rent ' is much lower than the 
 rent of the market, a considerable minority of this class 
 have sublet or mortgaged their lands, in order to get 
 advances of which they stand in need ; this, no doubt, is a 
 violation of the law ; but it is a violation difficult to prove, 
 and they run the risk. In this way, as I have shown, in a 
 preceding chapter, the husbandry of Ireland has declined 
 of late years ; woodland has been cut down recklessly to a 
 great extent ; main drainage has been largely neglected, a 
 ruinous thing in a wet climate ; in thousands of cases the 
 farming of tenants at ' fair rents ' is wretched. The face of 
 the country reveals these facts : Ireland is worse cultivated 
 than it was twenty years ago ; indeed, the best farming, in 
 the island, by many degrees, is that conducted by a small 
 number of men of substance, who still hold on the footing 
 of free contract, having settled with their landlords, and 
 taken out leases, a significant commentary on Irish legis- 
 lation since 1881. 
 
 This subject, however, must be considered from a broader 
 point of view, and with reference to the community of 
 Ireland, as a whole. A great confiscation, I have said, has 
 been wrought in the Irish land ; the immense fall in 
 the value of the landlord's estate, and the immense rise 
 in the value of the tenant right, prove that property 
 belonging to one class has been transferred, wholesale, by 
 law, to another, a result never contemplated by responsible 
 statesmen. And confiscation has produced its inevitable 
 effects ; free dealing in land has been prevented ; except 
 to his former tenants an Irish country gentleman cannot 
 sell what remains to him of his former estate, and that 
 through the system of ' land purchase ; ' capital shuns the 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 235 
 
 Irish soil as if it were a quicksand ; trustees and mort- 
 gagees will not invest in it ; in a word, as respects the 
 class which had been its owners, the Irish land has been 
 bound in a kind of pernicious mortmain. It is unnecessary 
 to dwell on the resulting evils ; one of the sources of the 
 wealth of Ireland has been made barren ; a paralysis has 
 fallen on a member of Irish industry ; what is, perhaps, 
 even worse, a sense of insecurity, of instability, of fear of 
 unknown change, so widely prevails in Irish landed rela- 
 tions, that they have become completely unsettled, and are 
 a mere chaos. And as vicious legislation has cut the old 
 landlord off from his estate, has assimilated him to the 
 chief lord of the eighteenth century, and is evolving, by 
 degrees, the middleman, so the effects of confiscation, by 
 keeping land out of commerce, have unnaturally limited 
 and restricted its nominal ownership ; in fact, many of the 
 features of the detestable penal laws of Ireland are reap- 
 pearing in the Irish land system, and are being reproduced 
 by the modern Irish land code. Another mischievous 
 effect of this code, in another direction, requires attention. 
 The value of tenant right, we have seen, has enormously 
 increased ; the sums paid by incoming to outgoing tenants, 
 on the transfer of farms, have, accordingly, become enor- 
 mous ; these purchasers, therefore, are being subjected to 
 heavy outlays, practically in the nature of rack-rents, which 
 hamper their industry, starve their capital, and most in- 
 juriously affect good husbandry. One class of the com- 
 munity is thus wronged for the behoof of another ; and 
 agriculture must, more or less, suffer. 
 
 Not the least, however, of the manifold evils caused by 
 this legislation have to be yet noticed. The ancient 
 divisions of race and faith in the Irish land system still 
 continue ; what was most harsh and oppressive in them 
 has been effaced ; but they have become wider and more 
 marked in the last twenty years ; and this is largely to 
 be ascribed to the present land code. A mode of land 
 
236 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 tenure, which produces harassing litigation at short in- 
 tervals of time, and makes landed relations cockpits for 
 legal conflicts, necessarily sets the landed classes against 
 each other ; it has aggravated the old differences deep- 
 rooted in the Irish soil. The Protestant gentleman and 
 the Catholic peasant are more estranged from each other, 
 in the southern provinces, than they have been, I believe, 
 within living memory; the same remark, too, applies to 
 Presbyterian Ulster, where the gentry belong, for the most 
 part, to the late Established Church, and the tenant classes 
 are of the faith of John Knox ; the lines of distinction 
 between these orders of men have deepened ; and this 
 alienation, concurring with another cause, has contributed 
 to the cry for the confiscation of the Irish land, which is 
 now being very generally raised, and to which I shall refer 
 afterwards. Another mischief of this legislation, at which 
 I have already glanced, is the widespread demoralisation 
 it has caused, from the nature of the case. The litigation 
 in the Courts where ' fair rents ' are being fixed, is often 
 a miserable spectacle of hard and mendacious swearing 
 productive of the worst effects on the human character. 
 Peasants, as a rule, do not scruple to pledge their oaths 
 that their rents ought to be at most a fourth of the rents 
 they had paid for perhaps half a century; the witnesses 
 they call as valuers usually repeat these statements. The 
 claims, too, for exemption from rent, on account of im- 
 provements, are often ridiculous, often shameful ; I have 
 seen sums paid for manures twenty years old, gravely put 
 forward as creating a claim for exemption ; and the subject 
 of the deterioration of farms is another fruitful source of 
 falsehood. It is hardly necessary to comment on the 
 results, as regards self-respect and the moral sense of men, 
 which must follow proceedings of this kind, carried on, 
 over whole counties, in thousands of cases; they are, 
 inevitably, in a very high degree, unfortunate ; but, when 
 law encourages dishonesty, they were to be only expected. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 237 
 
 Such have been the fruits of the new Irish land code, 
 on the side of the occupation of the Irish land. Legis- 
 lation, essentially faulty and unwise, in conflict with 
 economic science and the facts of the case, has taken 
 from the Irish landlords their chief proprietary rights, and 
 forcibly transferred these to their tenants ; it has not 
 conferred the benefits it intended on an unfairly favoured 
 class ; it has wrought a revolution in the Irish land system, 
 in contravention to plain justice, and given it an unnatural 
 and evil aspect ; it has caused iniquitous confiscation on 
 a vast scale and demoralisation profound and widespread, 
 with the far-reaching inherent mischiefs ; and bad adminis- 
 tration has made bad laws worse. Political economy, 
 spite of Mr. Gladstone, has not fled from this world at 
 his bidding ; she looks on, so to speak, at the ruins in 
 Ireland produced by the violation of her most certain 
 principles ; I will add, she affirms the claim to compen- 
 sation of the Irish landlord, if the simplest equity is not 
 to be set at nought. As to the general situation evolved 
 by the present Irish land code, I may refer to these 
 pregnant words of Mr. Lecky : ' It cannot be denied that 
 this legislation has redressed some hard cases and benefited 
 a large number of tenants ; and as few men look beyond 
 immediate consequences, or rightly estimate those which 
 are indirect and remote, this fact is accepted by many as 
 its justification. For my own part, I believe that it will 
 one day be found that the evils resulting from this policy 
 have greatly outweighed its benefits, and that they will 
 fall far more heavily on another class than on the small 
 class which was directly injured. In a poor country, where 
 increased capital, improved credit, and secure industry are 
 the greatest needs, it has shaken to the very basis the 
 idea of the sanctity and obligation of contract ; made it 
 almost impossible to borrow any considerable sum on 
 Irish land ; effectually stopped the influx of English gold ; 
 paralysed or prevented nearly all industrial undertakings 
 
238 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 stretching into a distant future. It has reacted powerfully 
 upon trade, and thus contributed to impoverish the Irish 
 towns, while it has withdrawn the whole rental of Ireland 
 from the improvement of the soil, as the landlord can 
 have no further inducement or obligation to spend money 
 on his estate. In combination, also, with the Home Rule 
 movement, it has driven much capital out of the land.' * 
 
 I pass on to the legislation of late years, with respect to 
 the Irish land, on the side of ownership. I have briefly 
 described what that legislation is : a Conservative Ministry, 
 impressed with the wrong idea that Mr. Gladstone had 
 1 created dual ownership,' by the ill-conceived measure of 
 1 88 1, resolved to abolish this evil thing if they could, 
 though it is the natural mould of Irish land tenure ; and 
 Parliament has allotted ^40,000,000 to attain this object, 
 through the operation of what is falsely called ' land 
 purchase.' The mode of proceeding has been explained : 
 an Irish landlord, who desires to sell his estate to his 
 tenants, can obtain an advance for this purpose from the 
 State, through the agency of the Land Commission ; the 
 tenants are then made owners of their farms, without con- 
 tributing any moneys of their own, and hold at terminable 
 annuities much lower than even ' fair rents.' The trans- 
 action, therefore, we have seen, is, in no sense, a purchase ; 
 it is a gift, in the nature of a bribe ; it is completely 
 different from the policy of John Bright and the sales of 
 land made to tenants before 1885, in which these men 
 paid part of the price at least, the only real security for 
 thrift and honesty. Of the £40,000,000, nearly half, I have 
 said, has been spent ; and out of the 486,000 agricultural 
 Irish tenants, some 50,000 have acquired their holdings, 
 in fee, under these conditions. The law thus applies to a 
 mere fraction of the class ; it is idle to assert that this can 
 do much to extinguish 'dual ownership' in all Ireland; 
 the sum required would be many times more than that 
 * ' Democracy and Liberty,' vol. i. pp. 202, 203. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 239 
 
 which alone has been made available ; and the process, at 
 the present rate of ' purchases/ would not be accomplished 
 within a century. We may, therefore, pass away from 
 this part of the subject ; but let us see how ' land purchase,' 
 effected in this way, bears on the position of the Irish 
 landed gentry. The immense majority of this order of 
 men still cling to their native country and their homes ; 
 they hate the idea of parting with the rights they retain in 
 the land, trampled down and injured as they have been ; 
 this is especially the case with the best and most solvent 
 landlords. But as the terminable annuities payable on 
 1 land purchase ' are not nearly so high as even very low 
 rents, not to speak of the other conditions of this mode of 
 tenure, it follows that tenants who have thus been made 
 owners are infinitely better off than tenants still subject 
 to rent ; one class has great advantages, of which the other 
 is deprived ; as a necessary consequence an artificial 
 standard is set up against rent, which does wrong to the 
 landlord, from the nature of the case ; gives every tenant 
 on his estate a grievance ; and not improbably may expose 
 him to a determined refusal to pay any rent whatever. 
 
 ' Land purchase,' therefore — the name is a mere untruth 
 — has been a failure as regards ' dual ownership ; ' and it 
 is establishing against the Irish landlord a false measure 
 of rent, analogous to a base coinage, a strange achievement 
 of a Conservative Government. Let us next consider 
 what has been the working of this economic nostrum, with 
 respect to the class, for the benefit of which it was first 
 prescribed, and which has reaped the advantages it gives. 
 The tenants, who have been made owners of their farms, 
 have, as a rule, discharged their obligations to the State 
 very well, though I could point to not a few exceptions ; 
 and there have been strikes against the payment of the 
 terminable annuities in some instances. This may be 
 sufficient for official bureaucrats ; it is not sufficient for 
 those who know Ireland, and can impartially watch the 
 
240 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 course of events. It was fondly expected that ' land 
 purchase,' that is, bribing tenants in Ireland to become 
 owners of their farms, would create a powerful body of 
 freeholders loyal to the State ; but this has already been 
 seen to be a mere delusion. As Parnell predicted would 
 be the case, these ' purchasers ' are ' patriotic ' in the 
 highest degree ; they fill the ranks of the United Irish 
 League, that is, of a conspiracy against our rule in Ireland, 
 and are numbered among its most efficient agents ; human 
 nature being what it actually is, this is precisely what was 
 to be expected. It was confidently foretold, again, that 
 these ' purchasers ' would form a thriving class of model 
 farmers ; and that their lands would be patterns of admir- 
 able and improved peasant husbandry, but this forecast is 
 being, in a great degree, falsified. These men, ' rocked and 
 dandled into their possessions,' in the words of Burke, with- 
 out a single guarantee for common prudence, and espe- 
 cially without an effort of their own, have, in hundreds of 
 instances, turned out sorry failures ; and it has been the 
 almost universal practice of the whole class to cut down 
 every tree that grows on their lands, an act of ruinous waste 
 in a rain-drenched climate. Besides, as freehold ownership 
 is not an Irish idea — indeed, is opposed to Irish ideas — these 
 ' purchasers ' have, in many cases, following the example 
 of tenants 'at fair rents,' subdivided, sublet, or mort- 
 gaged their holdings ; instead of remaining owners in a 
 true sense, they are becoming middlemen lording it over 
 rack-rented serfs. The agriculture, too, of hundreds of 
 these farms is slovenly in the extreme, for bribery does 
 not promote industry ; what is c easy got, easy goes ' is a 
 true proverb ; and, in addition, a number of these men were 
 really insolvent when they were made ' purchasers.' That 
 Ireland will blossom like a rose, under these conditions, is 
 seen even now to be a chimera ; and there is much reason 
 to believe that many of these ' purchasers ' have become 
 the prey of the race of local usurers, a consummation that 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 241 
 
 might have been predicted. ' I shall sell my estate,' a witty 
 Irishman once remarked, ' but I will keep two loan offices 
 and four public-houses; and in two generations my "pur- 
 chasing " tenants will be too happy to resell their lands to 
 my grandsons.' 
 
 A singular instance of ' land purchase,' and, indeed, of 
 the working of another part of the land code, has come 
 under my notice of late ; I can answer for the accuracy of 
 what I write ; scores of similar cases could be, probably, 
 found. In 1852, an industrious Scottish tradesman invested 
 the savings of years of his life in buying a chief rent under 
 the Encumbered Estates Act ; he gave £5000 for a per- 
 petual rent-charge of ,£192, that is, not quite 4 per cent, on 
 his capital. The tenant of the lands subject to the rent 
 was a middleman, with an estate of about ^"3000 a year ; 
 he had sublet the lands to a tenant in occupation of them, 
 a slovenly, ill-conditioned, and indolent farmer. The 
 Land Act of 1887 passed; the wealthy middleman, an 
 excellent ' mark ' for the chief rent, who, therefore, had 
 been obliged to pay the £"192 a year, was empowered by 
 the new law to evade his contract, and practically to get 
 rid of his interest ; the owner of the chief rent, therefore, 
 had only the tenant in occupation to look to for the dis- 
 charge of his claim. This person was succeeded by his 
 son, a good-for-nothing and drunken man, who soon 
 became head over ears in debt ; but he was declared ' a 
 purchaser' by the Land Commission, and, subject to a 
 terminable annuity, was made owner of the lands. But 
 the advance made was not more than £2300; the repre- 
 sentative of the hardworking Scotchman, who had bought 
 property, as secure, at the time, as Consols, was a loser of 
 more than half of his capital ; he was simply cheated out 
 of £"2700, through the operation of an iniquitous law ; his 
 indignant protests may well be conceived. The subsequent 
 history of this so-styled ' purchase ' is significant, and not 
 without interest. The worthless owner took possession of 
 
 R 
 
242 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 the lands ; his first step was to cut down the woodland, 
 until he was stopped by a creditor to whom he owed a 
 mortgage. Since that time he has become insolvent in all 
 but name, and cannot pay the annuity due to the State ; 
 the Land Commission has been trying to sell the lands ; 
 but the attempt has, hitherto, been a failure ; the lands 
 have been ' boycotted,' and the market has been closed 
 against a sale. These proceedings do not require a word 
 of comment ; they strikingly illustrate how the agrarian 
 code of Ireland makes havoc of capital, annuls contracts, 
 and confiscates property for the behoof of dishonest thrift - 
 lessness. Meanwhile the happy middleman enjoys his 
 £3000 a year ; I dare say he licks his lips as he thinks of 
 the Land Act of 1887, which scattered a just liability to 
 the winds. 
 
 The most remarkable and the worst effect — with a revo- 
 lutionary tendency in no doubtful sense — of this mis- 
 chievous system has, however, to be still noticed. About 
 one out of ten of the agricultural tenants of Ireland have 
 'purchased' their farms, in the way described; the fund 
 available for 'land purchase' cannot include more, than 
 one in five ; and the process is and must be slow, owing to 
 the law's delay. Legislation, therefore, with a singular 
 want of insight, has drawn, and is drawing, an unjust dis- 
 tinction between ' purchasing ' and rent-paying tenants ; it 
 is dividing them into a small favoured class, and a multi- 
 tude harshly left out in the cold — fat sheep in one fold, 
 lean goats in another ; as the inevitable result, the rent- 
 paying tenant resents the benefits obtained by ' the pur- 
 chaser;' and the immense majority of the farmers of 
 Ireland are made discontented with their lot, from their 
 point of view not without reason. It is idle to say to 
 this great body of men that they have already gained 
 advantages from the State, on which they never reckoned 
 thirty years ago, and that they have the ' Three F's,' and 
 all that the phrase implies ; those who have secured much 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 243 
 
 are eager to secure more ; the unfair distinction arbitrarily 
 made against them is unintelligible and exasperating, man 
 being what he is. The policy of ' voluntary purchase,' as it 
 is called, has, accordingly, from the very nature of the case, 
 provoked and called into being the cry for the ' compulsory 
 purchase ' of the Irish land, now being heard far and wide in 
 Ireland — that is, for the forcible expropriation of all Irish 
 landlords, and for placing all their tenants, in their stead, as 
 owners of their estates. This demand has as yet been 
 rejected by statesmen, and is, I believe, both hopeless and 
 shameful ; but it has, nevertheless, some logic on its side ; 
 it is a corollary from legislation essentially bad ; and, 
 backed as it is by a large force of Irish opinion, it cannot 
 be ignored or treated with contempt. It is simply extra- 
 ordinary that many Irish landlords have been encouraging, 
 and still encourage, ' voluntary purchase,' on its existing 
 lines, and will not perceive that it leads to 'compulsory 
 purchase ; ' either from a desire to dispose of parts of their 
 estates, or from motives not easy to understand, they are 
 promoting a revolution, which, if accomplished, would assure 
 their ruin, as I shall conclusively prove afterwards. But 
 the well-informed and most thoughtful members of their 
 class are not flies lured into a bottle by a bit of sugar ; 
 they are alive to all that is involved in what is called ' land 
 purchase.' Many years ago, when Parliament was voting 
 funds for ' voluntary purchase,' on the present system, I 
 indicated what would be the results ; I only claim credit 
 for some share of common sense : ' Law will have been 
 severing the occupiers of the soil by an arbitrary process 
 into a pampered caste, marked off from a disfavoured multi- 
 tude ; and, as a necessary consequence, the mass of tenants, 
 kept in an inferior position, will be filled with discontent 
 — and from their point of view with perfect justice — when, 
 as the advances from the State run short, their prospects 
 of " land purchase " shall wane and diminish. An " ugly 
 rush " will be made throughout the country to force 
 
244 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 landlords, as a class, to sell, in order to get a chance of 
 buying; in Ulster the cry for "compulsory purchase," 
 already heard, will swell high and fierce.' * 
 
 These, therefore, have been the fruits of the system 
 called ' land purchase ' with euphemistic falsehood. 
 ' Compulsory purchase,' a demand caused by an unwise 
 policy, is a question that must be fairly discussed ; it is 
 nothing to the purpose that it has as yet made little way 
 in Parliament. This claim would have been regarded as 
 sheer insanity thirty years ago ; it was scouted by John 
 Bright as in the highest degree mischievous, though John 
 Bright was the first statesman who proposed making 
 tenants in Ireland owners of their farms, but through a 
 real, not a sham, mode of purchase. The compulsory 
 purchase of the rented land of Ireland is a policy that has 
 advocates even in England and Scotland ; and it is lament- 
 able to observe how British opinion seems to take little 
 heed how a measure of this kind would affect the position 
 of the Irish landlord, another of the many instances of its 
 habitual disregard of the plainest rights of property in land 
 in Ireland. A set of doctrinaires, ignorant of Irish nature 
 and of the Irish land, imagine that 'the creation of a 
 peasant proprietary,' in all parts of Ireland, as the cant 
 phrase is, would, in any case, make the Union secure, and 
 would promote tranquillity, industry, and content. Some 
 politicians still cherish the fond belief, that thrusting Irish 
 tenants, wholesale, into the place of their landlords, by an 
 act of violence without a parallel, would make Irish govern- 
 ment and administration more easy ; and shut their eyes 
 to the nature of this policy. English and Scottish capital- 
 ists, who have made advances on Irish estates, see in com- 
 pulsory purchase the best probable means of realising 
 
 * Letters to the Manchester Guard/an, written in 1890, and since 
 republished. This little work was much noticed at the time ; attempts 
 to answer it were made to no purpose. The facts now speak for 
 themselves. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 245 
 
 securities now in danger ; a few great absentee landlords, 
 eager to part with their possessions in Ireland, at almost 
 any price, are possibly not opposed to this scheme ; and 
 so maybe a few bankrupt Irish landlords, hoping to get a 
 trifle out of a general shipwreck. The demand, however, 
 for compulsory purchase has its only real strength in 
 Ireland; and unquestionably it is widespread and far- 
 reaching. The conspiracy against British rule in Ireland, 
 which has made the annihilation of Irish ' landlordism ' 
 one of its main objects, calls for compulsory purchase, as a 
 matter of course ; it finds no difficulty in banding together 
 the peasantry of the southern provinces in support of a 
 cry which means for this class an improvement in their 
 lot, and appeals to deep-rooted sentiments of human 
 nature. The Irish Catholic priesthood, too, back the 
 movement to a man, and so do the local Nationalist 
 boards ; for obvious reasons, both these orders of men 
 seek to drive the Irish landed gentry from their homes, 
 and to replace them by dependents in sympathy with 
 them. The demand has also extended to Ulster, chiefly 
 on account of the harsh distinction drawn between 'pur- 
 chasing ' and • non-purchasing ' tenants ; it is economic 
 rather than social or political ; but the cry for compulsory 
 purchase is perhaps loudest in parts of the northern pro- 
 vince. Its principal champion, at present, is an enthusiast, 
 sincere, indeed, if without judgment and insight ; but he 
 is sustained by bodies of farmers formidable in numbers 
 at least. 
 
 The sharp and, as I think, the unfair distinction drawn 
 by the present law between tenant ' purchasers ' and 
 tenants still subject to the payment of rent, has created, 
 it cannot be said too often, the demand for the compulsory 
 purchase of the Irish land, and for this Lord Salisbury's 
 Government is largely responsible. But because an Irish 
 peasant, on one side of a fence, cannot obtain the benefits 
 of land tenure, which his neighbour, on the other side, 
 
246 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 has obtained, and may even have a right to complain, it 
 does not follow that compulsory purchase is a possible, 
 or aught but a disgraceful policy ; other interests and con- 
 siderations must be taken into account. Let us first see 
 how compulsory purchase would affect the financial 
 position of the Three Kingdoms. Great as the prosperity 
 of the Empire is, the strain on its resources is immense ; 
 the expenditure of the State at home is vast, and on the 
 increase ; the war in South Africa, and the settlement of 
 that huge region, will cost unknown millions ; the reform 
 of our military and even of our naval system, necessary to 
 our safety, will be a weighty burden for years ; every 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer has declared that fiscal 
 economy, as far as possible, is his first duty. But what 
 does the compulsory purchase of the Irish land involve, 
 and what, confessedly, are its essential conditions? Mr. 
 Gladstone, I have said, asserted, long ago, that the value 
 of the agricultural area of Ireland was ,£300,000,000 ; this 
 estimate, I believe, is too high ; but, in the opinion of 
 competent judges, it cannot be deemed less than 
 ;£ 1 50,000,000. But the forcible expropriation of the Irish 
 landed gentry on every principle of civilised law, as, 
 indeed, Sir Michael Hicks Beach has already insisted, 
 would imply giving them a large additional bonus ; this 
 probably would not be less than ^50,000,000 ; the sum, 
 therefore, required for compulsory purchase, would, it 
 may be assumed, be not less than ,£200,000,000. Now, 
 can any one imagine that the general taxpayer, in the 
 financial situation in which we are, and shall be for 
 years, will make himself liable for this colossal charge, 
 equal to the ransom Germany extorted from France, in 
 order to bribe Irish peasants into the ownership of their 
 farms, and to effect an agrarian revolution, in which he has 
 no interest ? I should like to see the Minister who would 
 go to the country on such an insane policy, and who 
 would call on the hardly taxed millions of England, 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 247 
 
 Scotland, and Ireland, to burn huge holes in their pockets 
 for such an object, for simply robbing Peter to pay Paul, 
 and that without a pretence of right, or any conceivable 
 good. And what security would the Irish land afford for 
 the payment of this enormous impost ? The terminable 
 annuities due from the ' purchasing ' tenants would, it has 
 pleasantly been said, be a sufficient guarantee ; but men 
 of common sense are not to be caught by chaff; the idea 
 is a vain and worthless delusion. The ' No Rent Mani- 
 festo ' and the ' Plan of Campaign ' were movements of 
 Irish peasants, so to speak, of yesterday ; what if another 
 Parnell were to arise and to issue a ukase that ' a foreign 
 and alien Government had no right to an unjust tribute; ' 
 and how could this be collected by a Department of an 
 absentee State? 
 
 The general taxpayer, therefore, who, thirteen years 
 ago, grumbled at a demand of ,£5,000,000 only, will 
 assuredly not fling ^"200,000,000, or half that sum, into 
 the Serbonian bog of the Irish land. It is hardly neces- 
 sary to dwell on so small a fact, 'that compulsory pur- 
 chase would reduce the income tax of Ireland about one- 
 half, for nine-tenths of the tenant ' purchasers ' would be 
 below its level ; but even this cannot be left out of sight. 
 Conservative statesmen, it should be added, are especially 
 bound to reject this scheme; in 1886 they denounced, in 
 emphatic language, Mr. Gladstone's far less dangerous 
 plan of making the State liable for £50,000,000, to buy 
 out Irish landlords ; flagrant inconsistency in politics 
 should be eschewed. The probably fixed purpose of the 
 general taxpayer not to mulct himself heavily to fling the 
 Irish soil to a mass of peasants, is doubtless, and I say it 
 with regret, the best security against the destruction of 
 the Irish landlords ; this despoiled and maltreated body 
 of men just now fill the place in Irish affairs of the ' Injured 
 Lady ' of Swift's satire, gravely told by her lover across 
 the Channel that ' I had cost him ten times more than I 
 
248 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 was worth to maintain me, and that it had been much 
 better for him if I had been damned, or burnt, or thrown 
 to the bottom of the sea.' * Nevertheless, I have faith in 
 right-minded Englishmen, however prejudiced or ill-in- 
 formed about an unpopular class, if plain facts and figures 
 are set before them ; let us see how it would fare with the 
 Irish landlord were he forcibly expropriated under com- 
 pulsory purchase. I will take the case of an Irish 
 country gentleman, who, in the period between 1868 and 
 1878, had an income from his estate of £1500 a year, 
 subject to a family charge of £10,000 at 4 per cent., that 
 is, had a net annual income of £1100. Owing to the 
 depression of agriculture since 1879, his rents would have 
 naturally fallen about £300 a year ; but let us suppose 
 that, through the operation of the new Irish land code, 
 they have been cut down to - fair rents ' of £900 a year 
 only. His annual income, therefore, would be £900 less 
 by £400, that is, he would still have £500 a year he 
 could call his own ; how would it be with him were he 
 forcibly sold out? Admit that his estate would fetch 
 eighteen years' purchase — the present average rate is 
 seventeen — that is, would realise £16,200 ; deducting, say, 
 £200 for law costs, this would be a net residue of £16,000. 
 But the family charge would absorb £10,000 ; the surplus 
 would be £6000 only, producing, let us calculate, £4 per 
 cent. ; this ruined man, therefore, who, little more than 
 twenty years ago, possessed an income of £1100 a year, 
 would be left £240 at the very utmost. I have taken care 
 to understate the case ; I challenge attention to my figures ; 
 I ask honest Englishmen would not this be sheer robbery, 
 accomplished, to the disgrace of the State, in its name ? 
 
 It has been urged, however — and to those who know 
 
 the facts, the statement is cruel and shameful mockery — 
 
 that the Irish landlord would only lose his rented lands, 
 
 and that ' he could live happily on the demesne land, which 
 
 * Swift's 'Works,' vol. ii. p. 82, ed. 1870. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 249 
 
 he would still retain.' This would be simply impossible 
 in the case of nineteen-twentieths of the class ; they would 
 not have the means to keep their demesnes up ; they 
 would be compelled to part with them at almost any price ; 
 and the few, who would have the means, would, all but 
 certainly, with their beggared fellows, leave a country in 
 which they had been foully betrayed. It is notorious, 
 indeed, that Irish Nationalist leaders, knowing what 
 compulsory purchase means, have marked down the 
 demesnes of the Irish landed gentry as their prey ; 
 associates of American Fenians and of the Clan na Gael 
 are to revel in the mansions of the Geraldines, the Butlers, 
 the O'Connors, the O'Neills, as Jacobins revelled in the 
 mansions of the La Tremouilles and the De Noailles. 
 But man does not live by bread alone ; the material ruin 
 of the Irish landlord would be bad enough ; but the 
 moral consequences of his expropriation must not be left 
 out of sight. Few of the purchasers under the En- 
 cumbered Estates Acts care probably much about the 
 lands they have bought ; the same remark probably applies 
 to most Irish absentees. But an immense majority of the 
 Irish landed gentry are deeply attached to their hearths 
 and their homes ; they are bound to their lands by innumer- 
 able ties ; they have been brought up with the sentiments 
 which property in land creates ; in the pathetic words of 
 an old chronicler, ' They do not wish to pray in foreign 
 churches, or to lie in foreign graves ; ' their hope has been 
 to live and die amidst their ancestral surroundings. The 
 State has, in a special manner, encouraged this belief; it 
 rooted the Irish landlord in the soil to be its supporter ; is 
 it to expel him from the position it has made for him, 
 without a thought of the shock to his best feelings this 
 must produce ? Would not such an act be dishonourable, 
 nay, infamous ? Let us hear what the deepest of our political 
 thinkers, Burke, has written upon a somewhat parallel 
 case : ' When men are encouraged to go into a certain 
 
250 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 mode of life by the existing laws, and protected in that 
 mode as in a lawful occupation — when they have accom- 
 modated all their ideas, and all their habits to it, ... I am 
 sure it is unjust in legislature, by an arbitrary act, to offer 
 a sudden violence to their minds and their feelings ; forcibly 
 to degrade them from their state and condition, and to 
 stigmatise with shame and infamy that character and 
 those customs, which before had been made the measure 
 of their happiness and honour. If to this be added an 
 expulsion from their habitations, and a confiscation of all 
 their goods, I am not sagacious enough to discover how 
 this despotick sport, made of the feelings, consciences, 
 prejudices, and properties of men, can be discriminated 
 from the rankest tyranny.' * 
 
 I have referred to an instance, within my knowledge, of 
 the operation of the new Irish land code, in the case of a 
 middleman, his under-tenant, and a despoiled owner of a 
 rent. I now refer to an instance, also within my know- 
 ledge, of what compulsory purchase would do in the case 
 of an Irish landlord. This person is a scion of one of the 
 princely Irish-Milesian houses ; his forefathers were lords 
 of a tract extending from the Boyne to the Shannon. 
 They belonged to one of the famous ' five bloods of Ireland,' 
 acknowledged to be half- royal by Henry of Anjou ; they 
 intermarried with the great Norman-Irish noblesse ; one of 
 their matronage was half-sister of Surrey's fair Geraldine ; 
 the ruins of the abbeys they founded are still to be seen. 
 Their domains were torn from them in the reign of Mary 
 Tudor ; but they fought stubbornly with their tribe in the 
 great Desmond war ; they retained, though proscribed, 
 the rank of princes, until the close of the sixteenth 
 century ; leaders of the house then carried their swords 
 into foreign armies, and have given a field marshal to 
 Austria and grandees to Spain. The direct line of the 
 chiefs, however, remained in Ireland ; it vegetated in 
 * ' Reflections on the Revolution in France,' vol. i. p. 440. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 251 
 
 obscurity until the Irish rising of 1689-90; one of its 
 members then appeared in the Parliament of James II. 
 in Dublin, and perished, at the head of his regiment, it is 
 said, at Aughrim. The fortunes of his descendants are not 
 without interest ; one is believed to have been a companion- 
 in-arms of Villars at Malplaquet and Denain ; two of 
 his remote offspring, the tradition exists, perished in the 
 ranks of Napoleon's armies. But the heir of the family 
 bowed under the yoke of the Irish penal laws, and became 
 a Protestant, at least in name ; his near kindred gave 
 Ireland Anthony Malone, one of the most illustrious 
 Irishmen of the eighteenth century, and gave England 
 the best commentator on her most immortal poet. One 
 of his representatives, the person of whom I write, still 
 possesses a fragment of the immense possessions his 
 fathers ruled ; of more than thirty of their castles he has 
 the wreck of one ; a scroll on the roof of his house bears 
 the touching legend that he has sprung from the loins 
 of the old Milesian princes. He is not wholly unknown 
 as an Irish landlord of this day ; curiously, too, his rental 
 has been hardly reduced by the visitations of the Land 
 and the Sub-Commissions. Is this scion of the best and 
 the most ancient noblesse of Ireland to be banished in his 
 old age from his home, and to be replaced in it by ornaments 
 of the Land, the National, and the United Irish Leagues, 
 for this would be one result of compulsory purchase ? 
 
 Let us imagine, however, that, owing to the malign 
 influence which, Spenser said, attends England in Irish 
 affairs, the Irish landed gentry were removed from the 
 land, and their former tenants were put in their place as 
 owners. What would be the consequences, economic, 
 social, political, of this sudden agrarian revolution in one 
 of the Three Kingdoms ? The distribution of the Irish 
 soil between the classes which would possess it, would be 
 unfavourable, in the highest degree, to the establishment of 
 a ' peasant proprietary,' the common name in use on this 
 
252 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 subject. Of the 486,000 tenant farmers in Ireland, some 
 132,000 hold patches of from less than one to five acres in 
 extent ; are these to be stereotyped as real land owners ? 
 More than 90,000 occupy from fifty to five hundred acres 
 and upwards ; these include the great graziers of the rich 
 tracts of pasturage ; do these supply elements of a ' peasant 
 proprietary ' in any rational sense ? The only class which 
 even on plausible, a priori grounds could be made occupy- 
 ing owners of the land would contain much less than 
 300,000 families ; and probably it occupies less than two- 
 thirds of the island as a whole. Are all these bodies of 
 men to be lumped, so to speak, together, and universally to 
 receive the ownership of the soil ; would not compulsory 
 purchase, even on these conditions, be the sheerest folly ? 
 Furthermore, the configuration of Ireland and her climate 
 make it next to impossible that a 'peasant proprietary' 
 could generally thrive within her borders ; Nature herself 
 forbids an attempt to carry out, on a large scale, a settlement 
 of the kind. The central area of the island is a low water- 
 shed of wide extent, from which a succession of streams 
 descends through vast tracts of morass and bog ; in other 
 parts of the country there are large and deep rivers, curving 
 as they approach the sea, and flowing through mountain 
 spaces ; the lands they traverse are swampy, and require 
 main drainage ; a large part of Ireland is composed of 
 wild hill ranges only fit for the rearing of young and 
 coarse breeds of cattle ; she possesses a fine area of the 
 best pasturage, confined, however, to a few counties ; her 
 true agricultural area is comparatively small. Her climate, 
 moreover, is wet to a proverb ; torrents of rain from the 
 Atlantic fall on her plains for months ; above all, her 
 inland towns are far from each other, and petty ; scarcely 
 one is peopled by more than 10,000 souls. Any well- 
 informed and right-judging person who knows the con- 
 ditions under which a 'peasant proprietary' can alone 
 flourish, must know that, from the nature of the case, it 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 253 
 
 would be a failure, in the circumstances in which it would 
 be necessarily placed, were it forcibly established in every 
 part of Ireland. Ireland has little in common with 
 Belgium, with Northern Italy, with France ; this settle- 
 ment of confiscation would go the way of the Englishry of 
 the Middle Ages and the Cromwellian colonists. 
 
 The most conclusive argument against compulsory 
 purchase has, nevertheless, to be yet put forward. The 
 state of things ' voluntary purchase ' is evolving would 
 assuredly be aggravated a hundred-fold were every tenant 
 in Ireland made the owner of his farm by a revolutionary 
 act on the part of the State. It is significant, in the highest 
 degree, that from the time of the ' New Departure ' to this 
 hour, the conspiracy against our rule in Ireland has 
 clamoured for the expropriation of the Irish landed gentry 
 by force, and for the conversion of their tenants into 
 possessors of these estates ; far better informed than 
 British statesmen, it has rightly calculated that this violent 
 change would increase the ' Nationalist ' sympathies of the 
 Irish peasant ; and this opinion is being confirmed, to a 
 great extent, by the results of ' voluntary purchase ' being 
 now developed. The coarse materialist view that bribery 
 will make a class law-abiding and loyal, is opposed to 
 human nature and fact ; bribery will not efface ideas, 
 feelings, and tendencies, deep-rooted in history and ancient 
 tradition ; above all, if it is a concession to agitation and 
 a rebellious movement, it will only quicken the animosity 
 to the State and the greed of the favoured class. Parnell, 
 I have said, had his mind made up on this subject ; he 
 always insisted that the Irish tenant, wherever his holding 
 had been made his own, would be ' more true to the cause 
 than ever ; ' it is curious that the confident prediction of a 
 most able man appears to have been persistently ignored. 
 For the rest, the mischief ' voluntary purchase ' is already 
 doing would be enormously aggravated by the effects of 
 compulsory purchase. The Irish tenant farmers, made 
 
254 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 owners of the land everywhere, would, like the present 
 'purchasers,' cut down woodland wholesale; the country 
 would be disafforested over an immense area ; the conse- 
 quences to agriculture would be as bad as possible. 
 Arterial and main drainage too would, as a rule, be 
 neglected ; but these would, comparatively, be trifling 
 results ; the compulsory purchaser would deal with the 
 land as their ' voluntary ' fellows are now largely dealing, 
 but, in all probability, more generally, and in much a 
 greater proportion. Holding as they would nine-tenths 
 of the Irish soil at terminable annuities much lower than 
 any rent, they would inevitably subdivide, sublet, and 
 mortgage their farms in tens of thousands of cases ; they 
 would become middlemen, over whole counties, the harsh 
 oppressors of a multitude ground down by rack-rents ; 
 the worst kind of 'landlordism' would be reproduced in 
 the worst aspect. The tendency of events is even now 
 confirming what I wrote a long time ago on this subject : 
 ' Freehold ownership, therefore, would disappear more or 
 less quickly over extensive tracts, the " yeomen " would 
 become a diminishing quantity, and these would be replaced 
 by a new class of landlords with tenants at competition 
 rents, that is, determined by the land hunger of the Celt. 
 The transformation would inevitably go on, for its causes 
 would operate with intense force ; and before many years 
 probably two-thirds of Ireland would have become a land 
 of mere peasant landlords placed over a mass of rack- 
 rented tenants.' * The creation of a universal ' peasant 
 proprietary,' by force, would, in fact, bring the Irish land 
 system back by degrees into the state in which it was 
 before the Great Famine, when millions of serfdom squatted 
 on the soil, disorganising agriculture and preventing social 
 progress. 
 
 * The Manchester Guardian, 1890. I quote this passage, for I 
 think its substance was referred to by the late Mr. Rathbone, member 
 for Liverpool. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 255 
 
 These considerations, however, by no means exhaust 
 the case against the compulsory purchase of the rented 
 land of Ireland. Irish landlords have been decried, for 
 an evil purpose, during many years ; their position is 
 difficult and open to attack ; but if they are an unpopular 
 class, they have been a civilising influence in Ireland of 
 real value, the most civilising influence, perhaps, in her 
 three southern provinces. Their annihilation, despoiled 
 and impoverished as they are, would still withdraw a 
 large fund from Irish rural labour ; and it would be 
 most injurious to agriculture in many ways, especially as 
 regards main and arterial drainage, an absolute necessity 
 for the Irish soil, and scarcely possible except under a 
 system of large estates. Their extinction, too, English- 
 men ought not to forget, would deprive the State of one 
 of its mainstays in Ireland ; the idea to the contrary grow- 
 ing up is a mere delusion ; it was not for nothing that 
 Parnell and Davitt described this order of men as 'the 
 British garrison,' and insisted that were it once out of the 
 fortress the power of England in Ireland would certainly 
 perish. The conversion of Irish farmers universally into 
 landowners would also have a ruinous effect on many Irish 
 industries. It would do infinite harm to many branches 
 of commerce, especially to trades of the higher type ; it 
 would be disastrous to such towns as Dublin and Belfast, 
 already beginning to protest against it ; and, whatever 
 may be said, the prospect of it is dreaded by agricultural 
 Irish labourers as a class, which has always been ill-treated 
 by their masters, the farmers, though, owing to the influence 
 of priests and demagogues, they are unwilling to express 
 the sentiments they really feel. Compulsory purchase, in 
 fact, is by no means so generally asked for in Ireland as 
 is supposed ; her representation demands it by a great 
 majority of votes; but this representation, as I have 
 pointed out before, is not a true index of Irish opinion. 
 Another consideration, too, should be taken into account 
 
256 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 in coming to a reasonable conclusion on this subject. The 
 land system of England and Scotland, from a variety of 
 causes sufficiently known, is essentially different from that 
 of Ireland ; politically, socially, economically, it has little 
 in common with it. But were Parliament to declare that 
 the whole tenant class of Ireland were to be transformed 
 into fee simple owners, subject only to renders, much less 
 than true rents, and payable for a short space of time, I 
 much doubt if English and Scottish tenants would ac- 
 quiesce, and would not agitate for legislation of a similar 
 kind, especially as British agriculture is still heavily 
 depressed. Leaseholders of large houses in towns, for 
 long terms of years, at ground rents, and a whole class of 
 builders, assuredly would join in such a demand ; the con- 
 tagion of revolution and socialism is always perilous. 
 English and Scottish landlords have usually played the 
 part of the Jew to the Samaritan as regards their Irish 
 fellows ; but ' proximus ardet Ucalegon ' might be borne 
 in mind.* 
 
 * Mr. Lecky, ' Democracy and Liberty,' vol. ii. pp. 487-4S9, rather 
 favours the policy of creating and extending peasant ownership in 
 Ireland, and, to a certain extent, approves of the so-called ' Land 
 Purchase ' Acts, but only as a doubtful experiment, to endeavour to 
 escape from a hopelessly bad land system. The distinguished his- 
 torian and thinker, in my opinion, is not sufficiently alive to the 
 iniquity of these measures as they affect landlords who wish to retain 
 their estates, or, rather, what remains of them ; but he clearly perceives 
 some of the objections to this vicious legislation. I quote his remarks 
 at some length : ' In Ireland, as is well known, great efforts are made 
 to create such a proprietary ; but the conditions of Ireland are unlike 
 those of any other part of the civilised globe. It has been the delibe- 
 rate policy of the Government to break down, by almost annual Acts, 
 the obligation of contracts, and the existing ownership of land has 
 been rendered so insecure, the political power attached to it has been 
 so effectually destroyed, and the influences tending to anarchy and 
 confiscation have been made so powerful, that most good judges have 
 come to the conclusion that it is necessary to force into existence by 
 strong legislative measures a new social type, which may, perhaps, 
 possess some elements of stability and conservatism. In order to 
 effect this object, the national credit has been made use of in such a 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 257 
 
 The Irish land system, therefore, from every point of 
 view, is simply in a deplorable state ; it is an economic 
 
 way that a tenant is enabled to purchase his farm without making the 
 smallest sacrifice for that object, the whole sum being advanced by 
 the Government, and advanced on such terms that the tenant is only 
 obliged to pay for a limited number of years a sum from 20 to 30 per 
 cent, less than his present rent. In other words, a man whose rent 
 has been fixed by the Land Court at ^100 a year, can purchase his 
 farm by paying, instead of that sum, £jo or ^80 a year for forty-nine 
 years. The arrangement sounds more like burlesque than serious 
 legislation ; but the belief that political pressure can obtain still better 
 terms for the tenant, and that further confiscatory legislation may still 
 more depreciate the value of land to the owner who has inherited it, 
 or purchased it in the open market, has taken such deep root in 
 Ireland that the tenants have shown little alacrity to avail themselves 
 of their new privilege. What may be the ultimate issue of the attempt 
 to govern a country in complete defiance of all received economical 
 principles remains to be seen. The future must show whether a large 
 peasant proprietary can be not only called into existence, but perma- 
 nently maintained, under these conditions, and whether it will prove 
 the loyal and conservative element that English politicians believe. 
 According to all past experience, peasant proprietors rarely succeed, 
 except when they possess something more than an average measure 
 of industrial qualities, and the Irish purchase laws give no preference 
 to the energetic, the industrious, and the thrifty. On the contrary, it 
 is very often the farmer who is on the verge of bankruptcy who is most 
 eager to buy, in order to reduce his annual charge. The tendency of 
 the new proprietors to mortgage, to sublet, and to subdivide, is already 
 manifest, and some of the best judges of Irish affairs, who look beyond 
 the present generation, are very despondent about the future. They 
 believe that a peasant proprietary, called into existence suddenly and 
 artificially, with no discrimination in favour of the better class, in a 
 country where industrial qualities are very low, and where the strongest 
 wish of the farmer is either to divide his farm among his children, or 
 to burden it with equal mortgages for their benefit, must eventually 
 lead to economic ruin, to fatal subdivision, to crushing charges on 
 land. The new policy must also, they contend, almost wholly with- 
 draw from the country life, where it is peculiarly needed, the civilising 
 and guiding influence of a resident gentry. Whether or not these 
 apprehensions are exaggerated time only can show. Two predictions 
 may, I think, with some confidence be made. The one is, that the 
 transformation is likely to be most successful if it is gradually effected. 
 The other is, that a great part of the influence once possessed by the 
 landlord will, under the new conditions, pass to the money-lender.' 
 
 S 
 
258 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 and social chaos, pregnant with mischiefs and dangers of 
 many kinds. Confiscation has wrought its work on the 
 Irish landlord ; has shaken the structure of Irish society ; 
 and has produced its inevitable results in banishing capital 
 from the land, and in dealing a weighty blow to Irish 
 credit. The legislation of 1881, and of subsequent years, 
 has conferred immense advantages on the tenant class in 
 Ireland ; but these have fallen short of what might be 
 supposed ; this class declares itself to be dissatisfied with 
 its lot ; it is clamouring for the wholesale transfer to itself 
 of the rented lands of Ireland, through what is known as 
 compulsory purchase, that is, corruption and spoliation 
 combined in an act of the State. And these efforts of 
 legislation, essentially unwise, in direct conflict with fact 
 and economic science, a mere makeshift to stave off agi- 
 tation and trouble, are, in all probability, by no means the 
 worst. Demoralisation has spread throughout Irish landed 
 relations, affecting them, unfortunately, in many ways ; 
 divisions of class have been made worse, as well as the 
 old divisions of race and faith ; respect for contracts and 
 obligations has been destroyed ; dishonesty and thriftless- 
 ness have been favoured, and industry and honesty not en- 
 couraged ; an evil spirit of discontent and desire for change 
 is abroad ; agriculture is plainly on the decline ; there is 
 nothing secure or settled in the land. Vicious as the Irish 
 land system unquestionably was before Mr. Gladstone first 
 took it in hand, I believe that, having regard to the general 
 interests of the State, it is still more vicious at the present 
 time ; it has been transformed, but, on the whole, trans- 
 formed for the worse. As I wrote before, when com- 
 menting on the position of affairs in Ireland, before the 
 Land Act of 1870, a revolution only could have removed 
 the deep-rooted ills in all that related to the land ; a revo- 
 lution alone could remove them now. But in the one 
 instance, as in the other, the evil caused by a revolution 
 would be infinitely greater than the good ; a new agrarian 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 259 
 
 revolution in Ireland would be a curse to her ; it is better, 
 as Burke has remarked, to try to repair even ruins than 
 to blot out every trace of the edifice. Still, taking it as 
 we find it, can nothing be done to amend, in some measure, 
 at least, the existing land system ? Much of it, I admit, 
 must be left untouched ; the principle of settling rent, 
 through the agency of the State, false as it is, must con- 
 tinue to work ; the principle of so-called ' land purchase ' 
 must, within reasonable limits, be still given free scope. 
 But something in the nature of reform is, I think, possible ; 
 the discussion of the subject may be of use ; I contribute 
 my mite to it, if with unfeigned diffidence. 
 
