M
?T OF 4. /
X GIFT OF
THE CLASS OF 1895
NORTHWESTERN
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
EVANSTON
ILLINOIS
IRELAND
FOR
THE IRISH.
lEELAND
FOR
THE lEISH:
A PRACTICAL, PEACEABLE, AND JUST SOLUTION
OF THE IRISH LAND QUESTION.
DEDICATED TO LORD VISCOUNT STANLEY,
BY
HENRY O'NEILL, Artist.
**Nothing ought to he exclusive property that can be enjoyed in common."
Palet's Moral Phil., b. iii.
LONDON ;
TRÜBNER AND CO., PATERNOSTER ROW.
dth^daIíE: h. o'neill, franoes-street.
1868.
[_All Right» Reserved.1
PRINTED BY PETER ROE,
MABBOT-STREET, DUBLIN.
TO LORD VISCOUNT STANLEY.
" I might have told Ireland I pitied her lot,
Might have sooth'd her with hope—but you know I did not."
T. Mooke—8. and H. Poems.
My Lord,
I take the liberty of dedicating this
work to you, because of your high character as
a Statesman, and the elevated position you hold
in the Cabinet. I wish to call your attention
to the proposals I advocate for the good of
Ireland.
You need scarcely be told that your speech,
delivered at Bristol on the 22nd of January
last, is one of great importance. In Ireland the
Land Question is of paramount consequence ;
and the opinions of a distinguished Member of
the Government on this Irish enigma are received
in this country with that anxious earnestness
vi DEDICATION.
naturally arising from a subject of such
momentous interest.
In the report of the speech to which 1 have
referred, you are stated to have expressed dis¬
approval of certain suggestions for converting
the present Irish tenants of small farms into
independent proprietors. In this respect I fully
concur with you ; it is also stated that you said
you cannot tell what ought to be done, and that
you are willing to do what is right.
Under these circumstances you can understand
why I dedicate this work to you, as it states the
plan by which the Irish Land Question can be
settled in a just and a peaceable way, and one
which would be a thorough, and is the only proper
remedy for Ireland's monster evil, landlordism.
The plan I propose is the result of much
experience and reflection. Your lordship will see
that I mention having travelled over nearly the
whole of Ireland, and under circumstances which
afforded me excellent opportunities for knowing
the state of the country and the condition of
its people.
DEDICATION. YÜ
My long and extensive experience, combined
with careful observation, enables me to speak
with confidence, when others, of less knowledge,
are quite puzzled as to what should be done.
I wish much that you would visit Ireland, and
judge for yourself ; this is the proper way of
investigation. You may rely on my statements,
in case you cannot personally verify them; and
any assertions I make I would substantiate with
pleasure, if called on for that purpose.
My lord, it is on behalf of millions of British
subjects that I address you; it is on behalf of
my country, which has so long and so cruelly
been ill-used by yours. I plead for justice for
a moral, an intellectual, and an oppressed race.
The Irish cannot remain as they are ; their
wrongs must have an end. Be it your glory
that to the utmost of your power you have
endeavoured to remove the main cause of the
sufferings of this ill-used country.
The plan I propose is just, peaceful, and practical.
Use your power to do an act of humanity and
right to Ireland. Be assured, my lord, that if not
viii DEDICATION.
done legally and quickly, there is every danger
that forcible measures may be resorted to. May
heaven avert from us the horrors of a social
convulsion ! Whether successful or not, disastrous
consequences are sure to result.
Remember the cost of Irish disaffection ; think
of the value of Irish loyalty. Society has been
deranged ; many men of respectable social
positions imprisoned ; some lives have been
lost by the feeble outbreak of discontent with
England's rule which took place lately; neither
the jail nor the scaffold has diminished disloyalty,
—far otherwise;—it can only be stayed by just
legislation. If not so stayed — I repeat my
solemn warning—the Irish will try the remedy
so often recommended by the aristocratic Press
of England for " the oppressed nationalities of
Europe." I hope such a fearful trial may never
be required.
Do justice to Ireland ; do what would satisfy the
consciences of intelligent, moral men ; abandon the
rule of force; adopt that of Christian morality;
do by us as you would be done by; spare our
DEDICATION. ix
liberty ; spare our lives ; deserve our loyalty ;
win our affection.
Erase the bitter memories
of the past by simple justice.
We ask no more!
Your lordship's
obedient servant,
H. O'NEILL.
Dundalk, June, 1868.
CONTENTS.
Page
Dedication to Lord Viscount Stanley ... v.
Introduction 1
Ch. I. A Description of Ireland . . . .11
II. Who Own Ireland ? 14
III. How is Ireland Cultivated ? . . . .17
rV. Uncultivated Lands 21
V. Why not Planted ? 27
VI. Irish Land-lords' Power . . . . .32
Vn. Emigration 45
Vni. The English Press 50
IX. By What Eight do the Land-lords hold Ireland ? 63
X. What does Ireland pay for Landlordism ? . 75
XI. Feudalism and Landlordism .... 85
XII. Associated Proprietary 98
XTTT. The Perfect Cure 104
Summary 116
INTRODUCTION.
" The evil that men do lives after them,"
Shakespeare, Julius Ccssar.
The natural productiveness of Ireland, and the
abilities of the Irish people, are in sad contrast
to its present imperfect state of cultivation, and
to the discomfort and discontent which prevail
amongst its population.
