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A COERECT REPORT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OF THE 
 
 RIGHT IION. W. E. GLADSTONE, 
 
 ON PEOPOSING 
 
 ^THE IRISH LAND BILL, 
 
 FEBRUARY 15, 1870. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JOHN MUEPvAY, ALBEMAPvLE STREET. 
 1870. 
 
Cl< 
 
 I G)^ ^ 
 
 LONDON: COI5NELIUS BUCK, 23, BATERNOSTER ROV, E.C. 
 
 
 O’Mhd. LlDiiArilY 
 30ST0NC0LIEGF 
 
SPEECH OF MR. GLADSTONE 
 
 ON THE 
 
 IRISH LAND BILL. 
 
 Mr. GLADSTONE, in rising to movo for leave to 
 bring in a Bill to amend tlie Law relating to tlie Occupa- 
 tion and Ownership of Land in Ireland, said : Twelve months. 
 Sir, have not yet fully passed since it was my duty to submit 
 to this House a measure of the greatest consequence and diffi- 
 culty with reference to the Church of Ireland. At the time 
 when that measure was introduced we were told from many 
 quarters that the Church was not the subject which really 
 involved the welfare and happiness of the Irish people, or 
 which went closest to the root of the Irish difficulty. Nor 
 did we at any time deny the justice of that representation. 
 We were sensible that behind that heavy labour there re- 
 mained for us a labour probably heavier still ; because it 
 must be one where we should not have the advantage of 
 that definite guidance and support which, in relation to the 
 Church question, we thought and found we should derive 
 from the clear, established, and familiar convictions of the 
 majority of the people. But, Sir, if I refer to this subject 
 now, it is in the hope that those who then thus truly 
 spoke will now approach the consideration of the Irish Land 
 Tenures full of the feelings that they then expressed, and 
 will bring home to themselves the vast importance of a sub- 
 ject, which touches the material, the domestic, the daily con- 
 dition directly, perhaps, of a majority of the population of 
 Ireland, and indirectly of the whole of that population ; and 
 which, through the population of Ireland, and through the 
 happy or unhappy results that may flow from our legislation, 
 has a direct and a vital connection with the happiness and 
 the stability of the Empire. 
 
 Peculiar ditfi- 
 culties 
 
 and import, 
 ancc oi the 
 gubject. 
 
4 
 
 lEISn LAND BILL. 
 
 The difll- 
 cultics have 
 been aggra- 
 vated by 
 delay. 
 
 The Devon 
 Commission. 
 
 Sir, we must not disguise from ourselves that the difficul- 
 ties of this weighty question have been greatly aggravated by 
 delay. And it can be no wonder, if we reflect on the 
 nature, the constitution, and the duties of the British Parlia- 
 ment, that it should occasionally fall short of the perfect per- 
 formance of those duties. The operations of the Parliaments 
 elected under the Eeform Act of 1832 were in themselves so 
 remarkable, so searching, so comprehensive, and so beneficial, 
 that I tliink I shall not be deemed to cast any reflection on 
 them, if I sorrowfully admit that neglect is chargeable upon 
 them in respect to the question of Irish Land Tenure. It 
 is, indeed. Sir, but too true, that in connection with the 
 Constitution of the British Empire, and with the world-wide 
 extension of its concerns, which touched on almost everything 
 affecting the human race in all quarters of the globe, short- 
 comings must from time to time be found. We have under- 
 taken more, I believe, than any other people in the history of 
 the world ever undertook ; and it is no wonder if, under these 
 circumstances, a people overcharged have likewise overtaxed 
 the Parliament, and if the consequences of that overtaxing 
 should be sometimes apparent in legislative neglect. Un- 
 doubtedly, that is the case in this instance. It was in 
 1833, I believe, that Mr. Sharman Crawford first called 
 the attention of the House of Commons to the grievous con- 
 dition of the occupiers of the soil in Ireland ; and when, in 
 1843, he repeated that representation, so struck was Sir 
 llobcrt Peel and so struck were his Government with the 
 truth and force of the case, that they appointed a Commis- 
 sion — a well and wisely constituted Commission — to inquire 
 into the subject of the occupation of land in Ireland. In the 
 year 1845 the Commission reported ; and it not only reported, 
 but it had accumulated a mass of valuable and important evi- 
 dence, and it also tendered most weighty recommendations. 
 Now, had those recommendations been acted upon at the time, it 
 it probable that at this moment no Irish land question would be 
 before the House for discussion. I do not say that they would 
 have removed every difficulty, but certainly they would have 
 removed so much of the difficulty that the removal of the re- 
 mainder would have been easily and promptly accomplished. 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 5 
 
 And, Sir, the person whose duty it was, on the part of the Go- 
 vernment of Sir Eobert Peel, to recommend to Parliament in 
 the name of his Colleagues an immediate compliance with 
 the recommendations of the Commission was the late Lord 
 Derby, then a distinguished member of a Conservative Go- 
 vernment, and since the brilliant Leader of the Conservative 
 party. In the speech of Lord Derby, delivered by him in 
 1845, as the organ of the Conservative Government, we have 
 the great repertory from which have since been chiefly drawn 
 the arguments of those Avho have urged upon Parliament the 
 necessity of legislating upon the occupation of land in Ire- 
 land. Sir, most unhappy has it been that those recom- 
 mendations have not been followed. I do not now speak 
 of the amount of blame to be divided as between one party 
 and another, or as between one person and another ; probably 
 none of us who have sat in Parliament since that epoch 
 are altogether exempt from responsibility. But what I hope 
 is, that having witnessed the disaster and difficulty which 
 have arisen from this long procrastination, we shall resolve in 
 mind and heart by a manful effort to close and seal up for 
 ever, if it may be, this great question, which so intimately con- 
 cerns the welfare and happiness of the people of Ireland. 
 
 If, however, there be additional difficulty arising from 
 delay, undoubtedly there is consolation also to be found in 
 the present state of facts, for we see, from unquestionable 
 signs, that men are prepared — I think most men, I hope all 
 men — on either side of politics, and particularly ^within the 
 walls of this House — for a settlement of this question. I 
 believe that upon these Benches — and when I heard the right 
 hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. 
 Disraeli) on Tuesday night, I formed the cheerful and san- 
 guine hope that on those Benches also — Gentlemen are 
 found to be fully sensible of the urgency of the case, and are 
 fully prepared to approach the subject in a just, practical, 
 and conciliatory spirit. I trust that, upon our part, nothing 
 shall be wanted in the avoidance of angry and invidious 
 topics, and in abstinence from the revival of painful recol- 
 lections. I trust that, by our studying to lay aside all per- 
 sonal feelings and prepossessions, nothing on our part shall 
 
 All parties 
 prepared for a 
 settlement of 
 the question. 
 
6 
 
 lEISn LAND BILL. 
 
 occur to intercept the arrival of that happy consummation 
 which I believe we all anxiously desire. 
 
 Nor, Sir, can any fail to see, or to derive encouragement 
 and comfort from the thought that, not the people of this 
 country only, hut the civilized world, look on our efforts 
 with hearty and animating interest. In proof of this, 
 I need ljut refer to one illustrious instance. The Emperor 
 of the French, himself engaged in a great and arduous 
 task, has noticed, in a solemn manner and in the kindliest 
 phrase, the efforts which he sees this nation and this Parlia- 
 ment is engaged in making to heal the wounds of Ireland. 
 And I am confident. Sir, that I do no more than give faithful 
 utterance to the minds of those who hear me, when I presume 
 to say that the Parliament and the people of this country 
 cordially reciprocate these sentiments of sympathy, and feel 
 warmly with him in his attempt and evident desire to extend 
 constitutional liberties to the people of France. We wish 
 him in his efforts that progi’ess and suecess which he has so 
 becomingly desired on our behalf. 
 
 And further, Sir, I should not do justice to the case if I did 
 not say that over and above those general sentiments of encou- 
 ragement, assistance — assistance valuable in a greater degree 
 than I can remember in any other instance of the kind — has 
 been given to us by what I may call the recent literature of 
 this great question. I cannot remember a case in which so 
 many gentlemen, governed by the simple motives of patriotism 
 and philanthropy, have devoted their time, thought, and 
 attainments, not to recommend the narrow views of a section, 
 or a party, but to elucidate and clear up the real difficulties 
 of the case. Members of the Bar, to whose name the title 
 of “learned” is not a mere formal appendage ; men versed 
 in historic knowledge ; men foremost in professional skill and 
 in the knowledge of the principles of agriculture ; Members 
 of this House too, I am glad to say, some who were with us 
 in times past, and some who ai’c here to aid us now — Gentle- 
 men whose names it might be invidious to enumerate lest I 
 should by chance be guilty of any omission ; — have rendered 
 us by the results of their inquiries the most valuable assist- 
 ance. And I think I may say that no part of the studies 
 
lEISn LAND BILL. 
 
 7 
 
 which they have made known to the public has escaped our 
 careful scrutiny and consideration. 
 
 However, Sir, when I spoke on the question of the Irish 
 Church, I had this great advantage — ^that the whole matter had 
 been so thoroughly sifted by the nation on the one side and the 
 other, as regarded the general consideration of the policy of the 
 measure to be applied for its solution, that it was quite unneces- 
 sary for me to detain the House by preliminaries. I am not now 
 in quite the same position. It is now necessary. Sir, at the 
 very outset, to refer to some of those misapprehensions— for 
 so I must call them — which prevail on this side of the water 
 as to the condition of Ireland ; for gladly as the people of 
 Ireland must have seen that this Parliament does not grudge 
 one year or more years than one spent in the endeavour to 
 remedy their grievances and relieve their misfortunes, yet 
 undoubtedly there do remain prepossessions adverse to the 
 character of the Irish people, whieh it is most desirable we 
 should endeavour to remove from the mind of England and 
 the mind of Scotland, in order that the nation at large may 
 come to a full and unprejudiced consideration of the ques- 
 tion. I mean prepossessions, some of which I am almost 
 ashamed to mention to this House, but yet such as have not 
 yet lost their root and hold in this country. 
 
 Some persons have the idea that the Irish, as being 
 a Celtic race, are, by some perverse ordinance of nature, prone 
 to violence and disorder. Some persons, again, are of opinion 
 that the legal relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland are 
 the same as those in England, and therefore they do not 
 understand why the former do not work in as easy and satis- 
 factory a manner as the latter. Some persons imagine that 
 the Irish, having been in a state, as is suj^posed, of constant 
 and progressive improvement for the last twenty years, can 
 have — I will not say no justification, but — no occasion for 
 still exhibiting feelings of discontent or uneasiness. Some 
 think we have been legislating for Ireland for a whole een- 
 tury, that we have done everything the wit of man could 
 devise to ameliorate the condition of the Irish people, and 
 that on this account it is strange indeed, and not owing to 
 om' default, but to something inherent in the Irish them- 
 
 Preliminary 
 necessity to 
 clear away 
 prevalent mis- 
 conceptions as 
 to the cha- 
 racter of the 
 Celtic race 
 and the con- 
 dition of the 
 Irish tenant. 
 
8 
 
 lEISn LAND BILL. 
 
 Agrarian 
 crime prevails 
 most where 
 Celtic blood 
 predominates 
 least; and 
 vice versa* 
 
 Is the system 
 of laud tenure 
 the same in 
 
 selves, that national content has not been established in that 
 country. 
 
 Let me take first the opinion that the reason is to be 
 found in the fact that the people of Ireland are a Celtic race. 
 True, the Irish are, upon the whole, a Celtic race ; but I 
 woidd remind the House that in 1846 Lord Bussell broadly 
 laid it down in this House, and laid it down with truth, that 
 eviction and the various evils connected with it were in Ireland 
 the leading cause of agrarian crime. Noav, Sir, we have some 
 means of testing this question with respect to the Celtic race. 
 Where is it in Ireland that the ratio of agrarian crime to 
 the number of evictions is the highest, and where is it the 
 least ? While m Connaught the Celtic race preponderates, 
 in Ulster, as we knoAv, there is the largest infusion of non- 
 Celtic blood. But in Ulster the ratio of agrarian erime to 
 evictions is far higher than in Connaught ; indeed, in no 
 part of Ireland is the ratio so low as in those counties where 
 the Celtic blood is almost unmixed. Again, taking the 
 history of the more recent times, you will find that those 
 counties where the disturbance of order has been greatest are 
 not those which have a peculiarly Celtic character : every one 
 of these is excluded from the list. The fact is that the in- 
 fusion both of English and of Scottish blood has poured into 
 the elements whereof the Irish character is composed a spirit 
 of pride and of ready self-defence — that sentiment which has 
 made England and Scotland ever prompt to rise in defence of 
 what the people deliberately believe to be their rights. It is 
 not then the Celtic element in the character of Ireland that 
 has given rise to all the disturbances of recent years ; but it 
 is a race even more energetic and massive in character, and 
 determined not to be trodden down, whieh, having mixed 
 with the Celtic race, has been the foremost to manifest its 
 displeasure and resentment whenever it has been made sub- 
 ject to the suffering which is invariably at the root of agrarian 
 crime. It would be easy to supply proof of my assertions in 
 detail, but time presses, and I must dispense with it for the 
 present. 
 
 Again, Sir, it is said that the system of land tenure is the 
 same in Ireland as it is in England, and that if it does not 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 9 
 
 produce the same effects in both countries that must be owing 
 to the fault of the Irish people. It is true that the naked 
 abstract law of the occupation of land in Ireland, as founded 
 upon contract and not upon tenure, may be the same as 
 in England. In both countries the occupation of the land, 
 as a rule, is founded upon the relation of two persons, one 
 of whom has something that is given him by a written or 
 an unwritten agreement, and the other has all the rest. It 
 may be quite true that that is the law of both countries ; but 
 it is only the mere skeletons of the laws of the two countries 
 that bear any resemblance to each other. The flesh and 
 the blood with which the figures are invested are wholly 
 different ; all the circumstances, all the associations, and 
 all the accretions that have grown around the naked ideas 
 are different in the one country from what they are in the 
 other. We cannot name a point in which the relation of 
 landlord and tenant in Ireland and in Great Britain are the 
 same, except only in what may be called the abstract and 
 general idea. Down to a late period Ireland has been full of 
 the recollections and the marks of conquest, while in England 
 nothing of the kind has existed for long ages past. In Ireland] 
 the landlord has commonly differed from the tenant in politics 
 and in religion, whereas in England the landlord and the tenant 
 have commonly been of the same mind in both religion and 
 politics. In Ireland the landlord does not, as a rule, find the 
 capital necessary for the improvement of the soil, although he 
 does so in exceptional and, perhaps, multiplying instances ; in 
 England the landlord is the person who does find that capital. 
 In Ireland the landlord is frequently an absentee, and unhap- 
 pily this has been so during the whole of the 700 }^ears of the 
 connection between the two countries ; in England and Scotland 
 complete absenteeism is comparatively rare. In Ireland a great 
 jealousy has prevailed among a large body of the landlords 
 during the last forty years against granting tenures longer 
 than from year to year ; whereas in Scotland, on the contrary, 
 the almost universal practice has been to grant much longer 
 terms, and in England there is hardly a quarter to be found 
 where such jealousy on the part of the landlords is to be 
 found. In Ireland, except where tenant-right exists, the law 
 
 n 
 
 Ireland and in 
 England ? 
 