 In order to find out the truth, and thoroughly to clear 
 the ground, a Commission, I suggest, ought to be appointed, 
 as important as the Devon Commission of nearly sixty 
 years ago; it should investigate the Irish Land Question 
 in all its branches. Its President should be a great English 
 nobleman — the nation would have confidence in the Duke 
 of Bedford, a princely and most liberal English landlord ; 
 but the judicial element should be strong in it; English 
 and Irish judges should be among its members ; it should 
 include trained agricultural experts : it should have repre- 
 sentatives of Irish landlords and tenants. It should 
 examine the Irish land system as this existed before 1870; 
 should review the whole series of Irish Land Acts, from 
 1870 to the present time, and inquire into their results and 
 tendencies ; should carefully consider the operation of the 
 tribunals selected to carry out the new Irish land code, 
 especially as regards the fixing of ' fair rents,' and that 
 not with respect to their procedure only, an unjust limit 
 imposed on the Fry Commission, but with respect to the 
 principles that have been adopted and the methods pursued ; 
 it should deal exhaustively with the subject of so-called 
 1 land purchase,' and see whether it has not directly led 
 to the demand for compulsory purchase ; it should take 
 evidence as to ' peasant proprietary ' and its creation ; and 
 
260 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 it should make a complete and searching report, with a 
 view to the legislation it might recommend. And if I am 
 not altogether mistaken, such a Commission would state, 
 in emphatic language, that the present Irish land code was 
 ill designed, even if it cannot be now much changed ; that 
 its administration has been attended with grave errors ; 
 that cruel wrong has been done to Irish landlords, while 
 Irish tenants have not obtained what was hoped for; that 
 the economic and social results have been deplorable ; 
 that if ' land purchase ' cannot be stopped, it is a bad 
 expedient on its present lines, and that the cry for com- 
 pulsory purchase has been its evident effect; and that 
 extensive, still more universal peasant ownership, is an 
 impossible and would be a pernicious policy. Finally, if I 
 am not much mistaken again, such a Commission would 
 report that a reform of the Irish land system, if very 
 difficult, should be attempted ; and that, in its main scope 
 and operation at least, it should be carried out on the side 
 of land tenure, that is, in the relations of landlord and 
 tenant, as has been the opinion of every thinker from 
 Burke onwards, who has not been swayed by the exigencies 
 of agitation, or of party politics. 
 
 I proceed briefly to put my scheme forward, assuming 
 that I have made a reasonably correct forecast. I may 
 say it has been a subject of reflection during many years, 
 indeed, since the legislation of 1881 ; Mr. Gladstone, in 
 his place in the House of Commons, pointedly approved 
 of a tract in which I set forth my views ; and so, curiously 
 enough, did Parnell. It is impossible, I have said, to 
 transform the existing system of Irish land tenure ; a wide 
 departure from it cannot be made ; but improvement is 
 really feasible within certain limits. My object would be 
 to get rid of palpable evils, inseparable from the present 
 state of things ; to make the positions of both Irish land- 
 lords and tenants in some degree better than they now 
 are ; to place the Irish land system on a somewhat less 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 261 
 
 precarious basis. In the first place, the law as to the 
 exemption of tenants' improvements from rent, an excres- 
 cence on the Land Act of 188 1, and made extravagant by the 
 Land Act of 1896, should be restricted in its application 
 to some extent ; as it stands, it is a fruitful cause of in- 
 justice, of demoralisation, and of hard swearing, producing 
 endless litigation to very little purpose ; claims in respect 
 of improvements ought to be more limited, in point of 
 time, than they are ; a check should be placed on obsolete 
 and illusory claims ; this would be advantageous, I think, 
 to all interests involved. Again, it would be impracticable 
 to exclude from the operation of the present land code 
 lands that have been already brought within its scope ; 
 but a more precise definition should be made of the ands 
 that are intended to be now excluded — demesnes, town 
 parks, residential holdings, and large pastoral farms ; the 
 decisions of the Courts, in this province, are very per- 
 plexing ; a good definition would make litigation very 
 considerably less. These changes, I am convinced, would 
 do much appreciable good ; but I would go a long way 
 farther in attempting to make the status of both landlord 
 and tenant in Ireland less insecure and vexatious than it 
 now is. In the first place, leaving lands now excluded 
 out, I would make all agricultural and pastoral Irish 
 tenants entitled to the tenure of the ' Three F's,' removing 
 the prohibition as to ' future tenants,' a distinction that 
 never ought to have been made, and, as far as possible, 
 securing this mode of tenure to the poorest tenants, by 
 means to which I shall advert afterwards. In the next 
 place, I would make an earnest effort to lessen the ruinous 
 litigation and the instability caused by the statutory leases 
 renewable at short intervals of time. The tenant should 
 have ' fixity of tenure ' in a real sense ; the estate created 
 in his favour against the landlord ought not to be one of 
 fifteen years only, however indefinitely it may be extended ; 
 I would prefer to see it an estate for ever ; but, as in the 
 
262 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 present state of agriculture, there would be objections to 
 this, on account of the uncertainty of the rate of rent, it 
 might be an estate for a limited term. But the term ought 
 not to be less than thirty years at least, renewable, of 
 course, like the shorter term of fifteen ; this would quiet 
 possession and get rid of lawsuits for the period of a 
 generation of men. The tenant should retain his right of 
 1 free sale ; ' but I would make the conditions less stringent 
 than they are under the existing law. 
 
 The position of the Irish tenant would thus be greatly 
 improved ; the sphere of the ' Three F's ' would be largely 
 extended ; he would have ' fixity of tenure,' for a long 
 time, at least, without the hazard and loss of litigation 
 every fifteen years ; his right of ' free sale ' would be less 
 restricted ; and he would have distinct advantages, as 
 respects ' fair rent,' under the part of my plan I am about 
 to explain. I turn to the position of the Irish ( landlord ' 
 — I still use this expression and that of 'tenant,' though 
 both words are hardly applicable to existing facts ; this, 
 too, in my judgment, would be made much better. The 
 estate that is now created against him would still be pre- 
 served ; I wish it were a perpetual estate, but it would be 
 one for thirty years at least ; he would, therefore, remain 
 assimilated to a rent-charger, as he is at present. But 
 like his tenant he would be comparatively free from law- 
 suits ; he would be less harassed by claims in respect of 
 improvements ; he would have, in many particulars, a 
 more stable tenure. He should, of course, retain the 
 ' royalties ' still reserved to him — mines, minerals, timber, 
 and such things ; and he should have the title to the 
 statutory conditions he now has ; but as his reversionary 
 rights would be somewhat lessened, he should be compen- 
 sated for these by a small money payment. With one 
 great exception he should have the legal remedies to 
 enforce the rights he now possesses ; and that exception 
 would be of great importance. I have always thought the 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 263 
 
 law of ejectment for non-payment of rent harsh ; it is an 
 innovation on the ancient Common Law ; it sometimes 
 causes forfeitures far from just ; it is not properly applic- 
 able to tenancies of long duration. I would certainly 
 abolish this mode of procedure ; I would instead of it give 
 the landlord a power to sell the tenant's lands, by a pro- 
 cedure analogous to that of bankruptcy, should default be 
 made in the payment of the rent, or rather the rent-charge 
 that might be due. The advantage to both landlord and 
 tenant would be great : the first would have a remedy 
 more expeditious and just than he has ; the second, should 
 the land be sold and lost to him, would, as a rule, have 
 a surplus over and above his debts ; unlike what is some- 
 times the case in evictions, he would realise for himself 
 his whole legitimate interest in the land. This single 
 reform would do much to make ' fair rent ' a less onerous 
 charge than it now is. 
 
 By these means the status of the Irish landlord would 
 be made by many degrees more secure ; the Irish tenant 
 would acquire an interest in the land much more durable 
 and stable than he has now, in fact, nearly equivalent to 
 full ownership, subject to a rent-charge ; and if his interest 
 were made a perpetuity, as I hope would be the case at 
 last, he would be assimilated to an owner subject to a 
 perpetual rent, or to an English copyholder subject to a 
 similar render. This is the position Burke proposed he 
 should have, considerably more than a century ago ; * it 
 
 * I quote these remarks of Burke, a striking instance of his political 
 wisdom (' Tracts on the Popery Laws,' vol. ii. p. 446) : ' It is on this 
 principle (to get rid of short and unprofitable tenures) that the Romans 
 established their emphyteusis, or fee-farm. For though they extended 
 the ordinary term of their creation to nine years only, yet they encour- 
 aged a more permanent letting to farm, with the condition of improve- 
 ment, as well as of annual payment where the land had lain rough 
 and neglected.' So John Stuart Mill (' Irish Land Question,' p. 31, 
 ed. 1870) : ' The idea of property does not, however, necessarily imply 
 that there should be no rent, any more than that there should be no 
 
264 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 is that which has been advocated by John Stuart Mill, 
 and, I am happy to add, by Mr. John Morley ; it is the 
 only position, compatible with common sense and justice, 
 which the new Irish land code has left possible, for I put 
 the quackery of compulsory purchase out of sight, and 
 voluntary purchase is a bad half-measure. The great 
 subject of fixing rent by the State would remain ; for, un- 
 justifiable as this expedient is, it is impossible, after what 
 has happened, to dispense with it. Without imputing 
 personal motives or moral blame to any one, the Land 
 Commission and its Sub-Commissions ought, I am con- 
 vinced, to cease to be the agency to fix ' fair rents ; ' how- 
 ever unconsciously, in my judgment, they have often 
 proceeded on false principles, and have done immense, 
 if not wilful wrong ; they are decried by landlords and 
 tenants alike in Ireland. Besides, there is a constitu- 
 tional objection to their adjusting rent ; the Land Com- 
 mission is entrusted with the task of carrying out ' land 
 purchase ; ' it has a direct inducement to whittle rents 
 away, in order to facilitate the sale of land ; its interest 
 and its duty are thus placed in conflict. Be this as it 
 may, my plan for fixing ' fair rents ' in Ireland by the 
 State would be altogether different. In the first place, a 
 definition of ' fair rent ' should be made by statute, and 
 should dominate, so to speak, the subject ; the omission 
 of this criterion has caused grave injustice. This having 
 been made, I would adjust Irish rents by a method much 
 better, I believe, than that now in existence. A body of 
 competent and well-paid valuers of land should be formed 
 
 taxes. It merely implies that the rent should be a fixed charge, not 
 liable to be raised against the farmer by his own improvements, or by 
 the will of a landlord. A tenant at a quit rent is, to all intents and 
 purposes, a proprietor ; a copyholder is not less so than a freeholder. 
 What is wanted is permanent possession on fixed terms.' Mr. Morley 
 said not long ago, in his place in Parliament, that, as things now stand 
 in Ireland, the landlord must become a rent-charger and the tenant a 
 copyholder, a true utterance. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 265 
 
 — there would be no difficulty about this in Ireland ; these 
 men should visit, when required, estates ; and having heard 
 what landlords and tenants had to say on the spot, should 
 declare what they consider the ' fair rents ' of farms, making 
 a deduction for improvements as arranged by a reformed 
 law, and taking waste and deterioration into account. 
 The reports made by the valuers should be complete and 
 explicit ; they would probably satisfy landlords and 
 tenants in most instances ; but dissatisfied persons should 
 have a right to an appeal, which should be a full rehearing 
 of all the facts in issue ; but the appeal should be at the 
 peril of costs against unsuccessful suitors. The tribunals 
 to decide the appeals should, I suggest, be composed of 
 two eminent judges, for each of the four provinces, assisted 
 by trained agricultural experts ; but the authority of the 
 judges should prevail on all questions. From these Courts 
 a further appeal should run to the Court of Appeal in 
 Ireland, on all matters of law and fact, and ultimately 
 should run to the House of Lords ; the present restricted 
 appeal to the Land Commission has been little better than 
 a sorry mockery of right. 
 
 The scheme I propose has obvious defects ; it sanctions 
 the vicious principle of State-settled rents, a thing un- 
 known in lands outside of Ireland, a defiance of the 
 simplest axioms of economic science. But it endeavours 
 at least to improve a bad system of tenure dealing with 
 accomplished facts now beyond recall ; I certainly think 
 it would make the relations of Irish landlords and tenants 
 better than they are, and would tend to place both classes 
 in the positions which, as affairs now stand, they will 
 probably, in the long run, occupy. As regards 'alternative 
 policies,' as they have been called, I have set forth the 
 reasons that the compulsory purchase of the Irish land 
 would be, I believe, impossible, and, were it possible, 
 would be a confiscation of the foullest kind, ruinous to 
 Great Britain and Ireland alike. I have also shown how 
 
266 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 the present system of so-styled 'voluntary purchase' is, 
 in my judgment, essentially immoral, and pregnant with 
 dangers ; and I have indicated the results being already 
 produced. That system, however, must go on ; for the 
 present it cannot be arrested ; a Conservative Government 
 still pins its faith on it, as a Whig Government, half a 
 century ago, pinned its faith on the Encumbered Estates 
 Act ; but a ' peasant proprietary ' rooted in corruption will 
 hardly succeed, and ' voluntary purchase ' draws the worst 
 kind of distinctions in Irish land tenure. The acceleration, 
 indeed, of this 'remedy' has been deemed advisable; and 
 as long as the sum voted by Parliament is not expended, 
 the system evidently must continue in force. Some of its 
 evils, however, would be lessened were the State to reserve 
 to itself the woodland, which tenant ' purchasers,' as a rule, 
 cut down and sell ; and if tenants proved to be solvent 
 were compelled to advance part of the money required to 
 transfer their lands to themselves. It is revolting to my 
 mind to see a wealthy Irish farmer bribed into the owner- 
 ship of his farm by an Act of the State, without having paid 
 a shilling of the price. I commend this spectacle to the 
 hard-pressed general taxpayer. 
 
 I need hardly say that, under the scheme I propose, 
 existing interests of tenants should remain intact, and 
 statutory leases should be allowed to come to an end, 
 before a change should be made by law in the position 
 they hold. The question of compensating the Irish land- 
 lords would remain ; a very few words on this will suffice. 
 I must remind the reader, as I have already shown, that 
 the Land Act of 1881 was passed on the condition that, 
 should experience prove that real injury had been done to 
 this order of men, their right to indemnity would be plain ; 
 Mr. Gladstone's language was unequivocal ; the House of 
 Commons approved. Nor can any reasonable doubt exist 
 that the course of legislation from 1881 to 1896 has con- 
 fiscated the property of the class to an immense extent ; 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 267 
 
 the simple fact that the value in Ireland of the fee simple 
 in land has been reduced by a third at least, and that the 
 value of the tenant right has been increased in about the 
 same proportion, points to a conclusion evident to im- 
 partial minds. I am satisfied as to what would be the 
 report on this subject of the Commission I should wish to 
 see appointed ; it could not avoid drawing an inference that 
 cannot be resisted. The question, therefore, will have to 
 be faced ; the good faith of Parliament is virtually at stake ; 
 and if a pledge made in the name of the State is not to 
 be broken, the right of the Irish landlords to compensation 
 is complete. Independently, too, of considerations of this 
 kind, it is a recognised principle that should a policy have 
 caused loss to a class, the State is morally bound to make 
 the loss up ; a violation of this principle is unjust and 
 dangerous alike. I quote from John Stuart Mill on this 
 very question : ' The principle of property gives the land- 
 owners no right to the land, but only a right to compensa- 
 tion for whatever portion of their interest in the land it 
 may be the policy of the State to deprive them of. To 
 that their claim is indefeasible. It is due to landowners 
 and to owners of any property whatever, recognised as 
 such by the State, that they should not be dispossessed 
 of it without receiving its pecuniary value, or an annual 
 income equal to what they have derived from it. If the 
 land was bought with the produce of the labour of them- 
 selves or their ancestors, compensation is due to them on 
 that ground ; even if otherwise, it is still due on the ground 
 of prescription. Nor can it ever be necessary for accom- 
 plishing an object by which the community altogether will 
 gain, that a particular portion of the community should be 
 immolated. When the property is of a kind to which 
 peculiar affections attach themselves, the compensation 
 ought to exceed a bare pecuniary equivalent. . . . The 
 legislature, which, if it pleased, might convert the whole 
 body of landlords into fundholders or pensioners, might, 
 
268 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 a fortiori, commute the average receipts of Irish land- 
 owners into a fixed rent-charge, and raise the tenants into 
 proprietors ; supposing always that the full market value 
 of the land was tendered to the landlords, in case they 
 preferred that to accepting the conditions proposed.' * 
 
 Assuming, then, the case for compensating the Irish 
 landlords to have been made out, compensation can be 
 afforded without the loss of a shilling to the State. The 
 bond fide encumbrances on their estates, that is, those 
 which represent advances in cash, are now at an interest 
 of from 4 to 5 per cent. ; the State could pay off those 
 which were perfectly secure at an interest of 2\ per cent., 
 and could make the landlords chargeable with interest at 
 3 per cent., in order to provide against possible loss. As 
 for encumbrances that were not perfectly secure, the State 
 should only pay off what was well charged ; but it should 
 do this on the same conditions ; and it should declare 
 hopeless encumbrances extinct. This would be a con- 
 siderable and just boon to the Irish landlords ; the 
 
 * ' Principles of Political Economy,' book ii. chap. ii. p. 6. I may 
 refer, too, to these pregnant remarks of Bentham (' Theory of Legis- 
 lation,' chap, xv.) : ' The principle of security requires that reform 
 should be attended with complete indemnity. ... I cannot yet quit 
 the subject, for the establishment of the principle of security demands 
 that error should be pursued in all its retreats. . . . The interest of 
 individuals, it is said, ought to yield to the public interest ; but what 
 does that mean? Is not one individual as much a part of the public 
 as another? The public interest which you introduce as a person is 
 only an abstract term ; it represents nothing but the mass of individual 
 interests. . . . Individual interests are the only real interests. Take 
 care of the individuals ; never molest them, never suffer any one to 
 molest them, and you will have done enough for the public. ... I 
 shall conclude by a general observation of great importance. The 
 more the principle of property is respected, the stronger hold it takes 
 on the popular mind. Slight attacks on this principle prepare the way 
 for heavier ones. A long time has been necessary to carry property 
 to the point where we now see it in civilised societies ; but a fatal 
 experience has shown with what facility it may be shaken, and how 
 easily the savage instinct of plunder gets the better of the laws.' 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE IRISH LAND 269 
 
 securities taken by the State should be in the form of 
 debentures, which would pass from hand to hand in the 
 market ; and many owners of encumbrances would no 
 doubt accept sums less than their full demands, for these, 
 they well know, are at present in danger. I would go, 
 however, farther in relieving the Irish landlords ; their 
 estates are subject to a mass of family charges created 
 under a different order of things ; if the State has 
 arbitrarily cut down the fund set apart for these, by a 
 wholesale reduction of rents, I cannot understand how it 
 is not the simplest justice to cut the charges down in 
 some fair proportion. At all events, I make these sugges- 
 tions for what they may be worth ; if right is to be done 
 to the Irish landed gentry, and a gross breach of public 
 faith is not to be made, some relief of this kind should be 
 extended to them. Very possibly this will not be afforded ; 
 but I venture to remind politicians that even an unpopular 
 class cannot be cruelly wronged and sacrificed, without 
 doing injury to all classes, and shaking to their foundations 
 the clear rights of property. And I openly avow that, in 
 my judgment, it would be in the highest degree against 
 the national interest to annihilate this body of men, as 
 must probably happen, should things in Ireland be left as 
 they are. What if they are the heirs of conquest and 
 confiscation in the past ? Is that a reason for destroying 
 them after the lapse of centuries, and when England 
 planted them in the land to be her mainstay ? What if, 
 in instances, comparatively few in the extreme, they have 
 abused the social trust imposed on them ? Was not this 
 because the opportunity was given by law, and was not 
 the law the work of successive Parliaments? Is it not 
 a fact that British ministers, so to speak, of yesterday, 
 declared that they were secure in their proprietary rights ; 
 and that Mr. Gladstone solemnly acquitted them of what 
 had been laid to their charge ? On the other hand, have 
 they not been for ages the staunchest friends of England 
 
270 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 in Irish affairs, especially in troubled and perilous times ? 
 Is it for nothing that they have been called the British 
 garrison by her foes, the strongest obstacle to rebellion 
 and treason ? And is a class, which has, on the whole, 
 been a civilising influence, for many years, in Ireland, and 
 which has given the State far more than a due proportion 
 of worthies — warriors, orators, statesmen, thinkers, men of 
 eminence in all the arts of life — to be sacrificed at the 
 bidding of a conspiracy bent on subverting British rule in 
 Ireland, or in deference to false and perilous theories ? 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE QUESTION OF THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS 
 BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND 
 
 The subject briefly considered — Financial position of Ireland before 
 1782, and under Grattan's Parliament — Her taxation and debt 
 small before 1798 — Ireland financially a distinct country — At the 
 Union, Pitt wished to ' assimilate her in finance ' with Great 
 Britain, but this impossible, and why — Ireland's contribution after 
 the Union — This was unjust, but it left her financially a distinct 
 country — Ireland made nearly bankrupt — The compromise of 
 1816 — The Irish Exchequer closed, and the Irish and British 
 debts consolidated — The object of the compromise was rather to 
 relieve Ireland from her burdens than to assimilate her in finance 
 with Great Britain — She still remained for many years financially 
 distinct from Great Britain, and is so still to some extent — The 
 conduct of Peel a striking proof of this — Mr. Gladstone imposes 
 the income tax on Ireland, and her spirit duties are largely raised 
 — Injustice of this policy — The Committee of 1863-64 — Ireland 
 does not obtain financial justice — The Report of the Childers 
 Commission made upon a reference by Mr. Gladstone following 
 Mr. Goschen — The Commission declares that Ireland has been 
 greatly overtaxed for many years — Evidence on which it has 
 founded this conclusion — Examination of arguments to the con- 
 trary — Another Commission promised, but the promise not fulfilled 
 — Importance of settling this question. 
 
 The financial relations between Great Britain and 
 Ireland have been a subject, at intervals of time, no 
 doubt, of strong controversy during a whole century. I 
 shall not harp on the saying of Johnson to an Irish friend, 
 ' Avoid a Union with England, she will only rob you ; ' 
 but, in the opinion of well-informed Irishmen, the fiscal 
 
 271 
 
272 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 treatment of Ireland, since 1 800-01, strikingly illustrates 
 the significant remark of Burke, ' When any community is 
 subordinately connected with another, the great danger of 
 the connection is, the extreme pride and self-complacency 
 of the superior, which, in all matters of controversy, will 
 probably decide in its own favour.' There is no reason 
 to impeach the good faith of Pitt and Castlereagh ; but 
 the financial arrangements they made for Ireland, when 
 the Union became law, were denounced by the most 
 distinguished Irishmen of the day ; these imposed on 
 Ireland an overwhelming burden, and, in fact, reduced her 
 to the very edge of bankruptcy. A compromise was 
 effected in 1816-17 ; this has been described as a generous 
 boon to Ireland ; but it was at best a slight relief from 
 injustice ; and it weakened securities she had against 
 fiscal exaction, while it involved her in liabilities which, if 
 remote, were not the less possible. It is a most significant 
 fact that Peel, who, as Chief Secretary from 18 12 to 181 8, 
 was familiar with the economic state of Ireland, refused, 
 though under the strongest inducements, to apply to 
 Ireland the fiscal charges extended to her by one of his 
 brilliant successors ; the most sagacious financier of the 
 nineteenth century played, in this matter, a very different 
 part from the most impulsive and not the least unscrupulous. 
 In 1853, and from thence in other years, Mr. Gladstone, in 
 order to carry out a policy distinctly opposed to many 
 Irish interests, subjected Ireland to a sudden and heavy 
 load of taxation, exactly at the time when, for the plainest 
 reasons, she ought to have been exempted from it ; from 
 that day to this, Irishmen, who understand the question, 
 are agreed that this was gross, nay, cruel, injustice. The 
 whole subject of British and Irish financial relations was 
 sent by Mr. Gladstone to a Commission in 1893, here 
 following the example of Mr. Goschen ; a careful inquiry 
 was held during many months ; the Report of the Com- 
 mission was startling and important in the extreme. This 
 
THE QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 273 
 
 tribunal, mainly composed of eminent English experts, 
 announced, and that almost with one voice, that Ireland 
 was being enormously overtaxed, and had been for upwards 
 of forty years ; and it plainly intimated that a remedy for 
 this wrong should be found. No real answer has been 
 made to this remarkable judgment ; the attempts at answers 
 that have been made are nearly all mere trifling ; Lord 
 Salisbury's Government evidently believes that an answer 
 is not possible ; it promised to appoint another Commission 
 to investigate certain parts of the subject ; years have 
 passed, and it has not performed its promise. Meanwhile, 
 even amidst the hurly-burly of Irish politics, Irishmen of 
 all parties have united in a demand for redress ; and if 
 the demand is not pressed with extreme vehemence, 
 it is sustained by all that is best in Irish opinion. It is 
 obviously unwise, and it may become dangerous, to 
 continue to ignore such a claim ; in any event the finan- 
 cial relations of the Three Kingdoms are not the least 
 important of ' Present Irish Questions ; ' I shall briefly 
 examine it in this chapter. 
 
 It is unnecessary to dwell on the financial relations of 
 Great Britain and Ireland before 1782 and the Union. 
 England held the position of an absolutely dominant State 
 before 1782, Ireland that of a conquered and despised 
 colony; Ireland was under the control of the British Parlia- 
 ment, and was governed by English officials supreme at the 
 Castle. Ireland was excluded from the foreign and colonial 
 trade of Great Britain ; her agriculture and manufactures 
 were half destroyed by the selfish jealousy and greed of her 
 imperious neighbour. She contributed, on the other hand, 
 nothing to the treasury of the ruling power ; she had 
 little or no part in British wars, or in building up the 
 edifice of the Empire, except through her soldiers in 
 the British army ; she was free from British debt and 
 from British taxation. In these circumstances, grievous 
 as was the incubus of Protestant ascendency upon the 
 
 T 
 
274 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 land, it is remarkable what material progress she made ; 
 her Parliament, though little more than a local vestry, 
 unquestionably promoted her material welfare ; she was 
 very lightly taxed, and was free from debt for many years. 
 She was still so completely distinct from Great Britain, 
 that it was not until 1769 that her Parliament agreed that 
 15,000 men, of whom 12,000 were to remain in Ireland, 
 should be enrolled for the defence of the State ; before 
 that time, she was only obliged to maintain a small British 
 force within her borders. After a partial relaxation of 
 the restraints on her commerce caused by the stress of the 
 American War, and by the famous volunteer movement, 
 Ireland obtained legislative independence in 1782 ; she 
 ceased to be subject to the British Parliament, and to fill 
 the position of a degraded colony ; she became, in theory 
 at least, an independent State in many respects. Her 
 Parliament was all but sovereign in name ; Ireland was 
 now united to Great Britain only by the link of the Crown ; 
 by an executive always despatched from Downing Street ; 
 and, it must be added, by the corruption of her Houses of 
 Lords and Commons. She was thus more than ever a 
 distinct country ; in fact, most British statesmen had soon 
 perceived that the celebrated settlement of 1782 greatly 
 weakened her old connection with England. She advanced, 
 however, markedly in prosperity for many years, until the 
 French Revolution arrested this ; her debt was little more 
 than £2,000,000 for a long time, her taxation only about 
 £1,000,000. But by the close of the eighteenth century 
 these figures had been disastrously changed ; her debt 
 had risen to upwards of £28,000,000, her taxation to about 
 £2,500,000. This great increase had been partly caused 
 by the costly expenditure of her transformed Parliament, 
 which had spent considerable sums on public works, and 
 on economic experiments of different kinds ; but five-sixths 
 of it was probably caused by the enormous charge incurred 
 by the Rebellion of 1798 — one of the most woeful tragedies 
 
THE QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 275 
 
 of Irish history — and by the suppression of that ill-starred 
 movement* 
 
 The Rebellion led at once to the Union ; it precipitated 
 what had perhaps become a necessity of State. The great 
 measure of Pitt was badly designed, and was, moreover, 
 tainted by a grave breach of faith ; it was only what was 
 called a ' Protestant Union,' that is, it rested upon false 
 and narrow foundations ; it deceived Catholic Ireland, and 
 did her gross wrong ; above all, it did not effect its main 
 object, and incorporate the lesser with the more powerful 
 country. It left Ireland, hitherto completely distinct, still, 
 to a very considerable extent, a distinct State ; she retained 
 a separate Government and Administration, separate 
 Courts of Justice, a separate Exchequer for many years ; 
 this shadow of separation, as Foster, one of her ablest 
 worthies, foretold, would give a demand for separation 
 substance.f The financial arrangements between Great 
 Britain and Ireland were practically altogether the work 
 of Pitt. A disciple of Adam Smith, the minister's wish 
 was to ' assimilate the two countries in finance ; ' to place 
 both under the same fiscal system, to make taxation in 
 both uniform. But in 1800, the National Debt of Great 
 Britain was more than ^"446,000,000, and her taxation was 
 
 * For the constitutional position of the British and Irish Parlia- 
 ments before the Union, see Hallam's ' Constitutional History,' vol. 
 iii., chapter on Ireland, and Ball's ' Legislative Irish System,' chaps, 
 v., xv. See also Lecky's ' History of England in the Eighteenth Cen- 
 tury,' vol. ii. chap. vii. ; vol. iv. chaps, xvi., xvii. As to the financial 
 position of the two countries, see the opening pages of each of the 
 Reports of the Childers Commission. 
 
 f Grattan described this vicious state of things in his inimitable 
 style (' Speeches,' p. 258, ed. published by Duffy) : ' The Union is not 
 an identification of the two nations ; it is merely a merger of the 
 parliament of one nation in that of another. . . . There is no identifi- 
 cation in anything save in legislature, in which there is complete and 
 absolute absorption. It follows that the two nations are not identified, 
 though the Irish legislature be absorbed, and by that act of absorp- 
 tion the feeling of one of the nations is not identified, but alienated. 
 The petitions on our table bespeak that alienation.' 
 
276 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 about £3 a head ; the National Debt of Ireland, we have 
 seen, was some £28,000,000, and her taxation by the head 
 not more than 10s. ; this immense inequality made 'assimi- 
 lation in finance ' impossible. Besides, Pitt, as a matter 
 of course, knew that Great Britain was a very rich 
 country, and Ireland perhaps the poorest in Europe ; 
 he was too great a financier to accept the false and shallow 
 theory that, as between two communities wholly unequal 
 in wealth, equal taxes were really equal burdens, and could 
 be just; he had emphatically remarked in 1785, when his 
 celebrated ' Commercial Propositions ' were opposed by the 
 selfish monopolies of British commerce, ' If one country 
 exceeded another in wealth, population, and established 
 commerce in a proportion of two to one, he was nearly 
 convinced that that country would be able to bear near 
 ten times the burden that the other would be equal to.' * 
 It had become necessary, therefore, at the time of the 
 Union, to place the financial relations between Great 
 Britain and Ireland on a basis that had nothing in 
 common with uniformity of taxation, and a common 
 fiscal system ; ' assimilation in finance ' was for the present 
 to be indefinitely postponed. 
 
 The financial settlement made at the Union distinctly 
 embodied these principles, and was carried by Castlereagh 
 through the Irish Parliament, by what methods history 
 records with shame. Like Pitt, the Chief Secretary 
 looked forward to a time when Great Britain and Ireland 
 might be under the same fiscal system ; but at this juncture, 
 this consummation was, he acknowledged, hopeless. 
 Ireland was, financially, to remain a separate country ; 
 she was to have a separate exchequer and separate taxes ; 
 her National Debt was to be kept distinct from that of 
 Great Britain. She was to furnish only a contribution 
 to the State ; and Castlereagh declared, over and over 
 again, that this contribution was to be only in proportion 
 * Report of the Childers Commission, p. 20. 
 
7W.fi: QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 277 
 
 to her means, and that in no event was she to be unduly 
 taxed. 'The great point to be ascertained is the best 
 criterion that can be found of the relative means of the 
 two countries, in order to fix the relative proportions of 
 their contributions. ... As to the future, it is expected 
 that the two countries will move forward together, and 
 unite with regard to their expenses in the measure of 
 their relative abilities.' By a comparison made between 
 British and Irish imports and exports, and between the 
 values of certain commodities, Castlereagh came to the 
 conclusion that the contributions which Great Britain and 
 Ireland ought to be expected to make for the general sup- 
 port and administration of the State, should be, respec- 
 tively, fifteen- and two-seventeenths, that is, Great Britain 
 was to pay about 88 per cent, and Ireland about 12 per 
 cent, of the sum total. This proportion was to be made 
 liable to revision at the end of twenty years ; for this pro- 
 vision, Castlereagh remarked, gave ' Ireland the utmost 
 possible security that she cannot be taxed beyond the 
 measure of her comparative ability, and that the ratio of 
 her contributions must ever correspond with her relative 
 wealth and prosperity ; ' and then followed arrangements 
 which undoubtedly had the ' assimilation of Great Britain 
 and Ireland in finance ' remotely in view ; but subject to 
 limitations that would preserve for Ireland her fiscal rights, 
 and would secure her from taxation beyond her means, 
 and unjust. It was proposed that if, at some future time, 
 the debts of both countries should be discharged, or if their 
 debts and their contributions were in the same proportion, 
 Great Britain and Ireland might be ' assimilated in finance,' 
 and placed under the same fiscal system ; but this was to 
 be on two express conditions, that the circumstances of 
 the two countries should admit of this change, and that, in 
 any case, should the change be made, Ireland — as was 
 the case of Scotland when her Union took place — should 
 have the benefit of such ' exemptions and abatements ' of 
 
278 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 taxation as might be deemed proper, and the circum- 
 stances of the situation might allow. The meaning of 
 the technical words, ' exemptions and abatements,' inter- 
 preted of late years in a pettifogging sense, was fully 
 recognised at the time, and for a long subsequent period, 
 indeed, has been recognised to this day by most of our 
 leading statesmen, namely, that Ireland was not to be 
 taxed unfairly or beyond her resources, as Castlereagh had 
 repeatedly promised.* 
 
 The Opposition in the Irish Parliament had many able 
 lawyers — the names of Saurin, of Plunket, of Bushe are 
 still known to fame ; it is to be regretted, perhaps, that 
 these powerful minds did not examine with more jealousy 
 the conditions under which Great Britain and Ireland 
 might be 'assimilated in finance,' distant as the contingency 
 appeared to be ; did not criticise more sharply words that 
 might be wrested from their accepted sense ; and trusted 
 too much to Castlereagh's phrases. But the attention of 
 the Opposition was rather directed to the Union in its 
 political than in its financial aspect ; it rather denounced 
 
 * I transcribe this part of the seventh article of the Treaty of Union ; 
 I believe that I have fairly described its purport (Report of Childers 
 Commission, p. 140) : 'That if at any future day the separate debt of 
 each country respectively shall have been liquidated, or if the values 
 of their respective debts . . . shall be to each other in the same pro- 
 portion with the respective contributions of each country respectively. 
 . . . And if it shall appear to the Parliament of the United Kingdom 
 that the respective circumstances of the two countries will thenceforth 
 admit of their contributing indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed 
 on the same articles in each, to the future expenditure of the United 
 Kingdom to declare that all future expense thenceforth to be incurred, 
 together with the interest and charges of all joint debts contracted 
 previous to such declaration, shall be so defrayed indiscriminately by 
 equal taxes imposed on the same articles in each country, and thence- 
 forth from time to time, as circumstances may require, to impose and 
 apply such taxes accordingly, subject only to such particular exemp- 
 tions or abatements in Ireland, and in that part of Great Britain 
 called Scotland, as circumstances may appear, from time to time, to 
 demand.' 
 
THE QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 279 
 
 the attempt to destroy the settlement of 1782 than 
 scrutinised the terms of the fiscal system to be imposed 
 on Ireland, at least, as these were concerned with the future. 
 The arrangements, nevertheless, by which Ireland was to 
 make the contribution of the two-seventeenths were fiercely 
 assailed in both the Houses in College Green ; Foster 
 described the calculations of Pitt and Castlereagh as 
 utterly false, and declared that the charge to be borne by 
 Ireland was much too large ; Grattan echoed this opinion 
 in characteristic language : ' Though I do not think the 
 means of this country are unequal to any necessary 
 expense, yet I do think they are inadequate to that 
 contributory expense which the Union stipulates. . . . 
 The attempt will exhaust the country, at the same time 
 that it enslaves her. Colour it as you please, Ireland will 
 pay more than she is able. Considering these the terms 
 of the Union so far as they relate to revenue, they amount 
 to a continuation of the double establishment, an increase 
 of the separate establishment, and a military government, 
 with a prospect of soon succeeding to the full taxes of 
 England.' * The Opposition, too, in the Irish House of 
 Commons loudly protested: 'Your Majesty's faithful 
 Commons are satisfied that this calculation is extremely 
 erroneous; and that on a just and fair inquiry into the 
 comparative means of each country, the Kingdom ought 
 not, and is not able to contribute anything like that 
 proportion.' t And twenty Irish peers placed this emphatic 
 protest on record ; I have space for a few sentences only : 
 1 Under such circumstances, it appears to us that if this 
 Kingdom should take upon herself irrevocably the payment 
 of two-seventeenths of these expenses, she will not have 
 means to perform her engagements unless by charging her 
 landed property with \2s. or 13^. in the pound; it must 
 
 * Grattan's speeches, quoted in a memorandum supplied to the 
 Childers Commission by Sir Edward Hamilton, p. 9. 
 f ' Minutes of Evidence,' Childers Commission, vol. i. p. 329. 
 
280 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 end in the draining from her her last guinea, in totally 
 annihilating her trade for want of capital, in rendering the 
 taxes unproductive, and consequently in finally putting 
 her in a state of bankruptcy. We think ourselves called 
 upon to protest against a measure so ruinous to our 
 country, and to place the responsibility of its consequences 
 upon such persons as have brought it forward and 
 supported it.' * 
 
 The Treaty of Union left Ireland, financially, still a 
 separate country, paying a fixed contribution for the uses 
 of the State. The great war with France soon broke out 
 again ; England was involved with Napoleon in a life-and- 
 death struggle ; her fiscal resources were strained to the 
 utmost ; her expenditure became prodigious for a series of 
 years. In these circumstances, the debt of Ireland rose 
 from £28,000,000 to upwards of £112,000,000; and her 
 taxation from about £2,500,000 to about £4,500,000 ; while 
 the debt of Great Britain advanced from some £446,000,000 
 to some £737,000,000, and her taxation from some 
 £24,000,000 to £54,000,000 ; the taxation of Ireland being 
 by the head about £1 in 18 16, that of Great Britain being 
 about £5, the figures sixteen years before being 10s. and 
 £3. The immense increase in the debt of Ireland, much 
 greater in proportion than that of Great Britain, was 
 certainly due to a large extent to the fact — and this was 
 frankly admitted by Grattan — that the poorer country 
 could not keep pace with the richer in the gigantic charges 
 of the war ; the case, it has justly been remarked, may be 
 compared to a case of this kind : ' If one man, A, who has 
 been living at the rate of £100 per annum, arranges to 
 keep house with another man, B, who has for some time 
 been living at the rate of £700 per annum, and to spend 
 £1 for every £7 which B spends, then so long as B continues 
 to live at the same rate as before, the expenses of A will 
 not be increased. But if B begins to live at the rate of 
 * Memorandum of Sir Edward Hamilton, p. 9. 
 
THE QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 281 
 
 ,£2100 a year, A will have to spend £300 a year, and if his 
 means are not sufficient for this, he must become bankrupt.'* 
 Allowing, nevertheless, for all this, it is not the less certain 
 that the calculations of Pitt and Castlereagh were utterly 
 falsified by the event, and that the warnings of Foster, 
 Grattan, and other well-informed Irishmen, besides the 
 protests made in the Irish Parliament, were verified to the 
 fullest extent ; as has been remarked by a distinguished 
 English expert, 'The calculations of Mr. Pitt and Lord 
 Castlereagh, the ministers who promoted the Union, and 
 who declared that Ireland would be able to pay, and ought 
 to pay, two-seventeenths of the joint expenses of the United 
 Kingdom, turned out to be mistaken, and the opinions of 
 Mr. Grattan, Mr. Foster, and other Irish members, who 
 denied that she would be able to contribute so large a 
 proportion, are proved by the event to have been well 
 founded.' \ 
 
 This contrast, it is hardly necessary to say, to persons 
 acquainted with Irish history, is only one of the innumer- 
 able proofs of the ignorance of Ireland too common to 
 British statesmen, and of their too common disregard of 
 the best Irish opinion. In 1815-16, at the close of the 
 war, Ireland was financially in a bankrupt condition ; she 
 could not pay the interest on her debt ; she could not 
 bear the weight of further taxation ; she was exhausted 
 and sucked dry by fiscal injustice. Her social state, too, 
 had become very alarming ; her population had rapidly 
 increased, and, mainly depending on the frail potato, was 
 already becoming an incubus on the land ; the collapse 
 of the high war prices had caused a sudden fall in rents 
 and the wages of labour ; there was general distress in 
 several counties, and Whiteboy and agrarian disorder 
 widely prevailed. The financial position of Ireland was 
 necessarily taken up by Parliament ; a Committee of the 
 House of Commons was selected to report upon it. By 
 
 * Report of the Childers Commission, p. 143. f Ibid., p. 32. 
 
282 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 this time one of the contingencies had taken place for the 
 possible ' assimilation in finance ' with Great Britain of 
 the much weaker country ; the contribution of Ireland, 
 compared with her debt, was even in less proportion than 
 the contribution of Great Britain to her own ; she had 
 been left far behind in the effort to pay her way. In this 
 position of affairs the Committee made its report, after a 
 long and careful examination of the case ; the House of 
 Commons passed these resolutions in May, 1816: 'That 
 it is the opinion of this Committee that the values of the 
 respective debts of Great Britain and Ireland, estimated 
 according to the provisions of the Acts of Union, have been, 
 at a period subsequent to these Acts, in the same pro- 
 portion to each other (within one-hundredth part of the 
 said value), with the respective contributions of each 
 country respectively, towards the annual expenditure of 
 the United Kingdom ; and that the respective circum- 
 stances of the two countries will henceforth admit of their 
 contributing indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed upon 
 the same articles upon each, to the future expenditure 
 of the United Kingdom ; subject only to such particular 
 exemptions and abatements in Ireland and in Scotland 
 as circumstances may appear from time to time to demand ; 
 and that it is no longer necessary to regulate the contribu- 
 tion of the two countries according to any specific pro- 
 portion, or according to the rules prescribed by the Acts 
 of Union, with respect to such proportions. That it is the 
 opinion of this Committee, that it is expedient that all 
 expenses henceforth to be incurred, together with the 
 interest and charges of all debts hitherto contracted, shall 
 be so defrayed indiscriminately by equal taxes to be im- 
 posed on the same articles in each country ; and that from 
 time to time, as circumstances may require, such taxes 
 should be imposed and applied accordingly, subject only 
 to such exemptions and abatements in Ireland and Scotland 
 as circumstances may appear to demand. That it is the 
 
THE QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 283 
 
 opinion of this Committee that such legislative measures 
 should be adopted as may be necessary to carry into 
 further effect the purposes of the said Acts of Union, by 
 consolidating the public revenues of Great Britain and 
 Ireland into one fund, and applying the same to the 
 general services of the United Kingdom.' * 
 
 These resolutions were partly embodied in an Act 
 which received the Royal assent in June, 18 16. By this 
 law the separate exchequer of Ireland was shut up ; there 
 was to be but one exchequer for the Three Kingdoms ; all 
 the revenues of Great Britain and Ireland were thrown 
 into a general fund to be applied to the requirements of 
 the State ; the separate debt of Ireland was fused into that 
 of Great Britain, the two making a common National 
 Debt. By these means Ireland was relieved from an 
 intolerable load of debt ; but those who contend that an 
 immense boon was thus conferred on her, only illustrate 
 the aphorism of Burke referred to before ; the matter was 
 decided by the opinion of the dominant power. Ireland, 
 no doubt, was set free from an overwhelming burden ; but 
 the burden was one improperly cast on her by the Union ; 
 the relief was only a small redress of injustice.! On the 
 other hand, the arrangements of 18 16 abolished the con- 
 tribution of the two-seventeenths, and made Ireland less 
 a separate country, financially, than she had been before ; 
 the resolutions of the House of Commons did not all 
 become law, but they at least declared that she might 
 become ' assimilated in finance ' to Great Britain at a 
 convenient time, and thus diminished her security against 
 undue taxation ; and the amalgamation of her debt with 
 that of Great Britain made her subject, at least conceivably, 
 to a gigantic charge, for which she was not in any way 
 liable. The compromise, however, effected at this time, 
 rather contemplated the relief of Ireland from existing 
 
 * Report of the Childers Commission, pp. 147, 148. 
 t Ibid., p. 33. 
 
PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 debt than her ultimate ' assimilation in finance to Great 
 Britain,' and the extension to both countries of the same 
 fiscal system. For many years after 1816 Ireland re- 
 mained, financially, completely distinct from Great Britain, 
 and under a scheme of taxation altogether different. Nor 
 is the reason difficult to seek ; she was declared entitled, 
 by the resolutions before mentioned, to the 'exemptions 
 and abatements ' secured to her by the Treaty of Union ; 
 and the Parliament of that day respected the treaty, in- 
 terpreting these terms in their true sense, that Ireland was 
 not to be taxed beyond her means. Her fiscal wrongs, 
 besides, from 1800 to 18 16, were still fresh in the minds 
 of statesmen ; these did not wish to repeat injustice ; above 
 all, she had many representatives of real weight at West- 
 minster — Grattan was a tower of strength in himself, and 
 he had very able followers ; these men would certainly 
 have fiercely resented attempts to impair the financial 
 rights of their country. 
 
 The fiscal systems of Great Britain and Ireland, still 
 altogether distinct, continued nearly on this footing for a 
 series of years. Great Britain was gradually relieved 
 from taxation peculiar to herself, amounting to very con- 
 siderable sums ; Ireland was not relieved in the same pro- 
 portion ; but this was hardly a real grievance ; the taxa- 
 tion of Great Britain during the war had been enormously 
 higher than that of Ireland. In 1819-20 the charge on 
 Great Britain, which had been about ,£5 per head, had been 
 reduced to ^3 13s. ; that on Ireland, which had been about 
 £1 a head, had been reduced to i$s. ^d. ; there seems to 
 have been little to complain of in these figures. Some 
 steps, however, but tentative only, were made by degrees 
 in ' assimilating the two countries in finance,' according to 
 the resolutions of 18 16 ; the duties on tea were made 
 equal for the Three Kingdoms, and the duties on tobacco, 
 as early as 1819; but it deserves special notice that this 
 policy was angrily opposed by many Irishmen in the House 
 
THE QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 285 
 
 of Commons, the most conspicuous of these being Sir 
 John Newport, a real master of Irish finance, who had 
 been Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer in 1806-07. Still, 
 notwithstanding innovations like these, the fiscal systems 
 of Great Britain and Ireland remained substantially dis- 
 tinct for a long period ; this was notably made manifest 
 as late as 1842. At this time the population of England 
 was in an alarming state ; the Chartist agitation was in 
 full swing ; British commerce was half strangled by heavy 
 duties on foreign imports ; the corn laws crippled and 
 burdened industry. Peel was at the head of his great 
 Ministry ; he began to carry into effect the policy of free 
 trade, inaugurated by Pitt, but unhappily delayed ; in 
 order to accomplish this he had to diminish or get rid of 
 the charges on foreign imports, and generally to substitute 
 direct for indirect taxation. He was under a strong 
 temptation to 'assimilate Great Britain and Ireland in 
 finance ; ' but he had been a friend and colleague of 
 Castlereagh ; he understood the true import of the Treaty 
 of Union ; above all, he knew Ireland well for an English- 
 man ; he had practically been her ruler for nearly six 
 years. In these circumstances he imposed the income 
 tax on Great Britain as an equivalent for many indirect 
 taxes ; but he pointedly abstained from extending the 
 tax to Ireland ; he felt that this would be an act of 
 financial wrong ; and though he increased for a short time 
 the duty on Irish spirits, he took off the increase within 
 a few months. The only 'assimilation in finance' he 
 effected was to make the stamp duties in Great Britain 
 and Ireland equal, and this was rather a legal than an 
 economic reform. 
 