Within the last forty years the means for pro¬
moting civilization, intelligence, and material
wealth have been developed in Ireland to an
extent which is unparalleled in history. Railways
have afforded the advantages of rapid intercourse
at very moderate charges, and have enabled pro¬
duce to be transmitted to markets which were
previously beyond access. Steam navigation has
served the same useful purpose. Agricultural
chemistry has been carefully studied: new and
efficient fertilizers have been discovered. Agri¬
cultural implements have been much improved,
and agriculture itself has taken the position of a
science. Newspapers and other literary produc¬
tions have been greatly reduced in price. These
form some of the means of social progress of which
B
2
imaoDucTioN.
we have had the command within the time above
mentioned ; yet they have failed to produce their
natural, proper effect on us.
Our agricultural products are diminishing ; our
population, instead of becoming more numerous,
wealthy, and happy, is decreasing with fearful
rapidity, and is a prey to poverty and discontent ;
railways and steamboats have furnished facilities
for the Irish to quit their native land ; literature
has but served to make them more fully sensible
of their sad lot, and more disgusted with some of
the laws under which they live. Thus Ireland
presents the extraordinary fact of a people not
progressing, although they have most powerful
means for advancement at their disposal.
This condition of Ireland is the reverse of what
could have been possibly anticipated by political
philosophers, who overlooked this one circum¬
stance, that Ireland belongs to a few thousand
land-lords, who possess a complete monopoly.
These have, in consequence of their power, been
able to get any benefits that have resulted firom
the improvements I have mentioned ; and hence
it is that, while some few persons have been en¬
riched, the nation has not ; and that, while the
Irish people justly complain of many evils due to
erroneous legislation, the monster evil of Ireland
is landlordism.
Irish landlordism is a thoroughly English in-
INTRODUCTION.
3
stitution. For five hundred years has England
been seizing on portions of our island, and plant¬
ing English people on the pillaged lands. The
history of these seizures, and of the struggles for
five centuries of our brave ancestors to oppose
them, is stated in many a book, and is the rubric
of every true Irish heart. I will not go over the
bloody story now, another time will answer better ;
but I may shortly mention that Queen Elizabeth,
after a desolating war of sixteen years' duration,
confiscated five hundred thousand acres of our
land in the South of Ireland; this was in 1584.
Her successor had hardly ascended the English
throne when he also confiscated another half-
million of acres of our lands in the North of
Ireland (in 1606). Another fifty years and Crom¬
well the ruthless, after most brutal, cold-blooded
slaughterings of our forefathers, having subdued
the Irish, confiscated three-fourths of this fine
country. Another half-century had not passed
away till William III. triumphed over the people
of Ireland, and again was confiscation of our lands
the result. Such is one hundred years' lamentable
history of our country.
From our lands thus seized on by our con¬
querors, our people, if possible, were to be ex¬
pelled. English and Scotch people were invited
to come and take possession of Ireland. The Irish
might go anywhere out of their own land ; here
4
INTRODUCTION.
they must not stay. They might be slaughtered
on the highway, and many were so slaughtered ;
the men and the boys might be transported as
slaves to work in the West Indies for English
land owners, and shiploads of them were so en¬
slaved ; our girls and our marriageable women
might be sent out to those same West-Indian
land-lords, because they complained of a want of
females for their lustful use, and shiploads of Irish
women were seized and transported to gratify the
passions of these Englishmen. Cromwell and his
Puritan government became procurers for the
West-Indian planters.
So it was in the Commonwealth days. We
were slaughtered for defending our property and
our lives ; cold-blooded murders in open day were
legalized; West-Indian slavery was the fate of
thousands ; enslaving and debauching our women
were lawful. English land-lords, English land-
tillers, and no Irish to be suffered on their own
lands : these were the acts, these were the rules of
the tranquillizers of Ireland in brutal Cromwell's
days.
Yet we were not tranquillized!
Since the victory of William of Orange, at the
end of the seventeenth century, England has
ruled supreme in Ireland. For one hundred and
seventy-eight years England has had Ireland at
her feet. England placed land-lords over us ; it
INTRODUCTION.
5
sent its own English and Scotch land-tillers into
our country ; it made the land-laws for this
island. During that very long period England
has been complete master in this country. The
lion growling over its writhing victim is not more
triumphantly dominant. England has had full
power over Ireland.
What is the result?
At the end of nearly two centuries of English
supreme rule, one-fourth of Ireland is lying waste ;
scarcely any part of it is properly cultivated, and
the people are so disgusted with English govern¬
ing, that they are ready to burst out into open
rebellion whenever there is a chance of success.
England's land-lords and England's land-laws have
not succeeded in Ireland.
Our farmers are little better than serfs; the
tillers of the soil are in an abject state of poverty
and of subjugation ; they are also in a dangerous
state of discontent. It is unreasonable to think
that the master-and-slave relations between land¬
lord and tenant can continue, or that this country
can prosper with the great bulk of its population
steeped in poverty, and a prey to sullen discontent ;
such a condition is destructive to a nation.
English confiscations,English land-lords, English
land-laws, and English land-tillers, have all failed
to make us satisfied with English domination.
Can such a change be made as would remove
6
INTRODÜCTIOW.
the great evil of Ireland, the land-lords? and can
that change he made peaceably and justly? After
nearly two hundred years of unbounded oppor¬
tunity to try English landlordism in Ireland, it is
surely not asking too much to demand a change
from this broken-down system.
The plan I propose would induce the land-lords
to dispose of their legal rights ; it would put an
end to land monopoly in Ireland ; it would do
justice to us by realizing the patriotic aspiration of
"IRELAND FOR THE IRISH."