10 
 
 IRISH LAND BILL. 
 
 True causes 
 of the recent 
 tendency to 
 an increase in 
 agrarian 
 crime In Ire- 
 and. 
 
 has refused to recognize in any and in every shape the right 
 of the tenant in anything which he has put into the soil ; 
 whereas in England there is not, perhaps, a single county 
 where, in one form or another, customs that mitigate the law 
 do not prevail, and greatly abate the force of that law. In 
 Ireland, from the unhappy circumstances of the country — and 
 I have no doubt, as regards the present race of landlords, it 
 is not from their want of will — there has not rested in the 
 hands of the landlords the discharge of that immense 
 mass of public duties, bearing upon every subject of political, 
 social, and moral interest, without fee or reward, which has 
 honourably distinguished for so many generations the land- 
 lords of England. This fixed and happy usage I take to 
 be a just relic and a true descendant of the feudal sys- 
 tem, a system which never took a real or genuine root in 
 Ireland. And lastly. Sir, whereas in England and in Scot- 
 land the idea of holding land by contract is perfectly tradi- 
 tional and familiar to the mind of every man, in Ireland, on 
 the contrary, where the old Irish ideas and customs were 
 never supplanted except by the rude hand of violence and 
 by laws written in the Statute Book, but never entering into 
 the heart of the Irish people, the people have not generally 
 embraced the idea of the occupation of land by contract ; 
 and the old Irish notion that some interest in the soil adheres 
 to the tenant, even although his contract has expired, is 
 everywhere rooted in the popular mind. If time permitted, 
 it would be easy to give proof of one and all these assertions 
 by a multitude of testimonies from persons who well know the 
 condition of Ireland. Therefore do not let us suppose or 
 imagine for a moment that resemblance between the Irish 
 and the English law is a reason why there should not be 
 good cause for special legislation on the subject of the 
 occupation of land in Ireland. 
 
 There is, however, another false impression which it is 
 necessary should be dissipated, and that is, that there is 
 something extraordinaiy and strange in the present sensitive- 
 ness of Ireland, and in the recent tendency to an increase of 
 agrarian crime. This idea has been founded upon the sup- 
 position that the contlition of Ireland, the condition of its 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 11 
 
 occupiers and the condition of its labourers, has for a score of 
 years been one of continuous and steady improvement. In 
 1860, my right lion. Friend, now Secretary of State for 
 War (Mr. Cardwell), described in a remarkable passage the 
 various forms and features of improvement that then marked 
 the state of Ireland, and of its occupiers and labourers. lie 
 is not a man given to exaggeration, and I believe that every 
 word which he spoke was at the time entirely true. But 
 the ten years which have since elapsed tell a different 
 tale ; and I will briefly state to the House some of the cir- 
 cumstances to which that difference is to be attributed. 
 Between 1849 and 1860 there was a great and general in- 
 crease in the rate of wages throughout Ireland, amounting 
 in some places to 30 per cent, in others to 50 per cent, 
 and in parts to even 100 per cent. Since 1860 that rate of 
 wages has not generally advanced. [An hon. Member here 
 made an observation which did not reach the Gallery.] Does 
 the hon. Member mean to say that the rate of wages had, in 
 1860, reached a point beyond which it was not necessary that 
 it should advance ? I have a word more to say on that sub- 
 ject of further advance, even if no other circumstance affected 
 the case. But I own that if it had been my lot to earn 
 only 6d a day, and if in consequence of an improved state of 
 things I was enabled to make Is., and I were then to find 
 that the course of improvement was arrested, that the rate was 
 stationary instead of progressive, nay, even that in some dis- 
 tricts there was a tendency to go backward instead of forward, 
 I am not sure that my temper would be one of exuberant 
 gratitude. But, Sir, other causes have been in progress 
 affecting unfavourably the Irish labourer. Undoubtedly evic- 
 tions have been fewer during the later period ; but I should 
 be sorry to be driven to an examination of the character 
 which in many cases they have borne. I will merely state that 
 some of the most painful, some of the most indefensible, nay^ 
 some of the most guilty of evictions have occurred between the 
 two dates to which I have referred. I think that of the crimes 
 which we have been so recently lamenting no small portion is 
 to be traced to an interference with the fixed usages of the 
 country, and with what the people believed to be their rights, 
 c 2 
 
12 
 
 lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 — interferences whicli were in some cases imprudent, and which 
 in others beyond a doubt deserved a much stronger epithet. 
 Another process has also been going forward with great 
 I'apidity in Ireland, which has acted very unfavourably upon 
 the prosperity of the labouring classes — I mean the transfer- 
 ence, and the rather rapid transference — of land from tillage 
 to pasturage. Between 1860 and 1868 the pasturage of Ire- 
 land has increased by about 560,000 acres, and the tillage 
 of Ireland has decreased during that period about 400,000 
 acres. "W e are given to understand that, inasmuch as meadow 
 land is reckoned under land in tillage, and has considerably 
 increased, the real decrease of tillage land is greater still. 
 But to bring the matter to a closer test, let us look at the 
 number of those who came under the operation of the Poor 
 Law. Down to 1860 there was a most remarkable decrease 
 in the pressure upon the poor rates, and in that year the num- 
 ber of persons seeking relief, who in 1849 might have been 
 counted, so to speak, by millions, was 170,000 ; but in 1868 
 that number had increased to 289,000. There is another cir- 
 cumstance of wider operation that has also greatly affected 
 the condition of the Irish labourer, and it is this : while, since 
 1860, upon the whole, wages, I will not say have gone back — 
 for I wish to keep strictly within bounds — but have exhibited 
 on the whole a stationary character, the cost of subsistence 
 has very considerably increased. I am almost afraid to tell the 
 House in what degree. But let us reflect for a moment. 
 What has free trade done for us ? As regards articles of 
 food it has lowered the price of wheat, which has been a great 
 boon to the people of England. But that is not the case in 
 Ireland, where wheat is consumed only to a very limited ex- 
 tent. On the other hand, free trade has raised the price of oats 
 and other agricultural products. By a most legitimate pro- 
 cess the price of almost everything, except the great article 
 of wheat, has risen. That is a great boon to the Irish farmer, 
 but to the labourer, or the man who is a buyer rather than a 
 grower of produce, such a change represents a condition, not 
 of increase, but of stinted and narrowed circumstances. 
 There are other circumstances — such as the gathering of 
 Irish labourers into towns, the loss of the gardens upon which 
 
lEISn LAND BILL. 
 
 13 
 
 they depended for their comfort and for auxiliary means of 
 subsistence, and the compulsion often imposed upon them 
 of travelling considerable distances to their work — which 
 have also had a very unfavourable effect. But, upon the 
 whole, I am quite sure I have said enough for the pre- 
 sent purpose, enough to show that we should be in gross 
 error if we supposed that we had a right to form a sanguine 
 expectation of that temper of general ease and contentment 
 in Ireland which belongs to a progressive state of prosperity, 
 if we take fairly in view what has been the course of affairs 
 in that country between the years 1859-60 and 1860-9. 
 
 But then, it is also said, and not unreasonably, nay, 
 with perfect truth so far as the literal sense of the proposition 
 is concerned — You have legislated in favour of Ireland for 
 a century, and yet the people of that country are not, after 
 all, content.'' Now, Sir, this is a most interesting and most 
 curious chapter of the subject, and I wish to know what it is 
 that we have been doing during that century. If we were ^^fch^had for 
 believers in astrology, or if we held the opinions of the its object the 
 fatalists, we might, after examining the bearing of much of Irish people 
 our remedial legislation upon Ireland, almost be led to believe c^es wtherto, 
 that some dark and baleful star brooded over that country) 
 which, as far as the Irish peasantry have been concerned, forbad element that 
 and intercepted the effects of the most beneficent legislation. beneficial 
 I do not speak without book. Let us consider how this has 
 been in two or three leading cases. In 1793, Parliament passed 
 an Act, the object of which was to enfranchise the Roman 
 Catholics for the purpose of Parliamentary elections. The 
 effect — probably the unforeseen effect — of that Act was that 
 the landlords of Ireland, with a view, and no very unnatural 
 view, to the extension of their political influence, immediately, 
 in a vast number of cases, became the prime promoters of 
 that excessive sub-division of land, with the view to the crea- 
 tion of 40s. freeholds, which ushered in the horrors of the 
 famine of 1847 and 1848. But the Act of 1829 put an end to 
 that inducement by disfranchising the 40s. freeholder. Well, 
 the former Act of 1793 had at least exercised this beneficent 
 effect, that it tended to encourage landlords to give to their 
 tenants something in the nature of relative permanence or 
 
14 
 
 lEISn LAND BILL. 
 
 stability of tenure, througli those leases for lives that were 
 necessary to constitute the condition of the Parliamentary 
 freehold which was to confer the vote. After 1829 that in- 
 ducement was withdrawn ; and, as the Act of 1793 had in- 
 troduced, or vastly extended, the mischief of the extreme 
 sub-division of land, so the Act of 1829 partly introduced, 
 and, beyond all doubt, if it did not introduce vastly extended, 
 the mischief, and perhaps, under the circumstances of Ireland, 
 the still greater mischief, of mere yearly tenancy. Then came 
 the Act which was passed, I think, in 1849 or 1850, called the 
 Encumbered Estates Act, which has since passed into the Act 
 for dealing with the sale of landed estates. Well, Sir, what 
 was done by that Act ? It had a most benevolent object; it 
 was intended to introduce capital into Ireland, to relieve im- 
 poverished proprietors of that country from that which was to 
 them not a privilege, but a burden — the possession of land 
 which they could not rightly use or manage — and to transfer 
 it into the hands of a more vigorous and opulent race of pro- 
 prietors, with a view to the development of the riches of the 
 soil. In that Act also, however, there was contained one 
 fatal oversight, so grievous in its operation that it is doubtful 
 at this moment whether Ireland, on the whole, is better or 
 w'orse for that Act. In 1845 the Commission of Lord Devon 
 and the Government of Sir Kobert Peel had recognized the 
 right of the tenant to be invested with a title to improvements. 
 Although the older landlords of Ireland sometimes, no doubt, 
 may liave improperly increased the rent, and compelled the 
 tenant to pay an increased amount in respect to the value 
 wliich he had himself added to the soil, yet in many cases 
 they made no such extortion. The improvements were not 
 theirs in a moral or equitable point of view, and they did not 
 exact a price for them. But when these properties came into 
 the Encumbered Estates Court they sold the estates precisely 
 as they were. The purchasers bought them as they were, and 
 no distinction was drawn between the soil itself and the im- 
 provements made by the tenant. So that the improvements 
 were sold, to persons who gave a price for them : sold away from 
 the tenant to whom they ought to have belonged ; and the price 
 was paid to the outgoing landlord, who, undoubtedly, ought 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 15 
 
 not to have been entitled to claim the property in them, and 
 would not have been so entitled if the legislation recommended 
 in 1845 had been adopted. Every one of these measures, all 
 of them beneficently intended, and for other purposes operating 
 beneficently — the Act of 1793, the Act of 1829, aud the 
 Encumbered Estates Act — was attended with consequences 
 most fatal to the best interests of the great mass of the 
 occupiers of Ireland. And it is not too much to say, witli 
 regard to the Encumbered Estates Act, that the oj^era- 
 tions which have been effected under that Act, and the 
 use that has been made, and not unnaturally made, of it 
 by some of those who have come in as new proprietors, may 
 be reckoned as specific causes of those disturbances which 
 have recently disfigured the records of our intelligence from 
 that country. Thus it seems that in our very remedies we V 
 
 have failed. We passed the Poor Law Bill for Ireland ; ' 
 
 and it was a great act of Christian charity and humanity 
 when we consider it as applying to that portion of the com- 
 munity who have fallen into a state of incapacity to maintain 
 themselves by their own labour. But if w’e have a peasantry 
 endowed with vigorous arms, possessed of both the ability and 
 will to earn their own subsistence, and if we encourage a system 
 under which that peasantry is expected to labour with only a 
 precarious title to occupation, and ever liable to be evicted 
 without fault or neglect of any kind, and if we then think 
 it enough to say, “Although you are evicted, still the doors 
 of the poor-house are open to receive you,” my answer is, that 
 this is not an operation by which you can bring about the 
 existence of national content. 
 
 Then there is another remedy, emigration, which land- Emigraiion. 
 lords have in many instances been sedulous to promote. Emigra- 
 tion, Sir, when it is voluntary and free, is the process which the 
 Almighty has ordained for covering and cultivating the waste 
 places of the earth. But that is when the emigrant is one 
 whose wish it is to go. When, on the other hand, he is one 
 whose wish it is to stay, who is truly, strongly, passionately 
 attached — and no people ever were more passionately attached 
 to the soil on which they were born and on which they have 
 grown than the Irish— then to say, “We cannot insure to 
 
16 
 
 lEISII LAND BILL. 
 
 
 Education, 
 when not ac- 
 companied by 
 remedial legis- 
 lation, tends 
 to make a 
 people more 
 discontented ; 
 and it has 
 done so in 
 Ireland. 
 
 you the possession of your holding — we cannot even give you 
 a reasonable probability that you will be able to exercise your 
 industry with confidence ; but there is the way across the 
 Atlantic, and there are the wide plains of America open to 
 receive you ” — do not let us conceal from ourselves that, under 
 such circumstances, emigration is another word for banish- 
 ment, and that the country whose laws inflict that punish- 
 ment and cause that banishment cannot expect, and does not 
 deserve, the affection of the people. 
 