 The life of the great minister was prematurely cut 
 short ; time brought with it its changes on its wings. The 
 statesman who had living traditions of the Union and its 
 finance had passed away ; O'Connell had disappeared from 
 the scene ; the representation of Ireland had fallen into a 
 
286 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 deplorable state. Meanwhile the free trade policy of Peel 
 had achieved great results in England and Scotland ; 
 free trade had given an immense impulse to our manu- 
 factures and our foreign commerce ; the repeal of the corn 
 laws had wonderfully quickened industry, and had been 
 a magnificent boon to the mass of the people ; the pros- 
 perity of Great Britain was advancing by leaps and 
 bounds. The development of free trade was the object 
 of nearly all our statesmen ; to accomplish this it was 
 essential still further to lessen or to abolish the duties on 
 foreign imports, and to let in the raw materials of manu- 
 factures free ; indirect taxation was still further to give 
 place to direct. In 1853, and during part of the subse- 
 quent period, our finances were in the hands of a minister 
 whose impulsive nature was upheld by a most imperious 
 will, and who, whatever was his policy, seldom stuck at 
 trifles. Apparently without mature reflection, and, it is to 
 be hoped, with little knowledge of the facts of the case, 
 Mr. Gladstone, setting the example of Peel at nought, 
 suddenly subjected Ireland to the income tax, and began 
 to raise the duties on Irish spirits ; by i860 these duties 
 had been more than trebled ; and the taxation of Ireland 
 had been increased by upwards of two millions sterling. 
 And what were the circumstances, during a large part of 
 this period, of the country on which this enormous burden 
 had been laid ? Ireland, no doubt, had begun to revive 
 from the effects of the catastrophe of 1845-47 > but, com- 
 pared with Great Britain, she was miserably poor; and 
 the Great Famine had shaken her social structure to 
 its base. Two millions of her population had fled from 
 their homes into exile ; a large part of the upper and of 
 the middle classes had been involved in ruin ; whole 
 tracts of her lands were derelict wastes ; her local taxa- 
 tion was exceedingly high. The imposition of this load 
 of taxation on a country in such a condition, unjustifiable 
 in the abstract, and from every point of view, was, in the 
 
THE QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 287 
 
 existing position of affairs, an act of cruel wrong ; no 
 wonder even one of Mr. Gladstone's colleagues has re- 
 marked, measured as is his language, ' We think that if 
 the House of Commons, in the period 1853 to i860, when 
 the great enhancement of taxation took place, had fully 
 considered the circumstances of Ireland, they would not 
 have felt themselves justified in increasing the taxation 
 of that country by means of the income tax and the equa- 
 lisation of the spirit duties.' * At this time, in a word, the 
 future Solon of Home Rule proved himself to be the 
 merciless Draco of Irish finance. 
 
 This great increase of taxation, to a considerable extent, 
 1 assimilated Ireland to Great Britain in finance ; ' placed 
 the two countries under nearly the same fiscal system ; 
 made the taxes of each not far from equal. This assimi- 
 lation, however, was still by no means complete — indeed, 
 is not complete to the present day ; Ireland has still fiscal 
 privileges under the Treaty of Union ; and this should be 
 carefully borne in mind. Mr. Gladstone, moreover, when 
 he made this increase, acknowledged that Ireland remained 
 a distinct country, entitled to immunities of her own ; when 
 he made her liable to the income tax, he cancelled a debt 
 of £4,000,000 which he professed she owed ; and if this was 
 an illusory pretence, for her liability for this reason was 
 more than doubtful, and the income tax she has since paid 
 has exceeded £23,000,000, still he distinctly admitted the 
 principle — indeed, it has always been admitted by states- 
 men worthy of the name. The enormous new burdens 
 imposed on Ireland, from 1853 to i860, provoked wide- 
 spread and profound discontent ; a Parliamentary inquiry 
 was conceded ; a Committee of the House of Commons 
 went into the subject in 1863-64. But the representation 
 of Ireland, I have said, was feeble ; her complaints were 
 stifled by the arts of the treasury ; the arguments of her 
 members were overborne by specious but utterly false 
 * Report of the Childers Commission, p. 158. 
 
288 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 sophistry ; the inquiry came to nothing as regards her 
 interests. The question remained in abeyance for years ; 
 the Irish reforms of Mr. Gladstone, from 1869 to 1873, the 
 troubles caused by the Land and the National Leagues, 
 and the Home Rule agitation that followed, turned public 
 attention away from the subject ; but it was not for- 
 gotten by well-informed Irishmen ; two real economists, 
 Butt and Judge Longfield, insisted that Ireland had here 
 a grievance ; and this was the opinion of several inde- 
 pendent gentlemen, survivors of the illustrious school of 
 Grattan. At last Mr. Goschen, perhaps moved by remon- 
 strances from Ireland being urged again, appointed a Com- 
 mittee of the House of Commons to examine into, and to 
 report upon, ' the equity of the financial relations in regard 
 to the resources and the population of the Three Kingdoms ;' 
 Mr. Gladstone, in 1893, recurred to the subject, which, 
 rather unaccountably, had been let drop. He directed a 
 Commission of great authority, composed for the most 
 part of expert Englishmen, and presided over by the late 
 Mr. Childers, a Chancellor of the Exchequer of Mr. Glad- 
 stone, to inquire thoroughly into the whole question of 
 the financial relations of Great Britain and Ireland, and 
 fully to set forth the conclusions they should form. The 
 scope of the investigation was to include the history of 
 the subject since the Union ; a consideration of the 
 financial resources of Great Britain and Ireland regarded 
 as distinct countries, and the principles to be kept in mind 
 in forming a correct judgment ; and, finally, the charge of 
 Ireland with respect to the State, and the contribution 
 which Ireland should make to it.* 
 
 * I think it necessary to set out verbatim the terms of reference to 
 the Commission ; I have for the sake of clearness changed their order : 
 'To inquire into the financial relations between Great Britain and 
 Ireland, and their relative taxable capacity, and to report : I. Upon 
 what principles of comparison, and by the application of what specific 
 standards, the relative capacity of Great Britain and Ireland to bear 
 taxation may be most equitably determined. II. What, so far as can 
 
THE QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 289 
 
 This inquiry, set on foot by a British statesman who 
 had made himself notorious for ' assimilating Great Britain 
 and Ireland in finance,' proceeded, nevertheless, upon an 
 admission that, financially, the two countries were still 
 distinct, and that the resources of each — their ' taxable 
 capacity,' in other words, a phrase turned into absurd 
 ridicule — afforded the true and the only test, as to the 
 equity of Irish compared to British taxation. The Com- 
 missioners were engaged in their arduous task for months ; 
 they explained, with a fulness and clearness never before 
 so complete, the history of the financial relations between 
 Great Britain and Ireland. They brought distinctly out 
 the fiscal position of the two countries before the Union ; 
 they set forth at length the financial arrangements made 
 in 1800-01 ; they described the compromise effected in 
 1816; they dwelt on the fiscal policy of Peel to Ireland, 
 and placed it in significant contrast with that of Mr. 
 Gladstone ; and they conclusively proved that, from the 
 Union to the present time, Great Britain and Ireland had 
 been treated financially as separate countries, despite the 
 'assimilation' of 1853-60, and that the right of Ireland, 
 under the Treaty of Union, to the ' exemptions and abate- 
 ments ' secured to her, these being interpreted as the case 
 requires, still give her immunities from taxation especially 
 her own, which must be recognised if she is to obtain 
 justice. Turning, then, to the resources of Great Britain 
 and Ireland, regarded as apart, as being the true criterion 
 of the taxation which Ireland ought to bear, the Com- 
 missioners reviewed a great mass of evidence, which, as far 
 
 be ascertained, is the true proportion, under the principles and specific 
 standards so determined, between the taxable capacity of Great 
 Britain and Ireland. III. The history of the financial relations 
 between Great Britain and Ireland, at and after the Legislative Union, 
 the charge for Irish purposes on the Imperial Exchequer during that 
 period, and the amount of Irish taxation remaining available for con- 
 tribution to Imperial expenditure ; also the Imperial expenditure to 
 which it is considered equitable that Ireland should contribute.' 
 
 U 
 
290 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 as was perhaps possible, made the truth manifest, and 
 arrived at conclusions which appear to be decisive. Com- 
 paring the death duties of Ireland and of Great Britain, 
 the proportion is about i to 18 ; comparing the income tax, 
 it is about I to 22 ; taking a great variety of other tests, 
 receipts of railways, savings banks deposits, money and 
 postal orders, and letters and telegrams, it varies from 1 to 24 
 and 16 ; and an estimate of the income of the two countries, 
 an estimate certainly not fair to Ireland, gives a proportion 
 of about 1 to 18. There are many reasons that these 
 figures exaggerate the true resources of Ireland, but, as- 
 suming them to be approximately correct, the Commis- 
 sion has reported that Great Britain exceeds Ireland in 
 resources by 20 to 1 ; in other words, that the ' taxable 
 capacity of Ireland, as contrasted with that of Great 
 Britain, cannot now be more than as 1 to 20.' * Applying 
 this inference to the taxation of the two countries, the 
 conclusions formed by this tribunal can hardly admit of 
 question. The revenue and taxation of Ireland compared 
 with that of Great Britain from 1889 to 1894 has been 
 .£7,300,000 and £7,800,000 against from £85,000,000 to 
 £89,000,000, that is, Ireland contributed from 8 to 9 
 per cent, of the sum total. But if the resources of 
 Ireland are only one-twentieth of those of Great Britain, 
 her taxation ought to be one-twentieth only, that is, it 
 ought not to be from £7,300,000 to £7,800,000 ; it ought 
 to be less than £5,000,000 ; not 8 or 9 per cent, but less 
 than 5 per cent. It follows from this that Ireland has 
 been overtaxed at the rate of between two and three 
 millions a year, and that for a very considerable space of 
 time.j 
 
 Enormous against Ireland as is this excess of taxation, 
 it may amount to a very much larger sum, if the national 
 
 * Report of the Childers Commission, p. 26. 
 
 f Since 1896, when the Childers Commission made its report, the 
 overtaxation of Ireland has increased. 
 
THE QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 291 
 
 account be taken on another, perhaps a sounder, basis. 
 There is the highest authority to show that taxation ought 
 only to fall, in the instance of any given country, on the 
 surplus remaining over and above the cost of the necessaries 
 of life ; and as regards the populations of Great Britain 
 and Ireland, this cost may be assumed to be £12 a head. 
 But if we take the income of Great Britain to be 1400 
 millions sterling, the cost of the necessaries of life at the 
 above rate would for Great Britain be a sum of 324 millions ; 
 and the surplus available for taxation would be 1076 
 millions. On the other hand, if we turn to Ireland, the 
 poor country, and suppose her income to be j6 millions 
 sterling, the cost of the necessaries of life for Ireland 
 would be a sum of 46 millions ; and the surplus available 
 for taxation would be 30 millions only. On this hypothesis, 
 the resources of Ireland which might be fairly taxed — her 
 taxable capacity, in a word — would, compared with the 
 resources of Great Britain, be, not as 1 to 20, but as 1 to 
 36 only ; and her taxation ought to be less than 
 £3,000,000, not, as before mentioned, less than £5,000,000. 
 The Childers Commission, no doubt, with the exception 
 of one of its members, did not give its sanction to this 
 conclusion ; but it was that formed by Sir Robert Giffen, 
 a master of the subject on all its bearings, and it cannot, 
 in common fairness, be left out of sight. Sir Robert 
 Giffen's view is expressed in these words ; it will be observed 
 that his figures do not correspond with those just cited ; but 
 the only point to consider is the principle on which he 
 takes his stand : ' If you deduct a minimum sum, so much 
 per head from each of the community, as a sort of minimum 
 sum, though you would not wish to take anything from a 
 man who had no more than that, then the taxable income 
 would be the whole income in each country above that 
 sum. That was the sort of general idea. If you apply 
 that to Ireland, and take a minimum sum of, say, £12 
 a head, you would get upon the basis of an Irish income of 
 
292 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 £76,000,000 a taxable surplus, I think, now of about 
 £22,000,000, and in Great Britain your taxable surplus 
 would come to over £900,000, 000.* 
 
 Setting, however, these last considerations aside, the 
 Childers Commission has conclusively shown that Ireland 
 is very largely overtaxed, and has been so for a long series 
 of years ; and the figures that represent this great over- 
 charge by no means represent the real difference of the 
 burdens imposed on the two countries. It does not require 
 the authority of Pitt to tell us that even equal taxation, 
 equally applied, is felt much more acutely by a poor 
 community than by one that is rich and prosperous ; let 
 us assume, what is by no means the fact, that this equality 
 exists as between Great Britain and Ireland, still Ireland 
 suffers much more than Great Britain. As Mill remarked 
 a long time ago, ' It is not the same thing to take £2 from 
 a man who has £40 a year, as to take £4 from a man who 
 has £80, or £40 from a man who has £800 ; the sacrifice 
 imposed on the taxpayer is greater upon the man from 
 whom you take £2 out of £40 than it is on the man from 
 whom you take £40 out of £800, although the proportion 
 is the same.' A few examples, taken from the case of 
 Great Britain and Ireland, will make the truth of this 
 proposition perfectly clear. The wages of an agricultural 
 labourer in Great Britain are, say, £40 a year ; the wages 
 of an agricultural labourer in Ireland are, say, £26 ; the 
 first pays £3 taxes on his tea and tobacco ; the second 
 pays only £2 ; but the £2 are obviously much the heavier 
 charge. Or suppose that a British artisan has £100 a 
 year, and an Irish artisan no more than £80; is not the 
 first more lightly taxed than the second, if he contributes 
 £5 to the revenue against £4 ? And the same thing 
 happens if we ascend the social scale; the £150 income 
 tax paid by a British landlord of £3000 a year is not felt 
 
 * Report of Childers Commission : ' Minutes of Evidence,' vol. i. 
 p. 17. 
 
THE QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 293 
 
 by him to be such a charge as the .£50 paid by an Irish 
 landlord of ^"iooo a year ; the same principle would extend 
 to the profits of trade were there small sums in Ireland 
 and large sums in Great Britain. Make taxes, therefore, 
 as equal as possible, and make their incidence completely 
 equal, still, in the case of a poor compared to a wealthy 
 country, the real burden on the taxpayer will be very 
 different ; it was for this reason that the late Mr. Nassau 
 Senior, an economist of no ordinary parts, pointedly 
 remarked, as regards British and Irish taxation, ' England 
 is the most lightly taxed and Ireland the most heavily 
 taxed country in Europe, although both are nominally 
 liable to equal taxation : I do not believe that Ireland is 
 a poor country because she is overtaxed, but I think she is 
 overtaxed because she is poor.' * 
 
 Ireland, therefore, on a full review of the argument, has 
 been overtaxed at least between two and three millions 
 sterling a year for certainly more than forty years ; and 
 this excess, as she is a very poor country, is, in her case» 
 especially severe. The trend of taxation, if the phrase 
 may be employed, as we follow its course, during a long 
 period, clearly indicates that she has suffered from grave 
 financial wrong. In 1819-20, we have seen, the taxation 
 of Great Britain was at the rate of £3 13s. a head, that of 
 Ireland being i$s. $d.; the proportion was £2 13s. id. 
 and £1 6s. yd. in 1859-60; in 1893 it was £2 4s. and 
 £1 8s. ; in other words, the imposts of the wealthy country 
 were progressively decreased, while the imposts of the 
 poor country were progressively raised. This distinction, 
 no doubt, has been partly due to the fact that the popula- 
 tion of Great Britain has been largely augmented, and the 
 population of Ireland has been enormously reduced in 
 numbers ; the charge in Great Britain has been distributed 
 among ever growing millions, the charge in Ireland has 
 been concentrated upon ever lessening thousands ; but 
 * Report of the Childers Commission, p. 16. 
 
294 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 this will not nearly account for the difference ; ' the 
 wealthier country,' it has been caustically said, ' was taxed 
 less and less as it became more wealthy ; the poorer 
 country was burdened more and more as its poverty 
 increased.'* And the overcharge on Ireland is all the 
 more grievous because it owed its origin to the policy of 
 free trade ; and this policy has been a questionable boon 
 to Ireland, while to Great Britain it has been an immense 
 benefit. No doubt the cheapening of the price of the 
 necessaries and of some of the conveniences of life, which 
 has been one of the results of free trade, has been a great 
 advantage to the Irish labourer, artisan, and mere cottar 
 peasant; but free trade has been injurious to the real 
 Irish farmer and the Irish landlord, and to most of the 
 classes connected with the land ; and the land is the main 
 source of the scanty wealth of Ireland. Free trade, on the 
 other hand, has been a principal cause of the extraordinary 
 development of the material welfare of England which has 
 been witnessed during the last fifty years ; it has doubled 
 and trebled her gigantic manufactures and trade, if her 
 agriculture is by no means flourishing. This striking 
 contrast gives pain to right-minded Irishmen ; they feel, 
 as Grattan predicted would be the case, that their country's 
 interests have been sacrificed to British commerce; and 
 the following observations are essentially true and just : 
 ' The change ' (from protection to free trade) ' has not 
 been so advantageous to Ireland, a country in which there 
 is but little trade or manufacturing industry, as it has been 
 to England ; although, as consumers, the Irish population 
 may have gained in some cases by the abolition of the 
 duties on foodstuffs, yet, on the other hand, as producers, 
 chiefly dependent on agriculture, they have lost in a far 
 greater degree by the cheap prices in the British markets, 
 produced, in part at least, by the free and untaxed supply 
 of foreign corn, live stock, dead meat, butter, cheese, eggs, 
 * Report of the Childers Commission, p. 89. 
 
THE QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 295 
 
 and other articles of food. ... It may even perhaps be 
 said that just as Ireland suffered in the last century from 
 the protective and exclusive commercial policy of Great 
 Britain, so she has been at a disadvantage in this century 
 from the adoption of an almost unqualified free trade 
 policy for the United Kingdom.' * 
 
 Many attempts, I have said, have been made to answer 
 the conclusive Report of the Childers Commission, to carp 
 at its proceedings, to challenge its statements, to deny that 
 Ireland has been largely overtaxed ; but, with scarcely an 
 exception, they have been grotesque failures. I need 
 hardly notice an audacious sally, which has been turned 
 to account in the House of Commons, and has split the 
 ears of the groundlings in different parts of England. 
 England, the argument runs, has been too kind to Ireland ; 
 Ireland pays no land tax and sundry other duties ; in 
 other respects she is equally taxed with Great Britain ; 
 she has not even a semblance of a real complaint ; and — 
 exactly in the manner of Swift's satire — ' let her hold her 
 tongue, or it may be the worse for her.' Ireland, no 
 doubt, ' assimilated as she has been in finance,' is free 
 from some charges imposed on England ; she has still 
 1 exemptions and abatements ' which, to some extent, 
 preserve her rights under the Treaty of Union, and show 
 that she is still financially a distinct country, as has been 
 recognised by every leading British statesman, from the 
 day of Pitt to the day of Mr. Gladstone. But the English 
 land tax, properly speaking, is not a tax at all ; it is a 
 rent-charge for centuries payable by the land ; at all 
 events, the Irish Crown and quit rents may be set off 
 against it ; and, as to the other taxes referred to, the cost 
 of collection in Ireland would exceed the returns ; it would 
 be a case of in Thesauro nihil, as in Plantagenet times. 
 Another argument, of which the late Mr. Lowe was the 
 author, is more plausible, and has done better service ; but 
 * Report of the Childers Commission, pp. 159, 160. 
 
296 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 it is not the less shallow and false sophistry, when brought 
 to the test. Taxation, it is said, falls on populations only ; 
 it is sheer nonsense to say that it falls on countries ; it is 
 not levied from Great Britain and Ireland ; it is levied from 
 the inhabitants within their borders. But the Englishman, 
 the Scotsman, and the Irishman are equally taxed ; the 
 Irishman, indeed, has a small advantage ; equality of 
 taxation is the rule in this matter ; and obviously equality 
 is the same thing as equity. An English landlord in Kent, 
 a Scotch landlord in Perthshire, an Irish landlord in 
 Kildare, pay the same income tax on the same rentals ; 
 so does a merchant in London, a merchant in Edinburgh, 
 a merchant in Belfast, on the same profits ; and the same 
 principle extends to all other classes. A farmer in Surrey, 
 a crofter in Argyleshire, a shopkeeper in Galway, pay 
 exactly the same tax on a gallon of rum, a gallon of 
 whiskey, a hogshead of beer ; the charge is the same for 
 each commodity in the three households. This Irish 
 grievance, therefore, is a mere delusion ; it is a sickly 
 phantom that vanishes in the light of the day. 
 
 That taxation falls on populations and not on areas of 
 land is a truism really never disputed ; the use of the 
 word ' countries,' in this sense, is a mere popular phrase. 
 This argument keeps out of sight the fact that equal taxes, 
 however equally imposed, are much heavier in the case of 
 a poor than of a rich community ; but, waiving this 
 objection, it is a sheer fallacy. If two populations had 
 exactly the same tastes, used the same commodities in 
 the same proportions, and were in the possession of the 
 same resources ; equality of taxation, if equally applied, 
 would probably be essentially just. But if two populations 
 have different tastes, if they differ in the use of even the 
 same commodities, and if their resources are very different, 
 and especially if equal taxation be not equally applied, 
 this apparent equality, far from being equity, may become 
 plain, nay, very grave iniquity. This may be made 
 
THE QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 297 
 
 intelligible, at a glance, by the consideration of a few 
 instances easily conceived. Impose an equal tax on coals 
 in England and Ireland : would the charge fall equally on 
 Englishmen in a land of coal and on Irishmen in a land 
 of peat mosses ? Tax Londoners and Parisians at the 
 same rate on coffee : would the Londoner, who drinks 
 comparatively little coffee, be as heavily mulcted as the 
 Parisian, who drinks a great deal ? Or suppose that light 
 taxes were laid on articles that suit Englishmen, and 
 enter into the consumption of the millions of England, 
 and that heavy taxes were laid on articles that suit Irish- 
 men, and are consumed by the Irish millions : would not 
 this system favour Englishmen, and injure Irishmen, 
 though the taxes on all these articles were the same in 
 both countries? Examples by the hundred might be 
 brought forward ; these suffice to prove that equality of 
 taxation, as between communities, differing from each 
 other in the conditions and circumstances of life, and 
 notably if the incidence of this taxation is not the same, 
 may be made to effect the grossest injustice. And this 
 financial wrong has been done, to a very great extent, if 
 we compare the taxation of Great Britain and Ireland. 
 The consumption of tea and tobacco by the head is nearly 
 the same in both countries ; the taxes on these commodities 
 are the same ; admit that this is equitable in a certain 
 sense, though the impost is relatively more burdensome 
 on the poor community. The consumption of spirits by 
 the head, also, is much the same for the Three Kingdoms ; 
 the taxation is precisely the same ; this, for the sake of 
 argument, I will call justice. But the consumption of 
 beer by the head in Great Britain is about double what 
 it is in Ireland ; probably ten Englishmen drink beer 
 compared to one Irishman ; whiskey is the ordinary 
 spirituous drink of Irishmen. Now, the taxes on beer and 
 on whiskey are the same in Great Britain and Ireland ; 
 but the tax on beer, measured by the alcoholic standard, 
 
298 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 is about six times lower than the tax on whiskey ; * beer, 
 therefore, compared with whiskey is greatly undertaxed ; 
 whiskey compared with beer is greatly overtaxed ; the 
 ordinary drink of Englishmen is treated differently from 
 the ordinary drink of Irishmen, one being encouraged, 
 the other discouraged ; though the taxes on each 
 commodity may be everywhere the same, the equality 
 of taxation manifestly results in wrong. The difference 
 amounts to a very large sum ; it is one of the causes that 
 Ireland is overtaxed.! 
 
 Equality of taxation may, therefore, be not equity ; it 
 may, as I have said, be sheer iniquity ; and this is 
 emphatically the case with respect to Ireland. This 
 system is productive of gross injustice as regards what 
 may be deemed the popular Irish drink ; but arguments 
 to support it have not been wanting ; they have been 
 complacently gulped down at several public meetings, it 
 is unnecessary to add within the borders of England. 
 The ( mere Irish,' it is said, have shocking bad tastes ; let 
 
 * ' Minutes of Evidence,' Childers Commission, vol. ii. p. 218. 
 
 t I quote from the Report of the Childers Commission, p. 68, these 
 valuable remarks on the subject : ' Neither can there then be any 
 question that a system of equal rates of taxes on the same subjects is 
 compatible with the utmost inequality of burdens between two coun- 
 tries contributing to one exchequer. All that need be done in order 
 to exact an undue proportion — unlimited in extent — of the means of 
 either of the countries is to tax the commodities most consumed in 
 that country, and in fixing the rate of the tax on each commodity, to 
 fix the higher rates on the particular commodities most generally in 
 use in that country, and the lower rates on those most consumed in the 
 other. The same kind of effect, of course, may be produced, and the 
 same discrimination exercised, by totally exempting some commodities 
 and taxing others, however lightly. In fact, a system of equal rates 
 of taxes may thus be rendered more easily unjust and burdensome to 
 the country discriminated against than one of differential taxes, because 
 in the latter case, the unequal treatment, and the mode of it being 
 manifest, are more liable to criticism and limitation ; whilst in the 
 former, the true effect of the system is disguised by the circumstances 
 that each particular head of tax is at the same rate in both countries.' 
 
THE QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 299 
 
 them take beer instead of whiskey and they can have no 
 grievance ; besides, whiskey is a nasty and unwholesome 
 thing ; it is in mercy to them that it is excessively taxed. 
 Is it possible that people who utter this stuff do not see 
 that sumptuary legislation of extreme harshness, nay, 
 persecution of the worst kind, may be justified on the 
 same class of premises ? Suppose that Napoleon, in the 
 plenitude of his power, had declared that the Parisians did 
 not know what was good for them, and had heavily taxed 
 their coffee to make them drink tea, even Austerlitz would 
 not have saved the Empire. Marie Antoinette actually made 
 an attempt to banish from her Court the velvets and silks 
 of Lyons, and to make it adopt the cambrics and muslins 
 of Belgium ; she would have been too glad to see the 
 first taxed and the second duty free, for she thought the 
 French taste for heavy and gorgeous apparel bad ; she 
 only aroused the indignation of Versailles. Or say that 
 the priests of the Jove of the Capitol had argued in this 
 way : ' Really these detestable Christians are fools for 
 worshipping a crucified Jew ; they have only to bow down 
 to Caesar to escape the lions ; otherwise they have them- 
 selves alone to blame.' Nay, coming nearer home, might 
 not a holy prelate of the Irish Established Church in the 
 eighteenth century have reconciled the penal code to his 
 conscience, by whispering to himself that the deluded 
 Papists had but to give up their vain superstitions, and to 
 conform to the pure well of faith that had its source in the 
 Castle, and that then they would be no longer outlaws ; 
 but let them take the consequences if they were blind to 
 their best interests on earth and in heaven. In fact, any 
 act of despotism on the part of the State might be 
 vindicated on these very laudable principles ; but on this 
 matter of the taxation of Irish whiskey I shall confine 
 myself to a single remark. Reverse the cases of England 
 and Ireland with respect to the imposts on beer and on 
 whiskey ; tax beer very heavily and whiskey very lightly ; 
 
30o PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 and what would Englishmen say of an argument that has 
 been thought good enough for Irishmen ; how long would 
 a Government exist that would try to carry out such a 
 policy ? In truth, this reasoning, if it can be so called, is 
 the worst kind of sophistry : the frank brutality of the 
 Roman proconsul, who told the population of a subject 
 province that they must endure their burdens as they 
 would endure the rain and the tempest, is less censurable, 
 to my mind at least, than this compound of absurd and 
 offensive insolence. 
 
 Another argument, really of no greater value, has had 
 many supporters in the House of Commons. True it is, 
 it is admitted, that, compared with Great Britain, Ireland 
 has been hardly treated in finance ; but this is because she 
 is a poor country, and a poor country must suffer from 
 taxation, fair as it may be, more than a wealthy country. 
 But the same inequality is seen in England : Dorset and 
 Wiltshire are more heavily burdened than Yorkshire and 
 Lancashire, yet Dorset and Wiltshire make no complaints 
 as Ireland does. This argument, however, ignores history, 
 and sets the Treaty of Union at nought ; Dorset and 
 Wiltshire are mere fractions of England ; Ireland has 
 always been financially a distinct country, entitled to 
 separate financial rights ; and this has been recognised by 
 the ablest British statesmen, notably, of late years, by Mr. 
 Goschen, and by Mr. Gladstone. This reasoning, in a 
 word, assumes that Ireland is merely an aggregate of 
 British counties ; but this has never been her true financial 
 position ; it is easy to sneer at the phrase 'separate entity ' 
 by which she has been called, that is, a land, financially, 
 apart from Great Britain, but sneers cannot get the better 
 of facts. These statements of distinguished English experts 
 are unquestionable in view of the record of history. Lord 
 Farrer has remarked : ' It is abundantly clear that of the 
 two conflicting theories — viz. the one which regards Great 
 Britain and Ireland as one country for the purpose of 
 
THE QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 301 
 
 taxation and expenditure, and the other which regards 
 Great Britain and Ireland as separate partners — the second 
 is the one upon which our instructions are founded ; the 
 one which has the greatest support in history, and the one 
 upon which all parties in Parliament have recently acted.' * 
 And Mr. Childers completely concurs : ' If apart from 
 the reference, it is asked why a distinction should be taken 
 between Great Britain and Ireland any more than between 
 Kent and Yorkshire, the answer is that Ireland entered 
 into a partnership with Great Britain under a formal Treaty 
 of Union, which did, to a certain extent, by the recognition 
 of the claim of Ireland to abatements and exemptions, if 
 circumstances should require, maintain the position of 
 Ireland as entitled to separate treatment as a whole, so 
 far as relates to taxation. It must also be recollected 
 that, as a matter of fact, Ireland has, at all times since the 
 Union, in various degrees received such separate treatment. 
 Ireland, therefore, cannot be regarded as merely a group 
 of counties of the United Kingdom. f 
 
 Two other arguments may be ascribed to the ingenuity, 
 if this is the true word, of the Treasury ; but the first rests 
 on a gross misrepresentation of fact, the other upon a false 
 theory ; both, with a slight reservation, may be dismissed 
 as hopeless. Ireland, it is said, may possibly be overtaxed — 
 admit this for the sake of argument — but she has had more 
 than her fair share of loans from the State ; a considerable 
 part of these has been freely remitted ; this has not been 
 the case in England and Scotland ; a large counterclaim, 
 therefore, may be made against her. 'Out of a total sum 
 of about one hundred and nineteen millions and a half 
 advanced in the United Kingdom, a little over fifty-two 
 millions, or 437 per cent., has been advanced to Ireland, 
 and of this, so large a proportion as one-fifth, or over ten 
 millions, had to be remitted, or treated as a free grant, 
 whilst only one fifty-eighth part of the advances made to 
 
 * Report of the Childers Commission, p. 39. f Ibid., p. 166. 
 
302 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Great Britain were so treated.' * So far as these loans 
 have been advances for the real good of Ireland, for 
 example, for the promotion of reproductive works — these 
 may fairly be taken into account ; but millions have been 
 misapplied and wasted or spent in the unproductive relief 
 of distress ; f these sums probably are greater than the 
 excess made out by the Treasury. As regards the remission 
 of the £10,000,000, the assertion relied on is simply 
 deceptive. Not less than £4,000,000 of this sum represent 
 the fund the extinction of which was the consideration 
 of putting the income tax on Ireland by Mr. Gladstone ; 
 and, as the charge of that tax has been since more than 
 £23,000,000, it savours of impudence to call this a 
 remission ; it was writing off a doubtful debt to justify a 
 new and portentous burden. The residue of the £10,000,000 
 is composed of advances that have been misspent or spent 
 on purposes really not Irish ; these were not remitted in 
 the proper acceptation of the word. 'The remaining 
 portion of the ten millions of alleged remissions of loans 
 consists mainly of remissions of the repayment of ex- 
 penditure by the Board of Works, where it was shown that 
 such expenditure had been wasteful, and of advances to 
 the clergy and laity of the Established Church of Ireland, 
 which advances Parliament, by legislation, deprived them 
 of the ability of repaying. Altogether it would appear, 
 from Sir Edward Hamilton's evidence, that in reality only 
 
 * Report of the Childers Commission, p. 11. 
 
 t Ibid.: Evidence of Mr. Munough O'Brien, pp. 12, 13: 'The 
 system of Imperial loans for temporary emergencies and charity tends 
 to increase the poverty of Ireland, whose future income is mortgaged 
 to pay interest on expenditure from which there is no return. There 
 is no surer road to ruin for an individual than borrowing money to 
 live upon, and most of these Imperial loans are practically made from 
 time to time to enable the Irish people to live or relieve acute distress 
 and disorder. Loans are almost annually made to keep the people 
 quiet or to keep them alive. Yet this expenditure does not prevent 
 the recurrence of famine, distress, and discontent ; it rather tends to 
 cause their recurrence.' 
 
THE QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 303 
 
 about one million out of the ten corresponded in their 
 character to the advances made to Great Britain, and that 
 consequently the proportion of real remissions of loans to 
 Ireland did not differ very materially from that of the 
 propottion of the remission in Great Britain.' 
 
 The second argument appears to be more plausible ; but 
 it is mischievous, in a high degree, and dangerous ; except 
 to a slight extent, it is completely fallacious. Ireland, it 
 is allowed, contributes from £7,300,000 to .£7,800,000 to 
 the exchequer ; but of this sum £5,000,000 and upwards 
 are expended on her ; she really hardly pays £2,000,000 
 to the State ; the £5,000,000 therefore, or nearly all this 
 sum, create a just counterclaim against her, even admit- 
 ting she is excessively taxed. This expenditure on Ireland, 
 it is contended, is for Irish ' local ' purposes ; it is not ex- 
 penditure for ' Imperial ' purposes ; the account, as between 
 Great Britain and Ireland, is to be taken as if all this 
 expenditure, or nearly so, were purely local. But is not 
 the expenditure for keeping up the Lord-Lieutenant and 
 his Court, is not the expenditure on the government and 
 administration of Ireland, essentially, and in the main, 
 Imperial, and not local in a legitimate sense, so long as 
 the United Kingdom exists ? Is it not as Imperial, at 
 least for the most part, as the expenditure on the British 
 army and navy and on the government and administration 
 of England and Scotland is Imperial, and not, properly 
 speaking, local ? This argument could be retorted with 
 decisive effect, if urged in the interest of Ireland against 
 Great Britain. If this kind of expenditure in Ireland is 
 held to be local, not Imperial, the same rule must apply 
 to England and Scotland ; this expenditure in their case 
 must be local and not Imperial. Why, then, should Ireland 
 contribute to such charges as public works in Edinburgh 
 and London, as the maintenance of the great English 
 dockyards and harbours, as the cost of the army and navy 
 outside Ireland, and of the government and administration 
 
304 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 of England and Scotland? Clearly on the Treasury- 
 hypothesis she should not contribute ; and if she does, she 
 has an immense counterclaim, so far as her contributions 
 are applied to these local objects. But, in truth, this 
 whole argument, when examined, is a mere sophism. The 
 revenues of the Three Kingdoms are paid into a common 
 exchequer ; they are distributed according to the uses of 
 the State ; this expenditure, as a general rule, must be 
 held to be Imperial, not local, and cannot give a part of 
 the Three Kingdoms a right to make a claim against 
 another. The State spends millions on London which 
 it does not spend on Surrey ; it spends millions in Hants 
 which it does not spend in Berkshire : does this circum- 
 stance give Surrey or Berkshire a title to say we can make 
 a demand on London and Hants ? Precisely in the same 
 way, the expenditure of the State on Ireland, as contra- 
 distinguished from that on Great Britain, cannot, at least 
 as a general principle, give Great Britain a right to make 
 a counterclaim on Ireland. 
 
 It is unnecessary to point out how this theory has a 
 tendency to create local and even national ill-will ; to set 
 parts of one country against other parts, and two countries 
 against each other ; it distinctly alienates Ireland from 
 Great Britain ; as I have said, it is full of mischief and 
 peril. In truth, however, it is a mere device to excuse the 
 overcharge of Irish taxation ; it has never entered the 
 minds of statesmen. Nothing can be more certain than 
 that every great British financier, from the day of Pitt to 
 the day of Peel, and to the day of Mr. Gladstone, has 
 regarded the expenditure of the Three Kingdoms, as this 
 is paid into a common exchequer, as a general fund to 
 be allocated as the State requires ; and has not regarded 
 it as a fund, under local heads, to be laid out in separate 
 districts, so as to give any one district a counterclaim 
 against another. I quote from a report of one of the 
 members of the Childers Commissions : ' A division of the 
 
THE QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 305 
 
 expenditure of the United Kingdom into "charge for 
 Irish purposes " and " Imperial expenditure," cannot be 
 made under the system of finance embodied in the con- 
 stitution established by the Legislative Union. All ex- 
 penditure under that system is " expenditure of the United 
 Kingdom," or, to express it more briefly, " Imperial ex- 
 penditure;" and all Imperial expenditure is defrayed 
 from the common fund of the Imperial Exchequer. If a 
 part of the Imperial expenditure be described as a charge 
 " for Irish purposes," this classification does not affect the 
 fact that it is Imperial expenditure, and charged as such 
 upon the whole Imperial revenue. To regard this ex- 
 penditure as non-Imperial, to deduct it from the particular 
 revenue contributed by Ireland to Imperial expenditure, 
 to treat the fraction of Irish revenue left as if it were the 
 whole of the Irish contribution to Imperial expenditure, 
 and to regard Imperial expenditure itself as not including 
 " the charge for Irish purposes," would be to do what the 
 Constitution does not sanction : it would be to deal with 
 the revenue and expenditure of the United Kingdom as 
 if the revenues of Great Britain and Ireland were raised 
 and administered by separate authorities, each of which, 
 having first, out of its own revenue, defrayed its separate 
 charges, then applied the balance to payment of common 
 expenses, which, in that case, would be properly classified 
 as Imperial.' * And the evidence of Sir Robert Giffen is 
 to the same effect : ' The opinion which I have formed is 
 that, on the whole, it is not possible to make the distinc- 
 tion between the different objects of Imperial expenditure 
 which is made in some of these discussions ; that, in fact, 
 all the expenditure by an Imperial .Government is to be 
 considered expenditure for Imperial purposes, and although 
 part of it may be spent locally, you cannot in any way 
 call it expenditure for the special benefit of that locality. 
 
 * Report of the Childers Commission : Report of Mr. Sexton and 
 others, pp. 102, 103. 
 
 X 
 
3o6 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 It is expenditure for the general objects of the Imperial 
 Government.' * 
 
 The theory of the Treasury is thus essentially false ; 
 but accidentally, it contains, I think, a residuum of truth. 
 When, as between two countries, one pays a considerable 
 sum, exclusively or mainly from local rates, and the same 
 charge in the other country is for the most part defrayed 
 from Imperial taxation by the State, it appears to me that 
 a portion of the sum so paid by the State may give one 
 country a counterclaim against the other to some extent. 
 This is the case as between Great Britain and Ireland ; the 
 cost of national education and of the police force is 
 largely discharged in Great Britain by local rates ; in 
 Ireland it amounts to about £2, 700,000, and is mainly 
 defrayed from Imperial taxes ; this may create a counter- 
 claim against Ireland within reasonable limits at least. 
 No doubt the charge of bringing up the young of the 
 poorer classes and of maintaining public order by a suit- 
 able force, ought largely to be an Imperial charge ; but 
 when in one community it is chiefly borne by local funds, 
 and in another it is chiefly borne by the common 
 Exchequer of both, this seems to give the first community 
 a partial claim against the second. This counterclaim, 
 such as it is, has been reckoned, in addition to a sum for 
 free grants, at about £500,000 a year by the Childers 
 Commission ; but it did not thoroughly go into the 
 subject ; this estimate is believed to be too low by well- 
 informed persons ; the counterclaim has been calculated 
 to be about £1,000,000 sterling. Lord Salisbury's Govern- 
 ment, we have seen, promised to appoint a second Com- 
 mission to examine this question at length, besides some 
 other financial questions suggested by the Report of the 
 Childers Commission ; for some unknown reason it has 
 not redeemed its pledge ; it is very desirable that it should 
 redeem it. Apart from the mischief of a delay approaching 
 * Report of the Childers Commission : ' Evidence,' vol. ii. p. 18. 
 
THE QUESTION OF IRISH FINANCE 307 
 
 a breach of public faith, the only inference that can be 
 drawn, if this promise is broken, is that the Government 
 accepts the view in this matter of the Childers Commission. 
 The Childers Commission has conclusively proved that 
 Ireland is much too highly taxed ; whatever counterclaim 
 may be made against this excess, the overcharge can be 
 little less than two millions a year. The arguments urged 
 against this conclusion are mere leather and prunella that 
 may be brushed aside ; the Report of the Commission has 
 had the sanction of nearly all economists of a high order. 
 By all means let another Commission strike a balance after 
 making every fair allowance ; but if it shall be struck, as 
 it must be in Ireland's favour, the only real question for 
 impartial men will be how it shall be best discharged. 
 Ireland has practically acquiesced for years in fiscal 
 injustice ; in any view of the case she has no right to call 
 for a change in our whole system of finance for her special 
 benefit. Still less has she a right to demand that her 
 customs and excise duties should be placed at a lower 
 level than those of Great Britain ; this would raise a 
 mischievous barrier between the two countries ; this policy 
 would be, perhaps, impossible ; if possible, it would probably 
 injure Ireland greatly in the long run. The only remaining 
 alternative is to leave our existing fiscal system intact, but 
 to make an annual grant from the exchequer for Irish 
 uses, as compensation for excessive taxation ; this has the 
 support of the Childers Commission. ' The third method, 
 and that which most strongly recommends itself to our 
 judgment, is to give compensation to Ireland by making 
 an annual allocation of revenue in their favour, to be 
 employed in promoting the material prosperity and social 
 welfare of the country.' * It is difficult to suppose, should 
 a large yearly sum be found to be due to Ireland, as affairs 
 now stand, that Parliament will refuse to pay honourably 
 a just debt; it would be a shameful act to repudiate an 
 * Report of the Childers Commission, pp. 194, 195. 
 
308 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 obligation of the kind. Years ago Pitt declared in his 
 characteristic style that ' Ireland might safely rely on 
 Great Britain for the discharge of any fair claim on her ; 
 the liberality, the justice, the honour of the people of 
 Great Britain have never been found deficient.' The time 
 has come to test the value of this pledge ; it has been 
 announced by the highest authority, in which English 
 opinion largely prevails, that Ireland has been immensely 
 overtaxed for years : will the ' people of Great Britain ' 
 give effect to this judgment, and make good a claim which 
 hardly admits of a doubt? The demand of Ireland, no 
 doubt, is not sustained by violent agitation and the shouts 
 of multitudes ; but it is backed by all that is best in Irish 
 opinion ; it rests upon the simplest financial justice. It is 
 dangerous to treat a demand such as this with contempt, 
 and still more so with weak sophistry ; not that Ireland 
 can make an effective resistance to fiscal wrong, however 
 clearly proved ; and I for one deprecate rhodomontade 
 about ' the Boston tea-ships.' But a claim may have 
 great moral force, though it be not supported by physical 
 power ; the disregard of this claim would provoke well- 
 informed Irishmen, and weaken the Union perhaps greatly ; 
 and, after all, is it a seemly sight, is it becoming in the 
 eyes of the world, that the richest country in Europe should 
 practically impose an iniquitous burden upon the poorest ? 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE QUESTIONS OF IRISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND 
 EDUCATION — OTHER QUESTIONS— CONCLUSION 
 
 Irish county government — The grand jury system in the eighteenth 
 century — Its merits and defects — The grand jury system in the 
 nineteenth century, and especially since 1836 — The Irish poor law 
 system — Elected and ex-officio guardians — The local government 
 of cities and towns in Ireland — Municipal institutions founded in 
 Ireland by the Norman kings — Why they did not prosper — 
 Boroughs and municipalities founded by James I. and the Stuarts 
 — Their condition in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — 
 The Municipal Reform Act of 1840 — The Towns Commissioners 
 Acts — Attempts to reform the municipal system of local govern- 
 ment in Ireland — The Local Government of Ireland Act, 1898 — 
 Complete change in Irish local government — The County 
 Councils — The County Borough Councils — The District, Rural, 
 and the Urban District Councils — Their functions, rights, and 
 duties — All these bodies placed on a democratic basis — Attitude 
 of the County Councils in the southern provinces — Education in 
 Ireland — History of primary education — The national system of 
 education — The principles on which it is founded — How it has 
 worked, and what its results have been — Secondary education in 
 Ireland — Its history — Its present condition very imperfect — The 
 Intermediate Education Act — University education in Ireland — 
 Its history — Trinity College — The Queen's Colleges and the 
 Queen's University founded by Peel — Their comparative failure 
 — Mr. Gladstone's Bill to reform University education in Ireland 
 — Its glaring errors and failure — Trinity College thrown open in 
 1873 — The Royal University founded in 1879 — Present state of 
 University education in Ireland — The true principles of reform — 
 Other Irish questions — Conclusion. 
 
 That local government in Ireland should still be a 
 ' Present Irish Question/ may appear strange to persons 
 
 3°9 
 
3io PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 only versed in the mere routine of politics. The subject 
 has been before Parliament for nearly thirty years ; it has 
 engaged the attention of more than one of its Committees ; 
 Butt endeavoured, to no purpose, to legislate on it. In 
 1892 Lord Salisbury's Government brought in a measure 
 which aimed at transforming the whole system of administer- 
 ing local affairs in Ireland ; but it had unquestionable 
 defects and was vehemently opposed ; unfortunately, as I 
 believe, it was permitted to drop. Six years afterwards, 
 that is, in 1898, the greater part of a parliamentary session 
 was employed in dealing with the question again ; a Bill 
 became law which placed Irish local government, in all 
 its departments, upon a new basis, and completely changed 
 the characteristics it had had for centuries. The measure 
 was to be a ne phis ultra ; it was extolled by applauding 
 partisans as a magnificent scheme of popular reform ; these 
 have since, over and over again, declared that its success 
 has been more than manifest. It is too soon to pronounce, 
 with anything like confidence, on what its ultimate results 
 may be, or even to say, with certainty, how it will practically 
 work ; but enough has already been made apparent to 
 cause thoughtful and fair-minded Irishmen to regard the 
 changes it has effected with grave misgivings ; to question 
 the principles on which it rests, or at least the wisdom of 
 applying them to Ireland as she now is ; and to ask 
 whether it must not be amended if the social structure of 
 Ireland is not to be still more violently disturbed, than it 
 has been by the experiments that have been made on it. 
 Besides, the local government and administration of every 
 community, especially if formed on a popular type, affect 
 its existence in many ways ; strongly indicate what its 
 opinions are, what its qualities, what its evident tendencies ; 
 in a word, largely represent its essential nature. It was 
 not for nothing that in his survey of the Revolution in 
 France, Burke did not confine himself to the sovereign 
 assembly at Versailles, but turned his penetrating glance 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 311 
 
 on the petty assemblies which had been set up in the new- 
 made departments, for the conduct of their local affairs ; 
 these, he insisted, formed the truest expression of the mind 
 of the people and of the leaders at its head. For these 
 reasons, therefore, if we would understand Ireland, her 
 local government is a ' Present Irish Question ; ' it is a 
 question, moreover, which, whatever may be said, in all 
 probability has not been finally settled. 
 