Several persons of undoubtedly great ability,
and with the kindest dispositions, who know the
wretched state of our agricultural population,
have proposed plans for improving the relations
between land-lord and tenant.
Mr. Bright suggests that the State should buy
up the land-lord's rights, and become itself land¬
lord.
We have tried State land-lords too long in
Ireland already, and could not expect that England
would be better in the future than she has been
in the past.—We have a well-founded dread of
English landlordism.
Mr. Dix Hutton proposes that Government
should aid the tenants to purchase their farms,
and so make them squireens over pocket estates
of a few acres,—a plan by which our land-lords
INTRODUCTION.
7
would be increased at least some hundredfold,—
a strange way of remedying the evil by multiplying
the causes of our misery.
Tenant right, by which the holder is possessed
in perpetuity of his farm so long as he pays his
rent, is another mode of the multiplying-remedy.
Mr. Isaac Butt has proposed a sixty-three years'
holding, with many very useful suggestions for
regulating the land-lord and tenant arrangements.
These plans have, for their main purpose, to
abrogate the power now possessed by Irish land¬
lords of tenancy at will and summary eviction^
Their talented propounders have not considered
the great question of political philosophy which
Paley thus expresses :—
"As THE LAND WAS ONCE COMMON TO ALL, BY WHAT
RIGHT COULD ANY PART OF IT BE TAKEN BY ONE PERSON TO
THE EXCLUSION OF ALL OTHERS."—Foley's Moral FhiL,
T •••
O. 111.
Another omission in these plans is that the
proposed improvement in the tenant's condition
is limited to the land-tillers. Now land rents in
towns are incomparably heavier than they are in
the country. It is true that building ground
tenancy is not at will, but if a complaint of being
rack-rented is often just with respect to farmers,
how much more so is it respecting rents of land
for building on? The farmer pays a few pounds
an acre for productive land ; ground to build on
8
INTRODUCTION.
is charged in many cases at the rate of several
hundred pounds an acre ; in some instances thou¬
sands of pounds per acre are paid for land mono¬
poly in towns. The place thus highly rented may
be a barren rock ; at all events, as it is for building
purposes, it is wholly unproductive.
The agricultural tenant very properly complains
of the powers now possessed by the land-lord of
summary eviction and non-compensation for im¬
provements ; the monopolist who lets building
ground has in general the same powers.
The measures proposed in the following pages
comprehend not only relieving tenants in town
and country from injustice, but also that landlord¬
ism shall be done away with, and the land be made
national property, to be managed by national land
guardians, and for national purposes.
It is not a revolution of force that is recom¬
mended. The just rights of the land-lords are
proposed to be purchased, so that they may
voluntarily part with their injurious monopoly.
The modes for purchasing the lands, providing
the funds, managing the national property, and
using the national land income are stated.
To recommend the buying up of all private ter¬
ritorial monopolies, and to explain how Ireland
could, in a peaceable way, be made the property
of the Irish people, are my objects in this publica¬
tion.
INTRODUCTION.
9
In illustrating the effects of Irish landlordism,
and commenting on these effects, I do not wish to
be understood as stating that all land-lords act in
the way pointed out ; it is the evil powers of land¬
lordism I attack. I admit that the land-lords only
use their legal rights, but these rights are ruinous
to Ireland. I understand that the land-laws of
Ireland and England are the same—perhaps so,—
but the conditions of the two countries are not ;
the immense manufactories of England give em¬
ployment, and check land competition: Ireland
has not that relief.
THE LAND OR DEATH is the alternative
with most of our small farmers.
Neither do I ascribe our land-lord evils to the
English people; their aristocracy has been an
affliction to them as well as to us ; not so much
certainly, because in England the manufacturing
and commercial classes are a counterbalance to the
land-lords,—we have no such check.
The facts stated in this work respecting the
neglected state of this country, its capabilities, its
cultivation, and the condition of its population, are
mainly the result of personal experience. I have
travelled much in Ireland, observed its condition,
mixed with its people ; naturally good powers for
noting what I see, have been quickened by the
circumstances of my being an Irishman who takes
a deep interest in his country's welfare, and who
B 2
10
IWTRODUCTIOW.
has children rising to take their places in the
fearful struggle of life.
I know the deplorable abasement of my
country, and seek to do my best for its exaltation.
CHAPTER I.
A DESCRIPTION OF IRELAND.
" The emerald gem of the western world."
Moobb.
Ireland is a most noble island ; it contains about
twenty-one millions of acres, and is capable of pro¬
ducing excellent crops of the staple articles of
consumption in such abundance that a far larger
population than is living here at present could be
supported in great comfort.
Its present population is a little above five mil¬
lions ; some persons have estimated that Ireland is
capable of subsisting ten times that number.
The mountains are well adapted for the growth
of useful timber, as oak, ash, elm, beech, pine,
larch, birch, yew, &c. Formerly the island was
well wooded, but now nearly all the mountains
are destitute of trees.
Besides an abundance of excellent building stone
and marbles, there are many mines of lead mixed
with silver; of copper, iron, sulphur, salt, coals,
and some gold ; as well as other precious minerals.
There are several good rivers, many noble lakes,
excellent harbours, abundance of both sea and
12
A DESCRIPTION OF IRELAND.
fresh water fish. There are neither dangerous
wild animals nor noxious reptiles.
This island has a mild, healthy, and genial cli¬
mate ;'hot very hot in summer, and seldom severely
cold in winter. Hurricanes and great thunder¬
storms are rare. The scenery in many places
is extremely beautiful, and altogether this fine
country is admirably adapted for human beings.