 I would desire. Sir, in the discussion of this subject, to 
 avoid anything like paradox ; and yet I cannot help asking the 
 simple question of the House which I have asked myself, and 
 with regard to which I confess I doubt as to the reply to be 
 given. It is true that now for ninety-eight years — I may say 
 for a century — we have been legislating in favour of Ireland. 
 During that time we have destroyed the odious fabric of the 
 Penal Laws. We have conferred, one by one, every political 
 privilege upon our Eoman Catholic fellow-countrymen. They 
 now enjoy in that respect the perfect and absolute equality 
 which is their undoubted right. And lastly, we have, and at no 
 small sacrifice of feeling to large portions of the community, 
 extended, I rejoice to say, the princij)le of equality to the 
 religious condition and circumstances of Ireland. Yet, not- 
 withstanding all these things, I doubt whether at this moment, 
 so far as the law is concerned, the condition of the Irish pea- 
 sant is materially better, or even better at all, than it was 
 before the mitigation of the Penal Laws. Certainly this is a 
 most startling proposition ; but ask yourselves what have you 
 done for the Irish occupier, and what have you done against 
 him ? One thing undoubtedly you have done for the people 
 of Ireland, and it is an enormous boon to the mass. You 
 have educated them. But when you educate a people and 
 give them an emancipated mind, with a free Press, and do 
 not at the same time remove other causes of complaint and 
 grievance, I ask you whether, so far from giving a motive 
 for content, you do not take the very course that is sure to 
 end in the augmentation of every difficulty with which you 
 have to contend ? Certainly, you have compounded or com- 
 muted the tithes, and abolished the Church cess. You have 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 17 
 
 built the workhouses in which the iinjjotent, the able-bodied, 
 and the helpless may be received. But I greatly doubt whe- 
 ther, on the other hand, the effect of other laws has not 
 greatly overbalanced the benefits which these measures have 
 conferred. I refer in part to the effect of the Encumbered 
 Estates Act, which, although nothing could be further from 
 the intention of Parliament, did operate as a confiscation, in 
 a vast number of cases, of the improvements executed by the 
 tenant. But you have done another thing of the greatest 
 importance, and which has not been sufficiently kept in the 
 view of the British Parliament. You have altered the whole law 
 with respect to the defence which protected the Irish occupier 
 in his holding. You have brought into play new statutes of evic- 
 tion. And what do those statutes of eviction say ? A gentleman 
 whose name is very well known in Ireland as a professor of 
 somewhat strong opinions. Father Lavelle, has quoted, in a 
 volume he has written, a statement of great legal authority 
 from a pamphlet published by Mr. O’Connell in 1843. The 
 statement fully details changes in the law which had com- 
 pletely altered the position of the Irish occupier in the interest 
 of the landlord. I will refer to only one of those Acts of 
 Parliament — that of 1816, which w'as passed at a period when 
 the high prices of the war began to be felt and the high rents 
 could no longer be paid. Paidiament was appealed to, under 
 these circumstances, to grant facilities for eviction which had 
 not previously existed. Do not let us suppose, therefore, that 
 this is a case in which Parliament is called iipon for the first 
 time to interfere with the tenure of land in Ireland. The 
 history of Parliament tells us of a series of interferences in 
 this respect. In many instances these interferences have 
 been unhappy to the occupier, and in some they have been 
 something more than unhappy ; I cannot but fear that they 
 have partaken of injustice. The Act of 1816, 56 Geo. III. 
 c. 18, recites in its Preamble that such were the expences and 
 delays of ejectment that it was absolutely and entirely im- 
 practicable as a remedy. But, if it were entirely, or in a 
 great degree, impracticable as a remedy, look at the effect 
 of the change. See what a defence that state of the law 
 was to the Irish occupier in the possession of his holding. 
 
18 
 
 lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 The Bill as- 
 sumes the ne- 
 cessity of in- 
 terfering with 
 land tenure in 
 Ireland. 
 
 Parliament 
 has always 
 
 All that defence we have altered. All that shelter we have 
 stripped away. We have simplified the law against him. 
 We have made ejectments cheap and easy, and notices to 
 quit have descended on the people like snow flakes. All 
 these things have been done by Parliament, and no compen- 
 sation has been made to the Irish tenant. And I do not 
 hesitate to say that while, with regard to the higher classes 
 of the Koman Catholics, Parliament has proceeded in one 
 unbroken course of beneficent legislation, by no means the 
 same thing can be said Avith regard to the tillers and oc- 
 cupiers of the soil. As it is said in the solemn words of 
 Scrij)ture, the things which should have been for their wealth 
 became unto them an occasion of falling ; so, much that was 
 intended for the benefit of Ireland has acted unhappily on 
 the Irish people, and Parliament has sometimes, without 
 sufficient cause, acted against the tiller of the soil. I will not 
 inflict upon the House the numerous references that could bo 
 made in support of this allegation. Were I to do so the task 
 before me Avould extend beyond all bounds. I will therefore 
 pass on. 
 
 The Motion I am about to make assumes that it is 
 desirable we should interfere for the purpose of “ amending 
 the law relating to occupation and ownership of land in 
 Ireland.” At this first stage I do not suppose much scruple 
 will be felt, because up to a certain point the law, in the 
 nature of the case, must always interfere. It must interfere — 
 namely, with reference to the cases in which parties make no 
 contract for themselves ; and the law now is that where 
 there is no special contract tenure shall be understood to be 
 from year to year. We do not propose to reverse this assump- 
 tion. But we propose, looking at the condition of Ireland, 
 not to leave it to parties without the interposition of law to 
 make the contracts which they may be willing to make ; and 
 this it is which at first sight may appear to be harsh. No 
 persons value more highly than we the freedom of contracts ; 
 it lies at the root of every healthy condition of society. But 
 even in those conditions of sooiety which we recognize as 
 healthy it is not possible to allow perfect freedom of contract. 
 English legislation is full of such interferences ; and Barlia- 
 
IRISH LAND BILL. 
 
 19 
 
 ment has shown a very decided tendency of late to multiply 
 them. You will not allow the man who has a factory to con- 
 tract with the persons whom he employs on terms which may 
 suit their inclinations, but which you have forbidden ; and 
 you will not allow the shipmaster to carry the emigrant 
 across the seas on terms on which he desires to carry, and the 
 emigrant desires to go. These are cases that justify inter- 
 ference ; but much stronger is the case for Ireland, because in 
 substance these contracts, though nominally free, have not 
 been really free under the peculiar conditions of life which 
 that country offers. Even where the law has left the Irish- 
 man free his circumstances have deprived him of freedom, 
 and it has thus become our duty and our necessity to 
 interpose, within limits cautiously and strictly guarded, for 
 the purpose of repressing that evil. In an agricultural coun- 
 try ; in a country where the population has been such as to 
 cause a demand for land always in excess of the supply, and 
 where the excess of this demand has recently been met and 
 aggravated by the tendency to carry land in large quantities 
 out of tillage into pasture, and thereby to diminish agricul- 
 tural holdings and employment ; and again by a desire to 
 consolidate farms, and thereby once more to narrow the means 
 of supplying the demand for land ; lastly, in a country which 
 is almost exclusively agricultural, and does not offer to the 
 adult Irishman that choice of professions and occupations 
 which he can easily find in a land where mining and manu- 
 facturing industry prevails, there history has but too well 
 supported the proposition that the freedom of contract which 
 the Irish peasant possesses is but a nominal freedom. It 
 may be necessary, therefore, to prescribe by law in certain 
 respects the terms and conditions on which land shall be held 
 in Ireland. 
 
 Strict freedom of contract, then, having proved to be a 
 great evil, what is the precise nature of that evil ? The 
 Devon Commission has pointed it out. It is insecurity of 
 tenure. It is that insecurity of tenure which not only abridges 
 the comforts of the cultivator of the soil, but which limits 
 and paralyzes his industry, and, at the same time, vitiates 
 his relations in a vast number of cases with the landlord. 
 
 claimed, and 
 sometimes ex- 
 ercised, the 
 right to inter- 
 fere with pri- 
 vate con- 
 tracts. 
 
 / 
 
20 
 
 IRISH LAND BILL. 
 
 “Fixity” of 
 tenure 
 
 means per- 
 petuity of 
 tenure, and is 
 different from 
 ‘security ” of 
 tenure. 
 
 and in a still greater number with the law under which and 
 the society in which he lives. Sir, the sun of hope has re- 
 cently dawned uj^on Ireland ! It is not impossible that the 
 Irish people, when they witnessed the devotion of the Session 
 of 1869 to Irish affairs, and when they knew that in 1870 
 Parliament was to apply itself with a similar heart-stirring 
 zeal to the adjustment of the Land Question — it is not im- 
 possible that they should think the day of hope had, at 
 length, returned with regard to this great q^uestion of the 
 tenure of land ; and, after so long a period of depression and 
 despondency, I cannot, for one moment, be surprised that, in 
 some cases where this hope has been revived, it has in the 
 minds of some been such as to exhibit elements of a riotous 
 exuberance. But, on the whole, I do not think there is much 
 to complain of in this respect. 
 
 There is, however, a proposition which has been made, and 
 which, in my opinion, deserves to be treated with serious at- 
 tention. As I have said, insecurity of tenure is the great mis- 
 chief we have to face ; and I will now consider the forms in 
 Avhich proposals for a remedy are made. Sometimes we hear 
 the remedy described by perpetuity, sometimes by fixity, 
 sometimes by security, sometimes by certainty, and sometimes 
 by stability of tenure. All these five words express in different 
 forms the different shapes which it is desired the remedy 
 should assume. As among these, I shall regard the word 
 “ fixity” as meaning perpetuity, or approaching to perpetuity, 
 and I shall consider stability, certainty, and security as mu- 
 tually corresponding, expressing a somewhat different idea. 
 They express the idea of a tenure which would enable a man 
 to pursue his industry without fear of loss from any change 
 that may happen to him on the part of the landlord ; they do 
 not express the transference to him of the essential right of 
 property in the soil. Now, the evil is so great that I, for 
 one, am prepared to say that I can hardly conceive of any 
 alternative which would not be better than the continuance of 
 the present state of things ; and I do not think that anything 
 dishonourable, anything that intends an injury to another, 
 has been projected by those who have set up perpetuity of 
 tenure for the Irish occupier as their favourite scheme, be- 
 
IBISH LAND BILL. 21 
 
 cause we have not a doubt that they have seen that inasmuch 
 as perpetuity of tenure on the part of the occupier is vir- 
 tually expropriation of the landlord, and a sa mere readjust- 
 ment of rent according to the price of produce can by no means 
 dispose of all contingencies the future may produce in his 
 favour, compensation would have to be paid to the landlord 
 for the rights of which he would be deprived. I have no 
 doubt that they have taken this circumstance into their view ; 
 but, at the same time, while this proposition is to be indis- 
 putable, I hold that the plan is attended with the greatest 
 practical difficulty, even were it on this ground alone. Be- 
 cause the question will be, by whom is that compensation 
 to be paid ? It must either be paid by our old familiar friend, 
 the Consolidated Fund — to which it appears to me that the 
 people of England and Scotland would certainly have a word 
 to say — or else it must be paid by an immediate increase of 
 the rents now payable in Ireland, in order to compensate, by 
 a positive augmentation at the moment, the landlords of Ire- 
 land for the loss of their chances in the future. Now, I do 
 not know how a measure is to be framed either upon the one 
 basis or on the other. 
 
 But suppose for a moment that we put the financial diffi- 
 culty out of view, what would be the efiect of perpetuity of 
 tenure upon the tenant ? As I understand it, the scheme itself 
 amounts to this— that each and every occupier, as long as he 
 pays the rent that he is now paying, or else some rent to be 
 fixed by a public tribunal charged with the duty of valuation, 
 is to be secured, for himself and his heirs, in the occupation 
 of the land that he holds, without limit of time. He will be 
 subject only to this condition — somewhat in the nature of the 
 Commutation of Tithe Act — that with a variation in the value 
 of produce, the rent may vary, but it will be slightly, and at 
 somewhat distant periods. The effect of that provision will 
 be that the landlord will become a pensioner and rentcharger 
 upon what is now his own estate. The Legislature has, no 
 doubt, the perfect right to reduce him to that condition, 
 giving him proper compensation for any loss he may sus- 
 tain in money ; the State has a perfect right to deal with 
 his social status, and to reduce him to that condition, if it 
 
 Financ ial ob- 
 jection to 
 Fixity of 
 tenure; 
 
22 
 
 IRISH LAND BILL. 
 
 which would, 
 moreover, be 
 injurious to 
 Ireland ; 
 
 (1) by making 
 landlords in- 
 dilTcrent to 
 the welfare 
 of their 
 tenantry ; 
 
 thinks fit. But then it is bound not so to think fit unless it 
 is shown that this is for the public good. Now, is it for the 
 public good that the landlords of Ireland, in a body, should 
 be reduced by an Act of Parliament to the condition practi- 
 calty of fundholders, entitled to apply on a certain day from 
 year to year for a certain sum of money but entitled to nothing- 
 more ? Are you prepared to denude them of their interest 
 in the land, and what is more, are you prepared to ab- 
 solve them from their duties with regard to the land ? I, for 
 one, confess that I am not ; nor is that the sentiment of my 
 Colleagues. We think, on the contrary, that we ought to look 
 forward with hope and expectation to bringing about a state 
 of things in which the landlords of Ireland may assume, or 
 may more generally assume, the position which is happily held, 
 as a class, by landlords in this country — a position marked by 
 residence, by personal familiarity and by sympathy with the peo- 
 ple among whom they live, by long traditional connection handed 
 on from generation to generation, and marked by a constant 
 discharge of duty in everj’’ form that can be suggested — ^be it as 
 to the administration of justice, be it as to the defence of 
 the country, be it as to the supply of social, or spiritual, or 
 moral, or educational wants — be it for any purpose whatever 
 that is recognized as good and beneficial in a civilized society. 
 Although, as I have said, nothing would induce me voluntarily 
 to acquiesce in the continuance of such a state of things as has 
 prevailed, and still, to a great extent, prevails in Ireland — it 
 would, I own, bo a most melancholy conclusion were we to 
 find that we could not rectify that v/hich is now wrong in the 
 land tenures of that country without undertaking a social re- 
 volution, a social revolution in which the main characteristics 
 would be the absolution of wealth and property from the 
 performance of duty, and an addition to that lounging class 
 — ^unfortunately too abundant in this country — who are 
 possessed of money and of nothing else, and who seem to 
 have no object in life but to teach us how to multiply our 
 wants and to raise the standard of our luxuries, even when we 
 have not yet solved the problem, or got to the heart of the 
 secret how we are to relieve the destitution which is pining at 
 our doors. 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 23 
 
 Again, perpetuity of tenure must, I think, be further con- 
 sidered from this point of view. If the land is to he bought, it 
 should he bought by and for the State, and that which is so pur- 
 chased should he distributed among, or applied for the benefit 
 of, the whole nation. But the occupiers of land in Ireland, 
 though they of themselves constitute something near a moiety 
 of the people of the country, yet are not the whole people. And 
 it would, I think, be difficult to show why, in favour of these 
 particular persons being occupiers, the whole essence of pro- 
 prietary right should be carried over from the class that now 
 possesses it to that which, though infinitely larger, is still a 
 class, is not the whole people of the country. But consider 
 again how this plan is to work. Let me suppose myself an 
 Irish occupier, invested by an Act of Parliament with per- 
 petuity of tenure. If I want to let the property which I have 
 thus acquired, am I to be allowed to let it to a tenant — a mere 
 tenant — or am I not to be allowed to let it to anybody but a 
 j>erpetuity-man like myself ? If I am only to let it to a per- 
 petuity-man, I can only let it to that class of men who are 
 prepared both to cultivate the soil and to pay me the price of 
 the permanent estate. The strange position in which we 
 should then find ourselves would be that all that active and 
 energetic class which does not require any permanent estate 
 in the land, but exists by the intelligent and profitable appli- 
 cation of capital to farming purposes, would be absolutely 
 proscribed ; you would not anywhere let a man in to put 
 a spade or plough into the ground unless he was able to 
 purchase the perpetual estate. But, on the other hand, if 
 I am told — “ You, a perpetuity-man, will be allowed to deal 
 with the land as you choose — to let it from year to year, to 
 create yearly or any other form of tenancies which you think 
 proper ” — then I say the Act of Parliament would contain 
 within it the seeds of its own destruction ; nay, not the germs 
 only, but the body and substance of provisions which would 
 soon generate the very mischiefs which you proposed to 
 extinguish. We should still have landlords and tenants with 
 relations as ill regulated as ever. At first they would be 
 small landlords, but not long. The wealth of this country 
 wovdd go forth once more into the market and accumulate 
 
 (2) by pro- 
 scribing the 
 whole class 
 of tenants 
 who wish to 
 pay a f air 
 rent for the 
 use of the 
 soil ; ( 3 ) by 
 perpetuating 
 the present 
 evil in the 
 creation of a 
 new class of 
 tenants with- 
 out fixity of 
 tenure. 
 