 In order to understand the subject, I must glance at the 
 system of Irish local government, as this existed until, 
 as it were, yesterday ; I turn, in the first instance, to Irish 
 county government. The beginnings of this scheme have 
 been traced back to the time of Strafford ; but it was not 
 finally established until the reign of William III., when 
 the subjugation of Ireland had been made complete. The 
 Irish grand juries always had criminal jurisdiction in their 
 countries like their English fellows ; but unlike these they 
 were now entrusted with almost absolute control over Irish 
 county government. This was partly because they were 
 representatives of the conquering race, by this time the 
 owners of nine-tenths of the lands of the country ; and 
 partly because there was no local organisation in Ireland, 
 like the English parish, which could give local influence 
 to the conquered race. The grand juries were always 
 composed of the leading landed gentry of their respective 
 counties ; they were nominated by the sheriffs, that is, by 
 officials of the Central Government; they were wholly 
 devoid of a popular element ; and as no Catholic could 
 have a share in their councils, until nearly the end of the 
 eighteenth century, they embodied, in the fullest sense, 
 the Protestant ascendency of the day, supreme in every 
 sphere of authority in the State. The grand juries had 
 almost the exclusive power of administering the local 
 affairs of their counties, of managing their roads, public 
 buildings, and police ; and they levied the charges for 
 these by a local rate, known as the county cess to this 
 
312 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 hour, and imposed almost wholly on the occupiers of the 
 soil, that is, in five cases out of six on the Catholic 
 peasantry, a striking instance of taxation without repre- 
 sentation to check it. These assemblies of local magnates 
 met twice a year at the assizes which were held in their 
 counties. Miss Edgeworth has given us graphic accounts 
 of them : how a seat on a grand jury was deemed a prize to 
 be sometimes fought for ; how the grand juries entertained 
 the judges in state, and vied with these sages in their 
 mighty potations ; and how, while wretches were hanged 
 and jurymen dined, the assize towns were scenes of not 
 fastidious revelry. There was much jobbing, corruption, 
 and waste in the administration of the counties in those 
 days ; much of the 'scratch me, and I will scratch you ;' 
 much 'give and take' at the cost of the ratepayers. But 
 there was another and better side to the picture : the Irish 
 gentry of the time had the faculty of command ; they 
 ruled their districts efficiently with their police ; the public 
 works for which they were responsible were usually good. 
 Arthur Young has especially noticed that the roads they 
 constructed were almost always well laid out and kept up. 
 Catholics were not admitted on grand juries until the 
 great Relief Act of 1793, the first general relaxation of 
 the execrable penal code. But the Catholic members of 
 these bodies have always been few ; the large majority 
 of the Irish landlords remains still Protestant. The bureau- 
 cracy of the Castle, after the Union, began to encroach on 
 the domain of the grand juries ; at the same time the 
 growing needs of the country made the expenditure on 
 local affairs much larger. The grand juries lost much of 
 their authority by degrees ; they were more and more 
 controlled by the Central Government, which supplanted 
 them in a variety of ways ; and they were ere long com- 
 pelled to vote sums for public works of different kinds 
 for the behoof of their counties. This change effectually 
 checked corruption and jobbing ; but as the requirements 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 313 
 
 of the counties increased, and the 'imperative present- 
 ments,' as they were called, were augmented, the charge 
 of the local rate or county cess became more onerous — it 
 has advanced enormously in the last sixty years ; and 
 this was still mainly imposed on the Catholic peasantry. 
 The civil or fiscal administration, which the grand juries 
 possessed until 1898, was finally arranged by an Act of 
 Parliament passed in 1836,* supplemented, from time to 
 time, by subsequent statutes. These bodies were composed 
 of the same elements, and nominated by the sheriffs as 
 before ; and they had a general supervision over all the 
 public works, roads, bridges, and buildings for public 
 purposes, comprised within their different counties, in- 
 cluding within these areas nearly all villages, and the 
 large majority of the lesser towns. But they were made 
 strictly dependent on the Central Government ; this had 
 the appointment of their chief officers ; their accounts were 
 subjected to a regular audit ; and their ' imperative pre- 
 sentments ' were largely extended. They acquired, too, 
 an additional jurisdiction in some respects, especially as 
 regards inquiries into criminal injuries and compensating 
 persons who had been sufferers, and as regards voting an 
 extra police force in disturbed districts ; but their old local 
 police had disappeared, and had been replaced by the 
 great central constabulary force. A change, too, was 
 effected in the modes through which local rates were 
 voted in the counties for public purposes. These sums 
 were ' presented ' in the first instance at ' baronial ' and 
 'county at large' sessions, held by county justices and 
 ratepayers of substance ; but these bodies were sub- 
 ordinate to the grand juries, and to a considerable extent 
 drawn from the same classes ; no popular element was 
 infused in county government, and the grand juries were, 
 in the last resort, supreme, within the limits which had 
 
 * 6 & 7 Will. IV. c. 116. The works of Messrs. Vanston and 
 Foote on the grand juries of Ireland may be referred to. 
 
3H PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 been assigned to them. The local expenditure voted and 
 assessed in this way was subject to examination by a 
 judge of assize, who 'fiated' it, as a general rule; and 
 ratepayers had a right to challenge it, by a procedure 
 called ' a traverse,' which, however, was seldom turned to 
 account. 
 
 The Irish grand juries were thus oligarchic bodies, 
 survivals of the Protestant ascendency of a bygone age, 
 and with a tendency, in their later history, to become 
 subordinate boards of the Castle. I pass on to the Irish 
 poor law system, another considerable department of Irish 
 local government. As we have seen, unlike what had 
 been the case in England, no poor law existed in Ireland 
 until 1838 ; the want of such a measure was one of the 
 causes of the pressure of a huge mass of indigence on the 
 soil before the catastrophe of 1845-47. The Irish poor 
 law, with some marked distinctions, was analogous to the 
 new English poor law, as it has long been called ; it has 
 now been in operation for about sixty years. The 
 country was divided into a series of unions, which have 
 varied from 130 to 163 in number; at present there 
 are 159 of these; these were the principal units for carry- 
 ing the poor law system into effect. The unions were 
 again subdivided into lesser districts, electoral divisions 
 for the county, wards for the larger towns ; the persons 
 chosen to administer the poor law were taken from these 
 areas ; and the unions and all that pertained to them were 
 placed under the control of the Central Government, repre- 
 sented by the Local Government Board of Ireland. The 
 persons returned from the electoral divisions and the 
 wards were selected by the votes of the ratepayers, and 
 were known as the elected guardians ; a popular element 
 was thus introduced into the administration of the law, 
 which had never been introduced into Irish county govern- 
 ment. The vote of the ratepayers, however, was cumu- 
 lative, not single ; the largest ratepayers had the most 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 315 
 
 votes, a safeguard, it has been assumed, for property ; and 
 the elected guardians, in theory at least, were balanced 
 by an equal number of ex-officio guardians, composed of 
 magistrates within the unions. The chief duties of the 
 elected and the ex-officio guardians, collectively known as 
 Boards of Guardians, were to provide for the wants of the 
 poor, and to assess and levy poor rates for that purpose ; 
 but many other duties were gradually imposed on them, 
 the principal of these being the care of the sanitary state 
 of the lesser towns within their districts. There was a 
 marked difference between the incidence of the poor rate 
 and of the county rate, or cess, of the grand juries. The 
 county cess, we have seen, was mainly a charge on the 
 Catholic occupiers of the soil, the poor rate was, to a very 
 considerable extent, a charge on the owners, for the most 
 part Protestants ; for the landlord was bound to pay the 
 whole poor rate in the case of the pettiest holdings, and 
 to allow his tenants half the poor rate in the case of other 
 holdings ; by these means the burden of at least half the 
 poor rate, it is believed, was borne by the Irish landed 
 gentry. It should be added that the elected guardians 
 have practically had the administration of the poor law 
 in their hands ; the ex-officio guardians, especially of late 
 years, took little part in it.* 
 
 I turn from the administration of local rural affairs in 
 Ireland to that of its chief cities and its towns. The Irish 
 towns, conquered and settled by the Danes, had, perhaps, 
 a kind of municipal government ; the Plantagenet kings 
 conferred municipal rights as freely in Ireland as they did 
 in England. Thus Dublin received a charter from John, 
 modelled on that of his ' liegemen of Bristol ; ' Limerick, 
 Waterford, Kilkenny, and several other towns were incor- 
 porated and given powers of self-government at different 
 periods of the Middle Ages. But the municipal life and 
 
 * The reader may be referred to Mr. Moore's work on the Irish 
 poor law. 
 
316 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 the municipal spirit which grew up and gained strength 
 in the thriving towns of England, and secured for them a 
 large measure of local liberty, had hardly any existence 
 in a land like Ireland, distracted by feudal and tribal 
 anarchy ; the corporate cities and towns of Ireland fell 
 into the hands of great Anglo-Norman nobles and Celtic 
 chiefs, and seem to have all but lost their local franchises. 
 During the long agony of the sixteenth century, when 
 Ireland was devastated by a horrible strife of race and faith, 
 these privileges were still further effaced ; at the death of 
 Elizabeth the Irish municipal centres, with the exception 
 of the capital, were mere names and shadows. A great 
 change took place when the subjugated land passed under 
 the domination of the first Stuarts. English law was now 
 extended over the whole of Ireland ; a colonial caste of 
 settlers was becoming lords of the soil ; the Government 
 was conducted by the men at the Castle, ruling through 
 a Parliament largely composed of the new settlers. 
 James I. created forty-six Irish boroughs with a stroke of 
 the pen, and gave them a representation in the Parliament 
 and municipal rights ; but these, for the most part, were 
 mere villages ; they obtained their large privileges solely 
 in order to support ' the English interest,' as it was called, 
 in the Irish House of Commons. This system was con- 
 tinued by the later Stuarts ; besides Dublin and the larger 
 towns of Ireland, there were about a hundred of these 
 petty municipalities and parliamentary boroughs in the 
 eighteenth century. These places, however, could have 
 no municipal freedom, and were wholly devoid of municipal 
 feeling ; they became nearly all the mere appanages of 
 the neighbouring leading families ; and, with hardly an 
 exception, they were extreme types of the Protestant 
 ascendency which prevailed everywhere. Something of 
 the same kind was witnessed in England, under the aristo- 
 cratic rule of that age, but there was the difference 
 between a sorry caricature and a picture ; the great cities 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 317 
 
 and the better towns of England still retained an ample 
 measure of municipal liberty, and, especially, did not lose 
 the municipal spirit ; the exact contrary was the case in 
 Ireland. 
 
 A large majority of the little Irish boroughs were 
 deprived of their parliamentary representation at the 
 Union, but they retained their nominal municipal rights. 
 They still remained under the control of the chief landed 
 gentry ; and they became, as indeed they had always 
 been, centres of maladministration, corruption, and pecu- 
 lation of all kinds. When, after the passing of the great 
 Reform Act of 1832, statesmen directed their minds to 
 the questions of corporate and municipal reform in 
 England, they naturally turned their minds to Ireland 
 also, where this reform was notoriously still more impera- 
 tive. After the publication of a masterly report in 1834-35, 
 which thoroughly illustrated the whole subject, the abuses 
 in the Irish corporations were shown to be such — they 
 were enormous even in the cities and larger towns — that 
 Peel, the leader of the Opposition, actually gave them up ; 
 he proposed to deprive the corporate towns of all municipal 
 rights and franchises, and to place them under the 
 authority of Commissioners appointed by the Crown. 
 This plan, however, was rejected by the Melbourne 
 Government, and was not sanctioned by the House of 
 Commons ; after a long and angry controversy, which con- 
 tinued for years, a measure became law as late as 1840 ; and 
 by this, with the exception of ten, all the corporate towns 
 of Ireland lost their municipal rights, and were thus left 
 without any power of self-government. With respect even 
 to the ten still enfranchised towns, their old privileges 
 were greatly curtailed and were transferred to the Central 
 Government ; and their municipal liberties were restricted 
 and narrowed. They retained, indeed, many rights of 
 self-government ; but the municipal franchise was placed 
 at a high level ; the great body of the townsmen did not 
 
318 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 possess it ; and they were subject to the supervision of 
 the Local Government Board, that is, of the Central 
 Government, to a considerable extent at least. True 
 municipal life, and the municipal sentiment, could not, 
 therefore, become well developed, in the case of towns 
 under such conditions ; they showed but few symptoms 
 of the wonderful growth of prosperity and power which 
 has been such a marked feature in the history of the great 
 corporate towns of England, in what may be called the 
 Victorian age, though, no doubt, the cases were widely 
 different — poor Ireland could not, in this respect, compete 
 with wealthy and progressive England. The deficiency 
 of corporate towns in Ireland was felt ere long to be 
 such, that, in 1854, and subsequent years, municipal rights 
 were, in some measure, extended to nearly a hundred 
 of these towns. These places were governed by bodies 
 called Town Commissioners elected by a kind of popular 
 vote ; but the authority of these bodies has never been 
 large ; the municipal franchise was very high ; and these 
 towns were also under the Irish Local Government Board. 
 Municipal institutions, like others of English origin, had 
 thus, from a variety of causes, when transferred to Ireland, 
 only a stunted, imperfect, and maimed existence. We 
 may briefly glance at the operation of the system of rural 
 and urban local government, of which we have en- 
 deavoured to sketch the outlines. Except, perhaps, in the 
 instance of criminal injuries, and of the compensation to 
 be adjudged by them, where they did not always give 
 proof of a judicial spirit, the grand juries, for upwards 
 of two generations, administered county affairs very well ; 
 they were economical, prudent, and jealous of expense, if 
 the public buildings they sanctioned were, occasionally, 
 too costly ; but the system was an anachronism, and had 
 had its day. In ordinary times the Irish poor law was 
 reasonably well administered by the Boards of Guardians, 
 as well, probably, as was the case in England ; they were 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 319 
 
 rather parsimonious in assessing rates, and gave little 
 attention to the sanitary state of their towns, but, on the 
 whole, there was not much cause to complain of them ; 
 and the Irish people, it must be recollected, have never 
 liked the poor law. The local administration of the cities 
 and the larger towns of Ireland was worse — a notable 
 exception was seen in Belfast ; but these, as a rule, gave 
 proof of the restricted system on which their government 
 had been formed ; the results appeared in a high death 
 rate, in bad supplies of water, in crowds of squalid and 
 deserted dwellings — in a word, in stagnation and a want of 
 progress, if other and powerful causes concurred. When 
 the movement conducted by Parnell acquired strength, 
 almost a revolution passed over the seats of Irish local 
 government, where these, except in Ulster, possessed a 
 popular element. Parnell called on the Boards of 
 Guardians, the Corporations, and the Town Commissioners, 
 in places where the ' people ' had any effective voice, to rally 
 round the Land and the National Leagues ; he achieved 
 remarkable success in the three provinces of the south. 
 This was especially made manifest in the Boards of 
 Guardians, composed largely of farmers of substance, and 
 in which the ex-officio guardians had little real power ; 
 these bodies set a crusade against the landed gentry on 
 foot ; marked them out for plunder in many ways ; en- 
 couraged ' boycotting ' and defiance of the law ; gave a free 
 rein to rebellious utterances of many kinds ; and denounced 
 Irish ' landlordism ' and British rule in Ireland, as fiercely 
 as they had been denounced at Land and National League 
 gatherings.* The same phenomena appeared in many 
 of the corporate and inferior towns : the Corporation of 
 Dublin indulged in anti-British threats and speeches ; the 
 Corporation of Limerick refused to pay a lawful tax ; 
 
 * See the Report of a Committee of the House of Lords, and 
 especially of the Evidence, taken in 1884-85, with respect to the 
 administration of the Irish poor law at the time. 
 
320 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 the Corporation of Cork proclaimed itself supreme in a 
 1 rebel ' city ; the example was generally followed in the 
 lesser towns of the south ; in short, these bodies became 
 centres of sedition, socialism, and resistance to the law, 
 and widely disseminated their pernicious teaching. In 
 fact, they made themselves agencies of the Land and the 
 National Leagues ; at the same time, in numerous instances, 
 they set the authority of the Local Government Board at 
 naught* 
 
 The system of Irish local government was obviously 
 so defective, so antiquated, so contrary to the spirit of the 
 age, that several attempts, we have seen, were made, long 
 ago, to reform it. It has now been completely transformed 
 on the principles applied to England and Scotland ; the 
 occasion of this transformation was somewhat singular. 
 In 1896 considerable relief was given, in England and 
 Scotland, to the landed interest by a subvention made by 
 the State, which defrayed half the charge of the local 
 county rates, the depression of agriculture being so 
 grievous ; the justice of this measure was hardly disputed. 
 But the Report of the Childers Commission, declaring that 
 Ireland was greatly overtaxed, and had been for a long 
 series of years, was published about the same time ; the 
 Government, probably because it had made up its mind 
 not to countenance the report in any way, refused to 
 extend the same relief to Ireland, although it was as much 
 required — a decision that simply nothing could warrant. 
 
 * For a further account of local government in Ireland, a reader 
 may consult the Report of Mr. W. P. O'Brien on Local Government, 
 1878, and reports on the towns of Ireland and their taxation about the 
 same date. An excellent tract on the subject was published by Mr. 
 William J. Bailey in 1888, called ' Local and Centralised Government 
 in Ireland.' With respect to the system of municipal government in 
 Ireland as it existed before 1840, nothing is so valuable as the Reports 
 of the Commissioners, very able men, charged to inquire into the 
 subject in 1834-35. A useful and well-informed account will also be 
 found in Mr. Barry O'Brien's ' Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,' 
 vol. i. book v. 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 321 
 
 The indignation, however, expressed in Ireland, and the 
 remonstrances even of the Ministerial Press, angrily as it 
 had challenged the findings of the report, before long 
 changed the Government's purpose ; it was formally an- 
 nounced, in 1897, that Ireland would obtain the same 
 boon as Great Britain, and, apparently, as a condition of 
 this, that Irish local government was to be reformed. 
 The measure of 1898 was the result of this compromise ; 
 the interdependence of two subjects, which have nothing 
 in common, has made it not easy to interpret ; but, as we 
 shall see, its authors have provided, with skill, against one 
 of the dangers the change involved, that is, the probability 
 that it might expose the Irish landed gentry to predatory 
 attacks. Before examining the recent law, I venture to 
 make a single remark. The question of the alleviation of 
 the charge of rates, a concession made to Ireland with 
 bad grace, and made to England and Scotland as a 
 matter of course, has nothing to do with the infinitely 
 larger question of the excessive taxation imposed on 
 Ireland ; relief in the one case does not imply relief in 
 the other ; the two subjects are altogether distinct. It 
 is essential carefully to keep this in mind, for attempts 
 are being made to confuse the two questions, and cha- 
 racteristically to argue that Ireland ought to rest and 
 be thankful, and not to say a word about her over- 
 taxation, because, forsooth, in common with England and 
 Scotland, she has received assistance as regards her local 
 rates. 
 
 The transformation which has been effected in Irish 
 local government has completely changed the old order 
 of things, and is of an extremely democratic character. 
 County government has been taken from the grand juries, 
 and has been extended to bodies known by the name of 
 County Councils, recently formed in Great Britain. The 
 County Councils proper are thirty-two in number, corre- 
 sponding to the number of the Irish counties ; they are 
 
 Y 
 
322 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 popular assemblies in the fullest sense of the word. They 
 are elected by the ratepayers of their districts, who possess 
 the present extravagantly low suffrage ; the right of 
 election is also bestowed on women ; and the protection 
 of the cumulative vote has been removed ; a cottar has 
 the same voting power as a man of forty thousand a year. 
 Any of these voters may have a seat in a County Council ; 
 the body, therefore, may be crowded with petty ratepayers ; 
 and women also may have seats. Three members of the 
 grand jury, in each county, are entitled to sit in a County 
 Council, but for a short time only — a provision intended 
 to reconcile the old with the new ; the County Councils 
 are given a right to ' co-opt ' a few members ; and the heads 
 of bodies subordinate to them have the privilege of taking 
 part in their counsels. The rights and the responsibilities 
 of the grand juries have, as a rule, been transferred to 
 the County Councils, except in the instance of criminal 
 injuries, and of determining compensation for these ; this 
 jurisdiction, subject to an appeal to a judge of assize, has 
 been properly conferred on the County Court judges, for 
 it is essentially of a judicial nature. The powers of the 
 County Councils thus extend to the management and the 
 supervision of the roads, bridges, and buildings for public 
 purposes comprised within their counties, and also to the 
 regulation of villages and petty towns ; but, like the grand 
 juries, they are subject to the same control of the Central 
 Government; they must make 'imperative presentments ' 
 like the grand juries ; and, as in the instance of the grand 
 juries, subordinate bodies have the initiative in part of their 
 duties. Their powers, however, have been made larger 
 and wider than those of the grand juries ; they have been 
 given the right to assess and levy the poor rate in rural 
 districts, the management of the asylums of the lunatic 
 poor, an authority, in cases of exceptional distress, subject 
 to the permission of the Local Government Board, to 
 sanction relief to poor people out-of-doors, and several 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 323 
 
 other powers of not much importance. It should be added 
 that the County Councils are not restricted in any way by 
 judge's ' fiats ' and by ' traverses ' as the grand juries were ; 
 these securities, such as they were, have disappeared ; but 
 their conduct may be controlled to a certain extent by the 
 Superior Courts of Ireland, as that of most public bodies 
 may be, if only through a tedious and costly procedure, 
 and they are more or less under the authority of the Local 
 Government Board. 
 
 Six of the principal cities and towns of Ireland, Dublin, 
 Belfast, Cork, Limerick, Londonderry, and VVaterford, have 
 been made distinct counties, with the appellation of County 
 Boroughs. The scheme of County Councils has been 
 applied to these also ; the townsmen and townswomen 
 have the same power of voting, and the same democratic 
 suffrage as the counties proper ; the borough assemblies 
 may have the same kinds of members ; but the titles of 
 mayors, aldermen, and burgesses have been preserved, in 
 recognition, so to speak, of strictly urban government. 
 These bodies, which, it will be observed, are popular in the 
 widest sense of the word, have the powers of grand juries 
 within their respective spheres ; but they retain besides 
 their former administrative powers subject to the control 
 of the Local Government Board ; they have thus been 
 changed from narrow and close oligarchies into democracies 
 on the very broadest basis. The County Councils have 
 under them two minor bodies, the Rural District Councils 
 and the Urban District Councils, the characteristics of 
 which may be briefly noticed. The sphere of the authority 
 of the Rural District Council corresponds, for the most 
 part, to the Poor Law Union ; these councils are elected 
 and constituted under the same conditions as the larger 
 councils already described ; they are, therefore, mere 
 democracies in considerable numbers. The Rural District 
 Councils are given the powers of the Baronial Presentment 
 Sessions of the Grand Juries, that is, they may initiate 
 
324 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 proceedings as their predecessors did ; they are made the 
 sole guardians of the poor within their districts, the ex- 
 officio guardians having been abolished ; their chairmen 
 are members of the County Councils ; it may be added 
 here that rating for the poor has been extended generally 
 over the union, not as hitherto confined to the electoral 
 division and the ward, a questionable provision which 
 will certainly increase the expenditure for the relief of 
 poverty. The sphere of the authority of the Urban 
 District Councils has been made that of the larger towns 
 of Ireland, being sanitary areas within themselves ; but 
 power has been taken to increase the number of these 
 towns, and this increase will be probably witnessed. The 
 Urban District Councils resemble, in their mode of election 
 and their constitution, the other assemblies, that is, they 
 are democracies to the fullest extent ; but they retain the 
 names of Corporate or Town Commissioners towns, and 
 of mayors, aldermen, and burgesses where they possessed 
 these before. The powers of the Urban District Councils 
 are those of the grand juries within the towns, except as 
 respects the larger public buildings, which were formerly 
 charged on ' the county at large ; ' these councils levy 
 and assess the poor rate within their districts ; and they 
 retain the powers of urban government they formerly 
 possessed. The Local Government Board has authority, 
 also, over the Rural District and the Urban District 
 Councils. 
 
 The entire system of Irish local government has thus 
 been placed on an extremely democratic basis, subject, 
 however, to partial control by the Central Government. 
 This revolution, for it has been nothing less, was obviously 
 liable to be attended by the many mischiefs inseparable 
 from a sudden transfer of enormous powers to local 
 assemblies of the most popular type, to maladministration, 
 waste, and extravagance, and, as especially would be the 
 case in Ireland, to violent or insidious attacks on the 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 325 
 
 landed gentry. The late measure has provided against 
 these evils, if not completely or adequately, with ingenuity 
 and skill. The relief of Irish agriculture was its first 
 financial object ; to effect this the county cess and the 
 poor rate have been consolidated into a single charge ; and 
 half of this is to be defrayed by the State and appropriated 
 to the relief of agricultural lands, towns and lands, within 
 municipal limits, being excepted. The subvention is not 
 to extend to sums payable in respect of criminal injuries, 
 nor to sums payable in respect of extra police in disturbed 
 districts ; these charges are properly to be borne by local 
 areas as before. The relief afforded is an annual sum of 
 about ^"700,000 ; it is divided in tolerably equal shares 
 between the owners and the occupiers of the soil, that is, 
 between the landlords and tenants of Ireland ; it is 
 characteristic of Radical clamour, that a boon, the justice 
 of which could not be disputed, was denounced as an 
 ( infamous job ' for the behoof of the Irish landed gentry. 
 A powerful check has been placed on extravagance and 
 waste, and on attempts to injure property in land, exposed, 
 we have seen, to undoubted dangers. The relief afforded 
 was calculated on the local expenditure for 1897, in the 
 words of the law, ' the standard year ; ' it was regularly 
 to be one-half of this sum. Should the local expenditure, 
 therefore, in subsequent years, be in excess of that of the 
 standard year, the proportionate value of the relief would 
 fall ; should it be a lesser amount, the value would rise. A 
 strong restraint was thus imposed on attempts recklessly 
 to job and waste local funds, and notably to plunder Irish 
 landlords ; but this restriction only applies to agricultural 
 lands ; it does not extend to property in towns ; and it is 
 difficult to say that it will always prove effective against 
 democratic sentiment, passion, and greed. The extent of 
 the relief afforded to Irish landlords differs widely as 
 between landlords of different classes of tenants ; landlords 
 of mere cottars will get very little ; landlords of farmers of 
 
326 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 substance will get much more ; but it is unnecessary here 
 to enlarge on this special subject* 
 
 This sweeping measure, in my judgment at least, might 
 have been better framed to carry out its policy. Like 
 much of the legislation of the Imperial Parliament, it has 
 been fashioned too closely on the English model ; it gives 
 to a poor and backward country, not trained in self-govern- 
 ment, local institutions naturally adapted only to an 
 opulent and well-ordered country accustomed for centuries 
 to local liberties. Having regard to the peculiar state of 
 Ireland, it might have made the powers of local govern- 
 ment it conferred larger, but it ought not to have been as 
 purely democratic as it is ; and it ought to have been 
 accompanied by safeguards it does not possess. I would 
 have been disposed to give the Irish County Councils a 
 right to take evidence for private Bills on the spot ; this, if 
 transmitted to the Irish Privy Council, and considered by 
 it, might be made the basis of reports by that body, which 
 could be turned into Acts of Parliament, by a summary 
 process, thus getting rid of great and useless expense, and 
 silencing one of the few real arguments in favour of Home 
 Rule. I would also have allowed the County Councils of 
 different counties, in matters in which they had a common 
 interest, say, in the drainage of some of the great Irish 
 rivers, to carry out together public works of this kind, and 
 to assess and levy rates for the purpose if, on consideration, 
 this was deemed expedient ; at present they have no 
 authority like this ; and such a power would, I think, be 
 for the general good of Ireland. The County Councils, 
 too, I believe, might be given a deliberative voice, in cases 
 they have not at present ; for example, should the rate- 
 payers of any county make a demand for sectarian educa- 
 tion, within its area, and declare themselves ready to pay 
 
 * I have only been able to sketch the outlines of the measure, the 
 Local Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, p. 1, 62 Vict. cap. 37. A good 
 commentary on it has been written by Mr. Brett of the Irish Bar. 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 3V 
 
 a rate for it, the County Council should have a right to 
 entertain the project, and to report on it to the Central 
 Government. And I am convinced that members of the 
 County Councils ought to have some seats on the Local 
 Government Board, and on other boards now filled by the 
 Castle bureaucracy ; this would introduce a popular element 
 into these bodies, and, in many ways, would be of real 
 advantage. On the other hand, in the election and the 
 constitution of the County and other Councils, democracy 
 has simply been let run riot ; and the resulting evils have 
 already been made manifest. Illiterate persons ought not 
 to have been qualified to be electors ; the single should not 
 have replaced the cumulative vote, property being thus 
 deprived of its legitimate weight ; above all, as is evident, 
 security should have been taken that the landed gentry 
 should have a proper representation on the County Councils. 
 The authority, too, of the Superior Courts over all these 
 assemblies should have been made more effective and less 
 costly than it is at present ; and that of the Local Govern- 
 ment Board should have been better defined and increased. 
 In all this province the checks possessed by the Central 
 Government over these local democracies are not, I think, 
 sufficient. 
 
 It is impossible, I have remarked, to say with certainty 
 what the end of this social revolution will be ; but some of 
 the results are, even now, apparent. There has, as yet, 
 been little tendency in the local boards to waste, or to 
 attempts to despoil the landed gentry ; the check in this 
 respect is of great force ; but no one, I repeat, can predict 
 what may be done under the influence of democratic 
 sympathies, especially should the existing agitation acquire 
 increased strength in Ireland. Some of the councils have 
 been very fairly managed ; a few others have been badly 
 administered ; as a rule, much time has been misspent in 
 irrelevant talk ; there has been a good deal of squabbling 
 with the Local Government Board ; but, on the whole, the 
 
328 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 local business of the counties and towns has been conducted 
 as reasonably well as could be expected in the case of a 
 new and immense experiment. But the consequences of 
 giving rawdemocracies great and sudden power have already- 
 been made but too manifest, as persons, who knew Ireland, 
 foresaw would happen. In parts of Ulster representatives 
 of the landed gentry have been elected to the County 
 Councils ; property in these has still legitimate influence. 
 But in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, this order of 
 men has been all but completely shut out from these 
 boards ; the land is not represented at all ; this is an 
 absolutely unnatural position of affairs, pregnant with many 
 ills to the community as a whole. It is not only that the 
 landed gentry have been deprived of an influence they 
 ought to possess, in a society in any degree well ordered ; 
 this change has a tendency to make them more and more, 
 what they have largely been made already, a privileged 
 class without duties, akin to the old seigneurie of France, a 
 state of things of which Tocqueville has powerfully described 
 the evils. In the southern provinces, too, the new 
 democracies, composed of Catholic ' Nationalists,' by large 
 majorities, have driven loyal, and especially Protestant, 
 men and women from local offices they had filled with 
 credit, and this too at a considerable charge on the rates, 
 a clear proof how no restraints can be wholly effective. 
 But the main feature in the conduct of the County and 
 other Councils is that in most parts of Ireland they have 
 followed the advice given by Parnell to their weaker fore- 
 runners ; they have made themselves agencies of the 
 United Irish League, as boards before them were agencies 
 of the Land and the National Leagues, and they have 
 given but too ample proof of disaffection, disloyalty, and 
 hatred of British rule. In some counties, the councils 
 seized the court houses, and refused light and fire to the 
 Superior and the County Court judges. Throughout the 
 South of Ireland most of the boards vied with each other 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 329 
 
 in wild expressions of sympathy with the Boers, and of 
 hopes that disaster would befall the British army ; many 
 gave free voice to frankly rebellious language ; many de- 
 nounced Irishmen being recruited for the British army. 
 Nor did these sinister exhibitions end here ; some of these 
 bodies went out of their way to sneer at their aged sovereign, 
 when she paid last year her last visit to the Irish shores, 
 to question her motives, to speak all kinds of evil ; a few 
 even refused to say a word of regret for her death, nay, 
 indulged in language of scarcely veiled insult. These 
 councils, in a word, in a number of instances, have 
 shown a marked resemblance to the Assemblies of the 
 Communes of Jacobin France, indignantly held up to 
 execration by Burke ; they have been petty nests of 
 seditious agitation and clamour. It is at least well that 
 this manner of men has not succeeded, in the great states- 
 man's language, in 'ascending from parochial tyranny to 
 federal anarchy,' and have warned us what would be the 
 nature of a Home Rule Parliament. 
 
 This scheme of local government must be given a trial ; 
 but ultimately it will have to be reformed, in a Conservative 
 sense, if things in Ireland are not to be left upside down.* 
 I turn to the subject of Irish education, which has been 
 lately attracting much public attention. University educa- 
 tion is the most prominent part of this question ; but, in 
 order to understand it, we must briefly consider the history 
 of Irish education in all its branches. The first scheme of 
 primary education in Ireland, of which we have a record — 
 I pass over the traditions of the Middle Ages — was due to 
 
 * Mr. Lecky, ' Democracy and Liberty,' Cabinet Edition, Introduc- 
 tion, p. 13, has well described this vaunted reform : ' It was a measure 
 introduced in fulfilment of distinct pledges, and it contains very skil- 
 ful provisions intended to protect existing interests. But, after all is 
 said, it means a great transfer of power and influence from the loyal 
 to the disloyal, and it goes in the direction of democracy far beyond 
 anything that a few years ago would have been accepted by the 
 Conservatives, or by the moderate Liberals.' 
 
33o PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 the policy of Henry VIII. ; he procured an Act from the 
 Irish Parliament, to the effect that elementary schools 
 should be set up in different Irish parishes ; but, true to 
 the ideal of Tudor statesmen — an ideal, however, which 
 he did not always pursue — he required that these should 
 be ' English schools/ to teach the Irish poor ' the English 
 language.' Many years passed before these schools were 
 found beyond the borders of the Pale ; but, as the march 
 of conquest advanced, they existed in many Irish parishes ; 
 there were more than five hundred of them in i8io,the largest 
 number probably they ever attained. These schools were 
 originally intended to be open without distinction of creed ; 
 but, under the conditions of Irish history, they necessarily 
 became confined to the lower Protestant classes ; they 
 were under the control of the clergy of the Established 
 Church, and Catholic children were kept away from them. 
 Elizabeth founded another class of schools, in part ele- 
 mentary, in part of a higher type ; these were known as 
 the Diocesan Irish Schools ; but there seem never to have 
 been more than sixteen of these ; and they, too, became 
 exclusively Protestant. To these schools should be added 
 ' the English Erasmus Smith Schools,' as they were called, 
 foundations grafted, so to speak, on grammar schools 
 established by a wealthy Cromwellian settler ; at one 
 time they were more than one hundred in number ; and 
 if not wholly, they were nearly confined to Protestant 
 children. A 'series of Reports of Commissions and other 
 records show that the education afforded in all these 
 schools was not what it ought to have been ; but this was 
 to be expected in the case of a country where Protestant 
 ascendency was supreme, where all administration was 
 selfish and corrupt, and where the schools were the mono- 
 poly of a fraction of the people only. As to the education 
 of the Irish Catholic poor in these centuries, it was dis- 
 couraged, and ultimately prohibited by the penal code ; 
 the Catholic child could not learn the rudiments in his 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 331 
 
 own land ; but in spite of this, 'hedge schools,' a significant 
 name, grew up, in hundreds, throughout the country, in 
 which, to adopt the words of Davis, a man of genius — 
 
 ' Still crouching 'neath the sheltering hedge, or stretched on mountain 
 fern, 
 The teacher and his pupils met feloniously to learn.' 
 
 As may, however, be supposed the instruction afforded in 
 these schools was usually bad ; throughout the eighteenth 
 century and a part of the nineteenth, the young of Catholic 
 Ireland were brought up in ignorance. In 1733 an odious 
 experiment was made, and continued for a long period, to 
 cause education to wean the Catholic child from his faith. 
 An institution, called the Charter School, was established ; 
 the object of its founders was to make ' the young of the 
 Papists ' Protestant, by attracting them to seminaries 
 where they were kept apart from their parents and priests, 
 boarded, lodged, and handed over to Protestant trades- 
 men ; millions were spent in furthering a detestable policy, 
 which literally set up Mammon against God. The Charter 
 Schools, however, completely failed ; they never had more 
 than fourteen hundred pupils, and they became wretched 
 Dotheboys Halls where cruel and pampered Squeerses, 
 eating up funds set apart for education such as it was, 
 starved and ill-treated children victims of every kind of 
 disease. 
 
 When the partial relaxation of the penal laws allowed 
 the children of the Irish Catholics to be taught the rudi- 
 ments, the ' Christian Brothers ' began to found their 
 schools, under the sanction of a Bull of Pius VI. ; these 
 schools, sectarian, like the genius of the Irish people, have, 
 though receiving no endowment from the State, grown from 
 small beginnings into a number of excellent Catholic 
 schools. The Quakers in Ireland had established a few 
 elementary schools before the Union ; and so had the 
 Presbyterians of Ulster. The Charter Schools lingered 
 
332 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 down to the year 1832 ; they disappeared when their 
 subsidies ceased; but the 'Incorporated Irish Society' is 
 in possession of the lands they once held, and it supports 
 a number of good Protestant schools. Primary education, 
 however, in Ireland remained very backward ; the Protestant 
 schools did not flourish; the Catholic 'hedge schools' 
 continued until the nineteenth century had far advanced. 
 Attempts were made to promote Irish primary education, 
 in different ways, after the Union ; a Board of Commis- 
 sioners of Education was appointed, and made valuable 
 reports ; but these efforts were of little avail for the benefit 
 at least of the Catholic young ; the schools thus established 
 were all Protestant ; and the evangelical movement, which 
 was then powerful, made them proselytising with scarcely 
 a single exception, a danger which the example of the 
 Charter Schools had especially made the Catholic Irish 
 priesthood dread. An institution, however, called the 
 ' Kildare Place Schools ' had, for a time, considerable 
 success ; these schools were thrown open to children of 
 all creeds, and had the high approval of O'Connell him- 
 self; but it was one of the rules that the Bible should 
 be read in the schools ; they became proselytising in no 
 doubtful sense, and ultimately they were tabooed by the 
 Catholic priesthood. Primary education in Ireland was 
 in this state, when the subject was taken up by Mr. 
 Stanley, the Chief Secretary for Ireland of Lord Grey, and, 
 in after years, the ' Rupert of Debate.' He founded in 
 1831-34 what has ever since been known as the 'National 
 System of Education ' of an elementary kind in Ireland. 
 The principles on which he proceeded were in accord with 
 the somewhat shallow Liberalism of the day, but, it must 
 be added, with the ideas of many enlightened Irishmen. 
 Primary education was to be endowed by the State, but 
 it was to be divided into two parts : secular instruction 
 was to be given in the new schools to children assembled 
 together to learn, and that without distinction of creed ; 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 333 
 
 but religious instruction was to be given to children kept 
 apart, Protestants and Catholics being completely separate, 
 by the pastors of their respective communions. By these 
 means it was hoped that a sound system of primary educa- 
 tion would be formed ; that proselytising would be made 
 impossible ; and that the youth of the warring races and 
 faiths of Ireland, under the influence of a common teach- 
 ing, would be made gradually to forget the animosities of 
 the past. The National Schools were to be the Lethe of 
 Irish discords. 
 
 I can barely glance at the chequered history of the 
 institution which was thus established. The 'National 
 System,' the name long in common use, was angrily con- 
 demned by the clergy of the Established Church of 
 Ireland, and by a majority, perhaps, of the laity; this 
 opposition was partly due to the spirit of an ascendency 
 that would not brook equality ; but it was largely to be 
 ascribed to a higher motive. The new system, it was 
 argued, cut education in two ; the separation of what is 
 secular from what is religious practically postpones what 
 is divine to the human ; and this is especially the case 
 under the arrangements in force, for religious instruction 
 in the schools may be a mere accident. The Irish 
 Protestant clergy, and many other Protestants, have never 
 taken to the National Schools ; their sincerity is proved 
 by the fact that a 'Church Education Society' exists, 
 which, though depending on voluntary subscriptions alone, 
 supports nearly two hundred exclusively Protestant schools. 
 As for the Presbyterians of Ireland, the National system 
 of education fell in with their views ; its ' Liberalism ' was 
 congenial to them ; but though schools of this type have 
 flourished in Ulster, the Presbyterians have given a great 
 deal of trouble to the Commissioners charged to carry out 
 the law, and have shown much animosity to the Catholic 
 Irish. The Irish Catholic priesthood at first accepted the 
 National system almost with gratitude ; it gave their flocks 
 
334 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 a rudimentary instruction they were much in need of; it 
 seemed to provide against the proselytising they feared 
 above all things ; and during some years the heads of 
 their Church in Ireland, for the most part not of the 
 Ultramontane faith, were not indisposed to welcome a 
 compromise. By degrees, however, opposition grew up in 
 Catholic Ireland against the system ; and, it must be 
 allowed, not without reason. The Catholic element on 
 the Commission was much too weak ; the purely secular 
 instruction in the schools was made partly religious, for 
 books of a Protestant complexion found their way into 
 them ; a cry of Protestant proselytising was raised ; and 
 the National system was solemnly condemned in 1850, at 
 the great Catholic Synod of Thurles, a sentence, however, 
 which had no effect on the Government. But the real 
 grievances of the Irish Catholics, in this matter, have 
 nearly all been removed ; the Catholic Commissioners 
 have been made equal in number with the Presbyterian 
 and Protestant ; secular instruction in the schools has 
 again been made strictly secular ; attempts at proselytising 
 have long been rendered impossible ; it should be added — 
 and this is very important — the Catholic priesthood have 
 become the managers of a large majority of the schools. 
 The system has certainly struck deep roots in Ireland ; 
 there are now nearly 9000 National Schools, endowed 
 with about £1,300,000 by the State, and teaching nearly 
 800,000 pupils ; they are supported by model and training 
 schools, and have a large staff of competent teachers ; the 
 instruction they afford, if not remarkable, is, on the whole, 
 sufficiently good. It may fairly be said that the National 
 system has been a beneficent influence of the greatest 
 value ; light has shone on a people that once sate in 
 darkness. The system, however, has become, insensibly, 
 but greatly, changed ; the National Schools have long 
 been, for the most part, sectarian, that is, composed of 
 Protestant or of Catholic children ; the ' mixed ' schools, 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 335 
 
 as they are called, are comparatively few. But the main 
 principle of the system still is in force ; the instruction 
 given in the schools, when the pupils sit together, is 
 strictly secular ; and this is secured by a conscience clause ; 
 the Bible cannot be read, in school hours, even in a 
 Protestant school ; no Catholic school can have a Catholic 
 emblem. The religious instruction given in the schools is 
 hardly what it ought to be, especially in the case of the 
 Protestant schools ; it must be added that the hope of 
 their founders that they would bridge over the gulf of 
 discords in Ireland has not been, in the slightest degree, 
 realised. 
 
 The Irish are, naturally, a religious people ; their history, 
 a long conflict of races and faiths, has, necessarily, made 
 them intensely sectarian. The system of education, of 
 which I have traced the outlines, was certainly not well 
 designed for them ; it would have been severely condemned 
 by Burke, the deepest of thinkers on the affairs of Ireland. 
 And though the National system has had a real measure 
 of success, it owes this, in the main, to the immense sub- 
 vention it receives from the State ; it has little or no 
 support from voluntary aid ; an attempt to impose an 
 education rate on Ireland would be a failure, would not 
 improbably wreck the system. Nor is this in harmony 
 with genuine Irish sentiment ; one of the most conclusive 
 proofs is that National education has become, to a great 
 extent, sectarian ; the ' Christian Brothers ' and the 
 ' Church Education Society ' schools, sustained by voluntary 
 effort alone, and overweighted in the race by the endowed 
 schools of the State, show how strong is Irish sectarian 
 feeling. The clergy, too, of the late Established Church, 
 and a considerable body of their communion, remain hostile 
 to the National Schools ; and though the Catholic priest- 
 hood have made them, to a great extent, their own, and 
 avail themselves of the advantages they afford, they are 
 hardly in heartfelt sympathy with them. Nor can it be 
 
336 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 denied that the conscientious objections to the National 
 system have real weight ; the system, if not irreligious, is, 
 we may say, neutral ; it does not make religion an essential 
 part of school life. It would, nevertheless, I believe, be 
 exceedingly unwise to disturb a system which, on the 
 whole, has for many years had excellent results in Ireland. 
 The opposition to it is not strong ; the children of the 
 humbler classes freely avail themselves of it, and that 
 with the full consent of their parents. Nor is the con- 
 scientious objection of much force in the case of schools 
 which are only day schools, and in which the rudiments 
 alone are taught ; this is not the case of education of the 
 higher kind, in which this objection is perhaps decisive ; 
 and it cannot be said that the National Schools have, in 
 any sense, impaired the religion of the Irish people.* 
 
 I pass from elementary to schools of a secondary kind 
 in Ireland. The Diocesan Schools of Elizabeth were nearly 
 all secondary schools ; but they were never numerous, and 
 have all but disappeared. The two first Stuarts made an 
 attempt to establish secondary education in Ireland on a 
 larger scale. They founded the ' Free Royal Schools,' as 
 they have been called, now seen at Armagh, Cavan, 
 Dungannon, Portora, and Raphoe ; they endowed them 
 with lands perhaps worth in our day, £6000 a year ; they 
 looked forward to a time when they might rival Eton, 
 Winchester, and the great public schools of England. 
 
 * For a description of elementary education in Ireland up to 1812, 
 see passages in Wakefield's 'Account of Ireland ;' and for a descrip- 
 tion in earlier and later times, see Mr. Barry O'Brien's ' Fifty Years 
 of Concessions to Ireland,' book i. chs. i.-xiv. ; Mr. Graham Balfour's 
 'Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland,' pp. 80-128; 
 the Report of the Commissioners of Irish Education, 18 10-21 ; the 
 important Report of the Powis Commission, 1870-71 ; and the Reports 
 of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland. Mr. Froude, 
 in his ' English in Ireland,' vol. i. p. 514 ; vol. ii. p. 491, has charac- 
 teristically eulogised the Charter Schools ; but he stands alone ; Mr. 
 Lecky, ' History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' vol. ii. pp. 
 200-304, has commented on this odious system as it deserved. 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 337 
 
 Erasmus Smith established three considerable 'grammar 
 schools,' and granted valuable estates for their support ; 
 a tolerably large number of secondary schools was also 
 founded, from time to time, by benefactors of the dominant 
 race in Ireland : of these Kilkenny College, a seminary 
 created by the House of Ormond, which reared Swift and 
 Berkeley, was the most conspicuous. These schools, though 
 often nominally open to different creeds, became, neverthe- 
 less, in the eighteenth century, under the Protestant 
 ascendency, supreme in the land, restricted to the young 
 of the Protestant caste ; they felt the effects of monopoly, 
 and of the corruption prevailing in the State ; the education 
 they afforded was, for the most part, bad ; their governing 
 bodies and masters were often grasping and selfish. After 
 the relaxation of the penal code, the Irish Catholics began 
 to found secondary schools ; their exertions were, in a high 
 degree, praiseworthy ; and though these schools received 
 no support from the State, some of them have done really 
 excellent work. A number, too, of secondary schools were 
 established in Ulster, for the most part for Presbyterian 
 uses ; some of these are sectarian, some open to all faiths ; 
 some have, others have not, received assistance from the 
 State ; in several the education given has been, on the 
 whole, good. A few secondary schools — St. Columba is 
 much the best — have also been founded within the last 
 century, usually for the benefit of the late Established 
 Church of Ireland. 
 