The natives of Ireland are of a quick, lively dis¬
position. Some of the greatest warriors, lawyers,
statesmen, divines, orators, poets, painters, archi¬
tects, sculptors, and other intellectual men and
women of which Europe can boast, have been bom
in this country.
With the advantages Ireland possesses, it might
be naturally supposed that the population is nume¬
rous, comfortable, and contented; the facts are
just the reverse, the population is scant, and is
diminishing daily; a large part of the people is
steeped in poverty, and a strong discontent,
amounting very often to sullen disloyalty, is burn¬
ing at the nation's heart.
Emigration is going on at a fearful rate.
Two hundred thousand persons leave Ireland
annually ; the money cost of their passage
being above a million of pounds sterling. Those
who emigrate generally do well, and send home
money to their relatives to assist these to quit
Ireland, or to aid them while they have to remain.
A DESCRIPTION OF IRELAND.
13
The poor Irish wanderer never forgets his
native land. The poet only expressed his life-long
feeling when he wrote of Ireland—
" Remember tbee ? yes, while there's life in this heart,
It shall never forget thee, all lorn as thou art ;
More dear in thy sorrow, thy gloom, and thy showers,
Than the rest of the world in their sunniest hours."
" Wert thou all that I wish thee, great, glorious, and free.
First flower of the earth, and first gem of the sea,
I might hail thee with prouder, with happier brow.
But oh ! could I love thee more deeply than now ?"
Moore.
The Irish emigrant never forgets that Ireland
is his country, nor loses the hope of seeing his be¬
loved island freed from land-lord tyranny.
" The savage loves his native shore.
Though rude the soil,^and chill the air;
Then well may Erin's sons adore
Their isle which nature formed so fair."
J AM ks Ork.
The practical goodness of heart and self-denial
so many of these emigrants display by sending
sums of money to their relatives and friends, are
deserving of the highest admiration. Having a
photographic gallery gives me many opportunities
of hearing of the merit and generosity of those
expatriated Irish who liberally share their earnings
with the less fortunate relatives and friends they
have left behind.
Ireland is one of the finest islands in the world ;
u
WHO OWN IRELAND?
its natives are a highly gifted race, yet they are
steeped in poverty, and are flying from their be¬
loved island; this island being one of the most
valuable and most desirable in the habitable globe.
The purchase value of Ireland is, at least, one
thousand millions of pounds sterling. Ireland is
the emerald gem of the western world.
CHAPTER II.
WHO OWN IKELAND?
What God makes the landlord takes.
If a person who does not know how the fact really
is were asked. Who own Ireland? he would
naturally and unhesitatingly reply. Of course the
natives' ; they must, no doubt, be the owners of
Ireland. This very reasonable idea is the reverse
of fact.
This island is the property of a few thousand
persons, many of whom were not even born in Ire¬
land, most of whom do not live in it, and nearly
the whole of whom detest the country and its
people—such persons are no more to be considered
as Irish than are the aborigines of Australia ; their
"WHO OWN IHELANB ?
15
sympathies are what are called English, by which
is meant that they are anti-Irish.
Ireland for the Irish, is an honest, patriotic wish,
which has yet to be realized.
Nearly every acre of Ireland belongs to a few
thousand land-lords : they possess a complete mo¬
nopoly of the island. The mountains and the
valleys, the lakes and the rivers are theirs ; they
also own all the wild birds and beasts on the land,
and all the fish in the lakes and rivers ; they have
Ireland for one vast zoological garden. They
also own the precious mineral wealth that the
Almighty power of the universe has hidden in
the depths of the land.
There is one subject respecting the owners of
Ireland which must be noticed, that is, the rents
they draw out of the country. I have seen the
amount stated at four millions annually ; I suspect
this sum- is far too little ; but as absenteeism is
also injurious to our country in other ways, by
depriving us of the advantages naturally resulting
from a resident proprietary, I think we may fairly
set down our detriment from absentee land-lords
at from eight to ten millions of pounds per annum.
All this heavy loss results from England's acts
in forcing these foreigners on us. For nearly two
hundred years absenteeism has been draining us ;
it is actually a British brigandage on Ireland,
and Britain is in all justice bound to repay this
16
WHO OWN IRELAND ?
damage to us ; taking it at the very moderate sum
of two millions per annum for two centuries, it
amounts to four hundred millions of money, of
which Ireland has been plundered by English
land-lords; every penny of that is a just debt. I
hope England will pay this sum. The injury we
have suffered in consequence of English land¬
lords and land-laws, England can never satisfy.
Meantime, I trust that a stop will be put to
absenteeism at once ; no more looting by way of
absentee rents. If these foreigners will not stay
in Ireland, let their rents stay here.
All the gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, coals, salt,
and other minerals belong to the land-lords ; every
grain of sand on the sea shore, every fragment of
wreck cast upon the beach, the very seaweed that
grows in the sea, the oysters, the cockles, and
mussels belong to them; everything that money
can be made of they claim.
Ireland does not belong to the Irish ; it is
monopolized by a few thousand persons. It may
be said of nearly all the Irish that they do not
own as much of Ireland as would'sod a lark.
The land monopolists own every field that is
cultivated by Irish farmers, or grazed by Irish
flocks or herds; they own the bogs that yield turf,
and the bare rocks that yield nothing ; all the
land, cultivated or uncultivated, fertile or barren.
They also own the land on which every house
how is ireland cultivated ?
17
stands in every city, town, village, and hamlet in
Ireland.
In answer to the question, Who own Ireland ?