24 
 
 lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 Besides, every 
 argument 
 which would 
 prove perpe- 
 tuity of tenure 
 good for Ire- 
 land would 
 prove it good 
 also for Eng- 
 land and Scot- 
 land; and 
 thus the Irish 
 Land Ques- 
 tion would 
 become an 
 United King- 
 dom Land 
 Question. 
 
 Moreover, 
 perpetuity of 
 tenure, apart 
 from absolute 
 ownership, is 
 not found to 
 answer where 
 it now exists. 
 
 great estates, so that — not we, perhaps, but, at any rate, our 
 children, should again have to assemble within these walls, 
 and to deal afresh with the difficulties of the Irish Land 
 Question. 
 
 There is another point which, I think, deserves serious 
 attention. I cannot help pointing out that if perpetuity of 
 tenure were really good for Ireland, it could not be very bad 
 either for England or Scotland. There are, indeed, peculiar 
 features in the condition of Ireland, that, in our judgment, 
 justify and demand peculiar legislation ; but I am aware of 
 none of those features that could by any man be held to extend 
 to recommending perpetuity of tenure in Ireland which would 
 not also be applicable to England or to Scotland. If perpetuity 
 of right is to be transferred from one class to another, that 
 would not be a bit more or less expedient on this side of the 
 water than on the other ; and accordingly in that view of the 
 matter this with which we have now to deal is not an Irish 
 Land Question, but an United Kingdom Land Question. 
 
 Lastly, I must put yet one other point. These tenures 
 which partake of the character of perpetuity, or approximate 
 to it, already to some extent exist in Ireland. I do not 
 say that it would be a sufficient argument in favour of 
 the plan — I rather think it would not — if you had proof 
 that this perpetuity of tenure was good for the people 
 themselves who had been the recipients of that mode of 
 treatment ; but this I must say, having endeavoured to 
 examine, as well as we can, the evidence with regard to the 
 agricultural condition of those portions of Ireland which are 
 at present held upon tenures of perpetuity without proprie- 
 torship, or which approximate to those tenures, that we do 
 not feel the result to be such as to assure us that this class 
 of tenure would in Ireland attain the object which we 
 greatly prize — namely, the object of enlarging the wealth of 
 the soil and of developing a powerful and flourishing agri- 
 culture. Having urged these arguments, to which I am 
 aware of no reply, I may, for the present at any rate, quit 
 this part of my subject. I therefore cast aside perpetuity of 
 tenure, as being a mode and form of remedy that we are 
 not prepared to entertain or propose. 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 25 
 
 Again I say, the evil with which we have to contend is 
 insecurity of tenure. How does this insecurity manifest 
 itself? Chiefly, as far as my knowledge goes, in these four 
 forms : — Sometimes it is in the shape of the withdrawal by 
 the landlord of privileges customarily enjoyed by the tenant. 
 There have been painful cases of this kind at no very dis- 
 tant date. Unfortunately, in the annals of Ireland it is 
 indisputably recorded that it was from the withdrawal of 
 privileges of this kind — the privilege, especially, of pasturage 
 — that Whiteboyisni first took its origin. And Whiteboyism 
 and the various forms of agrarian outrage and crime by 
 which it has been followed go far to justify an expression 
 used, I think, by Mr. Butt and by some others, that when 
 prescription is talked of in connection with the present state 
 of the land laws in Ireland, it must be remembered that 
 the people of Ireland to the best of their power have made 
 war upon these land laws. 
 
 The first form of suffering entailed upon the people by in- 
 security of tenure was the withdrawal of customary privileges ; 
 the second was by the lavish and pitiless use of notices to 
 quit. These notices to quit, though in many instances they 
 are not followed by the acute miseries of eviction, yet do pro- 
 duce the chronic suffering and the other chronic social mis- 
 chiefs attendant upon absolute uncertainty of condition. The 
 third form of evil has been direct eviction ; and the fourth 
 has appeared, wlfen demands for increased rent have been 
 made upon the tenant founded solely upon' the value which 
 he, by his labour and his capital, has added to the soil. That 
 power of demanding an increased rent is entirely dependent 
 on the ultima ratio of eviction ; and, treading sometimes but 
 too closely upon the heels of that power, there has been the 
 ultima ratio itself ; which, as I have shown, within the last 
 half century has been made far more formidable by the direct 
 action of Parliament than ever it had been before. 
 
 Well, now, let us look closely at the case of Ireland, and 
 see whether, in good faith, without injury to any class, we can 
 provide a remedy for these evils. There is one spot, at least, 
 in Ireland which is instructive on this portion of the subject, 
 and that is the Province of Ulster. I am far from saying 
 
 D 
 
 The real evil 
 is insecurity 
 of tenure. 
 
 Different 
 ways in which 
 this insecurity 
 acts. 
 
 The Custom 
 of Ulster 
 proves the 
 possibility of 
 giving secu- 
 rity of tenure 
 to the tenant 
 without vio- 
 
26 
 
 lETSn LAND BILL. 
 
 latingthe that it would be desirable or possible to reproduce all over 
 perty! Irclaiid the exact state of things which prevails there as re- 
 gards the occupation of land ; but the state of the Province 
 of Ulster I hold to be perfectly and demonstrably available 
 for the present argument up to this point — that you can 
 apply a remedy to this profound and fatal evil of inse- 
 curity of tenure, and yet that such a remedy can be found 
 and applied without shaking the foundation of property. 
 Sir, that proposition — that such a remedy can be discovered 
 and applied without shaking the foundation of property — 
 is so important that I must ask the House to consider for 
 a few moments what is the condition of Ulster. In general, 
 security of tenure there prevails. Is property shaken ? Now 
 it is curious to compare the movement of rents in Ireland 
 in relation to the movement of rents in England and 
 Scotland ; and also to compare the movement of rents in 
 Ulster with that of Ireland in general. This can be done 
 with sufficient approach to precision for practical purposes. 
 In 1779 Arthur Young estimated the rents of Ireland 
 at £6,000,000 sterling ; in 1869, ninety years after, the 
 rents of Ireland were returned, in round numbers, at 
 £12,000,000. They may amount to a little more — I dare 
 say the figures I have cited are under rather than over the 
 mark ; but we may take it as at least near the truth that in 
 Ireland, as a whole, where the tenure of the cultivator has 
 been generally insecure, ninety years have ^‘ust doubled the 
 rent received by the landlords. Now, in England we have 
 not laboured under this evil of the insecurity of tenure, be- 
 cause confidence has supplied that which was wanting in the 
 mere letter of the law. But in England in 1771 — not very 
 far from the period taken by Arthur Young for Ireland — the 
 rents were £16,000,000; in 1869 they were £48,000,000 — 
 so that in very nearly the same period in England, where the 
 tenure of the cultivator is more secure, the rents have trebled ; 
 while in Ireland, where the power of the landlord is more ab- 
 solute and more frequently put into use, the rents have only 
 doubled. But now I pass from England to Scotland, where 
 the tenure of the cultivator is still more secure than in Eng- 
 land, because it is tied and bound in the main by leases. 
 
 The history of 
 the Three 
 Kingdoms 
 proves that 
 rents rise in 
 proportion to 
 the tenant’s 
 security of 
 tenure. 
 
lEISH LAND BILL, 
 
 27 
 
 And what is the case with Scotland ? In Scotland in 1770 
 the rents were £1,200,000, and in 1869 they were £7,200,000. 
 That is, where the tenure of the cultivator is most secure, 
 and the landlord exercises the smallest amount of arbitrary 
 jurisdiction, the rents have been sextupled nearly in the same 
 time that they have been doubled in Ireland. I own that these 
 facts appear to me full of instruction. 
 
 But now let us compare Ireland with Ulster — because in 
 Ulster the tenure is more secure than it is in the rest of Ire- 
 land, and in fact Ulster may be said to enjoy practical 
 security. Well, Arthur Young, fortunately for us, distin- 
 guishes between the rents of the eight counties where the 
 Ulster custom prevails — which may be conveniently called 
 tenant-right counties — and the rest of Ireland ; and the case 
 is this : — The rental of the eight counties where security or 
 stability of tenure prevails was, in 1779, £990,000 ; in 1869, 
 it was £2,830,000. That is, the rental has more than trebled, 
 and that under a system, I admit, in some respects defective, 
 and in some extravagant, but which still gives practical 
 security. The rest of Ireland minus Ulster is what we must 
 compare with the eight counties. Well, Sir, the rest of Ire- 
 land, minus Ulster, in 1779, according to Arthur Young, 
 had a rental of £5,000,000 ; and in 1869 that rental was 
 £9,200,000. That is to say, in the Provinces where the 
 power of the landlord is greatest and the tenure is least se- 
 cure, the rents did less than double themselves, whereas where 
 the power of the landlord is least and the tenant is most 
 secure — namely, in Ulster — the rental has increased more than 
 three-fold. 
 
 But, again, it may be said that in Ulster you have the in- 
 fluence of manufactures, and that manufactures tend power- 
 fully to increase rents. Well, Sir, but Ulster had manu- 
 factures in 1770. I am not aware that the manufacturing 
 character of a certain part of Ulster dates from any period later 
 than 1770. Whether its manufactures relatively to agricul- 
 ture stand differently in amount now from what they did then 
 I do not know, but it is certainly correct to say that Ulster had 
 the advantage — and the great advantage — of manufactures 
 in 1770 as well as in 1869. But there is another point 
 
 D 2 
 
 This exempli- 
 fied still mere 
 clearly by a 
 comparison of 
 Ulster with 
 the rest of 
 Ireland. 
 
28 
 
 TETSH LAND BILL, 
 
 which we shall do well to notice as to manufactures. Manu- 
 factures do not tend directly in the neighbourhood of their 
 own immediate seats to produce good agriculture. Manufac- 
 tures, by stimulating prices, produce good agriculture in a 
 country generally ; but the great manufacturing counties 
 of England are not those most distinguished for good agri- 
 culture. I am sorry to confess that in Lancashire, for in- 
 stance, where I was born, a county which has certainly achieved 
 some celebrity for manufactures, and around Liverpool, though 
 the district is much favoured by the neighbourhood of great 
 estates such as those of Lord Derby and Lord Sefton, yet 
 agriculture till a late period was^ I will not say exactly the 
 opprobrium, but certainly it was by no means the glory of 
 the country. Take again the county of Northumberland. 
 In general it is most famous for agriculture, but not in 
 the neighbourhood of Newcastle ; and I remember very well 
 having learned at Newcastle that to improve the state of agri- 
 culture in that district a number of Norfolk ploughmen had 
 been introduced. The reason of this is not far to seek. It is 
 that where there is competition between agriculture and manu- 
 factures, or between agriculture and mining industry, those 
 pursuits which pay the best wages get the best workmen, and 
 it is to the weakest and least intelligent part of the popula- 
 tion that the pursuit least remunerative- — namely, agricul- 
 ture — is committed. 
 
 Again, Sir, the results of an examination of the pro- 
 duce of Ulster will be found not a little remarkable. It is ad- 
 mitted on all hands that Ulster is greatly poorer in natural 
 resources than any of the other three Provinces of Ireland. 
 But what are its products ? Its products may not be thought 
 very extraordinary, perhaps, until I illustrate them by finding 
 a measure of the natural producing power of the soil of 
 Ireland in its different Provinces. The rateable product of 
 Ulster is now somewhat higher than that of the rest of Ire- 
 land. The land under crop in Ulster is £6 3s. per acre ; 
 in the rest of Ireland it is £5 I85. In land under tillage it 
 is for Ulster £1 125. 8d. ; for the rest of Ireland it is 
 £1 II5. 6d. A^ou may say that this is no very great difference ; 
 but consider the difference of natural fertility ; and we 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 29 
 
 have a remarkable test of this natural fertility, because there was 
 a period when a very careful valuation — as I may almost call 
 it — of the respective fertility of the four Provinces of Ireland 
 was made by the Parliament of this country, which was most 
 closely sifted and tested by individuals who had a peculiar 
 interest in arriving at the truth. At the time of the Great 
 Eebellion the Parliament organized an army to send into 
 Ireland. For that purpose it was necessary to raise money. 
 It was obtained from a body of persons called Adventurers, 
 who were to supply the necessary funds, and were to be paid 
 by lands taken at certain prices, and these prices were to be 
 different according as the lands were in one or another Pro- 
 vince of Ireland. They were to have lands in Ulster at the 
 price of £200 per 1,000 acres ; they were to have lands in 
 Connaught at the price of £300 per 1,000 acres ; they were 
 to have lands in Munster at the price of £450 per 1,000 acres; 
 and they were to have lands in Leinster at the price of £600 
 per 1,000 acres. I strike out Leinster ; because, though it was 
 in part Irish, both English tenure and English blood, and 
 something of an old civilization, might be said to prevail there 
 at the time. I have no doubt that it was by far the richest 
 Province at that day; but the other three Provinces may, 
 I conceive, be taken as fairly representing the relative fer- 
 tility of the soil. Indeed, if anything, the comparison is 
 rather too favourable for Ulster, for it was thirty years after 
 the settlement of James the First had been effected. On the 
 whole, at least it is no unfair statement if we follow this 
 classification, and say that the natural producing power of the 
 ordinary soil of Ulster appears to be little more than one-half 
 the producing power of Munster and Connaught ; and yet 
 under the state of things as it exists the actual produce 
 of the soil is greater in Ulster than in the rest of the three 
 Provinces. So, then. Sir, I think I make good my proposi- 
 tion that Ulster shows us, at any rate, as much as this ; it is 
 possible to find a remedy for this deadly evil of insecurity of 
 tenure, and yet at the same time not to shake the stability of 
 property. 
 
 Well, now, in considering what the remedy should be I 
 may venture to say we have cast aside altogether any guidance 
 
 The Govern- 
 ment scheme 
 founded on 
 
30 
 
 lEISII LAND BILL. 
 
 the teaching 
 of experience, 
 not on theo- 
 retical reason- 
 ing. 
 
 from the false lights of theory. We do not intend to ap- 
 pi’oach legislation on the land tenure of Ireland with a view 
 to give effect to this or that doctrine as to the mode in which 
 the land is to be managed or cultivated. The question as 
 to whether the properties into which a country is divided 
 should be large or small ; the question whether the holdings 
 should be large or small ; the question whether the tenancy 
 should be yearly or for a longer term ; the question whether 
 improvements should be made by the landlord or by the 
 tenant ; — all these are matters on which, in my judgment, 
 there is room for an immense variety of opinion, according to 
 time, place, and circumstances. We wish to be guided, as 
 far as can be, by experience. We wish to take the facts and 
 circumstances of Ireland as we find them, and to apply 
 them in the best manner we are able to the Bill which I 
 have now to lay before you. 
 