 The progress made by secondary schools in Ireland, even 
 in the nineteenth century, has not been rapid. It is not 
 to be named with the immense development of public 
 schools in England, within the same period, caused, in 
 some measure, by the genius of Arnold ; secondary Irish 
 schools, in fact, have been largely a failure, like other 
 institutions of British origin. This is mainly to be attributed 
 to three reasons : the higher upper classes in Ireland usually 
 send their sons to be educated in the great English public 
 
 z 
 
338 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 schools ; the Irish secondary schools are seldom well 
 endowed ; above all, the upper middle class in Ireland 
 is small and has little influence. Two Commissions, 
 appointed in 1854 and in 1878, examined secondary 
 education in Ireland as it then existed ; their reports give 
 a far from favourable account of the system. The secondary 
 Irish schools have not been much affected by an Act of 
 Parliament passed in 1885, which provided for making 
 better schemes for their management ; but certainly they 
 have derived very great benefit from the Intermediate 
 Education Act of Lord Cairns, which established a system 
 of competition between them, and secured prizes for success- 
 ful competitors. In these honourable trials the Catholic 
 schools have done well ; but even now the secondary 
 schools are decidedly inferior to what they ought to be, and 
 do not exhibit many signs of improvement An impartial 
 inquirer thus described them in 1871 :* 'Upon the whole, 
 secondary instruction, throughout the country, was as some 
 one — I believe Lord Cairns — said, " bad in quality and 
 deficient in quantity." The fact seems incredible, but 
 there can be no doubt of its authenticity, viz. that out of 
 a total population of 5,500,000, there were only 10,814 
 boys in Ireland learning Latin, Greek, or modern languages 
 in 1 87 1. Or, to put the matter in another way, while 
 in England about ten or fifteen in every 1000 were 
 instructed in these languages, only two in every 1000 were 
 instructed in them in Ireland.' t 
 
 I pass on to University life in Ireland, the question, I 
 have said, most prominent at this time. Ireland had no 
 
 * Barry O'Brien, ' Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,' vol. ii. p. 
 322. 
 
 t See Wakefield's 'Account of Ireland ' for the state of her secondary 
 schools in 1 8 1 2 ; Barry O'Brien's ' Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,' 
 book x. chs. i., ii., iii. ; Graham Balfour's ' The Educational System 
 of Great Britain and Ireland,' pp. 203-218 ; and the Reports of the 
 two Commissions of 1854-57 and of 1878-80, of which the heads were 
 Lord Kildare and the Earl of Rosse. 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 339 
 
 Oxford or Cambridge in the Middle Ages ; an attempt to 
 establish a Universityin Dublin failed ; science and literature 
 could not grow up in a land distracted by feudal and 
 tribal strife, and in which two Churches were continually at 
 war with each other. Elizabeth founded Trinity College 
 towards the close of her reign, on the site of a monastery 
 that had been suppressed ; it was the intention of the 
 queen, and of her two first successors, that this seminary 
 should expand into a University in the true sense, contain- 
 ing a number of colleges within its sphere, and probably 
 open to all students whatever their race or their faith. 
 This happy consummation, however, was made impossible 
 during the long period of civil war and trouble, which only 
 came to an end with that of the seventeenth century. 
 Trinity College remained a single foundation ; and, in the 
 era of Protestant ascendency that ensued, when Catholic 
 Ireland lay under the ban of the penal code, it necessarily 
 became an exclusively Protestant place of learning, its 
 dignities, its honours, nay, admission to it, being reserved 
 to members of the Established Church. It had, however, 
 been amply endowed ; and, from an early period, it 
 possessed many distinguished worthies, the names of 
 Ussher, of King, of Browne, and of others, being still 
 remembered. Trinity College, strange to say, was very 
 High Church during the reigns of the two last Stuarts and 
 of Anne ; its leading divines preached the creed of 
 passive obedience ; and it was remarkable for its aversion 
 to Presbyterian Ireland, as was clearly shown in the 
 diatribes of Swift. The college, however, became Whiggish 
 and Low Church during the reign of Walpole — its Provost 
 was appointed by the Crown ; and until nearly the close 
 of the eighteenth century, its professorships, its fellowships, 
 its scholarships, its degrees, even entrance to its walls, were 
 strictly confined to the dominant communion of the Anglican 
 Church. But a liberal spirit grew up, and gained strength 
 within it ; this appears in many of the admirable writings 
 
340 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 of Berkeley, breathing the ideas that afterwards inspired 
 Grattan, and in the histories of Leland and Warner, on 
 the whole just to the vanquished Catholic people ; and 
 after the almost National movement which produced the 
 Revolution of 1782, Trinity College took a remarkable 
 step, which proved that it was in advance of the politics of 
 that age. In 1793, when the Irish Parliament passed a 
 great measure of Catholic relief, the college made Catholics 
 eligible for its degrees and its minor prizes ; and, but that 
 its statutes made this impossible, it would, perhaps, have 
 allowed Catholics to become professors, fellows, and 
 scholars — in short, to have a share in its dignities and its 
 government. Nothing like this was done at Oxford and 
 Cambridge until the nineteenth century had run far its 
 course. 
 
 From this time onwards Trinity College, accessible to 
 Presbyterians some years before, received Catholics 
 honourably within its precincts. A few distinguished 
 Catholic Irishmen have obtained the excellent education 
 it has always afforded ; and these have been treated with 
 scrupulous fairness ; no attempt at proselytising has ever 
 been made or thought of. Their numbers, however, have 
 never been large ; and they were necessarily placed in an 
 inferior position, for they could not become professors, 
 fellows, or scholars ; the college remained an institution 
 essentially Protestant, even anti-Catholic, in much of its 
 teaching, for example, in the predilection it long showed for 
 Locke. The college continued to thrive and to make 
 progress; the reproach cast on it that she was the 'silent 
 sister,' was rather due to the want of publishing enterprise 
 in the Irish capital, than to any deficiency in literary 
 power ; at all events, it has long ago been removed ; Trinity 
 College has stood for a century in the foremost rank of 
 places of learning famed for scientific eminence. In 
 1843-44 an attempt was made to introduce Catholics on 
 the foundation, as scholars ; but this was prohibited by 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 341 
 
 the statutes ; some ' non-foundation ' scholarships were 
 then endowed ; and Catholics were enabled to compete 
 for them. This was the position of the college, when, in 
 1844-45, after the agitation for Repeal had shown how dis- 
 affected Catholic Ireland still was, Peel turned his mind to 
 Irish remedial measures, and among these to a reform of 
 high education in Ireland. His policy was to maintain the 
 Union intact, and all the institutions closely connected 
 with it, but to create institutions, so to speak, alongside 
 of these, to which Irish Presbyterians, and Catholics 
 especially, might freely resort, in complete equality with 
 all Irishmen ; he therefore left Trinity College exactly as 
 it was, but resolved to establish and endow places of 
 learning, which he hoped would be popular supplements 
 to it, and would give a University training to students 
 who, as affairs stood, were not on the same level as the 
 favoured Protestants in it. He founded the Queen's 
 Colleges of Belfast, of Cork, and of Galway ; these were 
 supplied with an ample staff of professors, endowed, and 
 given the means to bestow many prizes ; and they were 
 affiliated to the Queen's University, empowered to confer 
 degrees. The principle on which these institutions were 
 formed was, following the so-called liberalism of the time, 
 almost exactly the same as that on which the Irish 
 National Schools had been based. Secular education in 
 them was to be united, religious education was to be kept 
 apart ; their students were to learn the things that belonged 
 to this world together ; but as to what belonged to another 
 world, this teaching was to be provided by their pastors 
 outside their colleges, and they were not to have it in 
 common. The colleges, and the University, therefore, 
 were essentially seats of non-religious knowledge ; religious 
 equality, it was said, could be only thus secured ; and 
 residence in the colleges was not required. 
 
 The principle pervading the Irish National education 
 system was certainly open to grave objections ; these 
 
342 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 became infinitely stronger, when it was applied to a system 
 of high education in Ireland. Secular instruction could 
 be really combined, and given to children together, when 
 limited to the first rudiments : how could it be combined 
 when it should embrace such subjects as moral philosophy, 
 metaphysics, modern history, nay, physical science, and 
 when taught to young men of the University age ? Besides, 
 religious instruction, without a great shock to conscience, 
 could be made a subordinate consideration in mere day 
 schools : how could it, consistently with Christian duty, 
 be practically excluded from a University course, and left 
 to undergraduates to be dealt with as they might think fit, 
 and that at the most critical time of their life ? Indiffer- 
 ence to the Divine, masked in specious ' liberal ' phrases, 
 was, in truth, the cardinal feature of this scheme ; it would 
 have been severely reprobated by Burke ; it was repugnant 
 to the ideas of five-sixths of Irishmen ; its tendency was 
 to form minds in superior men, like those of Hume and 
 Gibbon, in inferior men, to produce infidel, even atheistic, 
 sentiments. It was denounced as 'godless' in the House 
 of Commons by the High Church party ; it was condemned 
 by O'Connell, from the outset, though the men of 'Young 
 Ireland' were not adverse; after some hesitation, it was 
 rejected unequivocally by the Irish Catholic bishops,* and 
 finally was held up to anathema at the Synod of Thurles. 
 That the bishops were sincere is proved by the fact, that 
 they established the Irish Catholic University a few years 
 afterwards — the first head of this creation was Newman ; 
 and the foundation has been maintained ever since, though 
 it could not give a degree, and it received nothing from the 
 State, and its only funds were the contributions of a poor 
 communion, a noble example of self-sacrifice and of a true 
 sense of duty. Meanwhile, the Queen's Colleges and 
 University were kept up and endowed, at the rate of about 
 
 * See the resolutions in Duffy's 'Young Ireland,' pp. 713, 714. 
 There has been much misrepresentation on this subject. 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 343 
 
 .£30,000 a year ; the College of Belfast has done well, for 
 it falls in with Presbyterian ideas; but the Colleges of 
 Cork and of Galway, notably the last, have been sorry, 
 nay, almost useless, failures; and Peel's hope that his 
 project would secure a good University training to Irish 
 Catholics of the better class has not been, to any real 
 extent, fulfilled. Trinity College remained for many years 
 unchanged, that is, it gave an admirable education to a 
 very few Catholics ; but it continued to be a Protestant 
 institution in its essential nature ; its governing body and 
 its hierarchy were all Protestant ; its teaching was Protes- 
 tant in some of its parts ; its higher honours were a monopoly 
 of the favoured communion. 
 
 The extreme unfairness of this University system, the 
 ascendency secured to Trinity College, which, admirable 
 institution as it was, was practically nearly confined to 
 Protestants of the upper class ; the failure, with respect 
 to Catholic Ireland, of the Queen's Colleges and the Queen's 
 University, and the large and useless expenditure this 
 involved ; above all, the denial to the Catholic University 
 of any share in the bounty of the State, though its claim 
 to it could be hardly doubtful, — attracted the attention of 
 several statesmen, from 1850 to 1870; but nothing was 
 done, or even attempted. The subject was taken up by 
 Mr. Gladstone, with characteristic earnestness, during his 
 first Ministry ; he declared that University education in 
 Ireland was 'a scandal;' indeed, Irish education of the 
 higher kind was the third branch of the upas tree which 
 threw its baleful shade over the land. He brought in a 
 measure of reform in the session of 1873 ; it was an 
 ambitious and a comprehensive scheme ; but it was much 
 the worst of his Irish reforms of this period ; and it ended 
 in complete and disastrous failure. With the historical 
 instinct occasionally seen in his legislation, Mr. Gladstone 
 proposed to revive the idea of Elizabeth and the first 
 Stuarts, and to found a great National University, which 
 
344 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 was to have the management and control of the higher 
 education throughout Ireland. The governing body of this 
 new institution was to be composed partly of men chosen 
 by the Lord-Lieutenant, and partly of the heads of the 
 colleges to be connected with it ; and it was to have the 
 sole power of conferring degrees in Ireland. Trinity 
 College was to hand over to the National University a 
 sum of £1 2,000 a year, that is, more than a fourth of its 
 endowments from the State ; its professorships, its fellow- 
 ships, its scholarships, in a word, all its prizes, were to be 
 thrown open to all its students whatever their faith ; but 
 in most other respects it was not to be essentially changed, 
 except as to the power of granting degrees. Trinity 
 College was to be affiliated to the National University as 
 a dependent college, and so were a number of minor 
 colleges ; but this remarkable distinction was made in 
 homage to the ' liberalism ' of the day : the Queen's 
 Colleges, that of Galway being suppressed as useless, were 
 to retain the endowments they received from the State, on 
 the ground that they were free to all comers ; but the 
 Catholic University was not to obtain a shilling, nor yet 
 other colleges of a sectarian type, on the ground that 
 they were ' close and exclusive,' this being the case of all 
 the Catholic colleges that could be affiliated to the new 
 foundation. The Queen's University was to be abolished, 
 for the National University was to be sole and supreme ; 
 and then came provisions, which, strange as they may 
 appear at first sight, were perhaps inevitable under the 
 conditions on which the project was formed. Moral 
 philosophy, metaphysics, and modern history were shut 
 out from the National University course ; they might be 
 taught in the colleges, but were to be no part of University 
 learning. And the National University, like the Queen's 
 Colleges, was to be 'non-religious ; ' its system of education 
 was to be secular and united, that is its students were to 
 be examined together in secular learning, but in religious 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 345 
 
 matters they were to stand apart ; religion, indeed, might 
 be a subject of college teaching, but it was not to be heard 
 of within the University walls ; in fact, it was probably to 
 be left to the students and their clergy. 
 
 This complicated measure, not easy thoroughly to under- 
 stand, was sustained, for a few days, by the glamour of 
 Mr. Gladstone's rhetoric. But ere long it arrayed against 
 it an immense preponderance of opinion in Ireland, and 
 was assailed with fatal effect in the House of Commons. 
 The Heads of Trinity College took the initiative in declaring 
 against it ; in debates, wise, patriotic, and just alike, they 
 recognised the claims of Catholic Ireland ; but they 
 protested against the wrong being done to the great and 
 ancient foundation they represented, and especially against 
 the degradation to which it was subjected by the Bill. 
 Trinity College was to be deprived for no reason of a large 
 part of its revenue ; it was to be placed under a governing 
 body, in which nominees of the Castle would be all-power- 
 ful — an influence pernicious to its independence and self- 
 government ; above all, the National University was to 
 supplant it, and was to exclude from its teaching the 
 noblest studies of the intellect of man. The Platonism 
 which had inspired Berkeley, the records which had 
 animated the genius of Burke, and had been fostered in 
 the Alma mater of these great worthies, were to be 
 banished from a foundation which was to be made the 
 head of University life in Ireland. These sentiments were 
 fully shared by enlightened Irishmen : that moral and 
 metaphysical science and modern history should be 
 virtually proscribed in the University about to be set up, 
 was, as it were, putting out one of the eyes of the intellect, 
 effacing what was best in the map of knowledge. But the 
 most decisive condemnation of the scheme was that 
 pronounced by the Irish Catholic bishops. Like their 
 predecessors of nearly thirty years before, and the Anglican 
 High Church party of that day, they asserted that the 
 
346 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 project was really ' godless ; ' it was irreligion in the mask 
 of non-religion ; its liberalism was in the highest degree 
 illiberal, for it offered their flocks a system of education it 
 was known they would reject ; and it was flagrantly, nay, 
 basely, unjust, for while Trinity College, and the Queen's 
 Colleges, and the Queen's University, were to remain 
 endowed, the Catholic University and all Catholic colleges 
 were to get nothing from the State. These arguments 
 made their way into the House of Commons, and were 
 vindicated in speeches of great ability. Disraeli dwelt 
 especially on the poverty and the imperfection of a 
 University scheme, in which the finest branches of know- 
 ledge were not to enter ; he frankly denounced the Bill 
 as ' atheistic,' an epithet which Burke assuredly would 
 have fastened on it. Other speakers, notably Ball, a very 
 brilliant Irishman, enlarged on the wrong done to Trinity 
 College, and earnestly advocated the Catholic claims ; not 
 only was the minister offering a stone for bread, he was 
 virtually trying to bribe the Irish Catholic into accepting 
 institutions he disliked, and in the attempt was deeply 
 offending his conscience. Notwithstanding the efforts of 
 a powerful Government, the Bill was rejected by the House 
 of Commons ; nearly all the Irish members voted against 
 it, and so did the best men of the Liberal party. 
 
 The year that witnessed the collapse of Mr. Gladstone's 
 measure, witnessed, also, a reform of Trinity College 
 conceived in the spirit of the ' liberalism ' of the hour, and 
 hailed as an illustration of what is called progress. The 
 government, the dignities, and the prizes of the college 
 were thrown open to all without regard to their creed ; this 
 was welcomed as ' University equality ' in the most perfect 
 sense. It is a mistake to suppose that a corresponding 
 change was ever made at Oxford and Cambridge ; the 
 extension of their privileges to persons whatever their 
 faith, has, thanks to the exertions of the late Lord 
 Selborne, been strictly confined to lay offices ; the 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 347 
 
 religious character and teaching of the Universities have 
 been carefully preserved.* Though Trinity College has 
 been made ' non-religious ' by this measure, and that to 
 such a degree that its governing body might conceivably 
 be composed of avowed atheists, it has, nevertheless, to 
 this day remained a Protestant institution in all essential 
 respects. Its professors, fellows, and scholars have, since 
 1873, been nearly all Protestants; its Catholic students 
 are not eight in a hundred of the number as a whole ; and 
 the chief practical result of the late reform has been to 
 make the heads of the Irish Catholic Church more opposed 
 than before to seeing Catholics enter its precincts. In 
 1879, Lord Beaconsfield's Ministry made an attempt to 
 diminish the injustice done to Irish Catholics by the 
 system of University education still in force in Ireland. 
 The Queen's University was abolished; a Royal University 
 was established, which was enabled to confer degrees on, 
 and to give prizes to, the students of the Catholic University 
 and other colleges ; but the Royal University is a mere 
 Examining Board ; it is not a University properly so called. 
 One incident connected with this institution deserves 
 attention ; the success of the students of Catholic colleges 
 at the Royal University examinations has been so great, 
 that it ought to silence jeers at the ' superstition ' which 
 keeps them back, the vulgar cant of ignorant prejudice or 
 worse.j Meanwhile the iniquities and anomalies of the 
 Irish University system have continued but very little 
 changed. J Trinity College remains a Protestant institution 
 
 * See ' The Problem of Irish Educauon,' by Butt, a masterly and 
 impartial tract. 
 
 f See for the figures ' The Irish University Question,' by Archbishop 
 Walsh, passim. 
 
 % For further information on the history and the present state of 
 the University system in Ireland, see ' The History of the University 
 of Dublin,' by the Rev. J. W. Stubbs, and ' The Constitutional 
 History of the University of Dublin,' by D. C. Heron ; Howley on 
 ' Universities ; ' ' What is meant by Freedom of Education,' by the 
 
348 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 well endowed, almost a monopoly of the Protestant upper 
 class in Ireland, practically little resorted to by Irish 
 Catholics ; the Queen's Colleges are avoided by the Irish 
 Catholics, as being ' irreligious ' if called ' non-religious,' 
 though the College of Belfast suits Presbyterian views ; 
 they, too, receive a large bounty from the State ; but the 
 Catholic University, the true seminary for the upper middle 
 Catholic classes, and now divided into different colleges, 
 is still, as such, left out in the cold. Its students, no 
 doubt, can obtain Royal University degrees, and some 
 of its professors have been placed as examiners on that 
 foundation ; but it is the veriest mockery to call this 
 justice when we look at Trinity College and the Queen's 
 Colleges. ' The words of scripture are reversed,' in 
 Macaulay's language ; ' the rich are filled with good things 
 and the hungry are sent empty away.' 
 
 I do not envy those who, whatever their reasons, refuse 
 to acknowledge the wrong done by these arrangements. 
 It will hardly be denied, in the twentieth century, that 
 Protestant ascendency ought not to exist in any sphere 
 of Irish affairs, and that in University life, as in all matters, 
 Irish Catholics ought to have civil equality, and that 
 without a violation of the rights of conscience. It has 
 been triumphantly maintained that, in high education, 
 these conditions are actually fulfilled in Ireland ; Trinity 
 College and the Queen's Colleges are accessible to all 
 students, without regard to their religion or no religion ; 
 these have a perfectly equal right to share in the govern- 
 ment and the honours of institutions thrown completely 
 
 O'Conor Don ; ' University Education,' by an Irish Protestant Celt ; 
 and especially ' The Problem of Irish Education,' by Butt. See also 
 the Irish University Debates in Hansard for 1873, and the very able 
 debate in Trinity College. The reader, too, may be referred to Mr. 
 Barry O'Brien's ' Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland,' book xi. ; to 
 Mr. Graham Balfour's ' Educational Systems of Great Britain and 
 Ireland,' pp. 273-288 ; to Mr. Godkin's ' Education in Ireland ; ' and 
 to Archbishop Walsh's ' The Irish University Question. 1 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 349 
 
 open. But those who argue in this way either shut their 
 eyes to facts, or will not perceive that this fine ' liberalism ' 
 in Ireland works sheer injustice. Catholics are but a 
 handful of students in Trinity College and the Queen's 
 Colleges compared to what their natural proportion ought 
 to be ; Trinity College, if nominally open, is in all essential 
 respects Protestant ; the Queen's Colleges as being ' non- 
 religious,' that is, in the view of their Church ' irreligious,' 
 are practically avoided by Irish Catholics ; yet the State 
 endows Trinity College and the Queen's Colleges ; it 
 starves the Catholic University and other Catholic 
 colleges, which are thus unfairly handicapped by their 
 rivals. If this is not furthering Protestant ascendency in 
 Irish high education, and denying civil equality to Irish 
 Catholics who, in this matter, will not forego the rights of 
 conscience, I do not know what else it can be ; it seems 
 to me to be iniquity in no doubtful sense. And are the 
 objections of the Irish Catholics, in this province, as 
 1 irrational ' and ' superstitious ' as has been scoffingly 
 said? Reverse the case of Trinity College: suppose that 
 England was a Catholic Power, and that she kept up a 
 great Catholic University in the Irish capital, discounte- 
 nancing Protestant institutions in many ways, how many 
 Protestants would enter its walls, how soon would the 
 cry of Catholic ascendency be raised ? Or suppose that 
 Oxford and Cambridge were made ' non-religious,' as the 
 Queen's Colleges in Ireland are, would not an immense 
 majority of English parents declare that these seats of 
 learning were 'godless/ and persistently keep their sons 
 away from them ? The simple truth is that the Catholic 
 objections to Trinity College and the Queen's Colleges are 
 really those which, in this matter, have been entertained 
 by the deepest thinkers ; to my mind, at least, they seem 
 perfectly well-founded. As to the statement that these 
 objections are those of the Irish Catholic bishops alone, 
 and are mere ' superstitious fancies,' it is enough to reply 
 
350 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 that, on two occasions, the Irish Catholic laity have 
 distinctly pronounced on this subject, and have declared 
 that they agree with the heads of their Church. And 
 as to the argument that Catholic States do not endow 
 sectarian institutions like the Catholic University and 
 other Irish Catholic colleges, it will be quite time enough 
 to examine this when anything like such a state of things 
 can be found as that which at present exists in Ireland. 
 
 One argument, however, seldom frankly set forth, but 
 hinted at in a variety of ways, has been a real obstacle to 
 a reform of this vicious system ; it strongly appeals to 
 British national prejudice, of all aberrations of opinion 
 the most difficult to overcome. ' Popery,' it is said, is a 
 • detestable thing ; ' a ' Protestant ' State ' must have 
 nothing to do with it ; ' to endow a Catholic University 
 in Ireland, therefore, or any colleges of the same com- 
 plexion, would be 'sacrificing to Baal,' or something as 
 wicked. Catholic Ireland must put up with Trinity College 
 and the Queen's Colleges, which have been made open to 
 all sorts and conditions of men; its 'conscientious objec- 
 tions' are mere 'bigotry.' This reasoning, which con- 
 demns as impious the religion of the greatest part of 
 Christendom, would unfortunately overthrow many arrange- 
 ments by which provision has been made in our 'Pro- 
 testant ' State for Catholic institutions of different kinds ; 
 if pushed to its consequences, it would revive the penal 
 code in Ireland, and lead to the confiscation of Catholic 
 charities. But though it has still indirectly an effect on 
 some politicians, it is, in its naked simplicity, only the 
 faith of Mr. Kensit and of those who walk in his footsteps ; 
 it is worthy of the philosophy of Lord George Gordon, of 
 the meekness of Orangeism, of the bray of Exeter Hall. 
 For some time a turn in British opinion has happily taken 
 place ; ' liberalism,' it has been perceived, in Irish Uni- 
 versity education has failed ; Mr. Arthur Balfour has 
 made himself conspicuous in advocating the just claims 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 351 
 
 of Catholic Ireland. Even as I write a Commission is 
 being appointed to consider the whole subject of University- 
 life in Ireland ; there can be no reasonable doubt that it will 
 fully bring to light the anomalies and the unfairness of 
 the existing system, and will recommend that the Catholic 
 University, and other Catholic colleges perhaps, shall be 
 endowed. In truth, things have already come to such a 
 pass that Trinity College, the one institution of which, it 
 is said, 'all Irishmen are really proud,' will, owing to the 
 exceptional favour it receives from the State, be placed in 
 grave danger, and the Queen's Colleges also, if a Catholic 
 University in Ireland be not established and endowed, in 
 order to secure to the Irish Catholic civil equality, in high 
 education, through the assistance of the State.* 
 
 On what principles, then, and by what means, is Uni- 
 versity education in Ireland to be so reformed as to do 
 equal justice to all Irishmen, to place Protestants, Presby- 
 terians, and Catholics on the same level, and, especially, 
 to vindicate the rightful claims of Catholic Ireland ? Two 
 leading projects have at least been sketched out : the first, 
 the grander and the more ambitious, but, in my judgment, 
 scarcely possible to carry into effect ; the second, more 
 simple, more in harmony with existing facts, and, I think, 
 safer and much more easy to realise. The first scheme, 
 
 * Too much is not to be made of ' Nationalist ' clamour ; but these 
 remarks of Mr. Dillon, M.P., are significant {Freeman's Journal, 
 April 13, 1 901) : 'I do not believe that these movements will ever 
 succeed . . . until that fortress of English domination and anti-Irish 
 bigotry, Trinity College, is for ever swept away, or there is placed 
 opposite to it a truly National University, where the most honoured 
 classes will be the classes of Irish literature and Irish history.' 
 Archbishop Walsh, a much abler man, has written in the same sense 
 in his work, ' The Irish University Question.' The question, he 
 contends, in many passages, must be settled by levelling up or by 
 levelling down, that is, by raising the Catholic University to the 
 position of Trinity College, or by disestablishing and disendowing 
 Trinity College. The evil precedent of the Act disestablishing the 
 Anglican Church in Ireland, will, it is hoped, be eschewed. 
 
352 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 following in some respects the measure of Mr. Gladstone 
 of 1873, but making a marked improvement on it, would 
 aim at establishing and endowing a National University 
 for all Irishmen, which should have a power to confer 
 degrees, in common with the Royal University now exist- 
 ing, and should have an ample professional staff; it should 
 have its examinations for degrees and for other honours. 
 The governing body of this University should be composed 
 of the heads of the colleges affiliated to it — the element of 
 the Castle being excluded, according at least to the best 
 authorities — and Trinity College should not be deprived 
 of any part of its revenues, as it was to be under the Bill 
 of 1873. Two of the Queen's Colleges probably should 
 be suppressed ; but the College of Belfast, which has been 
 successful, should probably be made a Presbyterian college, 
 at least in the main ; the endowments it would receive 
 should be, doubtless, increased. High Catholic education 
 should be provided for in this way : The Catholic Uni- 
 versity should be established and endowed, and placed 
 reasonably on a level with Trinity College, and perhaps 
 other Catholic colleges also ; but, in consideration of this 
 assistance from the State, a lay element should be intro- 
 duced into the Catholic University governing body ; this 
 should not be composed wholly of Catholic clergymen ; 
 and the teaching body should be composed of men, chosen 
 without regard to religious distinctions, but so constituted 
 that a majority should be Catholics, and that Catholic 
 education should be predominant. Other Catholic colleges 
 might be connected with this institution ; and Trinity 
 College, the Catholic University, and the Belfast and all 
 other colleges, should be subordinate to the National 
 University in this sense ; their students should be obliged 
 to resort to it, or to the Royal University if they preferred 
 it, in order to pass examinations, and to obtain degrees or 
 other honours, there being thus two Universities of different 
 types in Ireland. Education in all the affiliated colleges 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 353 
 
 should be perfectly free, that is, left to the arrangements 
 made by their governing bodies ; but a certain standard 
 of proficiency should exist, which, however, the tests of 
 University examinations would probably secure. 
 
 An Irish National University, could it be founded on 
 these lines, would present many attractive features, would 
 realise, indeed, a noble ideal. It would preserve Trinity 
 College as a great place of learning, would give Presby- 
 terian Ireland a college practically its own, and ought to 
 satisfy the legitimate demands of Catholic Ireland. That 
 its dependent colleges should compete with each other for 
 its degrees and honours, and be friendly rivals in the 
 splendid race of learning, would also be an immense 
 advantage; and the Royal University would, doubtless, 
 suffice for students too poor to enter the dependent colleges, 
 and yet aspiring to pass examinations and to obtain 
 degrees. But could a National University of this type be 
 set up in Ireland with a prospect that it would succeed or 
 flourish? Its governing body would be formed of the 
 heads of the colleges connected with it ; these would be 
 mainly composed of Catholic and Protestant divines : 
 could these, in the existing state of Ireland, agree as to 
 the University course that ought to be adopted ? Suppose 
 that Archbishop Walsh and Dr. Salmon, the venerable 
 provost of Trinity College, were together members of this 
 supreme board. Would the first approve of Locke's Essay 
 on the Human Understanding as a subject of examination 
 in the University schools? Would the second approve 
 of Bellarmine and even of Bossuet ? Dissension, I fear, 
 would be the inevitable result ; and in that case ' the 
 Castle ' would certainly try to gain authority over the 
 governing body, and to place on it nominees of its own, 
 in my judgment, an exceedingly mischievous thing. Very 
 probably, too, the State, in the long run, would deprive 
 Trinity College of some of its revenues, on different pleas 
 that could be plausibly urged ; to this there would be the 
 
 2 A 
 
354 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 gravest objections. And how could moral philosophy, 
 metaphysics, and modern history, nay, even physical 
 science itself, be made parts of University studies ? How- 
 could Protestants and Catholics be examined in them in 
 common ? Would it not be necessary to exclude them 
 from University teaching, as in the case of Mr. Gladstone's 
 ill-starred measure — to close the University to the best 
 works of the intellect of man, to deprive it of the most 
 fruitful branches of learning ? I fear the idea of a National 
 University, as affairs now stand in Ireland, is not likely to 
 become a reality with results that could be deemed hopeful. 
 No doubt the Royal University does, to some extent, have 
 examinations on these debateable subjects ; but they occupy 
 a very small place in its teaching; and in a National 
 University this ought not to be the case. 
 
 A National University would not be founded in Ireland 
 under the second project. Trinity College would remain 
 completely intact ; it would retain its present governing 
 body, its privileges, and its power of conferring degrees. 
 The Queen's Colleges — that of Galway being probably 
 suppressed, and its funds transferred to the College of 
 Belfast — and the Royal University would continue un- 
 changed ; the students of the Queen's Colleges would 
 probably seek degrees from the Royal University as they 
 do at present. But the Catholic University should be 
 established and endowed, and placed on the same level 
 as Trinity College, as far as this could be effected by law ; 
 the charge of the endowment would not be great — it would 
 be perhaps .£100,000 for buildings, and perhaps £"40,000 a 
 year for other purposes ; but the students, and those of 
 other colleges to be connected with it, would not be 
 numerous, at least for years; it should, of course, have 
 the power of conferring honours and degrees. In return 
 for these advantages, the State should have a right to 
 insist that its governing body should be in part laymen — 
 the Irish Catholic bishops have already agreed to this ; 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 355 
 
 and the State ought, also, to have a right to require that 
 the secular education it should afford should be good, a 
 security which could fully, if indirectly, be obtained. The 
 advantages of this scheme, it is obvious, are that it would 
 get rid of the difficulties inseparable from a National 
 University in Ireland ; it would preserve Trinity College 
 exactly as it is, an enormous gain for that great place of 
 learning; it would interfere as little as possible with things 
 as they are; and it would do all that Catholic Ireland 
 could reasonably demand. It is understood that a scheme 
 of this description has the approval of the authorities of 
 Trinity College, and of their distinguished representative, 
 Mr. Lecky ; their opinions are of the very greatest weight. 
 The only real objection made to this plan is one made by 
 characteristic prejudice : the education, in the Catholic 
 University, it is said, would be bad, and its degrees 
 would be of no value. In the face of the success of 
 Catholic University students at the Royal University 
 examinations, the first assertion has been proved to be 
 false ; and besides, this is the affair of the students and 
 their parents alone. As to the inferiority of the Catholic 
 University degrees, there is no reason to believe that this 
 would exist ; these degrees, moreover, would have to 
 compete with those of the Royal University and of 
 Trinity College ; if they were really inferior, this would 
 soon be found out, and the Catholic University would 
 have to increase their value. This is the true security 
 the State and the public would possess. 
 
 A few ' Present Irish Questions ' remain, on which I 
 may offer passing remarks. Ireland is essentially a poor 
 country ; her middle class is comparatively very weak ; 
 her trade and manufactures are small ; the greater part of 
 the community is a Celtic race. It has long been con- 
 tended by well-informed Irishmen that many undertakings, 
 which, in Great Britain, have properly been left to private 
 enterprise, ought, in Ireland, to be carried out by the State, 
 
356 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 as for centuries has been the case in France, a Celtic land, 
 as was largely the case in Ireland under her extinct Parlia- 
 ment. This observation especially applies to the Irish 
 railway system. As long ago as 1836, Thomas Drummond, 
 the Under Secretary of well-known renown, strongly recom- 
 mended that Irish railways should be laid out, managed, 
 and controlled by the Government; but this was inconsistent 
 with English ideas ; the Irish railways were abandoned to 
 private companies. The results have been very far from 
 fortunate ; many of the lines have been badly designed ; 
 the Irish railway fares are a great deal too high; too 
 numerous boards of directors are a heavy charge ; railway 
 communication, in a word, in Ireland is of an inferior kind, 
 and much too costly in a backward and poor country. 
 Not indeed that the State has not made large advances to 
 Irish railway companies, some of these on terms very unjust 
 to ratepayers ; but the system is faulty and ill-developed ; 
 a reform in this direction is greatly wanted.* As Drummond 
 insisted, the State, even now, ought to buy up and direct 
 the Irish railways ; but this is only a part of what it ought 
 to do in this province. The material condition of Ireland 
 is not prosperous ; her main river basins require drainage ; 
 her whole arterial drainage is in a bad state, and has 
 suffered much from the legislation of 1881, and from the 
 policy of so-called ' land purchase,' for ordinary Irish 
 tenants will not keep it up, and their landlords cannot 
 now be expected to do so ; these works must be under- 
 taken by the State, or assuredly they will not be under- 
 taken at all. Mr. Arthur Balfour has done something in 
 this direction by the encouragement of light railways in 
 remote parts of Ireland, and by the foundation of the 
 1 Congested Districts Board,' an institution that has had 
 excellent results. But this is only the fringe of the subject ; 
 an enormous amount of work remains to be done ; and this, 
 
 * See on this subject Mr. Lough's ' England's Wealth, Ireland's 
 Poverty,' pp. 88-94. 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 357 
 
 in the circumstances of Ireland, can only be done by the 
 Government. 
 
 In a book which has attracted some attention — ' Ireland, 
 1 798- 1 898 ' — I wrote these words nearly four years ago : 
 ' An Irishman, Wolseley, an Irishman, Roberts, are the 
 foremost of living British soldiers ; but there are no Irish 
 Guards, and few Irishmen in our artillery ; we see here a 
 want of tact and of sympathy.' Time, in this respect, has 
 suddenly brought its changes ; has again illustrated the 
 genius of the Irishman in war, and, in some measure, has 
 removed a reproach from England. It is true that the 
 conspiracy, which still exists in Ireland, did all that it 
 could to prevent Irishmen from taking part in the contest 
 in South Africa, and that even a petty Irish contingent 
 appeared in the ranks of the Boers. But Lord Wolseley 
 had at least a great share in fitting out the largest 
 expedition which has ever left our shores to fight an 
 enemy at a distance of six thousand miles — no other 
 power could do anything of the kind ; and without dis- 
 paraging our other generals, the presence of a superior 
 mind was at once seen when Lord Roberts was given the 
 supreme command in our army. And the Irish soldiery 
 who fought in the campaigns of 1899-1900 were true to 
 the noble traditions of their race ; they were in the fore- 
 front of many a bloody conflict ; and now that a regiment 
 of Irish Guards has been at last embodied — a tardy ac- 
 knowledgment of Irish military worth — England may 
 rest assured that these men will rival the famous Irish 
 Brigade of another age, ' ever and everywhere true ' to the 
 Bourbon lilies, and conspicuous in the service of France 
 on many a field of renown. I may add a word on another 
 subject, in which Ireland perhaps has a just claim on 
 England. The descendants of the chiefs, who, in Scotland, 
 clung to the cause of the Stuarts, have, for the most part, 
 regained their forfeited lands and honours ; no such repara- 
 tion has been made to the descendants of Irish nobles and 
 
358 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 princes, who supported the Stuarts in the nobler cause of 
 their country. The representative of the last of the Celtic 
 kings of Ireland — a man of large possessions and of un- 
 questionable parts — has no place on the roll of the peerage ; 
 the sons of ennobled Cromwellian troopers and trades- 
 men have precedence at Court over the sons of the most 
 illustrious Milesian Houses. This is not a mere trifle as 
 may carelessly be said ; it tends to revive memories that 
 it were better to forget. Can nothing be done to make a 
 graceful concession, which would touch many an Irish 
 heart, and would go some way to promote a spirit of 
 loyalty and hope in Ireland, which it should be a great 
 object of statesmanship to create and foster? 
 
 If the picture I have drawn of Ireland is correct in 
 outline, there is much of evil omen in her present con- 
 dition. The ancient divisions of race and faith, the most 
 distinctive feature in her social structure, are at least as 
 deeply marked as they have been for a century ; bad 
 legislation has made them deeper and wider. Catholic 
 Ireland remains disaffected to British rule, despite efforts 
 of conciliation and concessions that cannot be justified ; 
 no class in the community is completely satisfied ; dis- 
 content rankles in the hearts of the landed gentry. The 
 Union, indeed, has been successfully maintained ; the 
 frightful agrarian disorder of 1881-89 no longer exists. 
 But the Union is not permanently assured as long as the 
 Liberal party and eighty Irish members demand Home 
 Rule, and the over-representation of Ireland continues ; 
 the conspiracy of the Land and the National Leagues has 
 revived in that of the United Irish League ; and this seeks 
 to compass the ends of its prototypes by obstruction in 
 Parliament and detestable socialistic tyranny. And the 
 frame of Irish society has been well-nigh shattered ; ruins 
 have been made, nothing solid has been put in their place. 
 An aristocracy, long waning, has been practically de- 
 stroyed, and can no longer be a support of the State; the 
 
OTHER PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 359 
 
 bureaucracy of the Castle reigns in its stead ; but this is 
 essentially a weak Government ; it can maintain order, but 
 has no hold on the people ; the Irish democracy, to which 
 power has been transferred, regards it with a dislike and a 
 contempt it does not try to conceal. The country has 
 made hardly any progress of late years ; if some improve- 
 ment in the state of the middle classes appears, agriculture, 
 its leading industry, has perceptibly declined. In by far 
 the most important of Irish social relations, those connected 
 with the land, a revolution has taken place ; a huge if a 
 veiled confiscation has gone on ; the landed gentry have 
 been shamefully wronged ; the occupiers of the soil have 
 been most unduly favoured ; yet both classes declare they 
 have been ill-treated, notably the last. And the Irish land 
 system has been turned upside down, with consequences 
 disastrous and far-reaching ; the landlord has been cut off 
 from his estate ; the tenant has been encouraged in thrift- 
 lessness and waste by law ; the land has been bound in a 
 ruinous mortmain, like that which existed under the penal 
 code, and subjected to demoralising litigation, breeding a 
 war of class ; capital and fruitful enterprise turn away 
 from it. And, at the same time, in order to lessen these 
 evils, recourse has been had to remedies that are perhaps 
 worse ; the system of so-called ' land purchase ' has been 
 devised ; the result has been to create a class of peasant 
 owners reproducing the nearly extinct middleman, and, 
 above all, to arouse a cry for the ' compulsory purchase ' 
 of the rented lands of Ireland, an act of wholesale spolia- 
 tion unjust and disastrous alike. In the position of affairs 
 we now see in Ireland, the stability of society has been 
 rudely shaken ; the sense of the security of property has 
 well-nigh disappeared ; the sanctity of contracts has no 
 respect; the pillars on which order and prosperity rest 
 have been injured ; violent revolution has been arrested, 
 indeed, but revolutionary and socialistic ideas spread far 
 and wide. And will any impartial inquirer deny that 
 
360 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 these untoward results may be largely ascribed to the 
 faulty legislation of late years, and to a system of ad- 
 ministration shifty and feeble ? And what judgment is to 
 be passed on the thoughtless optimism too common in 
 opinion with respect to Ireland ? Meanwhile, reforms 
 imperatively required are not even attempted; they are 
 passed over or postponed to some more convenient season. 
 The time surely has come to look things in Ireland straight 
 in the face ; to see if statesmanship cannot do something 
 really effective for her good. This end assuredly will not 
 be attained by breaking up the Three Kingdoms under 
 the guise of Home Rule, or by promoting a confiscation 
 the worst Ireland has ever seen ; still less will it be attained 
 by the quackery in legislation and administration too 
 apparent of late years; nor can trifling and foolish 
 optimism blind the eyes of intelligent thinkers to facts. 
 Ireland can only expect to make progress by ruling the 
 community on the just and sound principles to which 
 long experience has given its sanction ; and this con- 
 summation can only be the slow result of time. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL, 1886. 
 
 ARRANGEMENT OF CLAUSES. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Legislative A uthority. 
 
 CLAUSE 
 
 i. Establishment of Irish Legislature. 
 
 2. Powers of Irish Legislature. 
 
 3. Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature. 
 
 4. Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature. 
 
 5. Prerogatives of Her Majesty as to Irish Legislative Body. 
 
 6. Duration of the Irish Legislative Body. 
 
 Execittive Authority. 
 
 7. Constitution of the Executive Authority. 
 
 8. Use of Crown Lands by Irish Government. 
 
 Constitution of Legislative Body. 
 
 9. Constitution of Irish Legislative Body. 
 
 10. First order. 
 
 11. Second order. 
 
 Finance. 
 
 12. Taxes and separate Consolidated Fund. 
 
 13. Annual contributions from Ireland to Consolidated Fund 
 
 of United Kingdom. 
 
 14. Collection and application of Customs and Excise duties 
 
 in Ireland. 
 
 15. Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund. 
 
 361 
 
362 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 CLAUSE 
 
 16. Irish Church Fund. 
 
 17. Public loans. 
 
 18. Additional aid in case of war. 
 
 19. Money bills and votes. 
 
 20. Exchequer Division and revenue actions. 
 
 Police. 
 
 21. Police. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 Supplemental Provisions. 
 Powers of Her Majesty. 
 
 22. Powers over certain lands reserved to Her Majesty. 
 
 Legislative Body. 
 
 23. Veto by first order of Legislative Body, how overruled. 
 
 24. Cesser of power of Ireland to return members of 
 
 Parliament. 
 
 Decision of Constitutional Questions. 
 
 25. Constitutional questions to be submitted to Judicial 
 
 Committee. 
 
 Lord-Lieutenant. 
 
 26. Office of Lord-Lieutenant. 
 
 Judges and Civil Servants. 
 
 27. Judges to be removable only on address. 
 
 28. Provisions as to Judges and other persons having salaries 
 
 charged on the Consolidated Fund. 
 
 29. As to persons holding Civil Service appointments. 
 
 30. Provision for existing pensions and superannuation 
 
 allowances. 
 
 Transitory Provisions. 
 
 31. Transitory provisions in Schedule. 
 
 Miscellaneous. 
 
 32. Post office and savings banks. 
 
 33. Audit. 
 
APPENDIX 363 
 
 CLAUSE 
 
 34. Application of parliamentary law. 
 
 35. Regulations for carrying Act into effect. 
 
 36. Saving of powers of House of Lords. 
 
 37. Saving of rights of Parliament. 
 
 38. Continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, etc. 
 
 39. Mode of alteration of Act. 
 
 40. Definitions. 
 
 41. Short title of Act. 
 
 Schedules. 
 
 A Bill to amend the provision for the future Government of 
 Ireland. [a.d. 1886. 
 
 Be it enacted by the Queen's most excellent Majesty, by 
 and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and 
 Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament 
 assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows : 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Legislative Authority. 
 
 1. On and after the appointed day there shall be estab- Estabiish- 
 lished in Ireland a Legislature consisting of Her Majesty iJfs'iiLe i 
 the Queen and the Irish Legislative Body. lature. 
 
 2. With the exceptions and subject to the restrictions in Powers of 
 this Act mentioned, it shall be lawful for Her Majesty the i^ure^ 2 ' 5 
 Queen, by and with the advice of the Irish Legislative 
 
 Body, to make laws for the peace, order, and good govern- 
 ment of Ireland, and by any such law to alter and repeal 
 any law in Ireland. 
 
 3. The Legislature of Ireland shall not make laws Exceptions 
 
 relating to the following matters, or any of them : — from 
 
 , . ° ,.._._ , . powers of 
 
 (1) The status or dignity of the Crown, or the succession Irish Legis- 
 
 to the Crown or a Regency ; lature. 
 
 (2) The making of peace or war; 
 
 (3) The army, navy, militia, volunteers, or other mili- 
 
 tary or naval forces, or the defence of the realm ; 
 
 (4) Treaties and other relations with foreign States, or 
 
364 
 
 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Restric- 
 tions on 
 powers of 
 Irish Legis- 
 lature. 
 
 the relations between the various parts of Her 
 Majesty's dominions ; 
 
 (5) Dignities or titles of honour ; 
 
 (6) Prize or booty of war ; 
 
 (7) Offences against the law of nations ; or offences 
 
 committed in violation of any treaty made, or 
 hereafter to be made, between Her Majesty and 
 any foreign State ; or offences committed on the 
 high seas ; 
 
 (8) Treason, alienage, or naturalisation ; 
 
 (9) Trade, navigation, or quarantine ; 
 
 (10) The postal and telegraph service, except as here- 
 
 after in this Act mentioned with respect to the 
 transmission of letters and telegrams in Ireland ; 
 
 (11) Beacons, lighthouses, or sea-marks; 
 
 (12) The coinage; the value of foreign money; legal 
 
 tender ; or weights and measures ; or 
 
 (13) Copyright, patent rights, or other exclusive rights 
 
 to the use or profits of any works or inventions. 
 Any law made in contravention of this section shall be 
 void. 
 
 4. The Irish Legislature shall not make any law — 
 
 (1) Respecting the establishment or endowment of re- 
 
 ligion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or 
 
 (2) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, 
 
 on account of religious belief ; or 
 
 (3) Abrogating or derogating from the right to establish 
 
 or maintain any place of denominational educa- 
 tion or any denominational institution or charity ; 
 or 
 
 (4) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend 
 
 a school receiving public money without attending 
 the religious instruction at that school ; or 
 
 (5) Impairing, without either the leave of Her Majesty 
 
 in Council first obtained on an address presented 
 by the Legislative Body of Ireland, or the consent 
 of the corporation interested, the rights, property, 
 or privileges of any existing corporation incor- 
 porated by royal charter or local and general Act 
 of Parliament : or 
 
APPENDIX 365 
 
 (6) Imposing or relating to duties of customs and duties 
 
 of excise, as defined by this Act, or either of such 
 duties, or affecting any Act relating to such duties 
 or either of them ; or 
 
 (7) Affecting this Act, except in so far as it is declared 
 
 to be alterable by the Irish Legislature. 
 
 5. — Her Majesty the Queen shall have the same pre- Preroga- 
 rogatives with respect to summoning, proroguing, and Majesty as 
 dissolving the Irish Legislative Body as Her Majesty has to Irish 
 with respect to summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the Body. 
 Imperial Parliament. 
 
 6. — The Irish Legislative Body whenever summoned Duration of 
 may have continuance for five years and no longer, to be Legislative 
 reckoned from the day on which any such Legislative Body Body. 
 is appointed to meet. 
 
 Executive Authority. 
 
 7. — (1) The Executive Government of Ireland shall Constitu- 
 continue vested in Her Majesty, and shall be carried on by Executive 
 the Lord-Lieutenant on behalf of Her Majesty with the aid Authority. 
 of such officers and such Council as to Her Majesty may 
 from time to time seem fit. 
 