I reply,
Ireland belongs to a few thousand persons, who
are chiefly absentees, and are thereby as much
foreigners as if they were born and lived among
the primitive inhabitants of the Antipodes.
Eight thousand five hundred persons are land¬
lords, water-lords, game-lords, fish-lords, mine-
lords, sand-lords, sea weed-lords, wreck-lords, oyster-
lords, cockle-lords, and lords of anything else they
can make money of, but which they never made
themselyes.
CHAPTER III.
HOW IS IRELAND CULTIVATED ?
" Alas, poor country."—Shakespeare, Macbeth.
Let us now inquire. How is the land cultivated
under the proprietors placed over the Irish nation
by England ?
I have traversed the greater part of Ireland,
and have noticed the state of the land with respect
to its profitable use ; as an observation of a general
18
HOW IS IRELAND CULTIVATED ?
character, I agree with every writer on the subject
that the productive powers of Ireland are not
properly developed.
What the land has to produce are com and
root crops, pasturage, and timber.
As an instance of the management of thé land
with respect to its profitable use, let us take the
magnificent plain of Leinster, which lies between
the hills south of Dublin and those north of Dun-
dalk, sixty miles in extent each way; no place in
Ireland is more favourably circumstanced for de¬
veloping what Lord Dufferin styles " consummate
cultivation." It has Dublin on its coast, as well
as Drogheda and Dundalk, two other important
seaport towns. Dublin, including its extensive
suburbs, contains nearly half a million of persons ;
it is the chief port of transit between England and
Ireland, and is the capital of this island. The soil
of this Leinster plain is, in general, favourable for
agriculture. These combined advantages would
naturally induce the best farming; but any one
who has seen English farming is stmck with the
inferior character of the husbandry in this fiivoured
locality ; yet, except about Belfast, I have not seen
better farming in Ireland.
The weeds are often suffered to overran the
crops, and the corn fields are, at times while the
crop is still green, thick with a wild cabbage weed
called praiseach {brassica), the grazed land with
HO"W IS IRELAND CULTIVATED ?
19
ragwort, the meadows with crowsfoot, while the
ditch hanks are crowded with those pernicious
plants, docks, dandelion, thistles, couchgrass, and
kindred nuisances, of which there will almost
inevitably be some in the cultivated lands.
This management is very properly termed dirty
farming,—it is very inferior to what I have seen
in England.
The mode of farming in Ireland is, in many
respects, different from that in England ; the
English fields and farms are much larger, the horses
far more powerful, and the farm vehicles (waggons
in England, carts and cars in Ireland) used on the
English farms are a vast deal larger. I have never
seen in Ireland such barns as are usual on English
farms—immense structures for securing the com
crop of the farm under cover, and into which
the teams of great horses can draw the loaded
waggons.
Such barns are, I believe, no where in Ireland.
The little structures called barns in Ireland
form part of the out-offices, and serve merely for
thrashing com, storing the thrashed-out grain,
and similar uses.
In fact the farming operations in Ireland are,
in general, conducted on a very small scale;
the farms are mostly about ten acres, often less ;
a small cart, a small horse or an ass, a few
simple implements, a dung heap before the door.
20
HOW 18 IRELAND CULTIVATED ?
and such scanty means, or so much credit, as will
enable the tenant to crop the land and exist till he
can get in the produce, and you have the stock-in-
trade of the greater part of the Irish farmers.
As for a barn, that is a rarety ; I have seen the
corn thrashed on the public road, and winnowed
from a sieve on a breezy day in the grass field
behind the cabin.
The Irish small farmer has no plough, he
borrows one, and pays for the hire by working as
a day labourer; the out-offices of such a small
farmer would be an ass's shed, a pig-sty, and a
shelter for the ass's car beneath the rick of turf.
I need hardly say that I have been describing
the humblest of the Irish small farmers.
Irish farming is far behind the farming I have
seen in England. Scotch farming is said to be the
best in the British islands, and Irish farming the
worst.
Quite close to Dublin farming is rather carefully
conducted,—it must be so to pay £10 or £12 an
acre rent, besides county rates and cess,—but
within four or five miles of that great city slovenly
farming is often seen.
uncultivated lands.
21
CHAPTER IV.
UNCULTIVATED LANDS.
" Nature's awful waste."—Campbell's Last Man.
We have seen the imperfect way in which land is
cultivated in this country, and that this slovenly
farming is carried on even close to Dublin ; I have
now to show that large tracts of land, which admit
of profitable cropping, are left wholly unctiltivated
and profitless ; in fact nearly one-fourth of Ireland
is lying waste.
On the bleak sides of mountains in the County
Wicklow, where now the land is wholly unproduc¬
tive, there are the traces of cultivation; these are
ascribed to the ancient Irish before the English
came into this country, and when the hills around
Lough Dan bore noble trees, some trunks of which
I have Seen disinterred. At present these hills are
in stern nakedness. If these hills were timber
clothed, not only would a shelter be given by the
woods to such crops as might be cultivated on the
open and suitable spaces, but the land, now sterile,
would be fertilized by the leaves and other drop¬
pings from the trees, to say nothing of the value
of the timber crop.
The soil of America has been so enriched by its
22
UNCULTIVATED LANDS.
timber that, for fifty years, lands, cleared of their
woods, have been annually cropped, and yielded
fine harvests without any manuring.
I have seen ancient furrows in other counties
where now no crop could be raised.
The County Wicklow is near Dublin ; its nearest
boundary is only ten miles from Dublin.