 This is a Bill to amend the law relating to the acqui- 
 sition and occupation of Land in Ireland.'^ First of all I 
 will dispose of that part which has reference to the acquisition 
 of land, and which is the simplest portion of the measure. 
 And here. Sir, let me say that I deeply regret the absence 
 and the cause of the absence of the right hon. Member for 
 Buckinghamshire, and I regret yet more deeply — as is natural 
 — the absence and the cause of the absence of another Mem- 
 ber of this House, the only one, perhaps, who can vie with 
 him in distinction, I mean my right hon. Colleague the Presi- 
 dent of the Board of Trade, who is so deeply interested in 
 the whole of this subject, and who has made those portions 
 of it which relate to the acquisition of land in no small degree 
 a special and favourite study. I will ask leave to read a few 
 lines which he wrote to me on being seized with his recent 
 indisposition. He uses the following words : — 
 
 ‘ ^ I cannot tell you how much I am disappointed at being 
 absent from the meeting of Parhament, but I have distinct warn- 
 ings of an attack something like that from which I suffered 14 
 years ago, and I dare not disregard them^ I am quite unable to 
 work, and must leave London for a time. I regret deeply that I 
 cannot be at your side to vote and plead for the Irish Land 
 Bill.’^ 
 
IRISH LAND BILL. 
 
 31 
 
 After making reference to tlie varieties of opinion as to the Bill 
 which may possibly be entertained, Mr. Bright proceeds — I 
 think it a just and comprehensive measure, and I hope the 
 moderation and patriotism of Parliament will enable it 
 soon to become law.^^ 
 
 The measures. Sir, which we propose with respect to the 
 ownership of land for the consideration of Parliament during 
 the present Session, should Parliament adopt our view, are not 
 exclusively those comprehended within the present Bill : other 
 features will be included in other Bills, and I will presently 
 notice them, for they do not apply to Ireland alone, but to 
 some other parts of the United Kingdom. Among them will 
 be a measure which I hope will be of immense benefit to the 
 possessors of land in this country — a Bill for facilitating 
 the transfer of land. Another will deal with the succession 
 to real estate in cases of intestacy, and will give greater 
 ease, freedom, and, I should add, justice to the play of the 
 law than in its present case it can be said to possess. It is 
 possible that there may be some other provisions analogous 
 to these, which we may deal with during the present Session, 
 and which will be applicable, not to Ireland alone, but 
 beyond its limits also ; because in reference to them we con- 
 sider the circumstances of other portions of the United 
 Kingdom to be so analogous as to warrant our dealing with 
 them together. However, everything I am now about to say 
 is confined exclusively to Ireland, and, in conformity with the 
 language of the Speech from the Throne, the Bill relating to 
 the tenure of land in Ireland will be adapted to the peculiar 
 circumstances of that country.” 
 
 With regard to the important object of facilitating ac- 
 quisition of land by those who do not now possess it, we pro- 
 pose ill the first place arrangements for increasing the powers 
 of owners. The manner I do not stop to explain, because 
 time will not permit me ; but I may say the arrangements 
 will present a relaxation of the fetters which now confine 
 the action of the owners of land. With respect to those 
 who may desire the acquisition of land, we propose that loans 
 of public money shall be granted to occupiers desirous to 
 purchase from their landlords any cultivated lands now 
 
 Provisions for 
 facilitating 
 the acquisi- 
 tion and sale 
 of land. 
 
32 
 
 lEISII LAND BILL. 
 
 occupied by tliemselves, and this arrangement will be so 
 framed as not to restrict the loans to cases of private con- 
 tract, but to extend them also to those cases where the pro- 
 prietor, attracted by the advantages of a Parliamentary title, 
 thinks proper to carry his estate into the Encumbered Estates 
 Court. This assistance will only be given to occupiers who 
 are willing to buy where the landlord is willing to sell. They 
 will be required to pay down not less than 25 per cent, and 
 the repayment of the loan will be arranged upon the basis of 
 the Drainage Acts. 
 
 I am not one of those who are disposed to take the 
 most sanguine view of the extent to which a provision of 
 this kind is likely to be acted upon ; but I received a few 
 days ago — not with reference to this Bill — a printed paper 
 which shows that it is likely to be appreciated. Mr. Canning 
 used to say that whoever prints publishes, and, inde- 
 pendently of that dictum, this document bears no mark on 
 it that it is private, and therefore I may advert to it. It is 
 a statement of the tenants on the Marquess of Waterford's 
 estate, in the county of Derry, and it appeals for a loan to 
 assist them in the purchase of the estate. The case presents 
 extraordinary features. The estate is not a small one — on 
 the contrary, as I understand, the rental is £14,300, with 
 several outgoings, leaving a net rental of more than £13,000 
 a year ; yet here are a body of tenants who declare their 
 readiness, if assisted by a loan, to organize a company for 
 the purpose of jDurchasing the estate ; prompted by the de- 
 sire, no doubt, to save the sums they have paid for the tenant- 
 right of their farms, and by a fear, perhaps, lest the estate 
 should fall into the hands of an owner who would not re- 
 spect the custom which had prevailed with regard to the 
 tenure of land. This instance is calculated to show that 
 provisions for the acquisition of land by the tenants may be 
 more likely to be acted upon than many, and I confess my- 
 self to have been among the number, had exclusively 
 imagined. 
 
 Further, Sir, we mean to relax the rule that these loans 
 should be made to occupiers in a special case — ^namely, 
 when a landlord is only willing to sell in block, and where 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 33 
 
 the tenants combining find means, with or without assistance 
 from the Exchequer, for the purchase of a large portion of 
 the estate, though not of the whole — say to the extent 
 of four-fifths. In these cases it is proposed that assistance 
 should be given to others, although not the occupiers, for 
 the purchase of the remaining one-fifth. 
 
 With regard, again, to waste land, it is proposed to give 
 loans to the owners, under this Act, for the purpose of pre- 
 paring the waste land for occupation — by making roads, for in- 
 stance, and by the erection of the necessary buildings ; and by 
 other operations not absolutely belonging to the reclamation of 
 the land strictly so called, but such as to make them desirable 
 objects for purchase, by those who are to undertake the opera- 
 tion of reclaiming, and who may be able to fulfil the conditions. 
 It is also proposed, when a landlord after reclaiming] waste 
 land may be desirous of selling it, to assist the purchaser, 
 provided he can pay down a large portion of the price, and 
 provided the landlord is willing to become joint security to 
 the Government for the money — or that other security satis- 
 factory in its nature can be had. It is unnecessary for me to 
 go into detail at the present moment respecting the manner 
 in which these transactions will be managed. Suffice it to 
 say that they will be under the direction of the Board of 
 Works in Dublin ; but the point to which the Government 
 mainly look is — first, that the conditions shall be 'prima facie 
 reasonable ; and secondly, that the security shall in all cases be 
 sufficient ; and the mode of repayment will be by the system 
 of annuity, of which we have already had ample experience 
 under the Drainage and other Acts, and which has been found 
 to work so well. With regard to the ownership of land, I 
 quit the subject with the remark that even those who do not 
 think that any great sub-division of land is likely to arise 
 from these propositions may be of opinion that, under the 
 circumstances of Ireland, it is eminently to be desired that 
 Parliament should be far from shomng any jealousy of the 
 ownership of the soil by the Irish people, but, on the con- 
 trary, should testify its readiness by all allowable means, even 
 if they involve some extension of ordinary rules, to promote 
 the attainment of that object. 
 
34 
 
 IRISH LAND BILL. 
 
 Proposed 
 Courts of Ad- 
 judication in 
 respect to 
 Land Occu- 
 pancy. 
 
 Now, Sir, having dealt with the subject of the acquisition 
 of land, I come to the clauses which relate to the still greater 
 and more urgent subject of the occupation of land. Our first 
 proposal which I will name under this head — the proposal 
 which, for the sake of convenience, I detach from all the rest 
 — relates to the instrument by which the new law is to be 
 administered. We propose to supply, as most necessary 
 under the circumstances, a distinct and appropriate judicial 
 machinery for the purpose of the Bill. That machinery will 
 be two-fold. It will be either a Court of Arbitration or a 
 Civil Bills Court, as they are respectively named in the mea- 
 sure. The Court of Arbitration will be a tribunal consti- 
 tuted in a simple manner by the voluntary choice of the 
 parties ; but it is necessary that its awards should, when once 
 made, have the force of law. We are desirous of giving 
 every encouragement for the settlement of matters arising 
 under the measure by means of arbitration ; and for these 
 plain and simple reasons — first, because it is the cheapest 
 and most direct method, and next, because it appears to be, 
 according to the best evidence, a practice deeply engrained in 
 the habits and dispositions of the people of Ireland. 
 
 When matters arising out of the operation of this Bill 
 shall be settled by arbitration, there will be no appeal ; but 
 when parties desire to proceed before a tribunal invested di- 
 rectly with public authority they will go to the Civil Bills 
 Court — that is to say, to the Civil side of the Court of Quarter 
 Sessions — in which the Assistant Barrister acts alone as J udge 
 of the Court. The Assistant Barrister will adjudicate the 
 case and dispose of it under the following conditions. In the 
 first place, if he thinks the matter too important for his own 
 action, he may reserve a case for the decision of a higher tri- 
 bunal ; in the second place, if the parties are willing, he 
 may give them an amicable and voluntary hearing in his 
 own room in lieu of a contentious proceeding in Court ; and, 
 in the third place, whatever he decides he will decide subjeet 
 to an appeal to a higher tribunal. This appellate tribunal 
 will consist of the two Judges of Assize. If it should be 
 found necessary for the purpose of quickening the process of 
 appeal, it is proposed that three instead of two assizes shall 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 35 
 
 be held ia Ireland, so as to shorten the period intervening be- 
 tween each assize ; and the appeal to the Judges will be final. 
 At the same time, if they find the matter submitted to them 
 to be one which they cannot take the responsibility of decid- 
 ing, they will have authority to reserve a case for a Court in 
 Dublin, which in the Bill is called the Court for Land Cases ; 
 and this Court, which will be called into being for the pur- 
 pose of receiving and disposing of those references will be 
 composed of existing Judges, in part of equity and in part of 
 common law. This is the nature of the tribunal to be erected. 
 I will not enter into the provisions of the Bill with regard to 
 the appointment of valuators and assessors : these are sub- 
 altern and subsidiary to those particulars which I have men- 
 tioned. But I wish to say a word with regard to the juris- 
 diction of this Court. Every one must feel that, in order to 
 meet an unlimited variety of circumstances such as must 
 arise in the cases coming before it, this Court must be in- 
 vested with considerable discretionary power ; on the other 
 hand, the Government have felt that it would be neither just 
 nor expedient to impose upon the Court the business of dis- 
 covering the principles upon which land tenure should be 
 regulated. We have, therefore, endeavoured to insert in the 
 Bill everything which Parliament could usefully specify in 
 the shape of positive provisions, and we have left the appli- 
 cation of them to the discretion of the Court, taking care 
 as well as we can to enlarge this discretion by a clause which 
 will best explain itself, and which now stands as Clause 14. 
 It is called the Equities Clause, and its purpose is to enable 
 the Court in all cases to consider the equity as well as the 
 law of the case. It runs as follows : — 
 
 . On the hearing of any dispute between landlord and tenant 
 in respect of compensation under this Act, either party may make 
 any claim, urge any objection to the claim of the other, or plead any 
 set-off such party may think fit . . . and the Court shall take into 
 consideration any such claim, objection, or set-off, also any such 
 default or unreasonable conduct of either party as may appear 
 to the Court to affect any matter in dispute between the parties, 
 and shall admit, reduce, or disallow altogether any such claim, 
 objection, or set-off made or pleaded on behalf of either party 
 as the Court thinks just, giving judgment on the case with 
 
36 
 
 lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 Tour clashes 
 of agricultural 
 holdings in 
 Ireland. 
 
 I. The Ulster 
 Custom, and 
 how the Bill 
 deals with it. 
 
 regard to all its circumstances^ including sucli consideration of 
 conduct as aforesaid.’’ 
 
 The general aim of the Bill, therefore, will be to lay dovm 
 clear and distinct propositions of law for the guidance of the 
 Court, but to allow the Court to take into its view all that 
 variety of considerations and circumstances by which the 
 application of the rules ought to be affected. 
 
 Having now. Sir, disposed of all preliminary and all col- 
 lateral matter, I proceed to say that with respect to the legis- 
 lation itself upon the tenure of land, there are four descrip- 
 tions of holdings in Ireland which we liave thought it our 
 duty to keep specially in view. The first of these is the class 
 of holdings which now exists under the Ulster custom. The 
 second is the class that exists under other customs ana- 
 logous, more or less, to that of Ulster, prevailing irregularly 
 and variously over a large part of the surface of Ireland, but 
 not having that definite existence and that weight of tradition 
 and authority which belong to the Ulster custom. The third 
 class is that residue of yearly tenancies which have not prac- 
 tically enjoyed hitherto any protection whatever from any 
 custom, either such as that of Ulster or such as may be found 
 in other parts of Ireland. In the fourth place, we have thought 
 it right to keep in view that class of estates the landlords of 
 which, already sensible of the mischiefs that prevail, have 
 sought to apply a remedy by the voluntary introduction of a 
 system of leases, and of leases in two forms — either, in the 
 first place, leases after the Scotch and English fashion, under 
 which a farm is delivered over with all its appliances, gene- 
 I’ally speaking, into the hands of the tenant for the purpose 
 of effective cultivation, those appliances having been furnished 
 by the landlord ; and secondly, leases of the Irish character, 
 somewhat longer generally in duration, but not usually at- 
 tended with the same conditions on the part of the landlord 
 in respect either of finding or assi sting to find the buildings 
 and other improvements necessary for the proper cultivation 
 of the farm. 
 
 First then, the question is how we are to deal with those 
 holdings in Ireland which are under the Ulster custom. 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 37 
 
 The Bill will be limited in the strictest manner to agri- 
 cultural holdings ; it will not touch any persons except those 
 who are pursuing agriculture as an industry and a trade. I 
 will here also say in order to disembarrass myself of that part 
 of the question, that there will be certain exceptions running 
 through the Bill which it would be difficult now to describe 
 in detail ; those exceptions will include, for instance, the gar- 
 dens of such labourers as are the servants of the farmer or 
 of the landlord, the lands held as demesne land, and the 
 lands of miscellaneous character which were described in a 
 former Bill as taken for special or temporary purposes. The 
 House will perhaps for the present be good enough to take for 
 granted that such matters have been considered and practi- 
 cally provided for by a series of exceptions to the general 
 operation of the Bill. I am now to speak generally and 
 broadly of all holdings that are held for agricultural purposes 
 in the common sense of agriculture pursued as a trade. 
 