 (2) Subject to any instructions which may from time to 
 time be given by Her Majesty, the Lord-Lieutenant shall 
 give or withhold the assent of Her Majesty to Bills passed 
 by the Irish Legislative Body, and shall exercise the prero- 
 gatives of Her Majesty in respect of the summoning, pro- 
 roguing, and dissolving of the Irish Legislative Body, and 
 any prerogatives the exercise of which may be delegated to 
 him by Her Majesty. 
 
 8. — Her Majesty may, by Order in Council, from time Use of 
 to time place under the control of the Irish Government, la ^s by 
 for the purposes of that Government, any such lands and Irish 
 buildings in Ireland as may be vested in or held in trust for m ent. 
 Her Majesty. 
 
 Constitution of Legislative Body. 
 
 Constitu- 
 9. — (1) The Irish Legislative Body shall consist of a tionofIrish 
 first and second order. Body. 1 ^ 
 
366 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 (2) The two orders shall deliberate together, and shall 
 vote together, except that, if any question arises in relation 
 to legislation or to the Standing Orders or Rules of Pro- 
 cedure or to any other matter in that behalf in this Act 
 specified, and such question is to be determined by vote, 
 each order shall, if a majority of the members present of 
 either order demand a separate vote, give their votes in 
 like manner as if they were separate Legislative Bodies ; 
 and if the result of the voting of the two orders does not 
 agree the question shall be resolved in the negative. 
 First order. 10.— (1) The first order of the Irish Legislative Body 
 shall consist of one hundred and three members, of whom 
 seventy-five shall be elective members and twenty-eight 
 peerage members. 
 
 (2) Each elective member shall at the date of his 
 election and during his period of membership be bona fide 
 possessed of property which — 
 
 (a) If realty, or partly realty and partly personalty, yields 
 
 two hundred pounds a year or upwards, free of all 
 charges ; or — 
 
 (b) If personalty yields the same income, or is of the 
 
 capital value of four thousand pounds or upwards, 
 
 free of all charges. 
 For the purpose of electing the elective members of 
 the first order of the Legislative Body, Ireland shall be 
 divided into the electoral districts specified in the First 
 Schedule to this Act, and each such district shall return the 
 number of members in that behalf specified in that Schedule. 
 
 (3) The elective members shall be elected by the 
 registered electors of each electoral district, and for that 
 purpose a register of electors shall be made annually. 
 
 (4) An elector in each electoral district shall be qualified 
 as follows, that is to say, he shall be of full age, and not 
 subject to any legal incapacity, and shall have been during 
 the twelve months next preceding the twentieth day of July 
 in any year the owner or occupier of some land or tenement 
 within the district of a net annual value of twenty-five 
 pounds or upwards. 
 
 (5) The term of office of an elective member shall be 
 ten years. 
 
APPENDIX 367 
 
 (6) In every fifth year thirty-seven or thirty-eight of the 
 elective members, as the case requires, shall retire from 
 office, and their places shall be filled by election ; the 
 members to retire shall be those who have been members 
 for the longest time without re-election. 
 
 (7) The offices of the peerage members shall be filled as 
 follows, that is to say, — 
 
 (a) Each of the Irish peers who on the appointed day is 
 
 one of the twenty-eight Irish representative peers, 
 shall, on giving his written assent to the Lord- 
 Lieutenant, become a peerage member of the first 
 order of the Irish Legislative Body ; and if at any 
 time within thirty years after the appointed day 
 any such peer vacates his office by death or 
 resignation, the vacancy shall be filled by the 
 election to that office by the Irish peers of one of 
 their number in manner heretofore in use respect- 
 ing the election of Irish representative peers, 
 subject to adaptation as provided by this Act, and 
 if the vacancy is not so filled within the proper 
 time, it shall be filled by the election of an elective 
 member. 
 
 (b) If any of the twenty-eight peers aforesaid does not 
 
 within one mo?ith after the appointed day give such 
 assent to be a peerage member of the first order, 
 the vacancy so created shall be filled up as if he 
 had assented and vacated his office by resignation. 
 
 (8) A peerage member shall be entitled to hold office 
 during his life, or until the expiration of thirty years from 
 the appointed day, whichever period is the shortest. At 
 the expiration of such thirty years the offices of all the 
 peerage members shall be vacated as if they were dead, and 
 their places shall be filled by elective members qualified and 
 elected in manner provided by this Act with respect to 
 elective members of the first order, and such elective 
 members may be distributed by the Irish Legislature among 
 the electoral districts, so, however, that care shall be taken 
 to give additional members to the most populous place. 
 
 (9) The offices of members of the first order shall not 
 be vacated by the dissolution of the Legislative Body. 
 
368 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 (10) The provisions in the Second Schedule to this Act 
 
 relating to members of the first order of the Legislative 
 
 Body shall be of the same force as if they were enacted in 
 
 the body of this Act. 
 
 Second xi. — (i) Subject as in this section hereafter mentioned, 
 
 order. * 
 
 the second order of the Legislative Body shall consist of 
 
 two hundred and four members. 
 
 (2) The members of the second order shall be chosen 
 by the existing constituencies of Ireland, two by each 
 constituency, with the exception of the City of Cork, which 
 shall be divided into two divisions in manner set forth 
 in the Third Schedule to this Act, and two members shall 
 be chosen by each of such divisions. 
 
 (3) Any person who, on the appointed day, is a member 
 representing an existing Irish constituency in the House of 
 Commons shall, on giving his written assent to the Lord- 
 Lieutenant, become a member of the second order of the 
 Irish Legislative Body as if he had been elected by the 
 constituency which he was representing in the House of 
 Commons. Each of the members for the City of Cork, on 
 the said day, may elect for which of the divisions of that 
 city he wishes to be deemed to have been elected. 
 
 (4) If any member does not give such written assent 
 within one month after the appointed day, his place shall be 
 filled by election in the same manner and at the same time 
 as if he had assented and vacated his office by death. 
 
 (5) If the same person is elected to both orders, he shall, 
 within seven days after the meeting of the Legislative Body, 
 or if the Body is sitting at the time of the election, within 
 seven days after the election, elect in which order he will 
 serve, and his membership of the other order shall be void 
 and be filled by a fresh election. 
 
 (6) Notwithstanding anything in this Act, it shall be 
 lawful for the Legislature of Ireland at any time to pass an 
 Act enabling the Royal University of Ireland to return not 
 more than two members to the second order of the Irish 
 Legislative Body in addition to the number of members above 
 mentioned. 
 
 (7) Notwithstanding anything in this Act, it shall be 
 lawful for the Irish Legislature, after the first dissolution of 
 
APPENDIX 369 
 
 the Legislative Body which occurs, to alter the constitution 
 or election of the second order of that body, due regard 
 being had in the distribution of members to the population 
 of the constituencies ; provided that no alteration shall be 
 made in the number of such order. 
 
 Finance. 
 
 12. — (1) For the purpose of providing for the public Taxes and 
 service of Ireland, the Irish Legislature may impose taxes, consoH- 
 other than duties of Customs or Excise as defined by this dated 
 Act, which duties shall continue to be imposed and levied 
 by and under the direction of the Imperial Parliament 
 only. 
 
 (2) On and after the appointed day there shall be an 
 Irish Consolidated Fund separate from the Consolidated 
 Fund of the United Kingdom. 
 
 (3) All taxes imposed by the Legislature of Ireland and 
 all other public revenues under the control of the Govern- 
 ment of Ireland shall, subject to any provisions touching 
 the disposal thereof contained in any Act passed in the 
 present session respecting the sale and purchase of land in 
 Ireland, be paid into the Irish Consolidated Fund, and be 
 appropriated to the public service of Ireland according to 
 law. 
 
 13. — (1) Subject to the provisions for the reduction or Annual 
 cesser thereof in this section mentioned, there shall be t j ons f ron , 
 made on the part of Ireland to the Consolidated Fund of i relan ^ to 
 the United Kingdom the following annual contributions in dated Fund 
 every financial year ; that is to say, — Kingdom 
 
 (a) The sum of one million four hundred and sixty-six 
 
 thousand pounds on account of the interest on and 
 management of the Irish share of the National 
 Debt : 
 
 (b) The sum of one million six hundred and sixty-six 
 
 thousand pounds on account of the expenditure on 
 the army and navy of the United Kingdom : 
 (c) The sum of one hundred and ten thousand pounds 
 on account of the Imperial civil expenditure of 
 the United Kingdom : 
 
 2 B 
 
37o PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 (d) The sum of one million -pounds on account of the 
 Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metro- 
 politan Police. 
 
 (2) During the period of thirty years from this section 
 taking effect the said annual contributions shall not be 
 increased, but may be reduced or cease as hereinafter 
 mentioned. After the expiration of the said thirty years 
 the said contributions shall, save as otherwise provided by 
 this section, continue until altered in manner provided with 
 respect to the alteration of this Act. 
 
 (3) The Irish share of the National Debt shall be 
 reckoned at forty-eight million pounds Bank annuities, and 
 there shall be paid in every financial year on behalf of 
 Ireland to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the 
 National Debt an annual sum of three hundred and sixty 
 thousand pounds, and the permanent annual charge for the 
 National Debt on the Consolidated Fund of the United 
 Kingdom shall be reduced by that amount, and the said 
 annual sum shall be applied by the said Commissioners as 
 a sinking fund for the redemption of the National Debt, 
 and the Irish share of the National Debt shall be reduced 
 by the amount of the National Debt so redeemed, and the 
 said annual contribution on account of the interest on and 
 management of the Irish share of the National Debt shall 
 from time to time be reduced by a sum equal to the interest 
 upon the amount of the National Debt from time to time 
 so redeemed, but that last-mentioned sum shall be paid 
 annually to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the 
 National Debt in addition to the above-mentioned annual 
 sinking fund, and shall be so paid and be applied as if it 
 were part of that sinking fund. 
 
 (4) As soon as an amount of the National Debt equal to 
 the said Irish share thereof has been redeemed under the 
 provisions of this section, the said annual contribution on 
 account of the interest on and management of the Irish 
 share of the National Debt, and the said annual sum for a 
 sinking fund shall cease. 
 
 (5) If it appears to Her Majesty that the expenditure 
 in respect of the army and navy of the United Kingdom, 
 or in respect of Imperial Civil expenditure of the United 
 
APPENDIX 371 
 
 Kingdom, for any financial year has been less than fifteen 
 times the amount of the contributions above named on 
 account of the same matter, a sum equal to one-fifteenth 
 part of the diminution shall be deducted from the current 
 annual contribution for the same matter. 
 
 (6) The sum paid from time to time by the Commis- 
 sioners of Her Majesty's Woods, Forests, and Land 
 Revenues to the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom 
 on account of the hereditary revenues of the Crown in 
 Ireland shall be credited to the Irish Government, and go 
 in reduction of the said annual contribution payable on 
 account of the Imperial Civil expenditure of the United 
 Kingdom, but shall not be taken into account in calculating 
 whether such diminution as above mentioned has or has not 
 taken place in such expenditure. 
 
 (7) If it appears to Her Majesty that the expenditure in 
 respect of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin 
 Metropolitan Police for any financial year has been less 
 than the contribution above-named on account of such 
 constabulary and police, the current contribution shall be 
 diminished by the amount of such difference. 
 
 (8) This section shall take effect from and after the thirty- 
 first day of March, one thousand eight hundred and eighty- 
 seven. 
 
 14. — (1) On and after such day as the Treasury may Collection 
 
 direct all moneys from time to time collected in Ireland a "4 a PP]'" 
 ' cation of 
 
 on account of the duties of Customs or the duties of Excise Customs 
 as defined by this Act shall, under such regulations as the d^fes h» se 
 Treasury from time to time make, be carried to a separate Ireland, 
 account (in this Act referred to as the Customs and Excise 
 account) and applied in the payment of the following sums 
 in priority as mentioned in this section ; that is to say, — 
 First, of such sum as is from time to time directed by 
 the Treasury in respect of the costs, charges, and 
 expenses of and incident to the collection and manage- 
 ment of the said duties in Ireland not exceeding four 
 per cent, of the amount collected there ; 
 Secondly, of the annual contributions required by this 
 Act to be made to the Consolidated Fund of the 
 United Kingdom ; 
 
372 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Thirdly, of the annual sums required by this Act to be 
 paid to the Commissioners for the Reduction of the 
 National Debt ; 
 Fourthly, of all sums by this Act declared to be payable 
 out of the moneys carried to the Customs and Excise 
 account ; 
 Fifthly, of all sums due to the Consolidated Fund of the 
 United Kingdom for interest or sinking fund, in respect 
 of any loans made by the issue of bank annuities or 
 otherwise to the Government of Ireland under any Act 
 passed in the present session relating to the purchase 
 and sale of land in Ireland, so far as such sums are not 
 defrayed out of the moneys received under such Act. 
 (2) So much of the moneys carried to a separate account 
 under this section as the Treasury consider are not, and 
 are not likely to be, required to meet the above-mentioned 
 payments, shall from time to time be paid over and applied 
 as part of the public revenues under the control of the 
 Irish Government. 
 Charges on 15. — (1) There shall be charged on the Irish Con- 
 solidated 1 " solidated Fund in priority as mentioned in this section : — 
 Fund. First, such portion of the sums directed by this Act to 
 
 be paid out of the moneys carried to the Customs and 
 Excise account in priority to any payment for the public 
 revenues of Ireland, as those moneys are insufficient to 
 pay; 
 Secondly, all sums due in respect of any debt incurred 
 by the Government of Ireland, whether for interest, 
 management, or sinking fund ; 
 Thirdly, all sums which at the passing of this Act are 
 charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United 
 Kingdom in respect of Irish services other than the 
 salary of the Lord-Lieutenant ; 
 Fourthly, the salaries of all judges of the Supreme Court 
 of Judicature or other Superior Court in Ireland, or of 
 any County or other like Court, who are appointed 
 after the passing of this Act, and the pensions of such 
 judges ; 
 Fifthly, any other sums charged by this Act on the Irish 
 Consolidated Fund. 
 
APPENDIX 373 
 
 (2) It shall be the duty of the Legislature of Ireland to 
 impose all such taxes, duties, or imposts as will raise a 
 sufficient revenue to meet all sums charged for the time 
 being on the Irish Consolidated Fund. 
 
 16. — (1) Until all charges which are payable out of J«sh 
 the Church property in Ireland, and are guaranteed by the Fund. 
 Treasury, have been fully paid, the Irish Land Commission 
 shall continue as heretofore to exist, with such Commissioners 
 and officers receiving such salaries as the Treasury may 
 from time to time appoint, and to administer the Church 
 property and apply the income and other moneys receivable 
 therefrom ; and so much of the salaries of such Com- 
 missioners and officers and expenses of the office as is not 
 paid out of the Church property shall be paid out of 
 moneys carried to the Customs and Excise account under 
 this Act, and if these moneys are insufficient, out of the 
 Consolidated Fund of Ireland, and if not so paid, shall be 
 paid out of the moneys provided by Parliament. Provided 
 as follows : — 
 
 (a) All charges on the Church property for which a 
 
 guarantee has been given by the Treasury before 
 the passing of this Act shall, so far as they are 
 not paid out of such property, be paid out of the 
 moneys carried to the Customs and Excise account 
 under this Act, and if such moneys are insufficient, 
 the Consolidated Fund of Ireland, without pre- 
 judice nevertheless to the guarantee of the 
 Treasury ; 
 
 (b) All charges on the Church property, for which no 
 
 guarantee has been given by the Treasury before 
 the passing of this Act shall be charged on the 
 Consolidated Fund of Ireland, but shall not be 
 guaranteed by the Treasury nor charged on the 
 Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. 
 (2) Subject to any existing charges on the Church 
 property, such property shall belong to the Irish Govern- 
 ment and any portion of the annual revenue thereof which 
 the Treasury, on the application of the Irish Government, 
 certify at the end of any financial year not to be required 
 for meeting charges, shall be paid over and applied as part 
 
374 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 of the public revenues under the control of the Irish 
 Government. 
 
 (3) As soon as all charges on the Church property 
 guaranteed by the Treasury have been paid, such property 
 may be managed and administered, and subject to existing 
 charges thereon disposed of, and the income or proceeds 
 thereof applied, in such manner as the Irish Legislature 
 may from time to time direct. 
 
 (4) ' Church property ' in this section means all property 
 32 & 33 accruing under the Irish Church Act, 1869, and transferred 
 
 ic . c. 42. tQ ^ Irish Land Commission by the Irish Church Act 
 
 Vict. c. 71. Amendment Act, 1881. 
 
 17. — (1) All sums due for principal or interest to the 
 
 Public Public Works Loan Commissioners or to the Commissioners 
 of Public Works in Ireland in respect of existing loans 
 advanced on any security in Ireland shall on and after the 
 appointed day be due to the Government of Ireland instead 
 of the said Commissioners, and such body of persons as 
 the Government of Ireland may appoint for the purpose 
 shall have all the powers of the said Commissioners or 
 their secretary for enforcing payment of such sums, and all 
 securities for such sums given to such Commissioners or 
 their secretary shall have effect as if the said body were 
 therein substituted for those Commissioners or their secretary. 
 (2) For the repayment of the said loans to the Con- 
 solidated Fund of the United Kingdom, the Irish Govern- 
 ment shall pay annually into that Fund by half-yearly 
 payments 011 the first day of January and the first day of 
 July, or on such other days as may be agreed on, such 
 instalments of the principal of the said loans as will 
 discharge all the loans within thirty years from the appointed 
 day, and shall also pay interest half-yearly on so much of 
 the said principal as from time to time remains unpaid at 
 the rate of three per cent, per annum, and such instalments 
 of principal and interest shall be paid out of the moneys 
 carried to the Customs and Excise account under this Act, 
 and if those are insufficient, out of the Consolidated Fund 
 cf Ireland. 
 
 Additional ig. If Her Majesty declares that a state of war exists 
 
 nicl in ccisg . 
 
 of war. and is pleased to signify such declaration to the Irish 
 
APPENDIX 375 
 
 Legislative Body by speech or message, it shall be lawful 
 for the Irish Legislature to appropriate a further sum out 
 of the Consolidated Fund of Ireland in aid of the army or 
 navy, or other measures which Her Majesty may take for 
 the prosecution of the war and defence of the realm, and 
 to provide and raise money for that purpose ; and all 
 moneys so provided and raised, whether by loan, taxation, 
 or otherwise, shall be paid into the Consolidated Fund of 
 the United Kingdom. 
 
 19. — (i) It shall not be lawful for the Irish Legislative Money bills 
 Body to adopt or pass any vote, resolution, address, or Bill and votes - 
 for the raising or appropriation for any purpose of any part 
 of the public revenue of Ireland, or of any tax, duty, or 
 impost, except in pursuance of a recommendation from 
 Her Majesty signified through the Lord-Lieutenant in the 
 session in which such vote, resolution, address, or Bill is 
 proposed. 
 
 (2) Notwithstanding that the Irish Legislature is pro- 
 hibited by this Act from making laws relating to certain 
 subjects, that Legislature may, with the assent of Her 
 Majesty in Council first obtained, appropriate any part of 
 the Irish public revenue, or any tax, duty, or impost 
 imposed by such Legislature, for the purpose of, or in 
 connection with, such subjects. 
 
 20. — (1) On and after the appointed day, the Exchequer Exchequer 
 
 Division of the High Court of Justice shall continue to be an d IS1 ° n 
 
 a Court of Exchequer for revenue purposes under this Act, rev erme 
 . , n . , , a- , . , actions, 
 
 and whenever any vacancy occurs in the office of any judge 
 
 of such Exchequer Division, his successor shall be appointed 
 by Her Majesty on the joint recommendation of the Lord- 
 Lieutenant of Ireland and the Lord High Chancellor of 
 Great Britain. 
 
 (2) The judges of such Exchequer Division appointed 
 after the passing of this Act shall be removable only by 
 Her Majesty on address from the two Houses of the 
 Imperial Parliament, and shall receive the same salaries 
 and pensions as those payable at the passing of this Act to 
 the existing judges of such division, unless with the assent 
 of Her Majesty in Council first obtained, the Irish Legis- 
 lature alters such salaries or pensions, and such salaries and 
 
376 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 pensions shall be paid out of the moneys carried to the 
 Customs and Excise account in pursuance of this Act, and 
 if the same are insufficient shall be paid out of the Irish 
 Consolidated Fund, and if not so paid shall be paid out of 
 the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. 
 
 (3) An alteration of any rules relating to the procedure 
 in such legal proceedings as are mentioned in this section 
 shall not be made except with the approval of the Lord 
 High Chancellor of Great Britain, and the sittings of the 
 Exchequer Division and the judges thereof shall be regu- 
 lated with the like approval. 
 
 (4) All legal proceedings instituted in Ireland by or 
 against the Commissioners or any officers of Customs or 
 Excise, or the Treasury, shall, if so required by any party in 
 such proceedings, be heard and determined before the 
 judges of such Exchequer Division, or some or one of them, 
 and any appeal from the decision in any such legal pro- 
 ceeding, if by a judge, shall lie to the said division, and if 
 by the Exchequer Division, shall lie to the House of Lords, 
 and not to any other tribunal ; and if it is made to appear 
 to such judges, or any of them, that any decree or judgment 
 in any such proceeding as aforesaid, has not been duly 
 enforced by the sheriff or other officer whose duty it is to 
 enforce the same, such judges or judge shall appoint some 
 officer to enforce such judgment or decree ; and it shall be 
 the duty of such officer to take proper steps to enforce the 
 same, and for that purpose such officer and all persons 
 employed by him shall be entitled to the same immunities, 
 powers, and privileges as are by law conferred on a sheriff 
 and his officers. 
 
 (5) All sums recovered in respect of duties of Customs 
 and Excise, or under any Act relating thereto, or by an 
 officer of Customs or Excise, shall, notwithstanding anything 
 in any other Act, be paid to the Treasury, and carried to 
 the Customs and Excise account under this Act. 
 
 Police. 
 
 Police. 21. — The following regulations shall be made with 
 
 respect to police in Ireland : — 
 
APPENDIX 377 
 
 (a) The Dublin Metropolitan Police shall continue and 
 
 be subject as heretofore to the control of the 
 Lord-Lieutenant as representing Her Majesty for 
 a period of two years from the passing of this Act, 
 and thereafter until any alteration is made by Act 
 of the Legislature of Ireland, but such Act shall 
 provide for the proper saving of all then existing 
 interests, whether as regards pay, pensions, super- 
 annuation allowances, or otherwise. 
 
 (b) The Royal Irish Constabulary shall, while that force 
 
 subsists, continue and be subject as heretofore to 
 the control of the Lord-Lieutenant as representing 
 Her Majesty. 
 
 (c) The Irish Legislature may provide for the establish- 
 
 ment and maintenance of a police force in coun- 
 ties and boroughs in Ireland under the control of 
 local authorities, and arrangements may be made 
 between the Treasury and the Irish Government 
 for the establishment and maintenance of police 
 reserves. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 Supplemental Provisions. 
 
 Powers of Her Majesty. 
 
 22. — On and after the appointed day there shall be Power over 
 reserved to Her Majesty — certain 
 
 * J . lands re- 
 
 (i) The power of erecting forts, magazines, arsenals, served to 
 dockyards, and other buildings for military or Majesty. 
 naval purposes ; 
 
 (2) The power of taking waste land, and, on making due 
 compensation, any other land for the purpose of 
 erecting such forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, 
 or other buildings as aforesaid, and for any other 
 military or naval purpose, or the defence of the 
 realm. 
 
378 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Legislative Body. 
 
 Veto by 23. — If a Bill or any provision of a Bill is lost by dis- 
 
 of Leo-isia- agreement between the two orders of the Legislative Body, 
 
 tive Body, an d after a period ending with a dissolution of the Legisla- 
 how over- . . . 
 
 ruled. tive Body, or the period of three years, whichever period is 
 
 longest, such Bill, or a Bill containing the said provision, is 
 again considered by the Legislative Body, and such Bill or 
 provision is adopted by the second order and negatived by the 
 first order, the same shall be submitted to the whole Legis- 
 lative Body, both orders of which shall vote together on the 
 Bill or provision, and the same shall be adopted or rejected 
 according to the decision of the majority of the members 
 so voting together. 
 Cesser of 24. — On and after the appointed day Ireland shall cease, 
 Ireland to except in the event hereafter in this Act mentioned, to 
 return return representative peers to the House of Lords or 
 
 members r * 
 
 to Parlia- members to the House of Commons, and the persons who 
 ment on the said day are such representative peers and members 
 
 shall cease as such to be members of the House of Lords 
 
 and House of Commons respectively. 
 
 Decision of Constitutional Questions. 
 
 Constitu- 25. Questions arising as to the powers conferred on the 
 tions to be Legislature of Ireland under this Act shall be determined 
 
 submitted as follows :— 
 
 to Judicial . . 
 
 Com- {a) If any such question arises on any Bill passed by the 
 
 mittee - Legislative Body, the Lord-Lieutenant may refer 
 
 such question to Her Majesty in Council ; 
 
 (b) If, in the course of any action or other legal proceed- 
 
 ing, such question arises on any Act of the Irish 
 Legislature, any party to such action or other 
 legal proceeding may, subject to the rules in this 
 section mentioned, appeal from a decision on such 
 question to Her Majesty in Council ; 
 
 (c) If any such question arises otherwise than as afore- 
 
 said in any Act of the Irish Legislature, the Lord- 
 Lieutenant or one of Her Majesty's principal 
 Secretaries of State may refer such question to 
 Her Majesty in Council ; 
 
APPENDIX 379 
 
 (d) A question referred or appeal brought under this 
 
 section to Her Majesty in Council shall be referred 
 for the consideration of the Judicial Committee 
 of the Privy Council ; 
 
 (e) The decision of Her Majesty in Council on any 
 
 question referred or appeal brought under this 
 section shall be final, and a Bill which may be so 
 decided to be, or contain a provision, in excess 
 of the powers of the Irish Legislature shall not be 
 assented to by the Lord-Lieutenant; and a pro- 
 vision of any Act which is so decided to be in 
 excess of the powers of the Irish Legislature shall 
 be void ; 
 
 {/) There shall be added to the Judicial Committee 
 when sitting for the purpose of considering ques- 
 tions under this section, such members of Her 
 Majesty's Privy Council, being or having been 
 Irish judges, as to Her Majesty may seem meet; 
 
 (g) Her Majesty may, by Order in Council from time 
 to time, make rules as to the cases and mode in 
 which and conditions under which, in pursuance 
 of this section, questions may be referred and 
 appeals brought to Her Majesty in Council, and 
 as to the consideration thereof by the Judicial 
 Committee of the Privy Council, and any rules so 
 made shall be of the same force as if they were 
 enacted in this Act ; 
 
 (//) An appeal shall not lie to the House of Lords in 
 respect of any question in respect of which an 
 appeal can be had to Her Majesty in Council in 
 pursuance of this section. 
 
 Lord-Lieutenant. 
 
 26. — (i) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary con- Office of 
 tained in any Act of Parliament, every subject of Her te n ant . ie "" 
 Majesty shall be eligible to hold and enjoy the office of 
 Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, without reference to his 
 religious belief. 
 
 (2) The salary of the Lord-Lieutenant shall continue to 
 
380 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 be charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United King- 
 dom, and the expenses of his household and establishment 
 shall continue to be defrayed out of moneys to be provided 
 by Parliament. 
 
 (3) All existing powers vested by Act of Parliament or 
 otherwise in the Chief Secretary for Ireland may, if no such 
 officer is appointed, be exercised by the Lord-Lieutenant 
 until other provision is made by Act of the Irish 
 Legislature. 
 
 (4) The Legislature of Ireland shall not pass any Act 
 relating to the office or functions of the Lord-Lieutenant of 
 Ireland. 
 
 Judges and Civil Servants. 
 
 Judges to 
 
 be remov- 27. A judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature or other 
 
 on^ddress. Superior Court of Ireland, or of any County Court or other 
 
 Court with a like jurisdiction in Ireland, appointed after 
 
 the passing of this Act, shall not be removed from his office 
 
 except in pursuance of an address to Her Majesty from 
 
 both orders of the Legislative Body voting separately, nor 
 
 shall his salary be diminished or right to pension altered 
 
 Provisions during his continuance in office. 
 
 as to 28. — (1) All persons who at the passing of this Act are 
 
 othfr per- judges of the Supreme Court of Judicature or County Court 
 
 sons having judges, or hold any other judicial position in Ireland shall, 
 
 charged on if they are removable at present on address to Her Majesty 
 
 the Con- £ b fa Houses of Parliament, continue to be removable 
 
 sohdated ' 
 
 Fund. only upon such address from both Houses of the Imperial 
 
 Parliament, and if removable in any other manner shall 
 
 continue to be removable in like manner as heretofore; 
 
 and such persons, and also all persons at the passing of 
 
 this Act in the permanent Civil Service of the Crown in 
 
 Ireland whose salaries are charged on the Consolidated 
 
 Fund of the United Kingdom, shall continue to hold office 
 
 and to be entitled to the same salaries, pensions, and 
 
 superannuation allowances as heretofore, and to be liable 
 
 to perform the same or analogous duties as heretofore ; and 
 
 the salaries of such persons shall be paid out of the 
 
 moneys carried to the Customs and Excise account under 
 
APPENDIX 381 
 
 this Act, or if these moneys are insufficient, out of the Irish 
 Consolidated Fund, and if the same are not so paid shall 
 continue charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 (2) If any of these said persons retires from office with 
 the approbation of Her Majesty before he has completed 
 the period of service entitling him to a pension, it shall be 
 lawful for Her Majesty, if she thinks fit, to grant to that 
 person such pension, not exceeding the pension to which 
 he would have been entitled if he had completed the said 
 period of service, as to Her Majesty seems meet. 
 
 29. — (1) All persons not above provided for and at the As toper- 
 passing of this Act serving in Ireland in the permanent f°gcivn " 
 Civil Service of the Crown shall continue to hold their Service 
 offices and receive the same salaries, and to be entitled to ments. 
 the same gratuities and superannuation allowances as here- 
 tofore, and shall be liable to perform the same duties as 
 heretofore or duties of similar rank, but any of such persons 
 shall be entitled at the expiration of two years after the 
 passing of this Act to retire from office, and at any time if 
 required by the Irish Government shall retire from office, 
 and on any such retirement shall be entitled to receive 
 such payment as the Treasury may award to him in accord- 
 ance with the provisions contained in the Fourth Schedule 
 to this Act. 
 
 (2) The amount of such payment shall be paid to him 
 out of the moneys carried to the Customs and Excise 
 account under this Act, or, if those moneys are insufficient, 
 out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and so far as the same 
 are not so paid shall be paid out of moneys provided by 
 Parliament. 
 
 (3) The Pensions Commutation Act, 1871, shall apply 34 & 35 
 
 to all persons who, having retired from office, are entitled lc • c - 3 • 
 to any annual payment under this section in like manner 
 as if they had retired in consequence of the abolition of 
 their offices. 
 
 (4) This section shall not apply to persons who are 
 retained in the service of the Imperial Government. 
 
 30. Where before the passing of this Act any pension Provision 
 or superannuation allowance has been granted to any pensions 
 
382 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 and super- person on account of service as a judge of the Supreme 
 allowances. Court of Judicature of Ireland, or of any Court consoli- 
 dated into that Court, or as a County Court judge, or in 
 any other judicial position, or on account of service in the 
 permanent Civil Service of the Crown in Ireland otherwise 
 than in some office, the holder of which is, after the passing 
 of this Act, retained in the service of the Imperial Govern- 
 ment, such pension or allowance, whether payable out of 
 the Consolidated Fund or out of moneys provided by Par- 
 liament, shall continue to be paid to such person, and 
 shall be so paid out of the moneys carried to the Customs 
 and Excise account under this Act, or, if such moneys are 
 insufficient, out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, and so far 
 as the same is not so paid, shall be paid as heretofore out 
 of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom or 
 moneys provided by Parliament. 
 
 Transitory Provisions. 
 
 Transitory 31. The provisions contained in the Fifth Schedule to 
 provisions t ^. g ^ ct re j a); j n g t0 t h e mo( j e m which arrangements are to 
 Schedule. b e made for setting in motion the Irish Legislative Body 
 and Government, and for the transfer to the Irish Govern- 
 ment of the powers and duties to be transferred to them 
 under this Act, or for otherwise bringing this Act into 
 operation, shall be of the same effect as if they were 
 enacted in the body of this Act. 
 
 Miscellaneous. 
 
 Tost office 32. Whenever an Act of the Legislature of Ireland has 
 banks. VmgS P rov ided for carrying on the postal and telegraphic service 
 with respect to the transmission of letters and telegrams in 
 Ireland, and the post office and other savings banks in 
 Ireland, and for protecting the officers then in such service, 
 and the existing depositors in such post-office savings banks, 
 the Treasury shall make arrangements for the transfer of 
 the said service and banks, in accordance with the said 
 Act, and shall give public notice of the transfer, and shall 
 pay all depositors in such post-office savings bank who 
 request payment within six months after the date fixed for 
 
APPENDIX 383 
 
 such transfer, and after the expiration of such six months 
 the said depositors shall cease to have any claim against 
 the Postmaster-General or the Consolidated Fund of the 
 United Kingdom, but shall have the like claim against the 
 Consolidated Fund of Ireland, and the Treasury shall cause 
 to be transferred in accordance with the said Act the 
 securities representing the sums due to the said depositors 
 in post-office savings banks, and the securities held for 
 other savings banks. 
 
 33. Save as otherwise provided by the Irish Legis- Audit, 
 lature — 
 
 (a) The existing law relating to the Exchequer and the 
 
 Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom shall 
 apply to the Irish Exchequer and Consolidated 
 Fund, and an officer shall from time to time be 
 appointed by the Lord-Lieutenant to fill the office 
 of the Comptroller-General of the receipt and 
 issue of Her Majesty's Exchequer and Auditor- 
 General of public accounts so far as respects 
 Ireland; and 
 
 (b) The accounts of the Irish Consolidated Fund shall 
 
 be audited as appropriation accounts in manner 
 provided by the Exchequer and Audit Depart- 
 ments Act, 1S66, by or under the direction of 29 & 30 
 the holder of such office. Vict - c - 39- 
 
 34. — (1) The privileges, immunities, and powers to be Appiica- 
 held, enjoyed, and exercised by the Irish Legislative Body, [iamentarv 
 and the members thereof, shall be such as are from time to law. 
 time defined by Act of the Irish Legislature, but so that 
 the same shall never exceed those at the passing of this 
 Act, held, enjoyed, and exercised by the House of Commons, 
 and by the members thereof. 
 
 (2) Subject as in this Act mentioned, all existing laws 
 and customs relating to the members of the House of 
 Commons and their election, including the enactments 
 respecting the questioning of elections, corrupt and illegal 
 practices, and registration of electors, shall, so far as 
 applicable, extend to elective members of the first order 
 and to members of the second order of the Irish Legislative 
 Body. Provided that, — 
 
384 
 
 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Regula- 
 tions for 
 carrying 
 Act into 
 effect. 
 
 Saving of 
 powers of 
 House 
 of Lords. 
 
 (a) The law relating to the offices of profit enumerated 
 in Schedule H to the Representation of the 
 People Act, 1867, shall apply to such offices of 
 profit in the Government of Ireland not exceeding 
 ten, as the Legislature of Ireland may from time 
 to time direct ; 
 
 {b) After the first dissolution of the Legislative Body, 
 the Legislature of Ireland may, subject to the 
 restrictions in this Act mentioned, alter the laws 
 and customs in this section mentioned. 
 
 35. — (1) The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland may make 
 regulations for the following purposes : — 
 
 (a) The summoning of the Legislative Body and the 
 election of a Speaker, and such adaptation to the 
 proceedings of the Legislative Body of the pro- 
 cedure of the House of Commons as appears to 
 him expedient for facilitating the conduct of 
 business by that body on their first meeting ; 
 
 (/>) The adaptation of any laws relating to the election of 
 representative peers ; 
 
 (c) The adaptation of any laws and customs relating to 
 
 the House of Commons or the members thereof 
 to the elective members of the first order and to 
 members of the second order of the Legislative 
 Body ; and 
 
 (d) The mode of signifying their assent or election under 
 
 this Act by representative peers or Irish members 
 
 of the House of Commons as regards becoming 
 
 members of the Irish Legislative Body in pursuance 
 
 of this Act. 
 
 (2) Any regulations so made shall, in so far as they 
 
 concern the procedure of the Legislative Body, be subject 
 
 to alteration by Standing Orders of that Body, and so far as 
 
 they concern other matters, be subject to alteration by the 
 
 Legislature of Ireland, but shall, until alteration, have the 
 
 same effect as if they were inserted in this Act. 
 
 36. Save as in this Act provided with respect to matters 
 to be decided by Her Majesty in Council, nothing in this 
 Act shall affect the appellate jurisdiction of the House of 
 Lords in respect of actions and suits in Ireland, or the 
 
APPENDIX 385 
 
 jurisdiction of the House of Lords to determine the claims 
 to Irish peerages. 
 
 37. Save as herein expressly provided, all matters in Saving of 
 relation to which it is not competent for the Irish Legisla- pf^a.° f 
 tive Body to make or repeal laws shall remain and be within ment. 
 the exclusive authority of the Imperial Parliament, whose 
 power and authority in relation thereto, save as aforesaid, 
 shall in no wise be diminished or restrained by anything 
 herein contained. 
 
 38. — (1) Except as otherwise provided by this Act, all Continu- 
 existing laws in force in Ireland, and all existing courts of j^ng°[ a e V v S ~ 
 civil and criminal jurisdiction, and all existing legal com- courts, 
 missions, powers, and authorities, and all existing officers, etc.° erS ' 
 judicial, administrative, and ministerial, and all existing 
 taxes, licence, and other duties, fees, and other receipts in 
 Ireland shall continue as if this Act had not been passed ; 
 subject, nevertheless, to be repealed, abolished, or altered 
 in manner and to the extent provided by this Act ; provided 
 that, subject to the provisions of this Act, such taxes, duties, 
 fees, and other receipts, shall, after the appointed day, form 
 part of the public revenues of Ireland. 
 
 (2) The Commissioners of Inland Revenue and Com- 
 missioners of Customs, and the officers of such Commis- 
 sioners respectively, shall have the same powers in relation 
 to any articles subject to any duty of excise or customs, 
 manufactured, imported, kept for sale, or sold, and any 
 premises where the same may be, and to any machinery, 
 apparatus, vessels, utensils, or conveyance used in connec- 
 tion therewith, or the removal thereof, and in relation to 
 the person manufacturing, importing, keeping for sale, sell- 
 ing, or having the custody or possession of the same as they 
 would have had if this Act had not been passed. 
 
 39. — (1) On and after the appointed day this Act shall Mode of 
 not, except such provisions thereof as are declared to be of Act.'° n 
 alterable by the Legislature of Ireland, be altered except — 
 
 (a) By Act of the Imperial Parliament and with the 
 
 consent of the Irish Legislative Body testified by 
 an address to Her Majesty, or 
 
 (b) By an Act of the Imperial Parliament, for the passing 
 
 of which there shall be summoned to the House 
 
 2 C 
 
PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 of Lords the peerage members of the first order of 
 the Irish Legislative Body, and if there are no 
 such members then twenty-eight Irish representa- 
 tive peers elected by the Irish peers in manner 
 heretofore in use, subject to adaptation as pro- 
 vided by this Act ; and there shall be summoned 
 to the House of Commons such one of the members 
 of each constituency, or in the case of a constitu- 
 ency returning four members such two of those 
 members, as the Legislative Body of Ireland 
 may select, and such peers and members shall 
 respectively be deemed, for the purpose of passing 
 any such Act, to be members of the said Houses 
 of Parliament respectively. 
 (2) For the purposes of this section, it shall be lawful 
 for Her Majesty by Order in Council to make such pro- 
 visions for summoning the said peers of Ireland to the 
 House of Lords and the said members from Ireland to the 
 House of Commons as to Her Majesty may seem necessary 
 or proper, and any provisions contained in such Order in 
 Council shall have the same effect as if they had been enacted 
 by Parliament. 
 Defini- 40. In this Act — 
 
 The expression 'the appointed day' shall mean such 
 day after the thirty-first day of March in the year one 
 thousand eight hundred and eighty-seven as may be 
 determined by order of Her Majesty in Council. 
 The expression ' Lord- Lieutenant ' includes the lords 
 justices or any other chief governor or governors of 
 Ireland for the time being. 
 The expression ' Her Majesty the Queen,' or ' Her 
 Majesty in Council,' or 'the Queen,' includes the 
 heirs and successors of Her Majesty the Queen. 
 The expression ' Treasury ' means the Commissioners of 
 
 Her Majesty's Treasury. 
 The expression ' Treaty ' includes any convention or 
 
 arrangement. 
 The expression ' existing ' means existing at the passing 
 
 of this Act. 
 The expression ' existing constituency ' means any 
 
 tions. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 387 
 
 county or borough, or division of a county or borough, 
 
 or a University returning at the passing of this Act a 
 
 member or members to serve in Parliament. 
 The expression 'duties of excise' does not include a 
 
 duty received in respect of any licence whether for the 
 
 sale of intoxicating liquors or otherwise. 
 The expression ' financial year ' means the twelve months 
 
 ending on the thirty-first day of March. 
 41. This Act may be cited for all purposes as the Irish short title 
 Government Act, 1886. 
 
 of Act. 
 
 SCHEDULES. 
 First Schedule. 
 First order of the Irish Legislative Body. 
 
 Electoral Districts. 
 
 Rotation. 
 
 Second Schedule. 
 
 Provisions relating to the first order of the Irish 
 Legislative Body. 
 
 Third Schedule. 
 
 Boundaries of divisions of the City of Cork for the 
 purpose of returning members to the second order of the 
 Legislative Body. 
 
 Fourth Schedule. 
 
 Provisions as to superannuation allowances of persons in 
 the Permanent Civil Service. 
 
 Fifth Schedule. 
 Transitory provisions. 
 
THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL, 1893. 
 
 ARRANGEMENT OF CLAUSES. 
 
 Part I. 
 Legislative Authority. 
 
 LAUSE 
 
 i. Establishment of Irish Legislature. 
 
 2. Powers of Irish Legislature. 
 
 3. Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature. 
 
 4. Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature. 
 
 Executive Authority. 
 
 5. Executive power in Ireland. 
 
 Constitution of Legislature. 
 
 6. Composition of Irish Legislative Council. 
 
 7. Composition of Irish Legislative Assembly. 
 
 8. Disagreement between two Houses, how settled. 
 
 Irish Representation in House of Commons. 
 
 9. Representation in Parliament of Irish counties and 
 
 boroughs. 
 
 Finance. 
 
 10. As to separate Consolidated Fund and taxes. 
 
 11. Hereditary revenues and income tax. 
 
 12. Financial arrangements as between United Kingdom and 
 
 Ireland. 
 
 13. Treasury Account (Ireland). 
 
 14. Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund. 
 
 388 
 
APPENDIX 389 
 
 CLAUSE 
 
 15. Irish Church Fund. 
 
 16. Local loans. 
 
 17. Adaptation of Acts as to Local Taxation Accounts and 
 
 Probate, etc., duties. 
 
 18. Money bills and votes. 
 
 19. Exchequer judges for revenue actions, election petitions, 
 
 etc. 
 
 Post Office^ Postal Telegraphs ', and Savings Banks. 
 
 20. Transfer of post office and postal telegraphs. 
 
 21. Transfer of savings banks. 
 
 Irish Appeals and Decision of Constitutional Questions. 
 
 22. Irish appeals. 
 
 23. Special provision for decision of constitutional questions. 
 
 Lord- Lieutenant and Crown Lands. 
 
 24. Office of Lord-Lieutenant. 
 
 25. Use of Crown lands by Irish Government. 
 
 Judges and Civil Servants. 
 
 26. Tenure of future judges. 
 
 27. As to existing judges and other persons having salaries 
 
 charged on the Consolidated Fund. 
 
 28. As to persons holding Civil Service appointments. 
 
 29. As to existing pensions and superannuation allowances. 
 
 Police. 
 
 30. As to police. 
 
 Miscellaneous. 
 
 31. Irish Exchequer Consolidated Fund and Audit. 
 
 32. Law applicable to both Houses of Irish Legislature. 
 
 33. Supplemental provisions as to powers of Irish Legislature. 
 
 34. Limitation on borrowing by local authorities. 
 
 Transitory Provisions. 
 
 35. Temporary restriction on powers of Irish Legislature and 
 
 Executive. 
 
39o PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 CLAUSE 
 
 36. Transitory provisions. 
 
 37. Continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, etc. 
 
 38. Appointed day, 
 
 39. Definitions. 
 
 40. Short title. 
 
 Schedules. 
 
 A Bill to amend the provision for the Government 0/ Ireland. 
 
 [a.d. 1893. 
 
 Whereas it is expedient that without impairing or re- 
 stricting the supreme authority of Parliament, an Irish 
 Legislature should be created for such purposes in Ireland 
 as in this Act mentioned : Be it therefore enacted by the 
 Queen's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice 
 and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and 
 Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by 
 the authority of the same, as follows : — 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Legislative Authority. 
 
 Establish- 1. On and after the appointed day there shall be in 
 KshLe ' - I re l an d a Legislature consisting of Her Majesty the Queen 
 lature. " and of two Houses, the Legislative Council and the Legisla- 
 tive Assembly. 
 Powers of 2. With the exceptions and subject to the restrictions 
 lature"' 6215 " * n ^ s ^ ct ment ioned, there shall be granted to the Irish 
 Legislature power to make laws for the peace, order, and 
 good government of Ireland in respect of matters exclusively 
 relating to Ireland or some part thereof. 
 Exceptions 3. The Irish Legislature shall not have power to make 
 powers of ^ aws m res P ect °f the following matters or any of them : — 
 irishLegis- (i) The Crown, or the succession to the Crown, or a 
 Regency ; or the Lord-Lieutenant as representa- 
 tive of the Crown ; or 
 (2) The making of peace or war or matters arising from 
 a state of war ; or 
 
APPENDIX 391 
 
 (3) Naval or military forces, or the defence of the 
 
 realm ; or 
 
 (4) Treaties and other relations with foreign States, or 
 
 the relations between different parts of Her 
 Majesty's dominions, or offences connected with 
 such treaties or relations ; or 
 
 (5) Dignities or titles of honour; or 
 
 (6) Treason, treason-felony, alienage or naturalisation ; or 
 
 (7) Trade with any place out of Ireland; or quarantine, 
 
 or navigation (except as respects inland waters 
 and local health or harbour regulations) ; or 
 
 (8) Beacons, lighthouses, or sea-marks (except so far 
 
 as they can consistently with any general Act of 
 Parliament be constructed or maintained by a local 
 harbour authority) ; or 
 
 (9) Coinage; legal tender; or the standard of weights 
 
 and measures ; or 
 
 (10) Trade marks, merchandise marks, copyright, or 
 
 patent rights. 
 
 Any law made in contravention of this section shall be 
 void. 
 
 4. The powers of the Irish Legislature shall not extend Restric- 
 to the making of any law— powerTof 
 
 (1) Respecting the establishment or endowment of re- Irish Le s is - 
 
 ligion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or 
 
 (2) Imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, 
 
 on account of religious belief; or 
 
 (3) Abrogating or prejudicially affecting the right to 
 
 establish or maintain any place of denominational 
 education or any denominational institution or 
 charity; or 
 
 (4) Prejudicially affecting the right of any child to 
 
 attend a school receiving public money, without 
 attending the religious instruction at that school ; 
 or 
 
 (5) Whereby any person may be deprived of life, liberty, 
 
 or property without due process of law, or may 
 be denied the equal protection of the laws, or 
 whereby private property may be taken without 
 just compensation ; or 
 
392 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 (6) Whereby any existing corporation incorporated by 
 
 Royal Charter or by any local or general Act of 
 Parliament (not being a corporation raising for 
 public purposes taxes, rates, cess, dues, or tolls, 
 or administering funds so raised) may, unless it 
 consents, or the leave of Her Majesty is first 
 obtained on address from the two Houses of the 
 Irish Legislature, be deprived of its rights, privi- 
 leges, or property without due process of law ; or 
 
 (7) Whereby any inhabitant of the United Kingdom may 
 
 be deprived of equal rights as respects public sea 
 fisheries. 
 Any law made in contravention of this section shall be 
 void. 
 