The climate of this county is particularly mild,
the scenery lovely, soil good, people gentle, peace¬
able, loyal, obliging ; yet, except in some favoured
districts near the coast, this beautiful and alluring
county is destitute of gentry, and a large part of
it is totally desolate. I have walked through this
neglected waste, in the middle of a fine summer's
tlay, above ten miles of the public road without
seeing a human being, and this, remember, only a
few miles from Dublin ; in this long distance there
is not a house, not a cabin. I started a few grouse,
and saw one starved frog, no other signs of life,
not as much as a house fly ; it was "Nature's awful
waste," such as Thomas Campbell describes in
" The Last Man," and I felt as dreary, as lonely,
and heart-sunken as the poet's imaginary remnant
of humanity.
This tract is over fifty square miles in extent—
fifty square miles, not ten miles from Dublin,
totally uninhabited except in a few narrow valleys !
thirty-two thousand acres producing nothing but
worthless heath and the coarsest rushy grass.
UNCULTIVATED LANDS.
23
I need scarcely add that this is a mountain
district.
A fine road traverses this desolate region ; the
rock is granite, aud some micacious schist ; the
soil, as usual on Irish mountains, dry hog, in some
places of great depth, possibly twenty feet or more
of dry turf bog. An excellent road was made
through this district about the commencement of
the present century ; some of the deep turf banks
were then cut through. I have seen embedded in
these banks as fine stems of oak as ever grew ; I
have not seen finer growing anywhere in Keland.
These stems are the remains of ancient forests.
Ireland, formerly so abounded in trees that it
was called the wooded island. Now Ireland is
very bare of timber. These fine trees and these
marks of cultivation show that the place is well
suited for the growth of timber, and that, if judi¬
ciously planted, the waste land could, in some
places, be cultivated for grain crops.
More than half the Co. Wicklow is waste land.
Extract from Jonathan Pirn's " Condition and Prospects
of Ireland, 1848."
(P. 115.) " It is impossible for those who have not
visited the western coast of Ireland to form an adequate
idea of that country or of the condition of its inhabitants.
The land is occupied for the most part by vast and dreary
bogs, and wet or rocky mountains ; it is generally quite
destitute of trees for many miles inland ; there are pro-
24
UNCULTIVATED LANDS.
bably thousands of women and children on the western
coast who have never seen a shrub more than four feet
high. The cultivated portions lie in small patches, gene¬
rally on the borders of rivers. From the moisture of the
climate and the depth of the bogs, many of which consist
of the decayed remains of ancient forests, the task of
draining and reclaiming them for purposes of tillage must
be one of great diflSculty, involving an amount of outlay
utterly beyond the reach of most of the present occupiers or
proprietors."
(170.) " The cultivation of waste lands in Ireland has
often been proposed No one can doubt the
important results which must ensue."
He mentions waste land being reclaimed by
allowing cottiers to have it rent free for a few
years, and when reclaimed either they had to pay
rent or give it up.
That much of our bog land could be cultivated
either for food crops or for wood crops, is beyond
doubt, but a more extensive system of draining
than the present proprietors can act on is necessary
in many cases.
The bogs on the Shannon, below Athlone, are
so extensive that they look like a vast sea of dreary
brown, yet in many places they are well elevated
above the river ; and even where subject to
flooding, from lying low, -they could be well
drained by a proper regulation of the Shannon
itself.
Again, the dreary tract of bogs which lies
UNCULTIVATED LANDS.
25
between Kibush and Kilkee, in the Co. Clare,
and which is peculiarly wild and exposed to the
Atlantic hurricanes, so much so that the cottiers,
to prevent their roofs being whirled off, are
obliged to cover them with a strong network
of ropes which is held on by numbers of heavy
stones ; even this land of storms would bear
timber, for timber is found in the bogs, a proof of
trees having grown there formerly, and there are
two trees actually there ; stunted and gnarled as
they are, the wonder is how they have outlived the
bleak loneliness of their trying situation ; these
are the only trees for many miles around, they
stand by the roadside in front of a house, and in
one of them a couple of magpies have had their
nest for years. As these trees grow there, un¬
sheltered as they are, a number of trees would
grow much better, and they would serve to shelter
the cropped land, and also be a source of profit
in themselves.
It is a notion with some that trees will not grow
in bogs ; this is an error. I have not only seen the
roots of ancient forests, in their natural position, in
bogs, but have seen plantations thriving, and full
grown timber living and doing well in bogs.
Is it not deplorable that millions of acres are
profitless, which, if properly drained and planted
or cropped would be a great source of national
wealth to this poor country?
c
26
UNCULTIVATED LANDS.
The tendency of the land of Ireland is to
become boggy • this is owing to the humid nature
of the air, and its rather low and equable tempera¬
ture : it is counteracted by draining and cultivation.
Thus we see that millions of acres, now all but
useless, could be advantageously cropped.
A remarkable instance of tree roots in bogs in
their natural position occurs near Youghal, on the
south of that town ; the sea coast there is shingle
and sand, beneath these is bog ; all pure turf as
far as low water mark, how much farther I cannot
say ; but the sand having been swept off by a
storm left the understratum of bog bare, and there
I saw at nearly a quarter of a mile from high
water mark, and where there, must be several feet
in depth of water when the tide is in, the roots
and stumps of large trees in their places as they
grew. There are bog and timber also under the
sea at Tramore, Co. Waterford, and at that very
wild place. Whiting bay, same county; also very
deep bog under Lough Ouler, Co. Cavan : these I
have seen.