 How, then, are we to deal with the Ulster custom ? and 
 what is the essential character of that custom ? The view we 
 take of it is that it includes two elements — it includes com- 
 pensation for improvements and it includes the price of good- 
 will. It is not necessary at present to investigate the his- 
 tory of the Ulster custom : whether it represents the ancient 
 Irish ideas derived from the period of tribal possession ; 
 whether it represents the covenants which were inserted by 
 J ames the First in the charters granted to the settlers in that 
 Province; whether it has grown out of the happy political rela- 
 tions subsisting, for the most part, in Ulster between the land- 
 lords and the occupiers, which have induced landlords to view 
 favourably the growth of such an usage ; or whether, lastly, 
 it represents the payment of a kind of insurance for the 
 safety of the incoming tenant when he obtains that posses- 
 sion of land which is so prized and valued in that country. 
 Be that as it may, and without examining into these ques- 
 tions, we are content to take the Ulster custom as a matter 
 of fact ; we say that it prevails, that it is admitted, that it 
 is recognized by the landlords — not by each man as his indi- 
 vidual act, but in deference rather to the authoritative tradi- 
 tions of the district ; that where it is impaired by the action 
 
38 
 
 lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 of one landlord, or destroyed by the action of another, that 
 action is against the authoritative tradition of the district, 
 and that the consent which Ulster generally has given to 
 the continued prevalence of this custom, on the part of the 
 landlords as well as on the part of the tenants, amounts 
 to a virtual covenant between the parties. Viewing it as a 
 covenant we propose to take it such as it is, to convert it into 
 a law, and allow it to be examined into as a simple question 
 of fact in all cases where dispute arises by the Courts that 
 will be constituted under this Bill. They will have nothing 
 to do but to examine questions of fact, and to give etfect to 
 the custom with the binding authority of law. This part of 
 the Bill is very simple ; we do not attempt to modify the 
 custom ; we do not inquire into its varieties (it is well known 
 to vary within certain limits) ; we do not attempt to improve 
 it or to qualify it ; we leave it to be examined as a matter 
 of fact, and when it shall have been so ascertained, the Judge 
 will have nothing to do but to enforce it. There are but two 
 subsidiary provisions that must be added in order to explain 
 this portion of the Bill. First, where a landlord has by a 
 deliberate ai'rangement in the nature of purchase with the 
 occupier of the farm abrogated the Ulster custom, there it shall 
 not be pleaded against him, but the land shall fall within the 
 general scope of those provisions of the Bill which will be appli- 
 cable to land tenures apart from custom. Secondly, where the 
 tenant has proved the existence of the Ulster custom, and has 
 obtained compensation accordingly, whether from the landlord 
 or from the incoming tenant (as the custom may cause it to be) 
 under the clause relating to it, he shall not be entitled to com- 
 pensation under any other clauses of the Bill. The Equities 
 Clause which I have just read will of course apply to adjudica- 
 tions under the Ulster custom as well as to all others. But the 
 House will please to understand that, speaking generally, this 
 clause with regard to the Ulster custom, where it prevails, is 
 an isolated clause. It provides separately and completely for 
 all that class of holdings, and that consequently they do not 
 as a rule fall within the provisions of the Bill generally, which 
 have reference to occupations and holdings not under the 
 Ulster custom. So much with regard to the Ulster custom. 
 
IRISH LAND BILL. 
 
 39 
 
 The Ulster custom, as I have said, does not absolutely 
 overspread the whole of Ulster ; but it is confined to Ulster, 
 in no case passing beyond its limits. When we come to the 
 case of other customs that prevail outside Ulster these form a 
 subject-matter more difficult to deal with. Undoubtedly our 
 conclusion is that there is a very large amount of Irish usage 
 by which payment is made from an incoming to an outgoing 
 tenant; in some cases it is made with the consent of the landlord 
 directly, in some others indirectly ; but it is nowhere to our know- 
 ledge established as the fixed and authoritative tradition of a 
 district. I may perhaps say that in many cases it is winked at by 
 the landlord, in many other cases it is opposed, and in some 
 it is repressed by the landlords, who view it with a greater or 
 less degree of aversion. We have thought that, provided we 
 did no injustice, it would be wise to found our Bill upon 
 custom so far as it would carry us. This is an Irish usage, 
 and the Bill deals with the circumstances of Ireland ; wherever 
 there is a peculiarity in the circumstances of Ireland it is well 
 to adopt that peculiarity as the foundation of our provisions, 
 because the Irish people will fall more easily into the re- 
 gular operation of a Bill which conforms to their own pecu- 
 liar modes of action than they will into the working of a Bill 
 which lays down modes of action altogether new to them. 
 We have therefore thought, with reference to the condition 
 of Ireland, that these are payments to which the Court should 
 have regard, and which it may fairly take as an indication of 
 the amount of loss and damage that a tenant suffers by evic- 
 tion from his holding. We have stopped short of saying that 
 which we propose to say in the case of the Ulster custom, 
 that it shall be made absolutely and in all cases binding upon 
 the landlord, for this reason — that it does not bear with the 
 same unmistakeable clearness the character of a virtual cove- 
 nant authenticated by a long and wide-spread practice. We 
 propose that these other customs, where their existence is 
 established either by the landlord or by the tenant, shall be 
 legalized ; but we propose also to subject them to some re- 
 strictions which will not apply to the Ulster custom. In the 
 first place, the tenant may claim as an absolute right a cus- 
 tomary payment, out of Ulster, only in cases where he is dis- 
 
 II. Customs 
 analogous to 
 that of Ulster, 
 but with im- 
 portant dif- 
 ferences. 
 
40 
 
 lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 III. Holdings 
 protected 
 neither by 
 Customs nor 
 by leases. 
 
 tiirbed in his tenancy by the act of his landlord. In Ulster, 
 I believe, it makes no difference whether a man is a retiring 
 or an evicted tenant. With regard to these customs out of 
 Ulster, we propose to limit their binding and absolute opera- 
 tion to cases where the tenant is disturbed by the act of the 
 landlord. We propose that the tenant shall not be allowed 
 to take the benefit of these customs if he is evicted for non- 
 payment of rent. Thirdly, we propose that he shall not have 
 the benefit of the custom if he sublets or subdivides his hold- 
 ing, after the passing of the Act, without the consent of the 
 landlord, except it be for a purpose strictly defined in the 
 Bill with regard to cottages and gardens held by the labourers 
 and required for the cultivation of the farm — an exception the 
 necessity of which will be obvious. The fourth condition 
 which we attach to the application of these customs is that 
 not only arrears of rent but damages done by the tenant to the 
 farm may be pleaded by the landlord as a set-off. And the 
 fifth condition is one which I will explain more fully by-and- 
 by. It is this — that the landlord may, if he thinks proper, 
 bar the pleading of any such custom if he chooses ^to give his 
 tenant a lease for not less than thirty-one years, attended 
 with terms and conditions which I shall have occasion pre- 
 sently to describe. 
 
 We have, therefore, got thus far. The Ulster custom is 
 absolutely recognized in Ulster. Outside the limits of Ulster 
 these less binding customs are recognized, but subject to the 
 five conditions which I have just enumerated. 
 
 But there are a good many cases where no such customs 
 may be found, and where, at the same time, the tenant is not 
 protected by any lease, and feels in its full force that tremen- 
 dous evil of insecurity of tenure, which may at present be said 
 to be the monster evil of Ireland. We propose to deal with 
 these cases by establishing a scale of damages for eviction. 
 This scale of damages is, of course, subject to limitations. In 
 the first place, it is subject to all the limitations that I have 
 just described as applying to customs other than the Ulster 
 custom ; it can only be applied when the landlord disturbs 
 the tenant in his holding ; it cannot be applied if the tenant 
 sublets or subdivides his holding, or if he be evicted for non- 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 41 
 
 payment of rent ; arrears of rent and damage to the farm may 
 be set off against it ; and it may be barred by a length of 
 lease of thirty-one years or upwards. It is also provided that 
 in case of holdings above £50 parties may ‘‘ contract them- 
 selves out '' of this provision of the Act — what I call the scale 
 section, the section for scale of damages — provided they 
 receive a lease for at least twenty-one years, and if by tliat 
 lease the landlord contracts to execute the improvements 
 necessary in order to cultivate the soil in the due manner of 
 liusbandry. It is likewise provided that in farms of a certain 
 size, the parties may, if they please, ‘‘ contract themselves 
 out '' of this provision of the Act, as I believe some lawyers 
 term it. Our reason for here introducing this liberty is as fol- 
 lows : — Our desire is to interfere with freedom of contract 
 as little as possible. We are about to interfere with it in re- 
 gard to the terms on which minor tenancies may be taken, 
 because we say that in the circumstances of Ireland the tenant 
 is not free ; but as we move upwards in the scale of the value 
 of holdings, at last, undoubtedly, we reach a point where the 
 tenant may be said to be free. No one would say, for instance, 
 that a tenant of £500 a year in Ireland was not substantially 
 and for the most part as free as a farmer of the corresponding 
 class in England. Therefore, we propose to provide, with 
 regard to the scale of damages for eviction, that persons 
 having a farm not rented but valued in the public valuation 
 at £100 and upwards, may, if they think fit, contract them- 
 selves out of this section of the Act. 
 
 Now as to the scale of damages itself, which I will 
 explain to the House as clearly as I can. In applying this 
 scale the Judge is required by the Act to have regard to two 
 things — first, the improvements which have been executed by 
 the tenant upon the farm, and, secondly, the loss which the 
 occupier is about to sustain by being ejected from his holding. 
 These are the two main elements which the J udge will be 
 required to take into view. The scale, therefore, includes in 
 part compensation for improvements. It includes compensa- 
 tion for the minor and more ordinary improvements — for 
 manures and tillages, for fencing, and for some other matters. 
 But there are some improvements of so special a character 
 
 E 
 
42 
 
 lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 that we have felt that the tenant ought to be entitled to claim 
 his compensation for them — assuming him to be entitled to 
 ask for such a compensation — irrespective of the claim for 
 damages by eviction ; and these are improvements falling under 
 the two heads, firstly, of permanent buildings, and, secondly, 
 of the reclamation of land. I must own it was a matter of 
 surprise to me when I found it was a common practice in Ire- 
 land — it is not so, as far as my knowledge goes, in England 
 — to value buildings on a farm apart from the farm itself. 
 But it does appear to be a common practice ; the people seem 
 to have adapted themselves to it, and there may be a greater 
 facility in dealing with permanent buildings apart from the 
 rest of the Act on account of that practice, as, on the other 
 hand, there is a facility in dealing with the reclamation of 
 land apart from the rest of the claim, because it is an opera- 
 tion separate from the general operations of the farm. Sub- 
 ject, then, to a further compensation for permanent buildings 
 and for reclamation of land, and likewise subject to all the 
 conditions that I stated as embodied in “the Equities Clause,'" 
 and elsewhere, the Judge will, or may, award to the tenant 
 according to a varying scale. This scale has reference to 
 holdings of different value. If the holding is not valued in 
 the public valuation at over £10 the Judge may award to the 
 tenant a sum which is not to exceed seven years" rent : if the 
 holding is between £10 and £50 he may award a sum not 
 exceeding five years" rent ; if between £50 and £100, a sum 
 not exceeding three years" rent ; and if over £100, a sum not 
 exceeding two years" rent. And over and above the award 
 upon that scale, the Judge will have to deal separately with 
 the question of permanent buildings and the reclamation of 
 land. Now what, as I take it, will usually happen will be 
 this — This sum, which cannot be exceeded, is the sum which 
 the J uclge will set before himself at the outset as a standard. 
 It will be then open to the landlord to come in and to 
 put in proof any matter that he may think proper, of 
 such a nature as, in his opinion, ought to go in diminu- 
 tion of the claims, and some of these matters are very pal- 
 pable. For instance, suppose the case of a landlord, the 
 value of whose land has, from circumstances, undergone a 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 43 
 
 real increase otherwise than from the labour of the tenant. 
 That landlord is entitled to a fair increase of rent. But sup- 
 pose the tenant refuses to pay any increase whatever, and says 
 — Evict me if you dare’ — trusting to the scale of damages. 
 The landlord evicts. The case comes before the Judge. The 
 landlord may say — It is true I have evicted this man, but I 
 have done so because he only pays me 15^. an acre, and I will 
 show you that the land is worth a great deal more; it is a 
 case for an augmentation of rent, and I called upon him to 
 pay 205. an acre, but he claims to remain at the present 
 rent.” That will be a matter for the Judge to take fairly 
 into consideration, and he will make deductions from the 
 tenant’s claim on that account. Or take another case. 
 Suppose the landlord, desiring, for a particular reason, to 
 obtain possession of a particular holding, offers to the 
 tenant a holding of the same kind, or a better one, on his 
 own property, so that, in point of fact, the tenant probably 
 sustains neither damage nor inconvenience. The landlord 
 ought to be able to plead this, and to show it to the Judge ; 
 and when he does so, and shows that he has only evicted the 
 tenant on account of the tenant’s unreasonable conduct, the 
 Judge will make a deduction in consequence from the amount 
 of damages which the landlord would be otherwise liable to pay. 
 In truth, the Equities Clause will enable the Judge to take 
 fully into view, and weigh in his own mind, all those points 
 which affect the real merits of the case, by lowering the 
 amount of compensation, or even, should the case warrant it, 
 by refusing compensation altogether, although the landlord 
 may have been driven to evict the tenant. In the ordinary 
 case of eviction for non-payment of rent, or for sub-dividing 
 the land, the House will understand that the scale does not 
 apply at all. 
 
 So far, I have covered that portion of the ground which 
 belongs to the three cases of the Ulster custom, the customs 
 variously prevailing outside Ulster, and the holdings which 
 are comprised under neither of those heads, but which are 
 held either by the year or for short terms of years. Now, 
 notwithstanding all I have said, and although it is quite 
 obvious that wherever payment is made on the ground of 
 
44 
 
 lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 Compensa- 
 tion for im- 
 provements. 
 
 Improve- 
 ments de- 
 fined. 
 
 custom, that payment will include the value of the improve- 
 ments, yet it is necessary for us to have separate legislation 
 in regard to those improvements, because by this separate 
 legislation will be governed the case of the tenant who wishes 
 to retire. It would not be fair that, upon his expressing his 
 wish to quit his farm, his landlord should be called on to pay 
 him money for any loss he may suffer by his departure ; but, 
 upon the other hand, it would be perfectly fair that the retiring 
 tenant should be able to claim the value of his improvements, 
 the value of which would accrue to the landlord. Take, again, 
 the case of a man evicted for the non-payment of rent. We 
 do not in this case, speaking generally, allow for the damage 
 caused by eviction ; but we do not see why, because he has 
 failed to pay his rent, possibly from misfortune rather than by 
 his wilful fault, he ought to forfeit all the value of his im- 
 provements. That being so, we propose, over and above the 
 legislation I have already detailed, to legislate on the subject 
 of improvements. But what is an improvement ? That, 
 Sir, is a question which has cost us some trouble. Indeed, I 
 am bound to say, a great many things in this Bill might 
 w^arrant the same remark, for the subject is one of great com- 
 plexity and difficulty, and I am much mistaken if the House 
 will not find it to be so before its task shall have been com- 
 pleted. With the utmost goodwill and zeal, they will, I fear, 
 have to spend a considerable amount of time upon the Bill in 
 the endeavour to bring it as nearly as possible to perfection. 
 We have, however, I think, determined upon a very fair defi- 
 nition of what ought to be held as constituting an improve- 
 ment.” In the first place, it must add to the letting value 
 of the land ; in the second place, it must be suitable to the 
 nature of the holding. If the tenant, unfortunately for him- 
 self, chooses to lay out money on improvements which do not 
 improve, and do not add to the letting value of the holding, 
 that is his affair, and not the landlord’s. If, on the other 
 hand, he chooses to lay out his money in making additions to 
 his holding, which do add to the letting value, but which are 
 not suitable for the purposes of agriculture, the landlord is not 
 to be bound to pay for such an improvement, because it does 
 not come within the proper scope of the tenancy. A case 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 45 
 
 which has been mentioned to me, for instance, is that of a farm 
 abutting on the seashore, on which the tenant chose to build 
 a bathing-house. It is very probable that this bathing-house 
 may add to the letting value of the farm, but evidently the 
 tenant ought not to be entitled to payment for it as an im- 
 provement. That, undoubtedly, is not a sort of improvement 
 which will come within the meaning of this Bill, for it must 
 be something not only adding to the letting value of the land, 
 but also suitable to the nature of the holding. 
 