 Executive Authority, 
 
 Executive 5. — (1) The executive power in Ireland shall continue 
 Ireland! 1 vested in Her Majesty the Queen, and the Lord-Lieutenant, 
 on behalf of Her Majesty, shall exercise any prerogatives 
 or other executive power of the Queen the exercise of 
 which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty, and shall, 
 in Her Majesty's name, summon, prorogue, and dissolve 
 the Irish Legislature. 
 
 (2) There shall be an Executive Committee of the Privy 
 Council of Ireland to aid and advise in the government of 
 Ireland, being of such numbers, and comprising persons 
 holding such offices, as Her Majesty may think fit, or as 
 may be directed by Irish Act. 
 
 (3) The Lord-Lieutenant shall, on the advice of the said 
 Executive Committee, give or withhold the assent of Her 
 Majesty to Bills passed by the two Houses of the Irish 
 Legislature, subject nevertheless to any instructions given 
 by Her Majesty in respect of any such Bill. 
 
 Constitution of Legislature. 
 
 Composi- 6. — (1) The Irish Legislative Council shall consist of 
 ^^Mty-eight councillors. 
 
 Council. ( 2 ) Each of the constituencies mentioned in the First 
 
APPENDIX 393 
 
 Schedule to this Act shall return the number of councillors 
 named opposite thereto in that schedule. 
 
 (3) Every man shall be entitled to be registered as an 
 elector, and when registered to vote at an election, of a 
 councillor for a constituency, who owns or occupies any 
 land or tenement in the constituency of a rateable value of 
 more than twenty pounds, subject to the like conditions as 
 a man is entitled at the passing of this Act to be registered 
 and vote as a Parliamentary elector in respect of an owner- 
 ship qualification, or of the qualification specified in section 
 
 five of the Representation of the People Act, 1 884, as the 48 & 49 
 case may be : Provided that a man shall not be entitled 
 to be registered, nor if registered to vote, at an election 
 of a councillor in more than one constituency in the same 
 year. 
 
 (4) The term of office of every councillor shall be eight 
 years, and shall not be affected by a dissolution ; and one 
 half of the Councillors shall retire in every fourth year, and 
 their seats shall be filled by a new election. 
 
 7. — (1) The Irish Legislative Assembly shall consist ofComposi- 
 one hundred and three members, returned by the existing Legislative 
 parliamentary constituencies in Ireland, or the existing Assembly, 
 divisions thereof, and elected by the parliamentary electors 
 for the time being in those constituencies or divisions. 
 
 (2) The Irish Legislative Assembly when summoned 
 may, unless sooner dissolved, have continuance for five 
 years from the day on which the summons directs it to 
 meet and no longer. 
 
 (3) After six years from the passing of this Act, the 
 Irish Legislature may alter the qualification of the electors, 
 and the constituencies, and the distribution of the members 
 among the constituencies, provided that in such distri- 
 bution due regard is had to the population of the con- 
 stituencies. 
 
 8. If a Bill, or any provision of a Bill, adopted by the Disagree- 
 
 Legislative Assembly is lost by the disagreement of the ™<? en t ^ Q 
 
 Legislative Council, and after a dissolution, or the period Houses, 
 
 how 
 of two years from such disagreement, such Bill, or a Bill se ttled. 
 
 for enacting the said provision, is again adopted by the 
 
 Legislative Assembly, and fails within three months 
 
394 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 afterwards to be adopted by the Legislative Council, the same 
 shall forthwith be submitted to the members of the two 
 Houses deliberating and voting together thereon, and shall 
 be adopted or rejected according to the decision of the 
 majority of those members present and voting on the 
 question. 
 
 Irish Representation in House of Commons. 
 
 Represen- 9. Unless and until Parliament otherwise determines, the 
 
 Parliament following provisions shall have effect : — 
 
 of Irish /j\ After the appointed day each of the constituencies 
 
 counties x ' . ■" ^ 
 
 and named in the Second Schedule to this Act shall 
 
 boroughs. return to serve in Parliament the number of mem- 
 
 bers named opposite thereto in that Schedule, and 
 no more, and Dublin University shall cease to 
 return any member. 
 
 (2) The existing divisions of the constituencies shall, 
 
 save as provided in that Schedule, be abolished. 
 
 (3) An Irish representative peer in the House of Lords 
 
 and a member of the House of Commons for an 
 Irish constituency shall not be entitled to delibe- 
 rate or vote on — 
 
 (a) Any Bill or motion in relation thereto, the 
 
 operation of which Bill or motion is con- 
 fined to Great Britain or some part thereof; 
 or 
 
 (b) Any motion or resolution relating solely to 
 
 some tax not raised or to be raised in 
 Ireland ; or 
 
 (c) Any vote or appropriation of money made 
 
 exclusively for some service not men- 
 tioned in the Third Schedule to this Act ; 
 or 
 
 (d) Any motion or resolution exclusively affect- 
 
 ing Great Britain, or some part thereof, 
 or some local authority, or some person 
 or thing therein ; or 
 
 (e) Any motion or resolution incidental to any 
 
 such motion or resolution, as either is last 
 
APPENDIX 395 
 
 mentioned, or relates solely to some tax 
 not raised or to be raised in Ireland, or 
 incidental to any such vote or appropria- 
 tion of money as aforesaid. 
 
 (4) Compliance with the provisions of this section shall 
 
 not be questioned otherwise than in each House 
 in manner provided by the House. 
 
 (5) The election laws and the laws relating to the quali- 
 
 fication of parliamentary electors shall not, so far 
 as they relate to parliamentary elections, be altered 
 by the Irish Legislature, but this enactment shall 
 not prevent the Irish Legislature from dealing 
 with any officers concerned with the issue of writs 
 of election, and if any officers are so dealt with, 
 it shall be lawful for Her Majesty by Order in 
 Council to arrange for the issue of such writs, and 
 the writs issued in pursuance of such Order shall 
 be of the same effect as if issued in manner here- 
 tofore accustomed. 
 
 Finance. 
 
 10. — (1) On and after the appointed day there shall be Astosepa- 
 an Irish Exchequer and Consolidated Fund separate from soifdated" 
 those of the United Kingdom. Fund and 
 
 (2) The duties of Customs and Excise and the duties 
 on postage shall be imposed by Act of Parliament, but 
 subject to the provisions of this Act the Irish Legislature 
 may, in order to provide for the public service of Ireland, 
 impose any other taxes. 
 
 (3) Save as in this Act mentioned, all matters relating 
 to the taxes in Ireland and the collection and management 
 thereof shall be regulated by Irish Act, and the same shall 
 be collected and managed by the Irish Government, and 
 from part of the public revenues of Ireland : Provided 
 that— 
 
 (a) The duties of Customs shall be regulated, collected, 
 
 managed, and paid into the Exchequer of the 
 United Kingdom as heretofore ; and 
 
 (b) All prohibitions in connection with the duties of 
 
396 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Excise, and so far as regards articles sent out of 
 Ireland, all matters relating to those duties, shall 
 be regulated by Act of Parliament ; and 
 (c) The excise duties on articles consumed in Great 
 Britain shall be paid in Great Britain, or to an 
 officer of the Government of the United Kingdom. 
 
 (4) Save as in this Act mentioned, all the public revenues 
 of Ireland shall be paid into the Irish Exchequer and form 
 a Consolidated Fund, and be appropriated to the public 
 service of Ireland by Irish Act. 
 
 (5) If the duties of Excise are increased above the rates 
 in force on the first day of March one thousand eight 
 hundred and ninety-three the net proceeds in Ireland of the 
 duties in excess of the said rates shall be paid from the 
 Irish Exchequer to the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. 
 
 (6) If the duties of Excise are reduced below the rates in 
 force on the said day, and the net proceeds of such duties 
 in Ireland are in consequence less than the net proceeds 
 of the duties before the reduction, a sum equal to the 
 deficiency shall, unless it is otherwise agreed between the 
 Treasury and the Irish Government, be paid from the 
 Exchequer of the United Kingdom to the Irish Exchequer. 
 
 Hereditary 11. — (1) The hereditary revenues of the Crown in 
 
 revenues Ireland which are managed by the Commissioners of Woods 
 
 and income . . 
 
 tax. shall continue during the life of Her present Majesty to be 
 
 managed and collected by those Commissioners, and the 
 net amount payable by them to the Exchequer on account 
 of those revenues, after deducting all expenses (but including 
 an allowance for interest on such proceeds of the sale of 
 those revenues as have not been re-invested in Ireland), 
 shall be paid into the Treasury Account (Ireland) herein- 
 after mentioned, for the benefit of the Irish Exchequer. 
 
 (2) A person shall not be required to pay income tax in 
 Great Britain in respect of property situate or business 
 carried on in Ireland, and a person shall not be required to 
 pay income tax in Ireland in respect of property situate or 
 business carried on in Great Britain. 
 
 (3) For the purpose of giving to Ireland the benefit of 
 the difference between the income tax collected in Great 
 Britain from British, Colonial, and foreign securities held 
 
APPENDIX 397 
 
 by residents in Ireland, and the income tax collected in 
 Ireland from Irish securities held by residents in Great 
 Britain, there shall be made to Ireland out of the income 
 tax collected in Great Britain, an allowance of such amount 
 as may be from time to time determined by the Treasury, 
 in accordance with a minute of the Treasury, laid before 
 Parliament before the appointed day, and such allowance 
 shall be paid into the Treasury Account (Ireland) for the 
 benefit of the Irish Exchequer. 
 
 (4) Provided that the provisions of this section with 
 respect to income tax shall not apply to any excess of the 
 rate of income tax in Great Britain above the rate in Ireland 
 or of the rate of income tax in Ireland above the rate in 
 Great Britain. 
 
 12. — (1) The duties of Customs contributed by Ireland Financial 
 and, save as provided by this Act, that portion of any ments as 
 public revenue of the United Kingdom to which Ireland u^^d" 
 may claim to be entitled, whether specified in the Third Kingdom 
 Schedule to this Act or not, shall be carried to the Consoli- i" e i and 
 dated Fund of the United Kingdom, as the contribution of 
 Ireland to Imperial liabilities and expenditure as defined in 
 that Schedule. 
 
 (2) The civil charges of the Government in Ireland shall, 
 subject as in this Act mentioned, be borne after the 
 appointed day by Ireland. 
 
 (3) After fifteen years from the passing of this Act the 
 arrangements made by this Act for the contribution of 
 Ireland to Imperial liabilities and expenditure, and other- 
 wise for the financial relations between the United Kingdom 
 and Ireland, may be revised in pursuance of an address to 
 Her Majesty from the House of Commons, or from the 
 Irish Legislative Assembly. 
 
 13. — (1) There shall be established under the direction Treasury 
 of the Treasury an account (in this Act referred to as the (Ireland) 
 Treasury Account (Ireland)). 
 
 (2) There shall be paid into such account all sums 
 payable from the Irish Exchequer to the Exchequer of the 
 United Kingdom, or from the latter to the former Exchequer, 
 and all sums directed to be paid into the account for the 
 benefit of either of the said Exchequers. 
 
398 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 (3) All sums which are payable from either of the said 
 Exchequers to the other of them, or being payable out of 
 one of the said Exchequers are repayable by the other 
 Exchequer, shall in the first instance be payable out of the 
 said account so far as the money standing on the account 
 is sufficient ; and for the purpose of meeting such sums the 
 Treasury out of the Customs revenue collected in Ireland, 
 and the Irish Government out of any of the public revenues 
 in Ireland, may direct money to be paid to the Treasury 
 Account (Ireland) instead of into the Exchequer. 
 
 (4) Any surplus standing on the account to the credit 
 of either Exchequer, and not required for meeting payments, 
 shall at convenient times be paid into that Exchequer, and 
 where any sum so payable in to the Exchequer of the 
 United Kingdom is required by law to be forthwith paid 
 to the National Debt Commissioners, that sum may be 
 paid to those Commissioners without being paid into the 
 Exchequer. 
 
 (5) All sums payable by virtue of this Act out of the 
 Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom or of Ireland 
 shall be payable from the Exchequer of the United 
 Kingdom or of Ireland shall be payable from the Exchequer 
 of the United Kingdom or Ireland, as the case may be, 
 within the meaning of this Act, and all sums by this Act 
 made payable from the Exchequer of the United Kingdom 
 shall, if not otherwise paid, be charged on and paid out of 
 the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. 
 
 Charges 14. — (1) There shall be charged on the Irish Consolidated 
 
 Consoli- Fund in favour of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom 
 dated as a fi rs t charge on that fund all sums which — 
 
 (a) Are payable to that Exchequer from the Irish Ex- 
 
 chequer ; or 
 
 (b) Are required to repay to the Exchequer of the 
 
 United Kingdom sums issued to meet the divi- 
 dends or sinking fund or guaranteed land stock 
 
 54&S5 under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) Act, 1801 ; 
 
 Vict. c. 48. \ / » y } 
 
 or 
 
 (c) Otherwise have been or are required to be paid out 
 
 of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom in con- 
 sequence of the non-payment thereof out of the 
 
APPENDIX 399 
 
 Exchequer of Ireland or otherwise by the Irish 
 Government. 
 
 (2) If at any time the Controller and Auditor-General 
 of the United Kingdom is satisfied that any such charge is 
 due, he shall certify the amount of it, and the Treasury 
 shall send such certificate to the Lord-Lieutenant, who shall 
 thereupon by order, without any counter-signature, direct the 
 payment of the amount from the Irish Exchequer to the 
 Exchequer of the United Kingdom, and such order shall 
 be duly obeyed by all persons, and until the amount is 
 wholly paid no other payment shall be made out of the Irish 
 Exchequer for any purpose whatever. 
 
 (3) There shall be charged on the Irish Consolidated 
 Fund next after the foregoing charge — 
 
 (a) All sums, for dividends or sinking fund on guaranteed 
 
 land stock under the Purchase of Land (Ireland) 54 & 55 
 Act, 1 89 1, which the Land Purchase Account and 
 the Guarantee Fund under that Act are insufficient 
 to pay ; 
 
 (b) All sums due in respect of any debt incurred by the 
 
 Government of Ireland, whether for interest 
 management, or sinking fund ; 
 
 (c) An annual sum of five thousand pounds for the 
 
 expenses of the household and establishment of 
 the Lord-Lieutenant ; 
 
 (d) All existing charges on the Consolidated Fund of the 
 
 United Kingdom in respect of Irish services other 
 than the salary of the Lord-Lieutenant ; and 
 
 (e) The salaries and pensions of all judges of the Supreme 
 
 Court or other Superior Court in Ireland or of any 
 County or other like Court, who are appointed 
 after the passing of this Act, and are not the 
 Exchequer judges hereafter mentioned. 
 
 (4) Until all charges created by this Act upon the Irish 
 Consolidated Fund and for the time being due are paid, no 
 money shall be issued from the Irish Exchequer for any 
 other purpose whatever. 
 
 15. — (1) All existing charges on the Church property in Irish 
 
 Ireland — that is to say, all property accruing under the Fu^ 
 
 Irish Church Act, 1869, and transferred to the Irish Land 32*33 
 
 ' 7 ' Vict. c. 42. 
 
400 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 44&45 Commission by the Irish Church Amendment Act, 1881 
 ict. c. 71. — gj^u SQ £ ar ag nQt p^^ Qut £ ^ sa j ( j p r0 p ert y ^ e 
 
 charged on the Irish Consolidated Fund, and any of those 
 charges guaranteed by the Treasury, if and so far as not 
 paid, shall be paid out of the Exchequer of the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 (2) Subject to the existing charges thereon, the said 
 Church property shall belong to the Irish Government, 
 and be managed, administered, and disposed of as directed 
 by Irish Act. 
 Local 16. — (1) All sums paid or applicable in or towards the 
 
 loans. discharge of the interest or principal of any local loan 
 advanced before the appointed day on security in Ireland, 
 or otherwise in respect of such loan, which but for this Act 
 would be paid to the National Debt Commissioners, and 
 carried to the Local Loans Fund, shall, after the appointed 
 day, be paid, until otherwise provided by Irish Act, to the 
 Irish Exchequer. 
 
 (2) For the payment of the Local Loans Fund of the 
 principal and interest of such loans, the Irish Government 
 shall after the appointed day pay by half-yearly payments 
 an annuity for forty '-nine years, at the rate of four per cent., 
 on the principal of the said loans, exclusive of any sums 
 written off before the appointed day from the account of 
 assets of the Local Loans Fund, and such annuity shall be 
 paid from the Irish Exchequer to the Exchequer of the 
 United Kingdom, and when so paid shall be forthwith 
 paid to the National Debt Commissioners for the credit of 
 the Local Loans Fund. 
 
 (3) After the appointed day, money for loans in Ireland 
 shall cease to be advanced either by the Public Works 
 Loan Commissioners or out of the Local Loans Fund. 
 
 Adaptation 17. — (1) So much of any Act as directs payment to the 
 
 to Local S Local Taxation (Ireland) Account of any share of Probate, 
 
 Taxation Excise, or Customs duties payable to the Exchequer of the 
 
 and°Pro- S United Kingdom shall, together with any enactment amend- 
 
 bate, etc., ing the same, be repealed as from the appointed day with- 
 
 Seeso& 51 out prejudice to the adjustment of balances after that day ; 
 
 Vict. c. 41. but t h e iik e amounts shall continue to be paid to the Local 
 54 & 55 r 
 
 Vict. c. 48. Taxation Accounts in England and Scotland as would have 
 
APPENDIX 401 
 
 been paid if this Act had not passed, and any residue of 
 the said share shall be paid into the Exchequer of the 
 United Kingdom. 
 
 (2) The stamp duty chargeable in respect of the person- See 21 & 22 
 
 alty of a deceased person, shall not in the case of adminis- SS 1C 12-18. ' 
 
 tration granted in Great Britain be chargeable in respect of « & 22 
 
 , . . _. , , & . ,-j Vict. c. 95. 
 
 any personalty situate m Ireland ; nor in the case of ad- s . 29. 
 
 ministration granted in Ireland be chargeable in respect of 22 & 23 
 
 any personalty situate in Great Britain ; and any adminis- s. 25. 
 
 tration granted in Great Britain shall not, if re-sealed in ^ ict 4 ° 
 
 Ireland, be exempt from stamp duty on administration ss. 41-44- 
 
 granted in Ireland, and any administration granted in 
 
 Ireland shall not, when re-sealed in Great Britain, be 
 
 exempt from stamp duty on administration granted in 
 
 Great Britain. 
 
 (3) In this section the expression 'administration ' 
 means probate or letters of administration, and as respects 
 Scotland, confirmation inclusive of the inventory required 
 under the Acts relating to the said stamp duty, and the 
 expression ' personalty ' means personal or movable estate 
 and effects. 
 
 18. — (1) Bills for appropriating any part of the public Money bills 
 revenue or for imposing any tax shall originate in the an votes ' 
 Legislative Assembly. 
 
 (2) It shall not be lawful for the Legislative Assembly 
 to adopt or pass any vote, resolution, address, or Bill for 
 the appropriation for any purpose of any part of the public 
 revenue of Ireland, or of any tax, except in pursuance of a 
 recommendation from the Lord-Lieutenant in the Session 
 in which such vote, resolution, address, or Bill is proposed. 
 
 19. — (1) Two of the judges of the Supreme Court in Exchequer 
 Ireland shall be Exchequer judges, and shall be appointed j-evlnue^' 
 under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom ; and their actions, 
 salaries and pensions shall be charged on and paid out of petitions, 
 the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. etc - 
 
 (2) The Exchequer judges shall be removable only by 
 Her Majesty on address from the two Houses of Parliament, 
 and each such judge shall, save as otherwise provided by 
 Parliament, receive the same salary and be entitled to the 
 same pension as is at the time of his appointment fixed for 
 
 2 D 
 
402 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 the puisne judges of the Supreme Court, and during his con- 
 tinuance in office his salary shall not be diminished, nor his 
 right to pension altered, without his consent. 
 
 (3) An alteration of any rules relating to such legal 
 proceedings as are mentioned in this section shall not be 
 made except with the approval of Her Majesty the Queen 
 in Council ; and the sittings of the Exchequer judges shall 
 be regulated with the like approval. 
 
 (4) All legal proceedings in Ireland, which are instituted 
 at the instance of or against the Treasury or Commissioners 
 of Customs, or any of their officers, or relate to the election 
 of members to serve in Parliament, or touch any matter 
 within the powers of the Irish Legislature, or touch any 
 matter affected by a law which the Irish Legislature have 
 not power to repeal or alter, shall, if so required by any 
 party to such proceedings, be heard and determined before 
 the Exchequer judges or (except where the case requires to 
 be determined by two judges) before one of them, and in 
 any such legal proceeding an appeal shall, if any party so 
 requires, lie from any Court of first instance in Ireland to 
 the Exchequer judges, and the decision of the Exchequer 
 judges shall be subject to appeal to Her Majesty the Queen 
 in Council and not to any other tribunal. 
 
 (5) If it is made to appear to an Exchequer judge that 
 any decree or judgment in any such proceeding as aforesaid 
 has not been duly enforced by the sheriff or other officer 
 whose duty it is to enforce the same, such judge shall 
 appoint some officer whose duty it shall be to enforce the 
 judgment or decree; and for that purpose such officer and 
 all persons employed by him shall be entitled to the same 
 privileges, immunities, and powers as are by law conferred 
 on a sheriff and his officers. 
 
 (6) The Exchequer judges, when not engaged in hearing 
 and determining such legal proceedings as above in this 
 section mentioned, shall perform such of the duties ordi- 
 narily performed by other judges of the Supreme Court in 
 Ireland as may be assigned by Her Majesty the Queen in 
 Council. 
 
 (7) All sums recovered by the Treasury or the Commis- 
 sioners of Customs or any of their officers, or recovered 
 
APPENDIX 403 
 
 under any Act relating to duties of Customs, shall, notwith- 
 standing anything in any other Act, be paid to such public 
 account as the Treasury or the Commissioners direct. 
 
 Post Office, Postal Telegi'aphs, and Savings Banks. 
 
 20. — (1) As from the appointed day the postal and Transfer of 
 telegraph service in Ireland shall be transferred to the Irish and postal 
 Government, and may be regulated by Irish Act, except as in telegraphs, 
 this Act mentioned and except as regards matters relating — 
 
 (a) To such conditions of the transmission or delivery of 
 
 postal packets and telegrams as are incidental to 
 the duties on postage ; or 
 
 (b) To foreign mails or submarine telegraphs or through 
 
 lines in connection therewith ; or 
 
 (c) To any other postal or telegraph business in connec- 
 
 tion with places out of the United Kingdom. 
 
 (2) The administration of or incidental to the said 
 excepted matters shall, save as may be otherwise arranged 
 with the Irish Post Office, remain with the Postmaster- 
 General. 
 
 (3) As regards the revenue and expenses of the postal 
 and telegraph service, the Postmaster-General shall retain 
 the revenue collected and defray the expenses incurred in 
 Great Britain, and the Irish Post Office shall retain the 
 revenue collected and defray the expenses incurred in 
 Ireland, subject to the provisions of the Fourth Schedule 
 to this Act ; which schedule shall have full effect, but may 
 be varied or added to by agreement between the Post- 
 master-General and the Irish Post Office. 
 
 (4) The sums payable by the Postmaster-General or 
 Irish Post Office to the other of them in pursuance of this 
 Act shall, if not paid out of Post-Office moneys, be paid 
 from the Exchequer of the United Kingdom or of Ireland, 
 as the case requires, to the other Exchequer. 
 
 (5) Sections forty-eight to fifty-two of the Telegraph 26 & 27 
 Act, 1863, and any enactment amending the same, shall lct>c - 112 - 
 apply to all telegraphic lines of the Irish Government in 
 
 like manner as to the telegraphs of a company within the 
 meaning of that Act. 
 
404 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Transfer 21. — (i) As from the appointed day there shall be trans- 
 
 banks in§S f erre d to the Irish Government the post-office savings banks 
 in Ireland, and all such powers and duties of any depart- 
 ment or officer in Great Britain as are connected with post- 
 office savings banks, trustee savings banks, or friendly 
 societies in Ireland, and the same may be regulated by 
 Irish Act. 
 
 (2) The Treasury shall publish not less than six months 
 previous notice of the transfer of savings banks. 
 
 (3) If before the date of the transfer any depositor in a 
 post-office savings bank so requests, his deposit shall, 
 according to his request, either be paid to him or trans- 
 ferred to a post-office savings bank in Great Britain, and 
 after the said date the depositors in a post-office savings 
 bank in Ireland shall cease to have any claim against the 
 Postmaster-General or the Consolidated Fund of the 
 United Kingdom, but shall have the like claim against the 
 Government and Consolidated Fund of Ireland. 
 
 (4) If before the date of the transfer the trustees of any 
 trustees savings bank so request, then, according to the 
 request, either all sums due to them shall be repaid, and 
 the savings bank closed, or those sums shall be paid to the 
 Irish Government, and after the said date the trustees shall 
 cease to have any claim against the National Debt Com- 
 missioners or the Consolidated Fund of the United King- 
 dom, but shall have the like claim against the Government 
 and Consolidated Fund of Ireland. 
 
 (5) Notwithstanding the foregoing provisions of this 
 section, if a sum due on account of any annuity or policy 
 of insurance which has before the above-mentioned notice 
 been granted through a post-office or trustee savings bank, 
 is not paid by the Irish Government, that sum shall be 
 paid out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. 
 
 Irish Appeals and Decision of Constitutional Questions. 
 
 Irish 22. — (1) The appeal from Courts in Ireland to the 
 
 appeals. House of Lords shall cease ; and where any person would, 
 
 but for this Act, have a right to appeal from any Court in 
 
 Ireland to the House of Lords, such person shall have the 
 
APPENDIX 405 
 
 like right to appeal to Her Majesty the Queen in Council ; 
 and the right so to appeal shall not be affected by any 
 Irish Act ; and all enactments relating to appeals to Her 
 Majesty the Queen in Council, and to the Judicial Com- 
 mittee of the Privy Council, shall apply accordingly. 
 
 (2) When the Judicial Committee sit for hearing appeals 39 & 40 
 from a Court in Ireland, there shall be present not less than 
 
 four Lords of Appeal, within the meaning of the Appellate 
 Jurisdiction Act, 1876, and at least one member who is or 
 has been a judge of the Supreme Court in Ireland. 
 
 (3) A rota of privy councillors to sit for hearing appeals 
 from Courts in Ireland shall be made annually by Her 
 Majesty in Council, and the privy councillors, or some 
 of them, on that rota shall sit to hear the said appeals. A 
 casual vacancy in such rota during the year may be filled 
 by Order in Council. 
 
 (4) Nothing in this Act shall affect the jurisdiction of 
 the House of Lords to determine the claims to Irish 
 peerages. 
 
 23. — (1) If it appears to the Lord-Lieutenant or a Special 
 Secretary of State expedient in the public interest that steps foTdeciskin 
 shall be taken for the speedy determination of the question of consti- 
 
 11 t-ia •• 1 1. • 1 1 tutional 
 
 whether any Irish Act, or any provision thereof, is beyond questions, 
 the power of the Irish Legislature, he may represent the 
 same to Her Majesty in Council, and thereupon the said 
 question shall be forthwith referred to and heard and 
 determined by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 
 constituted as if hearing an appeal from a Court in Ireland. 
 
 (2) Upon the hearing of the question such persons as 
 seem to the Judicial Committee to be interested may be 
 allowed to appear and be heard as parties to the case, and 
 the decision of the Judicial Committee shall be given in 
 like manner as if it were the decision of an appeal, the 
 nature of the report or recommendation to Her Majesty 
 being stated in open Court. 
 
 (3) Nothing in this Act shall prejudice any other power 
 of Her Majesty in Council to refer any question to the 
 Judicial Committee, or the right of any person to petition 
 Her Majesty for such reference. 
 
406 
 
 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Lord- Lieutenant and Crown Lands. 
 
 Office of 24. — (i) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in 
 
 tenant. ' " an y Act, every subject of the Queen shall be qualified 
 to hold the office of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, without 
 reference to his religious belief. 
 
 (2) The term of office of the Lord-Lieutenant shall be 
 six years, without prejudice to the power of Her Majesty 
 the Queen at any time to revoke the appointment. 
 
 25, Her Majesty the Queen in Council may place under 
 the control of the Irish Government, for the purposes of 
 that Government, such of the lands and buildings in Ireland 
 vested in or held in trust for Her Majesty, and subject to 
 such conditions or restrictions (if any) as may seem 
 expedient. 
 
 Use of 
 Crown 
 lands by 
 Irish 
 Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Tenure of 
 
 future 
 
 judges. 
 
 As to 
 existing 
 judges 
 and other 
 persons 
 having 
 salaries 
 charged on 
 the Con- 
 solidated 
 Fund. 
 
 Judges and Civil Servants. 
 
 26. A judge of the Supreme Court or other Superior 
 Court in Ireland, or of any County Court or other Court 
 with a like jurisdiction in Ireland, appointed after the pass- 
 ing of this Act, shall not be removed from his office except 
 in pursuance of an address from the two Houses of Legis- 
 lature of Ireland, nor during his continuance in office shall 
 his salary be diminished or right to pension altered without 
 his consent. 
 
 27. — (1) All existing judges of the Supreme Court, 
 County Court judges, and Land Commissioners in Ireland, 
 and all existing officers serving in Ireland in the permanent 
 Civil Service of the Crown and receiving salaries charged on 
 the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, shall, if 
 they are removable at present on address from both Houses 
 of Parliament, continue to be removable only upon such 
 address, and if removable in any other manner shall con- 
 tinue to be removable only in the same manner as here- 
 tofore; and shall continue to receive the same salaries, 
 gratuities, and pensions, and to be liable to perform the 
 same duties as heretofore, or such duties as Her Majesty 
 may declare to be analogous, and their salaries and pensions, 
 if and so far as not paid out of the Irish Consolidated Fund, 
 
APPENDIX 407 
 
 shall be paid out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom : 
 Provided that this section shall be subject to the pro- 
 visions of this Act with respect to the Exchequer judges. 
 
 (2) If any of the said judges, commissioners, or officers 
 retires from office with the Queen's approbation before 
 completion of the period of service entitling him to a 
 pension, Her Majesty may, if she thinks fit, grant to him 
 such pension, not exceeding the pension to which he would 
 on that completion have been entitled, as to Her Majesty 
 seems meet. 
 
 28. — (1) All existing officers in the permanent Civil As to per- 
 Service of the Crown, who are not above provided for, and j n a civil 
 are at the appointed day serving in Ireland, shall, after that Servi p e 
 
 1 r . appoint- 
 
 day, continue to hold their offices by the same tenure, and ments. 
 
 to receive the same salaries, gratuities, and pensions, and 
 
 to be liable to perform the same duties as heretofore, or 
 
 such duties as the Treasury may declare to be analogous ; 
 
 and the said gratuities and pensions, and until three years 
 
 after the passing of this Act, the salaries due to any of the 
 
 said officers if remaining in his existing office, shall be paid 
 
 to the payees by the Treasury out of the Exchequer of the 
 
 United Kingdom. 
 
 (2) Any such officer may, after three years from the 
 passing of this Act, retire from office, and shall, at any 
 time during those three years, if required by the Irish 
 Government, retire from office, and on any such retirement 
 may be awarded by the Treasury a gratuity or pension in 
 accordance with the Fifth Schedule to this Act : Provided 
 •bat— 
 
 yi) Six months' written notice shall, unless it is otherwise 
 agreed, be given either by the said officer or by 
 the Irish Government, as the case requires ; 
 and 
 
 (b) Such number of officers only shall retire at one time, 
 and at such intervals of time as the Treasury, 
 in communication with the Irish Government, 
 sanction. 
 
 (3) If any such officer does not so retire, the Treasury 
 may award him, after the said three years, a pension in 
 accordance with the Fifth Schedule to this Act, which shall 
 
408 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 become payable to him on his ultimate retirement from the 
 service of the Crown. 
 
 (4) The gratuities and pensions awarded in accordance 
 with the Fifth Schedule to this Act shall be paid by the 
 Treasury to the payees out of the Exchequer of the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 (5) All sums paid out of the Exchequer of the United 
 Kingdom in pursuance of this section shall be repaid to 
 that Exchequer from the Irish Exchequer. 
 
 (6) This section shall not apply to officers retained in 
 the service of the Government of the United Kingdom. 
 
 As to 29. Any existing pension granted on account of service 
 
 pensions i n Ireland as a judge of the Supreme Court or of any Court 
 and super- consolidated into that Court, or as a County Court judge, 
 
 annuation . ,.,..,.. ' _ . , 
 
 allowances, or in any other judicial position, or as an officer in the 
 
 permanent Civil Service of the Crown other than in an 
 
 office the holder of which is after the appointed day retained 
 
 in the service of the Government of the United Kingdom, 
 
 shall be charged on the Irish Consolidated Fund, and if 
 
 and so far as not paid out of that fund, shall be paid out 
 
 of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. 
 
 Police. 
 
 As to 30. — (1) The forces of the Royal Irish Constabulary 
 
 and Dublin Metropolitan Police shall, when and as local 
 police forces are from time to time established in Ireland 
 in accordance with the Sixth Schedule to this Act, be 
 gradually reduced and ultimately cease to exist as mentioned 
 in that Schedule; and after the passing of this Act, no 
 officer or man shall be appointed to either of these forces ; 
 Provided that until the expiration of six years from the 
 appointed day, nothing in this Act shall require the Lord- 
 Lieutenant to cause either of the said forces to cease to 
 exist, if as representing Her Majesty the Queen he considers 
 it inexpedient. 
 
 (2) The said two forces shall, while they continue, be 
 subject to the control of the Lord-Lieutenant as representing 
 Her Majesty, and the members thereof shall continue to 
 receive the same salaries, gratuities, and pensions, and 
 
APPENDIX 409 
 
 hold their appointments on the same tenure as heretofore, 
 and these salaries, gratuities, and pensions, and all the 
 expenditure incidental to either force, shall be paid out of 
 the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. 
 
 (3) When any existing member of either force retires 
 under the provisions of the Sixth Schedule to this Act, the 
 Treasury may award to him a gratuity or pension in accord- 
 ance with that Schedule. 
 
 (4) Those gratuities and pensions and all existing 
 pensions payable in respect of service in either force, shall 
 be paid by the Treasury to the payees out of the Exchequer 
 of the United Kingdom. 
 
 (5) Two-thirds of the net amount payable in pursuance 
 of this section out of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom 
 shall be repaid to that Exchequer from the Irish Exchequer. 
 
 Miscellaneous. 
 
 31. Save as may be otherwise provided by Irish Act — lx }^ 
 
 (a) The existing law relating to the Exchequer and Con- Consoii- 
 
 solidated Fund of the United Kingdom shall apply dated Fund 
 
 ° rr J and Audit. 
 
 with the necessary modifications to the Exchequer 
 
 and Consolidated Fund of Ireland, and an officer 
 
 shall be appointed by the Lord-Lieutenant to be 
 
 the Irish Comptroller and Auditor-General ; and 
 
 (b) The accounts of the Irish Consolidated Fund shall 
 
 be audited as appropriation accounts in manner 
 provided by the Exchequer and Audit Depart- 2 ? & 3° 
 ments Act, 1866, by or under the direction of such 
 officer. 
 32. — (1) Subject as in this Act mentioned and particularly La _w appli " 
 to the Seventh Schedule to this Act (which Schedule shall both 
 have full effect), all existing election laws relating to the ^s^g ^ 
 House of Commons and the members thereof shall, so far latum 
 as applicable, extend to each of the two Houses of the 
 Irish Legislature and the members thereof, but such election 
 laws so far as hereby extended may be altered by Irish Act. 
 (2) The privileges, rights, and immunities to be held and 
 enjoyed by each House and the members thereof shall be 
 such as may be defined by Irish Act, but so that the same 
 
410 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 shall never exceed those for the time being held and enjoyed 
 by the House of Commons, and the members thereof. 
 Supple- 33. — (i) The Irish Legislature may repeal or alter any 
 
 visions as provision of this Act which is by this Act expressly made 
 to powers alterable by that Legislature, and also any enactments in 
 Legisla- force in Ireland, except such as either relate to matters 
 ture. beyond the powers of the Irish Legislature, or being en- 
 
 acted by Parliament after the passing of this Act, may be 
 expressly extended to Ireland. An Irish Act notwithstand- 
 ing it is in any respect repugnant to any enactment excepted 
 as aforesaid, shall, though read subject to that enactment, 
 be, except to the extent of that repugnancy, valid. 
 
 (2) An order, rule, or regulation, made in pursuance of, 
 or having the force of, an Act of Parliament, shall be deemed 
 to be an enactment within the meaning of this section. 
 
 (3) Nothing in this Act shall affect Bills relating to the 
 divorce or marriage of individuals, and any such Bill shall 
 be introduced and proceed in Parliament in like manner 
 as if this Act had not been passed. 
 
 Limitation 34. The local authority for any county or borough or 
 ing by local other area shall not borrow money without either — 
 authorities. (^ a special authority from the Irish Legislature, or 
 
 (b) The sanction of the proper department of the Irish 
 Government ; 
 and shall not, without such special authority, borrow : 
 
 (i.) In the case of municipal borough or town or area 
 less than a county, any loan which together with 
 the then outstanding debt of the local authority, 
 will exceed twice the annual rateable value of the 
 property, in the municipal borough, town, or 
 area; or 
 
 (ii.) In the case of a county or larger area, any loan 
 which together with the then outstanding debt of 
 the local authority, will exceed one-tenth of the 
 annual rateable value of the property in the 
 county or area ; or 
 
 (iii.) In any case a loan exceeding one-half of the above 
 limits without a local inquiry held in the county, 
 borough, or area by a person appointed for the 
 purpose by the said department. 
 
APPENDIX 411 
 
 Transitory Provisions. 
 
 35. — (1) During three years from the passing of this Temporary 
 Act, and if Parliament is then sitting until the end of that ^npower" 
 session of Parliament, the Irish Legislature shall not pass of Irish 
 
 T pctiqJt tnrc 
 
 an Act respecting the relations of landlord and tenant, or ano ? Execu- 
 the sale, purchase, or letting of land generally ; Provided tive - 
 that nothing in this section shall prevent the passing of 
 any Irish Act with a view to the purchase of land for 
 railways, harbours, water-works, town improvements, or 
 other local undertakings. 
 
 (2) During six years from the passing of this Act, the 
 appointment of a judge of the Supreme Court or other 
 Superior Courts in Ireland (other than one of the Exchequer 
 judges) shall be made in pursuance of a warrant from Her 
 Majesty countersigned as heretofore. 
 
 36. — (1) Subject to the provisions of this Act Her Transitory 
 Majesty the Queen in Council may make or direct such P r0Vlsl0ns - 
 arrangements as seem necessary or proper for setting in 
 motion the Irish Legislature and Government and for other- 
 wise bringing this Act into operation. 
 
 (2) The Irish Legislature shall be summoned to meet 
 on the first Tuesday in September, one thousand eight hundred 
 and ninety-four, and the first election of members of the two 
 Houses of the Irish Legislature shall be held at such time 
 before that day as may be fixed by Her Majesty in Council. 
 
 (3) Upon the first meeting of the Irish Legislature the 
 members of the House of Commons then sitting for Irish 
 constituencies, including the members for Dublin University, 
 shall vacate their seats, and writs shall, as soon as con- 
 veniently may be, be issued by the Lord Chancellor of 
 Ireland for the purpose of holding an election of members 
 to serve in Parliament for the constituencies named in the 
 Second Schedule of this Act. 
 
 (4) The existing Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and the 
 senior of the existing puisne judges of the Exchequer 
 Division of the Supreme Court, or if they or either of them 
 are or is dead or unable or unwilling to act, such other of 
 the judges of the Supreme Court as Her Majesty may 
 appoint, shall be the first Exchequer judges. 
 
412 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 (5) Where it appears to Her Majesty the Queen in 
 Council, before the expiration of one year after the appointed 
 day, that any existing enactment respecting matters within 
 the powers of the Irish Legislature requires adaptation to 
 Ireland, whether — 
 
 (a) By the substitution of the Lord-Lieutenant in Council, 
 
 or of any departments or office of the Executive 
 Government in Ireland, for Her Majesty in 
 Council, a Secretary of State, the Treasury, the 
 Postmaster-General, the Board of Inland Revenue, 
 or other public department or offices in Great 
 Britain; or 
 
 (b) By the substitution of the Irish Consolidated Fund 
 
 or moneys provided by the Irish Legislature for 
 the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, 
 or moneys provided by Parliament, or 
 
 (c) By the substitution or confirmation by, or other act 
 
 to be done by or to, the Irish Legislature for 
 confirmation by or other act to be done by or 
 to Parliament ; or 
 
 (d) By any other adaptation; Her Majesty, by Order in 
 
 Council, may make that adaptation. 
 
 (6) Her Majesty the Queen in Council may provide for 
 the transfer of such property, rights, and liabilities, and the 
 doing of such other things as may appear to Her Majesty 
 necessary or proper for carrying into effect this Act or any 
 Order in Council under this Act. 
 
 (7) An Order in Council under this section may make 
 an adaptation or provide for a transfer either uncondition- 
 ally or subject to such exceptions, conditions, and restrictions 
 as may seem expedient. 
 
 (8) The draft of every Order in Council under this 
 section shall be laid before both Houses of Parliament for 
 not less than two months before it is made, and such order 
 when made shall, subject as respects Ireland to the pro- 
 visions of an Irish Act, have full effect, but shall not 
 interfere with the continued application to any place, 
 authority, person, or thing, not in Ireland, of the enactment 
 to which the Order relates. 
 
 37. — Except as otherwise provided by this Act, all 
 
APPENDIX 413 
 
 existing laws, institutions, authorities, and officers in Ireland, Continu- 
 
 whether judicial, administrative, or ministerial, and all existing 
 
 existing taxes in Ireland shall continue as if this Act had laws, 
 
 not passed, but with the modifications necessary for adapt- offices! etc. 
 
 ing the same to this Act, and subject to be repealed, 
 
 abolished, altered, and adapted in the manner and to the 
 
 extent authorised by this Act. 
 
 38. — Subject as in this Act mentioned the appointed Appointed 
 
 day for the purposes of this Act shall be the day of the first ay ' 
 
 meeting of the Irish Legislature, or such other day not 
 
 more than seven months earlier or later as may be fixed by 
 
 order of Her Majesty in Council either generally or with 
 
 reference to any particular provision of this Act, and 
 
 different days may be appointed for different purposes and 
 
 different provisions of this Act, whether contained in the 
 
 same section or in different sections. 
 
 39. — In this Act unless the context otherwise Defini- 
 tions, 
 requires — 
 
 The expression ' existing ' means existing at the passing 
 of this Act. 
 
 The expression ' constituency ' means a parliamentary 
 constituency or a county or borough returning a mem- 
 ber or members to serve in either House of the Irish 
 Legislature, as the case requires, and the expression 
 'parliamentary constituency' means any county, 
 borough, or university returning a member or members 
 to serve in Parliament. 
 
 The expression ' parliamentary elector ' means a person 
 entitled to be registered as a voter at a parliamentary 
 election. 
 
 The expression ' parliamentary election ' means the 
 election of a member to serve in Parliament. 
 
 The expression ' tax ' includes duties and fees, and the 
 expression ' duties of excise ' does not include licence 
 duties. 
 
 The expression ' foreign mails ' means all postal packets, 
 whether letters, parcels, or other packets, posted in the 
 United Kingdom and sent to a place out of the United 
 Kingdom, or posted in a place out of the United 
 Kingdom and sent to a place in the United Kingdom, 
 
4H 
 
 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 26 & 27 
 Vict. c. 112 
 41 & 42 
 Vict. c. 76, 
 5S&56 
 Vict. c. 59, 
 7 Will. 4, 
 and r Vict 
 c. 36. 
 
 3 2 & 33 
 Vict. c. 73 
 48 & 49 
 Vict. c. 58 
 
 Short title. 
 
 or in transit through the United Kingdom to a place 
 out of the United Kingdom. 
 
 The expression ■ telegraphic line ' has the same meaning 
 as in the Telegraphs Acts, 1863 to 1892. 
 
 The expression ' duties on postage ' includes all rates 
 and sums chargeable for or in respect of postal packets, 
 money orders, or telegrams, or otherwise under the 
 Post-office Acts or the Telegraph Act, 1892. 
 
 The expression ' Irish Act ' means a law made by the 
 Irish Legislature. 
 
 The expression ' election laws ' means the laws relating 
 to the election of members to serve in Parliament, 
 other than those relating to the qualification of elec- 
 tors, and includes all the laws respecting the registration 
 of electors, the issue and execution of writs, the creation 
 of polling districts, the taking of the poll, the question- 
 ing of elections, corrupt and illegal practices, the dis- 
 qualification of members, and the vacating of seats. 
 
 The expression ' rateable value ' means the annual 
 rateable value under the Irish Valuation Acts. 
 
 The expression 'salary' includes remuneration, allow- 
 ances, and emoluments. 
 
 The expression 'pension' includes superannuation allow- 
 ance. 
 
 40. — This Act may be cited as the Irish Government 
 Act, 1893. 
 
 SCHEDULES. 
 
 First Schedule : Legislative Council — 
 Constituencies and Number of Councillors. 
 
 Constituencies. 
 
 Councillors. 
 
 Antrim County 
 
 Armagh County ... 
 
 Belfast Borough 
 
 Carlow County ... 
 
 Cavan County 
 
 Clare County 
 
 Three 
 One 
 Two 
 One 
 One 
 One 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 
 415 
 
 First Schedule — Continued. 
 
 
 Constituencies. 
 
 Councillors. 
 
 
 Cork County — 
 
 
 
 East Riding ... 
 
 Three 
 
 
 West Riding 
 
 One 
 
 
 Cork Borough 
 
 One 
 
 
 Donegal County ... 
 
 One 
 
 
 Down County 
 
 Three 
 
 
 Dublin County 
 
 Three 
 
 
 „ Borough ... 
 
 Two 
 
 
 Fermanagh County 
 
 One 
 
 
 Galway County 
 
 Two 
 
 
 Kerry County 
 
 One 
 
 
 Kildare County ... 
 
 One 
 
 
 Kilkenny County ... 
 
 One 
 
 
 King's County 
 
 One 
 
 
 Leitrim and Sligo Counties 
 
 One 
 
 
 Limerick County ... 
 
 Two 
 
 
 Londonderry County 
 
 One 
 
 
 Longford County 
 
 One 
 
 
 Louth County 
 
 One 
 
 
 Mayo County 
 
 One 
 
 
 Meath County 
 
 One 
 
 
 Monaghan County 
 
 One 
 
 
 Queen's County ... 
 
 One 
 
 
 Roscommon County 
 
 One 
 
 
 Tipperary County... 
 
 Two 
 
 
 Tyrone County 
 
 One 
 
 
 Waterford County 
 
 One 
 
 
 Westmeath County 
 
 One 
 
 
 Wexford County 
 
 One 
 
 
 Wicklow County 
 
 One 
 
 
 
 Forty-eight 
 
 
 The expression ' borough ' in this schedule means an 
 existing parliamentary borough. Counties of cities and 
 towns not named in this Schedule shall be combined with 
 the county at large in which they are included for Parlia- 
 mentary elections, and if not so included, then with the 
 county at large bearing the same name. 
 
 A borough named in this Schedule shall not for the 
 purposes of this Schedule form part of any other con- 
 stituency. 
 
4i6 
 
 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Second Schedule : Irish Members in the House 
 of Commons. 
 
 
 Number of Mem- 
 
 Constituency. 
 
 bers for House 
 
 
 of Commons. 
 
 Antrim County 
 
 Three 
 
 Armagh County 
 
 Two 
 
 Belfast Borough (in divisions as 
 
 I Four 
 
 mentioned below 
 
 Carlow County 
 
 One 
 
 Cavan County 
 
 Two 
 
 Clare County ... 
 