There are many lakes in this country which
cover bogs ; a proper system of drainage would
carry off the water ; thus not only gaining
additional land, but also raising the temperature
of the island, which is kept low by the great
quantity of surface water on it at present. It
would be a great advantage if the annual amount
why not planted ?
27
of heat in this country could be increased ; water
has a great avidity for heat, and, by absorbing it,
lowers the temperature ; this, in Ireland, is a
downright evil. A course of proper draining
would make the climate of Ireland warmer.
CHAPTER V.
WHY NOT PLANTED?
" There is a pleasure in the pathless woods."—Byron.
About one-fourth of. Ireland is waste, that is,
above five millions of- acres. These immense
and profitless tracts could bear excellent timber
crops.
Why not planted ?
The answer is, because the land is owned by
Irish land-lords. The proprietors are unwilling,
in many cases unable, to defray the heavy
cost of putting in timber crops.
A timber crop is very expensive to plant, and
many years must elapse before there is any
profit. The proprietor of a large estate, of
which the nominal rental may be thirty or forty
thousand a-year, has generally heavy mortgages
on it, which must absorba great part of the rental ;
28
WHY NOT PLANTED?
there will also be jointures, dowries, and other in¬
cumbrances ; a number of needy, idle, spunging
relations, too proud to work for their living;
possibly a few pledges of illicit indulgence,—I
heard one gentleman of property boast of eighty-
four,—these, with their mothers, have to be pro¬
vided for; very probably there is a spendthrift
son in the army, whose reckless extravagance has
to be met ; there may be an aspiring son in the
Church—an expensive profession ; a few daughters
to be portioned ; some expensive passions of his
own. Then an appearance equal to the nominal
rental of the estate must be kept up as well as
possible : pampered horses, expensive, wasteful
servants—these keep the owner always in diffi¬
culties ; yet he must subscribe to the local chari¬
ties, and to the home and foreign missions : such
a man of nominal wealth is actually steeped in
want—want of money,—his bank account is almost
always overdrawn.
In order to keep afloat, the land owner may
borrow a few thousands from his agent, hard cash
that will never be repaid. The agent knows this,
and has to squeeze it, Valentine M'Clutchy fashion,
out of the tenants, as M'Clutchys know well how
to do.
If the agent cannot screw the money out of the
tenants, it is nearly a dead certainty that the
money will be a dead loss.
WHY NOT PLANTED?
29
Mr. Jonathan Pim, in his work previously
quoted, thus describes, the Irish landlords :—
(P. 45.) " The pecuniary circumstances of the landed
proprietors generally, arising in some cases out of family
charges, and resulting in others from improvidence or care¬
lessness, possibly of former proprietors, disable many of
even the best disposed landlords from improving their
property."
And Mr. Pim quotes from the Report of the
Commissioners for Enquiry into the Occupation
of Land in Ireland :—
(P. 48.) " Is it extraordinary that the land of Ireland
has remained so long unimproved ? The owners in fee, in
many cases, have no interest in its improvement, it would
not increase their Tentai. The life possessor has little
anxiety to improve at the expense of his younger children."
Many an heir who succeeds to an estate has in¬
volved himself in debts incurred before he became
proprietor, of course at very ^heavy interest ; the
estate is most likely encumbered with the widow's
dowry, the sisters' jointures, and other family
charges ; thus, with a large rental, he has a small
income, on which he cannot maintain his position ;
he flies to the continent, where, at a moderate cost,
and in a quiet way, he can live comfortably within
his means.
An agent has to manage the property, if
possible to clear off its debts,—the highest rents,
the strictest landlordism, and not a penny on im¬
provements, must be his plan.
30
WHï NOT PLANTED ?
I knew one of the best land-lords in Ireland, a
noble marquis, whose lands were not only sub¬
jected to dowry, jointures, and provision for
some extravagant brothers, but who had also to
redeem from the cellars of one of those pawn¬
brokers of the upper ten thousand—a bank—the
family service of gold plate deposited by his father
as security for a large sum.
I doubt that there is one estate in Ireland free
from encumbrances.
How can such embarrassed men plant? they
can hardly keep their estates out of the Landed
Estates Court—a court established purposely to
relieve proprietors of Irish lands from their heavy
encumbrances, and in which, during the few years
it has been acting, I have read that about one-fifth
of Ireland, or above four millions of acres, have
been sold. These,men cannot even drain their
lands or build cottages for their labourers without
assistance : Government helps them with loans of
money to do these things.
Formerly the Royal Dublin Society promoted
planting in Ireland, by means of premiums ; land¬
lords will not cultivate timber without some such in¬
ducement, except for merely ornamental purposes.
As a rule, land-lords will do nothing to improve
their properties unless there is a quick return.
Trees, a slow growing crop, will never be a land¬
lord's crop ; potatoes, or corn, or turnips, whatever
WHY NOT TLANTED ?
31
comes round in a year, they will cultivate, or the
crop that runs on four legs—sheep and cattle,—
these are saleable in a year or two, these suit
the Irish landlord and the Irish tenant; as for
woodsj formerly they were abundant here, but the
spendthrift Irish gentry cut them down, sold them,
and spent the money.
" 0 ! the land-lords of Ireland were fine sporting blades,"
and they have sported their estates into the
Landed Estates Court; they have sold nearly
every stick of timber they could lay their hands
on, and have left this ill-used country as bare of
timber, as if the proper business of their lives was
to ruin Ireland and themselves.
Yet an immense quantity of trees could be culti¬
vated in the desolate parts of Ireland—a crop that
would in time be worth many millions annually to
the country.