 Thus understanding the word improvement,’’ what we 
 propose to do is exactly to reverse the presumption of the present 
 law. The law, as it stands, absolutely gives the improvements 
 to the landlord and presumes them to be his work. We propose 
 to presume them to be the work of the tenant, and to leave to 
 the landlord the business of showing, if he can, that such is not 
 the case. If they are the work of the tenant, they will, according 
 to our Bill, be his property, and it will be for the landlord to 
 show that they are not the work of the tenant if he disputes the 
 claim to compensation. The justice of this provision, that 
 the burden of proof should be thrown on the landlord, is, I 
 think, obvious. For how does the case stand ? The occupier is 
 in most instances a poor man, who has no agents, no legal 
 adviser, no representative, who may be here to-day and gone 
 to-morrow. For him to give proof with regard to improvements, 
 and especially with regard to improvements which might have 
 been executed by those predecessors from whom he might 
 have derived his title, would be almost impossible. The 
 landlord, on the other hand, possesses all the machinery con- 
 nected with the management of his estate ; he has the neces- 
 sary books and records, which he can without difficulty pro- 
 duce, and he can probably command a continuous chain of 
 evidence ; and we therefore cast the burden of proof on him 
 who is able to bear it, and relieve from the burden the man 
 who is not in that position. 
 
 This great and important change in the law will, of 
 course, be subject to certain limitations. 
 
 The House will, however, have observed that we do not 
 limit the operation of the new law to future improvements. 
 It is absolutely necessary that it should extend to those 
 
 
 
 The Bill re- 
 verses the 
 present law, 
 which gives 
 the presump- 
 tion of the 
 improve- 
 ments in 
 favour of the 
 landlord. 
 
 The tenant to 
 be entitled to 
 compensation 
 for retrospect- 
 ive improve^ 
 
merits, but 
 under certain 
 limitations. 
 
 4G IET8H LAND BILL. 
 
 already made. Had we thought fit, or had we happily been 
 enabled a quarter of a century ago, in 1845, to deal with this 
 question of improvements^ it might have been satisfactory from 
 some points of view, and sufficient for public purposes, to 
 provide for the cases of future improvements alone. But 
 having, unfortunately, adjourned for so long a time the day of 
 settlement of the question, and that day having now arrived, 
 it is quite plain, in the view of the Government — and I do 
 not expect, from all I can see of public opinion, that it will be 
 disputed in any quarter — that any legislation as to improve- 
 ments must in principle embrace retrospective improvements. 
 Still, it is necessary to impose some special limitations on 
 these retrospective claims ; and the limitations which we ask 
 the House to impose specially upon them are these, in the 
 justice of which I think most persons will be disposed to 
 agree. We propose, first of all, that no claim is to be 
 allowed for any improvement made more than twenty years 
 before the passing of the Act, unless it be in the nature of a 
 permanent building or of reclamation of land. In the second 
 place, such claim may not be made by the tenant under any 
 lease or contract now existing, if it be excluded by the terms 
 of the lease or contract. It is, in the third place, provided with 
 respect to past improvements that the Court may take into 
 consideration the time for which and the terms on which they 
 have already been enjoyed by the tenant. This provision I 
 look upon as one required by the circumstances of the case, 
 for if it were not adopted, we should be making a law to 
 bear with comparative severity on the best landlords, while 
 we should be showing the greater favour towards the worst. 
 The landlord who had closely followed up every improvement 
 made by his tenant with an increase of rent would, unless 
 we introduced into our Bill some such provision, be placed 
 exactly on the same footing with the man who had re- 
 spected the property of his tenant, and allowed him to con- 
 tinue on easy terms, having reference only to the prior value 
 of a farm, and not to the increased value imparted by the 
 tenant’s capital and labour. That is, I think, a sufficient 
 justification of this particular provision. 
 
 Then there are other limitations, such, namely, as apply 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 47 
 
 generally to all improvements. One of these is that no 
 claim may he made in respect of an improvement which is 
 contrary to any contract hereafter voluntarily entered into hy 
 the tenant, and which is not required for the due cul- 
 tivation of the soil. The House will here observe the 
 operation of the principle which I have laid down — that, 
 speaking generally, we do not allow parties to ‘^contract them- 
 selves out ” of the Act. We are reluctant to allow parties hy 
 contract to divest themselves of all right to make improvements. 
 We fear that under the circumstances of Ireland, an ostensible 
 freedom in this respect might in reality nullify the effect of 
 our legislation. We, therefore, absolutely reserve to the 
 tenant, whether he will or not, the right to make all the 
 improvements which may be required for the due cultivation 
 of his farm, and we give him no discretion with respect to 
 renouncing his right to improve, except in regard to improve- 
 ments lying beyond the range of this definition. 
 
 There is here a subsidiary proposition, to the effect that 
 for the space of two years from the passing of the Act, or 
 during the residue of any unexpired contract, the landlord 
 may prohibit an improvement on the ground that it would 
 be injurious to his estate, but subject to the condition that 
 the Land Court agrees with him in that view. This is a 
 provision which hon. Gentlemen will understand better when 
 they see it as stated in the Bill. The object of the provision 
 is to prevent the risk that unfair advantage might be taken of 
 the period of transition, and that the landlord might be dam- 
 nified by operations which might be effected before a new 
 contract could be entered into. 
 
 There is yet another class of improvements also which are 
 excluded from the provisions of the Bill ; I allude to improve- 
 ments executed by the tenant in cases where the landlord has 
 let a farm under the condition that he will himself execute 
 such improvements. For improvements which are the subject 
 of such a covenant on the landlord’s part no claim can be made, 
 unless the landlord has failed in his undertaking. It is im- 
 possible, as we think, to deny that the first right to improve 
 the soil belongs to the owner. We, therefore, give the land- 
 lord the right to undertake improvements, and we exclude 
 
 Parties not 
 allowed to 
 contraet 
 themselves 
 out” of the 
 Act except in 
 the cases spe- 
 cially pro- 
 vided for. 
 
48 
 
 lEISII LAND BILL. 
 
 tlie tenant from any interference with that right, until his 
 landlord shall have shown that he does not intend to fulfil his 
 obligation. 
 
 Lastly, there is another limitation in regard to claims 
 for improvements. It is a limitation which arises under 
 leases, and with this I will presently proceed to deal. 
 
 Thus far, Sir, I have mentioned four main provisions 
 with respect to the occupation of land in Ireland ; hut I have 
 also to deal with the case of land under lease, with respect to 
 which it is necessary to make some separate provision. Many 
 landlords may say that they do not object to granting security 
 or stability of tenure, but that they prefer to do it by the 
 method of lease rather than in the shape of compensation for 
 eviction from yearly or other short tenancies. Where a 
 lease is of competent length, we consider that the parties 
 to it must be understood to be perfectly cognizant of the 
 relations into which they enter; and we consider it to 
 be found by experience that the more definite those rela- 
 tions the greater will be the exertion of the farmer, the 
 more fully will he develop the agricultural resources of 
 the country, and the more complete will be, as a general rule, 
 the satisfaction of all concerned. Therefore we think the Bill 
 should be framed, on the one hand, so as not to compel 
 leases, but that it should, on the other hand, be so framed 
 as in no way to discourage them. We therefore say to the 
 landlord by the Bill — ^Mf you have heretofore adopted the 
 system of leases, we are unwilling to do anything to drive 
 you out of it ; but if you are disposed to adopt for the first 
 time the system of leases rather than to allow customs of a 
 somewhat indefinite character to prevail, or to allow yourself 
 to fall under the scale of damages for eviction, we will lay 
 down the conditions under which you may do it.’' A land- 
 lord, then, may, according to the 16 th clause, exempt his 
 lands from being subject to any custom, except the Ulster 
 custom, or from being subject to the scale of damages, pro- 
 vided he agrees to give the tenant a lease such as I will now 
 describe. First, it must be for thirty-one years; and, secondly, 
 it must leave to the tenant at the end of those thirty-one 
 years a right to claim compensation under three heads — first, 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 49 
 
 the head of tillages and maiiares — and it is as much for the 
 interest of the landlord as of the tenant that the latter should 
 retain that right, as otherwise the ground would run out with 
 the lease ; secondly, for permanent buildings ; and thirdly, 
 for the reclamation of land. But besides this, the lease must 
 be in regard to rent and to covenants approved by the 
 Court. The House will at once see why we are reluctantly 
 obliged to make the Court in this particular instance the 
 arbiter of the prospective arrangement between the tenant and 
 his landlord. And the reason is this. By the Bill the tenant 
 is invested with a certain title in his holding — a title to claim 
 for improvements absolutely if he retire, and a title to claim 
 for customary payment, or for damages and for certain im- 
 provements, if he be evicted. Thus the actual tenant is put 
 in possession of an inchoate or presumptive right. Now, 
 we are going to allow the landlord by leases to bar that 
 claim on the part of the tenant and to substitute for it the 
 conditions and incidents of leasehold tenure. If, however, 
 we do that, it is evident we cannot leave it to the landlord to 
 dictate absolutely the rent he might demand, or the condi- 
 tions he might insert in the lease, for that would enable him 
 absolutely to nullify the whole interest we have created on 
 behalf of the tenant. Therefore, to have the effect of barring 
 good-will or customary payment, a lease must be not only 
 one for a term of thirty-one years, and one reserving certain 
 rights to the tenant at the end of that term, but it must also 
 be in terms subject to the approval of the Court. 
 
 So much for the leasing power at the present moment. 
 Bit we have also the future to consider. And the idea we 
 have is this. We wish to grant to the landlord the permanent 
 power, if he think fit, of keeping the general claim for good- 
 will off his estate. This cannot, of course, be done by one 
 lease. It can be done by one lease as far as the particular 
 term and the particular person is concerned, and that lease 
 would be for thirty-one years independently of any landlord's 
 improvements, or might alternatively be for twenty-one years 
 if the improvements are to be made by the landlord and if the 
 farm be of a certain value. But the situation of the parties 
 at the end of that term will be altered. If the landlord, after 
 
50 
 
 lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 tlie land lias been held on one of these statutory leases, does 
 not think fit to continue the system of leases, good-will will 
 immediately gi’ow up as a plant grows from the ground. 
 If he gets a yearly tenant, or allows his lessee to become a 
 yearly tenant, or a tenant at a short term of years, the new 
 tenant, or his lessee, as the case may be, will be invested 
 with a title of good-will : but the landlord may, if he think 
 fit, follow up the thirty-one years’ lease with a second lease ; 
 and if he chooses to keep up a series of these leases he may 
 hold his land under lease perfectly free both from the in- 
 tervention of any claim for good-will and from any further 
 intervention of the Court. The intervention of the Court is 
 necessary up to this time because the lease is to bar the pre- 
 sumptive right which the Act would give to the tenant ; but 
 at the expiration of the first lease, the transaction, as far as 
 the tenant is concerned, will be wound up, and the landlord 
 will be under no obligation to anybody except to give a lease 
 conformably to the conditions enacted by the Act. Ho may 
 take the lease into the open market, and give it to the best 
 bidder ; but if he cannot find anybody to take it, and if the 
 land falls under an inferior description of tenure, he will be 
 liable to good-will just as if he had never given any lease at 
 all. I have here used the phrase good-will as an equivalent 
 for the payments to be made either under what the Bill terms 
 other custom, or under the Scale Clause. 
 
 We have been very anxious to avoid by this Bill any 
 interference of a public authority with any existing rent ; 
 but when we look at the case of Ireland we are compelled to 
 admit that, of late years especially, there may have grown up 
 in certain cases contracts for rent of a character most ex- 
 travagant, which it is totally impossible for the tenant to 
 pay and at the same time to live upon his holding. I will 
 mention a case which was told me by the proprietor of an 
 estate in Ireland. He said, in substance — There is an 
 estate adjoining mine, which was sold in the Encumbered 
 Estates Court. The land on both sides of the border is of 
 exactly the same quality. My land is rented at 155. an acre, 
 and I consider it rather moderately rented ; no doubt if I tried 
 I could get 185. an acre for it; but not more with any kind of 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 51 
 
 justice or moderation. The moment the land adjoining mine 
 was sold in the Encumbered Estates Court a demand Avas 
 made on the tenant for 325. an acre. This was refused. But 
 the rent was actually raised to 245. an acre.’^ It was ab- 
 solutely impossible for a tenant to pay that amount of rent 
 and live upon the land ; but, under the pressure of this deadly 
 necessity, which we say — not in all cases, but very often 
 practically impairs — and which, in some cases, really destroys 
 freedom of contract on the part of Irish occupiers, they have 
 been compelled, as a question of dear life, to enter into agree- 
 ments which they cannot fulfil with any justice to themselves. 
 
 The Bill will proceed upon the principle — and my lion. 
 Friend the Member for Cork (Mr. Maguire), who has taken 
 so laudable an interest in this subject, cannot understand me 
 too clearly on this point — that from the moment the measure 
 is passed every Irishman, small and great, must be absolutely 
 responsible for every contract into which he enters. By the 
 Bill we endeavour to establish a fair and equitable state of 
 reciprocal rights and duties ; and having done this, we ought 
 to embody in it nothing that can encourage any man to 
 tamper with good faith, or to disparage or undervalue in 
 any shape security and solidity of contracts. But we do feel 
 that in certain cases there is a given amount of difficulty as 
 to some of those contracts now in existence, which may have 
 been made under what we admit to have been an unfair and 
 inequitable state of circumstances. 
 
 Now, the provision we have made to meet the peculiar 
 class of cases I have described is this. The case supposed is 
 that such a man as I have just sketched to the House may find 
 himself unable in good faith to pay the rent, or to make out 
 of the land what every tenant ought to make in proportion to 
 the rent he pays. We provide by the Bill that, as a general 
 rule, eAuction for non-payment of rent shall be held to be an 
 absolute bar to any claim upon the landlord except for im- 
 provement ; but Avith regard to those cases where the Court 
 upon its responsibility and in its discretion finds special cir- 
 cumstances, we allow it in the exercise of its discretion to 
 allow damages even though the eviction be for non-payment of 
 rent. The Clause runs as folloAVS ; — 
 
 provided 
 against in 
 Bill. 
 