 Two 
 
 Cork County (in divisions as men- 
 
 > Five 
 
 tioned below) 
 
 Cork Borough 
 
 Two 
 
 Donegal County 
 
 Three 
 
 Down County 
 
 Three 
 
 Dublin County 
 
 Two 
 
 ,, Borough (in divisions as 
 
 I Four 
 
 mentioned below) 
 
 Fermanagh County 
 
 One 
 
 Gal way County 
 
 Three 
 
 ,, Borough 
 
 One 
 
 Kerry County 
 
 Three 
 
 Kildare County 
 
 One 
 
 Kilkenny County 
 
 One 
 
 ,, Borough 
 
 One 
 
 King's County 
 
 One 
 
 Leitrim County 
 
 Two 
 
 Limerick County ..■ 
 
 Two 
 
 ,, Borough 
 
 One 
 
 Londonderry County 
 
 Two 
 
 ,, Borough 
 
 One 
 
 Longford County ... 
 
 One 
 
 Louth County 
 
 One 
 
 Mayo County 
 
 Three 
 
 Meath County 
 
 Two 
 
 Monaghan County 
 
 Two 
 
 Newry Borough ... 
 
 One 
 
 Queen's County 
 
 One 
 
 Roscommon County 
 
 Two 
 
 Sligo County 
 
 Two 
 
 Tipperary County 
 
 Three 
 
 Tyrone County 
 
 Three 
 
 Waterford County 
 
 One 
 
 ,, Borough 
 
 One 
 
 Westmeath County 
 
 One 
 
 Wexford County 
 
 Two 
 
 Wicklow County 
 
 One 
 
 
 Eighty 
 
APPENDIX 417 
 
 (1) In this Schedule the expression 'borough' means 
 an existing parliamentary borough. 
 
 (2) In the parliamentary boroughs of Belfast and Dublin, 
 one member shall be returned by each of the existing par- 
 liamentary divisions of those boroughs, and the law relating 
 to the divisions of boroughs shall apply accordingly. 
 
 (3) The county of Cork shall be divided into two 
 divisions, consisting of the East Riding and the West 
 Riding, and three members shall be elected by the East 
 Riding, and two members shall be elected by the West 
 Riding ; and the law relating to divisions of counties shall 
 apply to these divisions. 
 
 Third Schedule : Finance — Imperial Liabilities, 
 Expenditure, and Miscellaneous Revenue. 
 
 Liabilities. 
 
 For the purposes of this Act, ' Imperial liabilities ' con- 
 sist of : — 
 
 (1) The funded and unfunded debt of the United King- 
 
 dom, inclusive of terminable annuities paid out of 
 the permanent annual charge for the National 
 Debt, and inclusive of the cost of the manage- 
 ment of the said funded and unfunded debt, but 
 exclusive of the Local Loans Stock and Guaran- 
 teed Land Stock, and the cost of the manage- 
 ment thereof; and 
 
 (2) All other charges on the Consolidated Fund of the 
 
 United Kingdom for the repayment of borrowed 
 money, or to fulfil a guarantee. 
 
 Expenditure. 
 
 For the purpose of this Act Imperial expenditure consists 
 of expenditure for the following services : — 
 
 1. Naval and military expenditure (including Greenwich 
 Hospital). 
 
 2. Civil expenditure, that is to say — 
 (a) Civil list and Royal family. 
 
 2 E 
 
4i 8 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 (b) Salaries, pensions, allowances, and incidental ex- 
 
 penses of — 
 
 (i.) Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, 
 (ii.) Exchequer judges in Ireland. 
 
 (c) Buildings, works, salaries, pensions, printing, stationery, 
 
 allowances, and incidental expenses of — 
 
 (i.) Parliament ; 
 
 (ii.) National Debt Commissioners ; 
 
 (iii.) Foreign Office and diplomatic and con- 
 sular service, including secret service, 
 special services, and telegraph subsidies ; 
 
 (iv.) Colonial Office, including special services 
 and telegraph subsidies ; 
 
 (v.) Privy Council ; 
 
 (vi.) Board of Trade, including the Mercantile 
 Marine Fund, Patent Office, Railway 
 Commission, and Wreck Commission, 
 but excluding Bankruptcy ; 
 
 (vii.) Mint; 
 
 (viii.) Meteorological Society ; 
 
 (ix.) Slave trade service. 
 (d) Foreign mails and telegraphic communication with 
 places outside the United Kingdom. 
 
 Revenue. 
 
 For the purposes of this Act the public revenue to a 
 portion of which Ireland may claim to be entitled consists 
 of revenue from the following sources : — 
 
 i. Suez Canal shares or payments on account thereof. 
 
 2. Loans and advances to foreign countries. 
 
 3. Annual payments by British possessions. 
 
 4. Fees, stamps, and extra receipts received by depart- 
 ments, the expenses of which are part of the Imperial 
 expenditure. 
 
 5. Small branches of the hereditary revenues of the 
 Crown. 
 
 6. Foreshores. 
 
APPENDIX 419 
 
 Fourth Schedule : Provisions as to Post Office. 
 
 (1) The Postmaster- General shall pay to the Irish Post 
 Office in respect of any foreign mails sent through Ireland 
 and the Irish Post Office shall pay to the Postmaster- 
 General in respect of any foreign mails sent through Great 
 Britain, such sum as may be agreed upon for the carriage 
 of those mails in Ireland or Great Britain, as the case 
 may be. 
 
 (2) The Irish Post Office shall pay to the Postmaster- 
 General ; 
 
 (i.) One-half of the expense of the packet service and 
 submarine telegraph lines between Great Britain 
 and Ireland after deducting from that expense of 
 the sum fixed by the Postmaster-General as incurred 
 on account of foreign mails or telegraphic com- 
 munication with a place out of the United King- 
 dom, as the case may be ; and 
 
 (ii.) Five per cent, of the expenses of the conveyance 
 outside the United Kingdom of foreign mails, and 
 of the transmission of telegrams to places outside 
 the United Kingdom ; and 
 
 (iii.) Such proportion of the receipts for telegrams to 
 places out of the United Kingdom as is due in 
 respect of the transmission outside the United 
 Kingdom of such telegrams. 
 
 (3) The Postmaster-General and the Irish Post Office 
 respectively shall pay to the other of them on account of 
 foreign money orders, of compensation in respect of postal 
 packets, and of any matters not specifically provided for 
 in this Schedule, such sums as may be agreed upon. 
 
 (4) Of the existing debt incurred in respect of tele- 
 graphs, a sum of five hundred and fifty thousand pounds, 
 two and three quarters per cent. Consolidated Stock shall 
 be treated as debt of the Irish Post Office, and for paying 
 the dividends on and redeeming such stock there shall be 
 paid half-yearly by the Irish Exchequer to the Exchequer 
 of the United Kingdom an annuity of eighteen thousand 
 pounds for sixty years, and such annuity when paid into 
 
420 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 the Exchequer shall be forthwith paid to the National Debt 
 Commissioners and applied for the reduction of the National 
 Debt. 
 
 (5) The Postmaster-General and the Irish Post Office 
 may agree on the facilities to be afforded by the Irish Post 
 Office in Ireland in relation to any matters the adminis- 
 tration of which by virtue of this Act remains with the 
 Postmaster-General, and with respect to the use of the 
 Irish telegraphic lines for through lines in connection with 
 submarine telegraphs, or with telegraphic communication 
 with any place out of the United Kingdom. 
 
 Fifth Schedule : Regulations as to Gratuities and 
 Pensions for Civil Servants. 
 
 Sixth Schedule: 
 
 Part I. — Regulations as to Establishment of Police 
 Forces and as to the Royal Irish Constabulary 
 and Dublin Metropolitan Police ceasing to 
 exist. 
 
 (1) Such local police forces shall be established under 
 such local authorities and for such counties, municipal 
 boroughs, or other larger areas, as may be provided by 
 Irish Act. 
 
 (2) Whenever the Executive Committee of the Privy 
 Council in Ireland certify to the Lord-Lieutenant that a 
 police force, adequate for local purposes, has been estab- 
 lished in any area, then, subject to the provisions of this 
 Act, he shall within six months thereafter direct the Royal 
 Irish Constabulary to be withdrawn from the performance 
 of regular police duties in such area, and such order shall 
 be forthwith carried into effect. 
 
 (3) Upon any such withdrawal the Lord-Lieutenant 
 shall order measures to be taken for a proportionate reduc- 
 tion of the numbers of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and 
 such order shall be duly executed. 
 
 (4) Upon the Executive Committee of the Privy Council 
 
APPENDIX 421 
 
 in Ireland certifying to the Lord-Lieutenant that adequate 
 local police forces have been established in every part of 
 Ireland, then subject to the provisions of this Act, the 
 Lord-Lieutenant shall within six months after such cer- 
 tificate, order measures to be taken for causing the whole 
 of the Royal Irish Constabulary to cease to exist as a police 
 force, and such order shall be duly executed. 
 
 (5) Where the area in which a local police force is 
 established is part of the Dublin Metropolitan Police 
 District, the foregoing regulations shall apply to the Dublin 
 Metropolitan Police in like manner as if that force were the 
 Royal Irish Constabulary. 
 
 Part II. — Regulations as to Gratuities and Pensions 
 for the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin 
 Metropolitan Police. 
 
 Seventh Schedule : Regulations as to Houses of the 
 Legislature and the Members thereof. 
 
 Legislative Council. 
 
 (1) There shall be a separate register of electors of 
 councillors of the Legislative Council which shall be made, 
 until otherwise provided by Irish Act, in like manner as the 
 Parliamentary register of electors. 
 
 (2) Where, for the election of Councillors, any counties 
 are combined so as to form one constituency, then until 
 otherwise provided by Irish Act, 
 
 (a) The returning officer for the whole constituency shall 
 
 be that one of the returning officers for Parlia- 
 mentary elections for those counties to whom the 
 writ is addressed, and the writ shall be addressed 
 to the returning officer for the constituency with 
 the largest population, according to the census of 
 1891. 
 
 (b) The returning officer shall have the same authority 
 
 throughout the whole constituency as a returning 
 officer to a Parliamentary election for a county has 
 in the county. 
 
422 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 (c) The registers of electors of each county shall jointly 
 
 be the register of electors for the constituency. 
 
 (d) For the purposes of this Schedule ' county ' includes 
 
 a county of a city or town, and this Schedule, and 
 the law relating to the qualification of electors, 
 shall apply, as if the county of a city or town 
 formed part of the county at large with which it is 
 combined, and the qualification in the county of a 
 city or town shall be the same as in such county 
 at large. 
 
 (3) Writs shall be issued for the election of councillors 
 at such time not less than one or more than three months 
 before the day for the periodical retirement of councillors 
 as the Lord-Lieutenant in Council may fix. 
 
 (4) The day for the periodical retirement of councillors 
 shall, until otherwise provided by Irish Act, be the last 
 day of August in every fourth year. 
 
 (5) For the purposes of such retirement, the constituen- 
 cies shall be divided into two equal divisions, and the con- 
 stituencies in each province shall be divided as nearly as 
 may be equally between those divisions, and constituencies 
 returning two or more members shall be treated as two or 
 more constituencies, and placed in both divisions. 
 
 (6) Subject as aforesaid, the particular constituencies 
 which are to be in each division shall be determined by lot. 
 
 (7) The said division and lot shall be made and con- 
 ducted before the appointed day in manner directed by the 
 Lord-Lieutenant in Council. 
 
 (8) The first councillors elected for the constituencies 
 in the first division shall retire on the first day of retire- 
 ment which occurs after the first meeting of the Irish Legis- 
 lature, and the first councillors for the constituencies in the 
 second division shall retire on the second day of retirement 
 after that meeting. 
 
 (9) Any casual vacancy among the councillors shall be 
 filled by a new election, but the councillor filling the 
 vacancy shall retire at the time at which the vacating 
 councillor would have retired. 
 
APPENDIX 423 
 
 Legislative Assembly. 
 
 (10) The Parliamentary register of electors for the time 
 being shall, until otherwise provided by Irish Act, be the 
 register of electors of the Legislative Assembly. 
 
 Both Houses. 
 
 (11) Until otherwise provided by Irish Act, the Lord- 
 Lieutenant in Council may make regulations for adapting 
 the existing election laws to the election of members of the 
 two Houses of the Legislature. 
 
 (12) Annual sessions of the Legislature shall be held. 
 
 (13) Any peer, whether of the United Kingdom, Great 
 Britain, England, Scotland, or Ireland, shall be qualified to 
 be a member of either House. 
 
 (14) A member of either House may by writing under 
 his hand resign his seat, and the same shall thereupon be 
 vacant. 
 
 (15) The same person shall not be a member of both 
 Houses. 
 
 (16) Until otherwise provided by Irish Act, if the same 
 person is elected to a seat in each House, he shall, before 
 the eighth day after the next sitting of either House, by 
 written notice, elect in which House he will serve, and upon 
 such election his seat in the other House shall be vacant, 
 and if he does not so elect, his seat in both Houses shall be 
 vacant. 
 
 (17) Until otherwise provided by Irish Act, any such 
 notice electing in which House a person will sit, or any 
 notice of resignation, shall be given in manner directed by 
 the Standing Orders of the Houses, and if there is no such 
 direction, shall be given to the Lord-Lieutenant. 
 
 (18) The powers of either House shall not be affected 
 by any vacancy therein, or any defect in the election or 
 qualification of any member thereof. 
 
 (19) Until otherwise provided by Irish Act, the holders 
 of such Irish offices as may be named by Order of the 
 Queen in Council before the appointed day, shall be entitled 
 to be elected to and sit in either House, notwithstanding 
 
424 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 that they hold offices under the Crown, but on acceptance 
 of any such office the seat of any such person in either 
 House shall be vacated unless he has accepted the office in 
 succession to some other of the said offices. 
 
 Transitory. 
 
 (20) The Lord-Lieutenant in Council may, before the 
 appointed day, make regulations for the following pur- 
 poses : — 
 
 (a) The making of a register of electors of councillors in 
 
 time for the election of the first councillors, and 
 with that object for the variation of the days 
 relating to registration in the existing election 
 laws, and for prescribing the duties of officers, 
 and for making such adaptations of those laws as 
 appear necessary or proper for duly making a 
 register ; 
 
 (b) The summoning of the two Houses of the Legislature 
 
 of Ireland, the issue of writs and any other things 
 appearing to be necessary or proper for the election 
 of members of the two Houses ; 
 
 (c) The election of a chairman (whether called Speaker, 
 
 President, or by any other name) of each House, 
 the quorum of each House, the communications 
 between the two Houses, and such adaptation to 
 the proceedings of the two Houses of the procedure 
 of Parliament, as appears expedient for facilitating 
 the conduct of business by those Houses on their 
 first meeting; 
 
 (d) The adaptation to the two Houses and the members 
 
 thereof of any laws and customs relating to the 
 House of Commons or the members thereof ; 
 
 (e) The deliberation and voting together of the two 
 
 Houses in cases provided by this Act. 
 
 (21) The regulations may be altered by Irish Act, and 
 also in so far as they concern the procedure of either House 
 alone, by Standing Orders of that House, but shall, until 
 altered, have effect as if enacted in this Act. 
 
NOTE I 
 
 From the ' Memoirs of the late Lord Selborne ' 
 (Part ii. pp. 261-263). 
 
 . . . Each new step Gladstone takes is, as it seems to me, 
 more and more on the side of moral as well as political evil. 
 Much as I disapproved of his surrender of last year to Parnell, 
 I disapprove very much more of his present endeavour to prevent 
 the restoration in the present stage of the Home Rule question, 
 of the reign of law in Ireland, and of the means he is attempting 
 to use for that purpose. Deliberate and organised obstruction in 
 the House of Commons, and an attempt to overrule a majority 
 against him there, of more than one hundred, by violent appeals 
 to popular passions outside, — those appeals being supported by 
 representing the cause of anarchy and conspiring against law as 
 the cause of liberty, — by denying the existence of any case for 
 strengthening the law, in the face of a complete and manifest 
 paralysis of law by the power of a seditious organisation, into 
 whose scale he has now thrown his whole influence, — and by 
 denouncing, in the most violent terms, the principle of measures 
 for the protection of the loyal, and for securing the due adminis- 
 tration of justice, which are the same (in their general character, 
 for it is not necessary here to go into questions of detail) with 
 those by means of which he himself governed Ireland for the last 
 years of his power, and far more consistent with all real ideas of 
 liberty than the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, which he 
 introduced in 188 1. It was quite open to him (of course) to 
 contend that, by the acceptance of his Home Rule scheme, the 
 necessity for any such measures might be prevented, and that he 
 prefers and insists upon that alternative, — so much as that was 
 involved in his measures of last year ; but it is quite a different 
 
 425 
 
426 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 thing to denounce the principle of maintaining law and govern- 
 ment, and defending those who respect and obey law from the 
 tyranny of conspirators against it, and making the ordinary criminal 
 law of the country a reality and not a mere idle name, — 'as 
 coercion,' in the sense of an undue invasion of liberty. To do 
 this, and to appeal ad populum against it from an overwhelming 
 majority in Parliament is Achcronta niovere, with a vengeance. . . . 
 For a man who, with his attainments, his experience, his profes- 
 sions, his fifty years' public service, his political education under 
 some of the greatest and best men of the time, has three times 
 filled the highest office in the State, and is now on the verge of 
 the grave, so to end his career, seems to me more shocking and 
 disheartening than anything else recorded in our history. It is 
 only the old respect, and old attachment, which makes one search 
 about for the possible explanations, in the workings of a very 
 complex and intricate mind. If (as I trust) the Government and 
 the House of Commons stand firm, all his efforts in the cause of 
 anarchy will be in vain. The clause as to removing trials to 
 England may have to be given up ; but the permanence of the 
 Bill (its best feature of all) must remain, if any good is to be done. 
 ... I will spare you a long yarn about politics this time. The 
 G.O.M. seems to be determined to pull the whole Irish house 
 down, parliamentary government and all, unless he can have his 
 own way. But I have no fear that he will have his way, just at 
 present, whatever harm he may do in the endeavour. But the 
 struggle is very disagreeable, as well as sharp. 
 
 NOTE II 
 
 Report of Special Commission (Vol. iv. pp. 544, 545). 
 
 Conclusions of the Report of the fudges. 
 
 We have now pursued our inquiry over a sufficiently extended 
 period to enable us to report upon the several charges and allega- 
 tions which have been made against the respondents, and we 
 have indicated in the course of this statement our findings upon 
 these charges and allegations, but it will be convenient to repeat 
 
APPENDIX 427 
 
 seriatim the conclusions we have arrived at upon the issues which 
 have been raised for our consideration. 
 
 I. We find that the respondent members of Parliament collec- 
 tively were not members of a conspiracy having for its object to 
 establish the absolute independence of Ireland, but we find that 
 some of them, together with Mr. Davitt, established and joined 
 in the Land League organisation with the intention by its means 
 to bring about the absolute independence of Ireland as a separate 
 nation. The names of these respondents are set out on a 
 previous page. 
 
 II. We find that the respondents did enter into a conspiracy 
 by a system of coercion and intimidation to promote an agrarian 
 agitation against the payment of agricultural rents, for the purpose 
 of impoverishing and expelling from the country the Irish landlords 
 who were styled the ' English Garrison.' 
 
 III. We find that the charge that ' when on certain occasions 
 they thought it politic to denounce, and did denounce, certain 
 crimes in public they afterwards led their supporters to believe 
 such denunciations were not sincere ' is not established. We 
 entirely acquit Mr. Parneli and the other respondents of the 
 charge of insincerity in their denunciation of the Phoenix Park 
 murders, and find that the ' facsimile ' letters on which this charge 
 was chiefly based as against Mr. Parneli is a forgery. 
 
 IV. We find that the respondents did disseminate the Irish 
 World and other newspapers tending to incite to sedition and 
 the commission of other crime. 
 
 V. We find that the respondents did not directly incite persons 
 to the commission of crime other than intimidation, but that they 
 did incite to intimidation, and that the consequence of that incite- 
 ment was that crime and outrage were committed by the persons 
 incited. We find that it has not been proved that the respondents 
 made payments for the purpose of inciting persons to commit 
 crime. 
 
 VI. We find as to the allegation that the respondents did 
 nothing to prevent crime and expressed no bona fide disapproval, 
 that some of the respondents, and in particular Mr. Davitt, did 
 express bona fide disapproval of crime and outrage, but that the 
 respondents did not denounce the system of intimidation which 
 led to crime and outrage, but persisted in it with knowledge of 
 its effect. 
 
428 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 VII. We find that the respondents did defend persons charged 
 with agrarian crime, and supported their families, but that it has 
 not been proved that they subscribed to testimonials for, or were 
 intimately associated with, notorious criminals, or that they made 
 payments to procure the escape of criminals from justice. 
 
 VIII. We find, as to the allegation that the respondents made 
 payments to compensate persons who had been injured in the 
 commission of crime, that they did make such payments. 
 
 IX. As to the allegation that the respondents invited the 
 assistance and co-operation of and accepted subscriptions of 
 money from known advocates of crime and the use of dynamite, 
 we find that the respondents did invite the assistance and co-ope- 
 ration of and accepted subscriptions of money from Patrick Ford, 
 a known advocate of crime and the use of dynamite, but that it 
 has not been proved that the respondents, or any of them, knew 
 that the Clan-na-Gael controlled the League or was collecting 
 money for the Parliamentary Fund. It has been proved that the 
 respondents invited and obtained the assistance and co-operation 
 of the Physical Force Party in America, including the Clan-na- 
 Gael, and in order to obtain that assistance, abstained from 
 repudiating or condemning the action of that party. 
 
Ind 
 
 ex 
 
 Administration of the affairs of 
 Ireland : its nature and defects, 28, 
 
 2 9 . 
 Agrarian crime in Ireland, 12, 29, 
 
 128, 135, 146. See Whiteboyism 
 
 Agriculture, state of, in Ireland, 3, 7» 
 
 204, 205, 206, 234 
 
 B 
 
 Balfour, Mr. Arthur : his successful 
 policy when Chief Secretary for 
 Ireland, 58 ; he establishes light 
 railways in Ireland, and the Con- 
 gested Districts Board, 35, 36 
 
 Belfast, improvement in, within the 
 last sixty years, 2 
 
 Bewley, Mr. Justice, the head of the 
 Second Land Commission : his 
 theory of occupation right in the 
 Irish land, 219, 220 
 
 Bureaucracy, the, of the Castle, 28, 
 29 
 
 Butt, Isaac : the true author of the 
 conception of Home Rule, 41 ; his 
 work on Irish Federalism, 42 
 
 Chicago, the Convention at, in 1886 : 
 speeches of two of Parnell's envoys, 
 
 57 
 
 Code, the Irish Penal : its effects on 
 the Irish land, 99, 100. See the 
 Question of the Irish Land, Chap. 
 III., in several places 
 
 Commissions appointed for consider- 
 ing and administering Irish affairs : 
 
 (1) the Devon Commission and its 
 Report — the mistake it made as to 
 Irish land tenure, 1 16 ; (2) the 
 Childers Commission and its Re- 
 port on Irish finance, 288-291 
 (see chapter on the Present Question 
 of Irish Finance, passim) ; (3) the 
 Land Commission appointed to 
 carry out the Land Act of 188 1 
 and its supplements, 166, 190, 191. 
 See Chaps. IV., V., VI., on the 
 Question of the Irish Land, in many 
 places 
 
 Confiscations of the Irish Land, 90, 
 91 » 9 2 , 93. 94. 95. 96. See Chap. 
 III., on the Question of the Irish 
 Land, in several places 
 
 Cork has not prospered within the 
 last sixty years, 2 
 
 Cromwell, Irish policy of, especially 
 as to the land, 93, 94 
 
 D 
 
 Davitt, Michael, inaugurates the Irish 
 
 Land League, 44 
 Derby, the Administration of Lord, 
 
 brings in Irish Land Bills in 1852, 
 
 which do not become law, 123 
 Dublin, improvements in, within 
 
 sixty years, 2 
 
 Emancipation, Catholic : its effects 
 on Irish landed relations, 1 1 3, 1 14 
 
 Encumbered Estates Act : an iniqui- 
 tous measure of confiscation, and 
 its results, 121, 122 
 
 429 
 
43° 
 
 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Exodus, the, of the Irish race after the 
 Famine, 120. See Chap. III., the 
 Question of the Irish Land, in several 
 places 
 
 Famine, the Great Irish, of 1845-47, 
 117, 118, 119; and see Chap. III., 
 on the Irish land, in several places 
 
 Fenian outbreaks in Ireland, 128, 1295 
 the consequences, 129; the influ- 
 ence of Fenianism in Ireland after 
 1870, 147 
 
 Finance, the question of Irish : the 
 financial relations between Great 
 Britain and Ireland a subject of 
 long controversy, 27 1 ; what they 
 were before 1 782, 273, and under 
 Grattan's Parliament, 274 ; increase 
 of the debt and the taxation of Ire- 
 land by the close of the eighteenth 
 century, 274, 275 ; the financial 
 arrangements made at the Union, 
 the work of Pitt, 275, 276; his 
 object was to _' assimilate Great 
 Britain and Ireland in finance,' 
 but this was impossible, and why, 
 ibid. ; the financial settlement 
 effected at the Union — Ireland to 
 pay a contribution, but not to be 
 taxed beyond her means, ibid. ; 
 the seventh article of the Treaty of 
 Union and its constitutional mean- 
 ing, 277, 278 ; the settlement de- 
 nounced in the Irish Parliament, 
 especially by Foster and Grattan, 
 279 ; protest of the twenty peers, 
 279, 280; the Union left Ireland 
 financially a distinct country, 280 ; 
 the settlement made at the Union 
 reduced her to bankruptcy, and how, 
 
 281, 282 ; the compromise of 1816, 
 
 282, 283 ; the real objects of this 
 measure, 283, 284 ; though theo- 
 retically to ' be assimilated ' in 
 finance, Ireland remained for many 
 years financially a completely dis- 
 tinct country, and the reasons, 284 ; 
 this fully recognised by Peel in 
 1842, 285 ; he refused to extend 
 the income tax to Ireland, and 
 permanently to increase her spirit 
 duties, ibid. ; Mr. Gladstone in 
 1853 suddenly disregards this 
 policy, and imposes the income 
 
 tax on Ireland, and raises her spirit 
 duties, 286 ; gross injustice of this 
 increase of taxation, especially 
 under the circumstances of Ireland, 
 286, 289 ; Ireland to a considerable 
 extent ' assimilated in finance ' to 
 Great Britain, but not completely, 
 even to the present day, a fact that 
 should be kept in mind, 287 ; the 
 Committee of 1863-64 on Irish 
 finance, ibid. ; it fails to get Ire- 
 land justice, 288 ; Mr. Goschen 
 appoints a Committee to investigate 
 the subject, ibid. ; this followed by 
 the Childers Commission, appointed 
 by Mr. Gladstone in 1893, ibid. ; 
 scope of the inquiry, 288, 289 ; 
 the work of the Childers Com- 
 mission, 289 ; it reports that Ireland 
 has been overtaxed at the rate of 
 between two and three millions a 
 year, and that for a very consider- 
 able space of time, 290 ; view of 
 Sir R. Giffen that even this estimate 
 falls short of the real truth, 291, 
 292 ; this overtaxation especially 
 severe in the case of Ireland, a poor 
 country, 292-295 ; the attempts 
 that have been made to answer and 
 refute the Report of the Childers 
 Commission have been grotesque 
 failures, 295 ; examination of these 
 arguments and reply to them — they 
 are either fallacious, or mischievous 
 and dangerous, 295-305 ; question 
 of a counterclaim against Ireland 
 in finance, 306 ; financial redress 
 which Ireland has a right to 
 demand, 307 ; the question should 
 be settled, 308 
 Foster, Mr., Speaker of the Irish 
 House of Commons, opposes the 
 financial arrangements of the Union, 
 272 
 
 Galway in decay, 6 
 
 Gladstone, Mr. : he ridicules Butt's 
 scheme of Home Rule, 44 ; fall of 
 his Administration in 18S5, 46 ; his 
 attitude at the General Election of 
 that year, ibid. ; he becomes a con- 
 vert to Home Rule and the probable 
 reasons, 47, 48 ; the best members of 
 the Liberal Party break away from 
 
INDEX 
 
 43i 
 
 him, 48 ; he introduces his first 
 Home Rule Bill, ibid. ; he dissolves 
 Parliament after the rejection of 
 that measure by the House of 
 Commons, 56 ; he allies himself 
 with the party of disorder in Ireland, 
 5^> 59 '> ne negotiates with Parnell 
 about Home Rule, 59 ; he returns 
 to office in 1892 with a small ma- 
 jority, 61; he introduces his second 
 Home Rule Bill in 1893, 62; his 
 Irish policy in 1868, 131 ; he dis- 
 establishes and disendows the Pro- 
 testant church in Ireland, ibid. ; 
 he makes no provision for the Irish 
 Catholic clergy, a capital mistake, 
 132 ; he introduces the Land Act 
 of 1870 for Ireland, 139, 140 ; he 
 declares against the Three F's, 
 and announces that this measure 
 is to be final, ibid. ; he becomes 
 Minister for the second time in 
 
 1880, 154 ; he introduces the Com- 
 pensation for Disturbance Bill, 155; 
 he surrenders to the Land League 
 and introduces the Land Act of 
 
 1881, 169; he makes the Kil- 
 mainham treaty with Parnell, 170 ; 
 the fiscal wrong he does to Ireland 
 in 1853-60, 2S6 ; he appoints the 
 Childers Commission in 1893 to 
 investigate the subject of Irish 
 finance, 288 ; his scheme of Irish 
 University Reform, 343, 344. And 
 see Chap. VIII., on Other Irish 
 Questions 
 
 Goschen, Mr., refers the question 
 of the financial relations of Great 
 Britain and Ireland to a Committee, 
 288 
 
 Grattan : he denounces the financial 
 settlement made at the Union for 
 Ireland, 279 
 
 II 
 
 Henry VII. : his Irish policy, 89 
 Henry VIII. : his wise policy for 
 Ireland unhappily prevented, 89, 
 90 
 Home Rule, the question of: Home 
 Rule not dead, 39 ; the present 
 attitude of the Liberal and the 
 ' Nationalist ' parties towards 
 Home Rule, 40 ; it is a ' Present 
 Irish Question,' 41 ; Isaac Butt 
 
 inaugurated this policy, ibid. ; his 
 plan of Home Rule, 42 ; the Irish 
 Home Rule party, 43 ; Butt's 
 proposals powerfully attacked in 
 Parliament, notably by Mr. Glad- 
 stone, ibid. ; Butt is gradually 
 supplanted by Parnell, 44 ; Michael 
 Davitt and the 'New Departure,' 
 ibid. ; Parnell the head of the 
 Land League, 44, 45 ; Mr. Glad- 
 stone succumbs to it, 45 ; Home 
 Rule condemned by statesmen of 
 all parties in 1880-84, ibid. ; Mr. 
 Gladstone accepts Home Rule, 47 ; 
 the first Home Rule Bill of 1886, 
 48 ; its characteristics and the ob- 
 jections to it, 48-50 ; what its 
 results would have been, 51-54; 
 the Bill is rejected in the House of 
 Commons, 55 ; attitude of the 
 Fenians in America, 55, 56 ; causes 
 that promoted the Home Rule 
 policy in Great Britain, 59, 60 ; 
 results of the General Election of 
 
 1892, 61 ; the Home Rule Bill of 
 
 1893, 62 ; its characteristics and 
 vices, 62-64 ; it is a much more 
 objectionable measure than that of 
 1886, and why, 65 ; strong oppo- 
 sition to it in the country, 68 ; the 
 in-and-out plan given up, 69 ; the 
 Bill passes the House of Commons 
 by a small majority through the 
 expedient of ' closure by compart- 
 ments,' 69 ; it is rejected in the 
 House of Lords by an overwhelming 
 majority, 70 ; Home Rule is scat- 
 tered to the winds at the General 
 Election of 1895, ibid. ; it is not a 
 prominent question at that of 1900, 
 ibid. ; the subject cannot be dis- 
 missed, 71 ; different forms of 
 Home Rule, 71-73; separation 
 a better policy than Home Rule, 
 73 ; ' Home Rule all round,' "j^, 
 74; conclusive objections to this 
 scheme, 74-77 ; the Union must 
 be maintained, and Home Rule 
 rejected by the nation, 78 ; the 
 rule of the Imperial Parliament has 
 had some bad effects in Irish affairs, 
 and why, 79, 80 ; proposal that the 
 Imperial Parliament should occa- 
 sionally sit in Dublin, and the 
 advantages of this, 81 ; royalty 
 should sometimes visit Ireland, 82; 
 necessity, in order to guard against 
 
432 
 
 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Home Rule, and for other reasons, 
 to reduce the over-representation of 
 Ireland in the House of Commons, 
 82,83 
 
 Ireland in 1901 : a revolution has 
 passed over Ireland, 2 ; she has 
 made some material progress, 2 ; 
 Dublin and Belfast, ibid. ; im- 
 provement in the habitations of 
 the community and in Catholic 
 places of worship, 2, 3 ; material 
 progress of the community, 3-5 ; 
 the dark side of the picture, 5 ; 
 decline of several towns in Ireland, 
 of manufactures, of fishing industry, 
 and of agriculture, 6, 7 ; Ireland a 
 poor country, 7 ; excessive emi- 
 gration, 8 ; great increase of local 
 and general taxation, 8 ; the pro- 
 gress of Ireland as nothing com- 
 pared to that of England and 
 Scotland, 9 ; the Irish land system 
 at the beginning of the reign of 
 Victoria, 11 ; sketch of it from 
 that to the present time, n-17 
 (and see the Question of the Irish 
 Land, Chap. III., in many places) ; 
 Ireland and her three peoples, 18 ; 
 Catholic Ireland remains for the 
 most part disaffected, despite the 
 great reforms effected in its interest, 
 19-21 ; the Catholic democracy of 
 Ireland, 21 ; failure of the policy 
 of conciliation, 22 ; Presbyterian 
 Ireland — its sentiments and de- 
 mands, ibid. ; Protestant Ireland- 
 its position in the community, 22, 
 23 ; discontent of the landed gentry, 
 23 ; character of the Irish legis- 
 lation of the Imperial Parliament, 
 23-25, and of its administration of 
 Irish affairs, 28, 29 ; the Anglican 
 Church of Ireland, 30 ; the Pres- 
 byterian Church, ibid. ; the Catho- 
 lic Church, 31 ; the administration 
 of justice in Ireland, 31, 32 ; Irish 
 literature and education, 32, 33 ; 
 resume" of the general condition of 
 Ireland, 33-35 ; the Irish policy 
 of Lord Salisbury's Government 
 during the last six years, 35, 36 ; 
 Ireland still 'the vulnerable part 
 near the heart of the Empire,' 37, 38 
 
 Lalor, John Finton, a rebel of 1848 : 
 his teaching with respect to the 
 Irish land, 148 
 
 Land, the question of the Irish : 
 importance of the subject, 184, 
 185 ; the Celtic tribal land system 
 in Ireland, 86, 87 ; the tribes, clans, 
 and septs, 87 ; the partial feuda- 
 lisation of the land system, 87 J 
 collective ownership of which traces 
 still exist, 87 ; the Anglo-Norman 
 Conquest of Ireland and the Colony 
 of the Pale, 88 ; the land falls into 
 the hands of great families, ibid. ; 
 miserable state of Ireland at the 
 close of the fifteenth century, 89 ; 
 Henry VII. and Poynings, ibid. ; 
 sagacious policy of Henry VIII. , 
 especially as regards the land, 90 ; 
 this, unfortunately, was not carried 
 out, ibid. ; the era of conquest 
 begins, and of the confiscation of 
 the Irish land, ibid. ; confiscation 
 of the territories of the O'Connors 
 of Offaly, of Shane O'Neill, and of 
 the Earl of Desmond, 90, 91 ; 
 rebellion of Tyrone, 91 ; all Ireland 
 made shireland, and the old Celtic 
 land system is effaced by law, ibid. ; 
 English modes of land tenure im- 
 posed on the people, 91, 92 ; con- 
 fiscation of the territories of Tyrone 
 and of O'Donnell, 92 ; the Planta- 
 tion of Ulster, ibid. ; further con- 
 fiscation in times of peace, ibid. ; 
 Strafford marks out Connaught for 
 confiscation, 92 ; beginning of 
 Protestant ascendency in the land, 
 93 ; vast confiscations effected by 
 Cromwell, 93 ; his scheme of a 
 general colonisation of Ireland fails, 
 93-95 ; results of the Cromwellian 
 conquest in the land, 95 ; policy of 
 Charles II. as regards the land, 
 ibid. ; confiscations after the Boyne 
 and the fall of Limerick, 96 ; state 
 of the Irish land system when the 
 period of violent confiscation ends, 
 97, 98 ; the era of Protestant as- 
 cendency and of Catholic subjection 
 in Ireland, 98, 99 ; the Penal Code 
 and its effects on the land, 99, 100; 
 mournful period in Irish history, 
 100-102 ; gradual improvement in 
 
INDEX 
 
 433 
 
 Irish landed relations, 102-104 ; 
 evil traces of the past : White- 
 boyism, 105 ; traditions of the 
 ancient land system survive, 106 ; 
 Edmund Burke on Irish land tenures 
 — he indicates a grave economic 
 vice in the land system, 107 ; pro- 
 gress of Ireland after 1782, ibid. ; 
 its effects on the land, 108 ; evil 
 results of the Rebellion of 1798, 
 109 ; the Union Speech of Lord 
 Clare on Irish landed relations, 
 109 ; revolution in the land system 
 in the first years of the nineteenth 
 century, no; the important social 
 and economic results, no, in; 
 want of a poor-law, III ; the con- 
 current rights of tenants in the land 
 not protected by the law, ibid. ; 
 period of distress after the Peace 
 of 1815, 112, 113; evictions and 
 clearances of estates, 113 ; agrarian 
 disorder, 113; Catholic Emancipa- 
 tion, ibid. ; its results as regards 
 Irish landed relations, 114; Peel 
 and the Irish land, 115; the Devon 
 Commission and its Report, 115, 
 1 16 ; its recommendations as to land 
 tenure ill conceived and condemned 
 in Ireland, 117; the Famine of 
 1845-47, and its effects on the Irish 
 land, 118, 119; the exodus, 120; 
 the Encumbered Estates Act, and 
 the effects of this scheme of confis- 
 cation, 121, 122 ; agrarian agitation 
 of 1852 in Ireland fails, 123 ; false 
 ideas of British statesmen as regards 
 the land, 129 ; partial prosperity in 
 Ireland for some years, 125 ; this 
 largely deceptive, 1 26 ; growth of 
 Fenianism, 128 ; the Fenian out- 
 break, 128, 129; change of opinion 
 in England as regards Ireland, 129 ; 
 Mr. Gladstone Prime Minister, 130; 
 state of the Irish land system before 
 the Land Act of 1870, 132-138 ; 
 the Land Act of 1870 and its pro- 
 visions, 141-143 ; merits and defects 
 of this measure, 144, 145 ; state of 
 Irish landed relations after the 
 Act, 146, 147 ; origin of the Land 
 League, 151, 152 ; distress in Ire- 
 land, and the Land League, 152- 
 154 ; the Compensation for Dis- 
 turbance Bill rejected by the House 
 of Lords, 155 ; frightful state of 
 Ireland and of landed relations in 
 
 1880-81, 155-161 ; the Land Act of 
 1881, 165 ; the provisions of the 
 measure, 165, 166 ; the Act is 
 directly opposed to that of 1870, 
 168; the no-rent movement, 179; 
 the National League replaces the 
 Land League, 171, 172 ; state of 
 Irish landed relations in 1886 and 
 1887, 175 ; the Land Act of 1887, 
 175 ; the Land Act of 1891, 178, 
 179 ; the land purchase section in the 
 Irish Land Act, 183 ; the principle 
 of this system false and dangerous, 
 ibid. ; the Land Purchase Act of 
 1 89 1, 184; recent legislation on 
 the Irish land unjust and tending 
 to confiscation, 186, 187. The 
 administration of the Irish Land 
 Acts, 188 ; of the Act of 1870, 189 ; 
 of the Act of 1 88 1, and its supple- 
 ments, 190 ; the first Land Com- 
 mission — allowances to be made 
 for it, 191 ; principles it should 
 have followed and course it should 
 have pursued in fixing ' fair rents, ' 
 192-197 ; the Sub-Commission — 
 nature of these tribunals, 197, 198; 
 how they ought to have fixed ' fair 
 rents,' 199, 203 ; criticism of Mr. 
 Lecky, 203, 204 ; examples of in- 
 justice, 204, 209 ; faulty methods 
 of fixing 'fair rents,' 209, 213; 
 appeals to the Land Commission 
 rendered almost nugatory, 215, 
 218 ; the second Land Commission : 
 Mr. Justice Bewley and his theory 
 of occupation right, 219, 221 ; in- 
 stance of a gross mistake, 222 ; the 
 Fry Commission — its Report a 
 masked censure on the proceedings 
 of the Land Commission, 222, 224 ; 
 Mr. Justice Meredith head of the 
 present Land Commission, 224 ; 
 conduct of the Government as re- 
 gards the Report of the Fry Com- 
 mission, 225 ; results of the labours 
 of the Land Commission and the 
 Sub-Commission in fixing ' fair 
 rents,' 225, 227; confiscation of 
 the property of landlords, 227 ; 
 excuses made for this false, 22S, 
 229 ; results of the system of land 
 purchase so far, ibid. ; mischievous 
 and dangerous consequences of all 
 this legislation on the Irish land ; a 
 retrospect of it on the side of occu- 
 pation, 230-237 ; judgment of Mr. 
 
 2 F 
 
434 
 
 PRESENT IRISH QUESTIONS 
 
 Lecky, 237, 238 ; retrospect of it 
 on the side of ownership, especially 
 with regard to the subject of 
 1 compulsive purchase,' which the 
 system of ' voluntary purchase ' has 
 necessarily made a grave question, 
 238-256 ; judgment of Mr. Lecky, 
 2 56) 257 ; the Irish land system in 
 a deplorable state, 257-259 ; plan 
 of the author for the reform of this 
 system approved by Mr. Gladstone 
 and by Parnell, 259-266 ; the com- 
 pensation of the Irish landlords 
 must be accomplished if public 
 faith is to be kept and common 
 justice done, 266-270 
 
 Land League, the : Reign of Terror 
 caused by, 14 ; its teaching and 
 that of the National League, 20 ; 
 ascendency of the Land League in 
 ten or eleven Irish counties, 45 ; 
 frightful state of Ireland due to it, 
 158-162 
 
 Law, Mr., the Irish Attorney-General 
 of Mr. Gladstone in 188 1 : his defini- 
 tion of ' fair rent,' 192 
 
 Limerick in decay, 6 
 
 Litton, Mr. E. F., a member of the 
 first Land Commission, 192 
 
 Local Government, sketch of, in Ire- 
 land, 309-329. See Chap. VIII., 
 Other Irish Questions, in several 
 places 
 
 M 
 
 Macaulay, Lord : speech on the state 
 of Ireland in 1 844, 36 
 
 Meredith, Mr. Justice, head of the 
 present Land Commission : a 
 capable lawyer, but bound by the 
 precedents of his forerunners, 229 
 
 N 
 
 National League, the: it replaces 
 the Land League, 47, 48 ; its 
 leaders set on foot 'The Plan of 
 Campaign,' 57 ; it was founded 
 by Parnell, 171 ; its character, 172 ; 
 agrarian side of the National 
 League movement, 174, 175 ; 
 decline of the power of the National 
 League in 1889, 1 77 J it is at its 
 lowest ebb in 1895, ibid. 
 
 National system of education, 332- 
 336. See Chap. VIII. , on Other 
 Present Irish Questions 
 
 O'Connell : his evidence on the state 
 of Ireland in 1825, 5 ; he wrings 
 Catholic Emancipation from a 
 reluctant Government, 113 ; leader 
 of the Repeal movement of 1843-44, 
 
 115 
 
 O'Hagan, Mr. Justice, head of the 
 first Land Commission, 190 
 
 ' Other Present Irish Questions,' 
 Chap. VIII. I. Local Government 
 in Ireland, 309 ; the grand juries, 
 their composition and functions, 
 311-314; the administration of 
 the poor law and the Boards of 
 Guardians, 314-315 ; the adminis- 
 tration of cities and towns — its 
 history, 315-318 ; character of, in 
 recent times, 318-320; how the 
 reform of 1898 was brought about, 
 320, 321 ; sketch of the Local 
 Government Act of 1898, 321-326 ; 
 and of its working up to the present 
 time, 326-329. II. Education in 
 Ireland, history of, 330 seqq. : 
 primary education, 330-332 ; the 
 National system founded by Mr. 
 Stanley — its principles and history, 
 332-336. Secondary education, dio- 
 cesan schools, 336 ; Royal schools, 
 ibid.; Erasmus Smith schools, 337 ; 
 other schools ; the system has not 
 been successful, and why, 337, 
 338. University education, Trinity 
 College, its history and the character 
 of the institution, 338-341 ; Peel 
 founds the Queen's Colleges and 
 University, 341 ; character of these 
 institutions, 392 ; the Catholic 
 University, ibid. ; Mr. Gladstone's 
 scheme of Irish University reform, 
 343. 344 5 g rave objections to it, 
 345, 346 ; it is rejected by the 
 House of Commons, 346 ; Trinity 
 College "opened," ibid. ; the 
 Royal University, 347 ; injustice 
 of the present system of University 
 education in Ireland, 347-35 1 ; 
 two plans of reform suggested, the 
 second to be preferred, 351-360 
 
INDEX 
 
 435 
 
 Palmerston, Lord : he condemns Irish 
 tenant right, 124 
 
 Parnell : supplants Butt, 44 ; leader 
 of the Land League, 44, 45 ; he 
 denounces the Conservative party 
 in 1885, 46 ; he pretends to accept 
 the Home Rule Bill of 1886, 55 ; 
 the special commission and Parnell, 
 59 ; he negotiates with Mr. Glad- 
 stone on Home Rule, ibid. ; his 
 fall, 59 
 
 Peel : his remarks on the Constitution 
 in Ireland, 32 ; he appoints the 
 Devon Commission, 115 ; his policy 
 during the famine, 117 ; he refuses 
 in 1842 to extend the income tax to 
 Ireland, 285; he founds the Queen's 
 Colleges and the Queen's University 
 in Ireland, 341 
 
 Pitt : the author of the financial 
 arrangements made at the Union, 
 
 275 
 
 Primary education in Ireland, 330- 
 336. See Chap. VIIL, on Other 
 Present Irish Questions 
 
 Queen's Colleges and Queen's Uni- 
 versity: founded by Peel, 341. See 
 Chap. VIIL, on Other Present Irish 
 Questions 
 
 R 
 
 Rebellion of 1798 
 Irish Land, 109 
 
 its effects on the 
 
 Salisbury, Lord : character of the 
 Irish policy of his ministry, 35, 36 
 
 Stanley, Mr., founds the system of 
 National Education in Ireland, 332 
 
 Strafford : his Irish policy, 92 
 
 Trinity College, 338-341. See Chap. 
 VIIL, on Present Irish Questions 
 
 U 
 
 Ulster Custom, the, III, 123, 137, 
 141 
 
 Union, The, 78, 79, 109 
 
 United Irish League, the : fills the 
 place of the Land and the National 
 Leagues, 26 ; speeches and conduct 
 of its leaders, 26, 27 
 
 Vernon, Mr. I. E., one of the members 
 of the first Land Commission, 190 
 
 W 
 
 Whiteboyism in Ireland, 12, 105, 160, 
 161 
 
 Young, Arthur : his tour in Ireland, 
 109, no 
 
 Appendices 
 
 I. The Irish Government Bill, 1886, 
 361-387 
 II. The Irish Government Bill, 1893, 
 388-424 
 
 III. Note I. From the * Memoirs of 
 
 the late Lord Selborne,' 425, 
 426 
 
 IV. Report of the Special Commis- 
 
 sion, vol. iv. pp. 544, 545. 
 Conclusion of the Report of 
 the Judges, 426-42S 
 
 THE END 
 
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