52 
 
 lETSn LAND BILL. 
 
 For the purposes of this Act ejectment for non-payment of 
 rent shall not be deemed disturbance of the tenant by the act of the 
 landlord.'' | 
 
 And with regard to all prospective contracts it is absolutely 
 necessary that if the landlord evict for non-payment ot rent 
 that should not be in the sense of the Bill a disturbance of 
 the tenant by the landlord, for the tenant will disturb himsel 
 by non-payment of the rent. But as respects present hold- 
 ings, we add the following qualification : — 
 
 Unless the Court decide on special grounds that it ought to 
 he deemed a disturbance in the case of a person claiming compen- 
 sation on such determination of a tenancy existing at the time of the 
 passing of this Act." 
 
 Consequently in one of these cruel cases where there is really 
 a gross inequality to redress, supposing the man to make a 
 fair offer of full and competent rent and to decline to he 
 responsible for the excess, and supposing also that he was 
 ejected from his holding for being unable to pay, that 
 would he a matter for the jurisdiction of the Court, which | 
 might award to a man thus disturbed by the act of the 
 landlord something in regard to the destitute condition into 
 which he would be thrown and the injury he may he held to 
 have suffered. 
 
 Even out of Aiiotlier provlsioii of some importance, and one which 
 
 tenant must will casc tlic worldiig of tlic Bill, is that where the incom- 
 
 ing tenant, even out of Ulster, has paid a sum of money to the 
 good-will of outffoiiin tenant with the consent of the landlord, then if the 
 
 his farm in all O ^ i • • x x 4-/^ n-n" 
 
 cases where landlord will iiot allow him to dispose ot liis inteiest to an 
 
 wiii'ifJ°teen iiicomiug tenant, we provide that the Court shall have disci e- 
 It'conso'nfof tioii to make an award against the landlord in respect of the 
 
 the landlord. paid. 
 
 I adverted some time ago to the notice to quit as an in- 
 strument through which in some cases, but I hope and 
 believe not in many, most grievous suffering has been sys- 
 tematically inflicted. Now, as we have endeavoured to load 
 eviction with conditions which may prevent its being used as 
 an engine of arbitrary power, we think it also necessary to 
 Notices to clog the action of these notices to quit. A notice to quit must, 
 quit must bo according to the Bill, he a notice for twelve months, instead of 
 
 for twelve ^ 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 53 
 
 six ; the term of notice must commence from the last gale 
 day of the current year : and finally, every notice to quit must stamp duty of 
 bear a stamp duty of 2s. Qd. It is said that there are some 
 landlords in Ireland who entertain themselves from year to 
 year by printing notices to quit on the back of their receipts for 
 rent ; and it is certainly intended, if they should feel it neces- 
 sary for their own purposes to prosecute that amusement here- 
 after, that they shall find it more expensive than it has 
 been heretofore. 
 
 Then there is another provision which I must mention, Provision in 
 
 ^ .1 regard to 
 
 although I have already so long taxed the patience of the county cess. 
 House ; and it has relation to the county cess. We think 
 that this Bill affords a convenient opportunity for dealing 
 with the question of county cess. The House is awcare of the 
 recommendation made by a Committee of this House that the 
 county cess should be placed upon the same footing as the 
 poor’s rates, with regard to its relation to the owner and 
 occupier. We propose to assimilate it to the poor rate ; but 
 we hesitate to effect the change at once in regard to all hold- 
 ings whatsoever. We therefore propose the following two-fold 
 enactment. In the first place, in all new tenancies one moiety 
 of the county cess shall be paid by the landlord and the other 
 moiety by the tenant, according to the mode in which the pay- 
 ment of the poor’s rate is now regulated; and in every old 
 tenancy under £4 in value the occupier shall at once be relieved 
 of it. We think that every landlord in Ireland w^ould be dis- 
 posed to say, with regard to these small holdings, where the 
 sum is insignificant, that the change had better be made at 
 once ; but this plan could not be followed in the case of the 
 larger holdings without causing probable disturbance to ex- 
 isting arrangements of rent, and this would be a disturbance 
 which, particularly at the present moment, we should be 
 very sorry to bring about. 
 
 Now, I think I have completed my very imperfect state- 
 ment of the provisions of this great and necessarily complex 
 measure. There are subjects of importance to which I have 
 not adverted at all, and there are others on which I have but 
 slightly touched, because I know that there are limits to the 
 capacity of human attention, and I feel that those limits have 
 
54 
 
 IRISH LAND BILL. 
 
 The Bill will 
 afford im- 
 proved secu- 
 rity of tenure 
 to the occu- 
 pier, and im- 
 proved secu- 
 rity of rent 
 to the land- 
 lord. 
 
 What the Bill 
 rtoes for the 
 Irish labourer. 
 
 been reached. We have toiled hard in the construction of this 
 measure, hut we are far from believing it to be perfect ; and we 
 invite, in unreserved good faith, the co-operation of all parties 
 and of all Members of this House. Our desire is that when 
 it has received the sanction of the Legislature it may become 
 a great gift to Ireland, and may put an end to the grievances 
 and sufferings which have so long accompanied the tenure 
 of land in that country. We found it necessary to propose a 
 Bill which, in our judgment, should be adequate. We sought 
 to give security of tenure to the occupiers of the soil ; and 
 this we found it impossible to do by any less operative mea- 
 sure than that of, firstly, by attaching to evictions such con- 
 ditions as would render them impolitic and difficult on the 
 part of the landlord, unless there existed strong and most 
 legitimate reasons why he should resort to this extremest 
 remedy ; and, secondly, of securing the evicted tenant, 
 if he had fulfilled his contract, from the danger and the fear 
 of being thrown out upon the world without carrying with 
 him a fair and reasonable compensation — not only for the 
 improvements which he had effected, but also for the depriva- 
 tion of those means of livelihood which had been afforded him 
 by the occupation of the land from which he was evicted. But 
 we have not knowingly at least proceeded in any spirit of par- 
 tizanship, and as we have afforded the occupier improved 
 security of tenure, so also have we afforded the landlord im- 
 proved security for his rent, and improved security, as we 
 think, for the better cultivation of his land ; indeed we have, 
 I hope not unwisely, given him powers against the unautho- 
 rized sub-letting and sub-dividing of his property, which he 
 does not now enjoy ; for the tenant, if he choose to resort to 
 such a practice, will lose some of the greatest advantages offered 
 him by this Bill. In addition to this, we have likewise given 
 to the landlord free scope to intercept by means of leases, if he 
 thinks fit, the more exceptional operation of the Bill. 
 
 I may now, perhaps, be asked what we have done for the 
 Irish labourer. For him we have done what the case will 
 permit. We have allowed the tenant to sub-divide and sub- 
 let for cottages and gardens to be let to the labourers em- 
 ployed upon the holding ; and, in ofiering from the public 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 55 
 
 funds facilities for the acquisition of land, we have been 
 careful not to exclude the acquisition of land in small quan- 
 tities. But the only great boon — and it is a great boon — which 
 it is in the power of the Legislature to give to the agricultural 
 labourer in Ireland is to increase the demand for his labour, 
 and by imparting a stimulus to the agriculture of that country, 
 to insure its requiring more strong arms to carry it on, and 
 thereby to bring more bidders into the market for those arms, 
 and raise the natural and legitimate price of their labour. 
 Unless we are mistaken, one of the specific evils which has 
 arisen from the practice of exacting an increased rent in pro- 
 portion to an increased produce is, that many a small occupier 
 is, out of fear of having to pay more for his holding, led to 
 convert his tillage into pasture, or to keep land in pasture 
 which ought to be converted into tillage. By either course of 
 proceeding he lessens the demand for agricultural labour. But, 
 if we can only convince every man that from the time this Act 
 passes he will be able to prosecute his industry in security, and 
 in the manner most advantageous to himself, so that all the 
 land that is fit for tillage may be devoted to tillage, and that, 
 in a word, the noble pursuit of agriculture shall be practically 
 as well as theoretically free, we, in so doing, shall confer 
 upon the agricultural labourer the greatest boon which it is 
 in our power to bestow. 
 
 But, I may be asked why I think this Bill will be accepted, 
 and what we believe will be its effect. Well, Sir, I reply 
 that in our judgment the first effect of this Bill will be to 
 render the landlords liable to charges which they do not at 
 the present moment incur; but in landlords — speaking of 
 them as a class — I repose so much of confidence, that they 
 will consent to bear the heavy responsibilities which attach 
 to that species of property. I have known heretofore, and 
 within the walls of this House, appeals made to the posses- 
 sors of this great and primary form of property in this country 
 to come forward freely for the general advantage — in which, of 
 course, their own advantage is ultimately involved — and to 
 bear burdens not hitherto laid upon them ; and I have seen 
 such an appeal freely and readily responded to. Of course, the 
 general effect of this measure is to impose the possibility of 
 
 General ef- 
 fect and pro- 
 spects of the 
 Bill. 
 
56 
 
 lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 ail immediate loss upon the landlord. The landlord will 
 absolutely lose his claim to many improvements heretofore 
 made by his tenant, and if he evicts he will be subject to 
 customary payment, or to payment under the scale of damages. 
 But I am not prepared to admit that in the operation of this 
 Bill, if it be in truth a well-devised measure for its end, 
 the landlord will be ultimately a loser. It is my firm belief 
 that he will be an ultimate gainer. In this matter it does 
 not follow that what you take from one party you give to 
 another, even though it be possible that there may be a 
 loss in the first effort at rectifying their relations. With 
 regard to the controversy whether Ireland is rented high 
 or low — my belief is that if you look on the one hand to the 
 quality and capacity of the soil of Ireland, and on the other 
 hand to the condition of those who own and cultivate it, the 
 land is rented low for the most part with relation to what the 
 landlord receives, and yet in very many cases high as regards 
 that share of the produce which the tenant obtains ; and 
 in now endeavouring to secure increased prosperity for the 
 tenant we are pursuing this design by giving him encourage- 
 ment and facility to extract it from the soil, and not by taking 
 a single farthing from the pockets of the landlord. There is, 
 as I believe, a huge fund of national wealth in the soil, as 
 yet undeveloped. Every traveller in Ireland tells you that 
 there is abundant wealth in the soil if you had but a better 
 system of tenure, and that were the people but encouraged to 
 use more freely their great energies in their agricultural 
 pursuits, we should speedily witness a great increase in the 
 produce of the land. That increase some place at 30, some 
 at 40, and others at 50 per cent ; some even do not scruple 
 to carry it to a still higher figure. But any of these estimates 
 — and I believe the lowest to be much within the mark — 
 represents a fund which does not now exist for any practical 
 purpose, but which this Act will probably call into active 
 and prolific existence — a fund which will be available primarily 
 for the benefit of the tenant, but ultimately, without doubt, 
 also for the benefit of the landlord. If, however, this pro- 
 position should be questioned, I ask you to fall back in mind 
 to the figures I have given you in connection with Ulster, 
 
lEISH LAND BILL. 
 
 57 
 
 and to look to the security of rent and the larger produce in 
 that Province as compared with the other Provinces of Ire- 
 land. I am persuaded, Sir, that if only we have the 
 assistance of this House in adjusting the provisions of the 
 Bill no long time will elapse before the landlord will have 
 cause to rejoice not less than the tenant in the adoption of 
 measure by the Legislature. And if, on the other hand, I 
 am asked why I believe the Bill will be accepted by the 
 tenant, I will say that, though it does not profess to transfer 
 to others the rights of the landlord in the soil, I still believe 
 it will be accepted, and I found this belief upon a firm convic- 
 tion of the truth of that remarkable declaration which was made 
 two centuries and a half ago by one of the most acute observers 
 of his day, Sir John Davies, the Attorney General of James 
 the First, whose writings upon Ireland are even now full of 
 interest and instruction. In those writings are contained these 
 memorable words — There is no nation of people under the 
 sun that doth love equal and indifferent justice better than 
 the Irish.” That w^as true in the 17th century, and nothing 
 that has since happened has tended, in my mind, to shake its 
 truth. The Irish people, as lovers of justice, while demand- 
 ing justice for themselves, will desire justice for others. 
 Justice for themselves will have been obtained when they are 
 able to pursue their industry in peace and confidence, with 
 a certainty of reaping its fruits. More than that they will not 
 ask ; and as the whole aim of this Bill is to secure for them 
 those great advantages, I am persuaded that they will accept 
 it as a just and valuable boon. 
 
 And if, again, I am asked what I hope to effect by this 
 Bill, I certainly hope we shall effect a great changedn Ireland ; 
 but I hope also — and confidently believe — that this change 
 will be accomplished by gentle means. Every line of the mea- 
 sure has been studied with the keenest desire that it shall 
 import as little as possible of shock or violent alteration into 
 any single arrangement now existing between landlord and 
 tenant in Ireland. There is, no doubt, much to be undone 
 — there is, no doubt, much to be improved — but what we de- 
 sire is that the work of this Bill should be like the work of 
 Nature herself when on the face of a desolated land she 
 
58 
 
 IRISH LAND BILL. 
 
 restores what has been laid waste by the wild and savage 
 hand of man. Its operations, we believe, will be quiet and 
 gradual. We wish to alarm none ; we wish to injure no one. 
 What we wish is that where there has been despondency 
 there shall be hope; where there has been mistrust there 
 shall be confidence ; where there has been alienation and 
 hate, there shall, however gradually, be woven the ties of a 
 strong attachment between man and man. This we know 
 cannot be done in a day. The measure has reference to evils 
 wdiich have been long at work, their roots strike far back into 
 bygone centuries ; and it is against the ordinance of Provi- 
 dence, as it is against the interest of man, that immediate 
 reparation should in such cases be possible ; for one of the 
 main restraints of misdoing w^ould be removed if the con- 
 sequences of misdoing could in a moment receive a remedy. 
 For such reparation and such effects it is^ that we look from ^ 
 this Bill ; and we reckon on them not less surely and not less 
 confidently because we know they must be gradual and slow ; 
 and because we are likewise aware that if it be poisoned by 
 the malignant agency of angry or of bitter passions, it cannot 
 do its proper work. In order that there may be a hope of its 
 entire success it must be passed — not as a triumph of party 
 over party, or class over class ; not as the lifting up of an 
 ensign to record the downfall of that which has once been 
 great and powerful — but as a common work of common 
 love and good-will to the common good of our common 
 country. With such objects, and in such a spirit as that, 
 this House will address itself to the work, and sustain the 
 feeble efforts of the Government. And my hope, at least, 
 is high and ardent that we shall live to see our w^ork prosper 
 in our hand, and that in that Ireland wdiich we desire to unite 
 to England and Scotland by the only enduring ties, those of 
 free will and free affection, peace, order, and a settled and 
 cheerful industry will diffuse their blessings from year to year, 
 and from day to day, over a smiling land. 
 
 M ;* 0 0 U J Q 
 
 LOXDOX : CORNELIUS BUCK, 23 , PA.TERNOSTER ROW, 
 
ACME 
 
 BOOKBINDING CO., INC. 
 NOV 1 5 1983 
 
 100 CAMSRIDGE STREET 
 CHARLESTOWN, MASS. 
 
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