Such is the state of Ireland as respects its agri¬
cultural products; the part that is cultivated is
but badly farmed, and a very large portion of it
that could be worked with great advantage, is
nearly as useless a waste as the wildest deserts of
Arabia. This is the result of the landlordism
England has forced on us.
After nearly two centuries of these English
land-lords and land-laws, our agricultural con¬
dition is a disgrace to our rulers, and a heavy
loss to ourselves.
32
IRISH LAND-LORDS' POWER.
Iron mines were formerly worked in Ireland,
they are not exhausted ; unlike the English mines,
coal is not always found with the iron ore ; wood
was used for smelting, and iron equal to the best
Swedish was produced. The mines had to be
stopped when our woods became exhausted ; they
could be worked again if we ha^ timber. '
Fuel is very scarce in some parts of this country ;
woods give a large supply of firing.
There are manufactures which could be carried
on if firing were more plenty.
Ireland loses many millions annually for want
of woods. Landlordism must be done away with
in order that Ireland may be properly wooded.
CHAPTER VI.
IRISH LAND-LORDS' POWER.
" I have been your slave too long,
And you have ruled me with a rod of iron."
Play of the Earl of Warwick.
The monopoly of the land-lords is complete ; the
only exception to land-lord monopoly is the "Ulster
Tenant-right"—a right, by the way, which is only
enforced in some parts of Ulster,—a right which
the land-lords have not been able to set aside,
IRISH LAND-LORDS' POWER.
.33
because tbey have an armed Protestant yeo¬
manry to deal with,—but a right which is not
legalized.
With the abové exception the English land-lord-
system is as thorough a monopoly of the island as
human ingenuity could devise. The land-lord can
cultivate the land, or he can let it lie idle ; he can
farm it himself, or he can let it to others ; the land
rent may be raised to the last penny that can be
squeezed out of the tenant; the tenant can be
turned out of his holding whenever the land-lord
pleases, unless he has the protection of a lease,
which Irish land-lords seldom give; he can be
evicted even though he has paid his rack-rent to
the uttermost farthing. English land-laws give
every security, every power to the land-lord ; there
is no security for the tenant : he is by the law flung
at the land owner's feet ; he is a serf—a slave in
his native land. The land-lords have a monopoly
as complete as laws can make it. " The land is
their's, and the fulness thereof:" "they can do what
they like with their own." This noble island is at
the mercy of a few thousand land monopolists,
most of whom are absentees, and who derive seve¬
ral millions of money annually from their mono¬
poly ; who have the land only very imperfectly
cultivated, who have a large part of the island
waste, and who have reduced a body of people,
that would naturally be the pride of their country
c 2
34
IRISH LAND'LORDS' POWER.
—the tillers of the soil,—into a state of abject
subjugation.
Are not Irish land-lords a great evil to Ireland ?
I hesitate not to say that they are the monster evil.
Every Irish land-lord has the power by law of
making his own arrangements with the land-tiller,
—not that these arrangements are made personally
by the land-lord,—an agent does this business, and
it is whispered that, in order to soften his feelings,
palm oil is found an admirable lubricator ; be that
as it may, the large number of poor fellows who
want land have no chance in bargaining with the
few wealthy owners of the land monopoly, hence
the limit of the land-lord's (or agent's) claim will
be the utmost excess that can be enforced from
the tiller ; on the side of the tenant there is
nothing but poverty, and no law ; on that of the
land owner there is monopoly secured by many a
law, and backed by money and social position.
Ireland shews the result.
The regulations on some Irish estates tell how
much the tenant is at the mercy (?) of his land-lord.
The tenants generally hold at the caprice of
the agent, so that they can be evicted for any
cause, just or unjust.
The tenant cannot crop but as the agent pleases.
No persons but the actual resident members of
the family shall be allowed to sleep more than one
night at the farm house.
tniSH LAND-LOIIDS' POWER.
35
No member of the tenant's family shall marry
without the agent's permission.
These are rules enforced on some estates,—their
violation subjects the tenant to immediate eviction.
Besides these rules the tenant is expected, and
is obliged, on pain of eviction, to vote as the land¬
lord dictates.
As if these were not enslaving enough, religion
is prostituted to the evil purpose of worrying the
tenantry with controversial tracts and proselytizing
temptations; the land-lord or his agent being
generally Protestant, of course is a zealous advocate
of the home missions, and sometimes goes to great
lengths in his " converting," or, rather, tormenting
operations.
Thus, under English landlordism, our rural
population is reduced from being " a bold pea¬
santry, their country's pride," to that of land
slaves,—they are the serfs of the land monopolists.
It may be said that, as the land-lords are gentle¬
men, it cannot be supposed that they would treat
the poor tenants unjustly, or even harshly ; this is
a fallacy. Gentlemen will, on ordinary occasions,
act justly by one another, though even among each
other they can act far otherwise at times ; but for
unprincipled rascality and unfeeling cruelty, for
every vice that can debase humanity, and for every
crime that can appal it, some gentlemen are as
ready as " any other man." From my experience
36
IRISH LAND-LOBDS' FUWEB.
of gentlemen land-lords, I can say that I have foiind
many that did not act unjustly or harshly ; some
few acted most kindly, and some îfcted as thorough
villains. Being gentlemen does not necessarily
imply justice or humanity. The state of our Irish
land-tillers shows that this is true.
Conditions which make the farmer a serf will
only be submitted to by men of very limited
means, and to whom the land is a vital necessity ;
men possessing capital must have better terms, or
they will emigrate ; hence leases are in some cases
granted to the monied farmers, and hence also this
class of agriculturists has furnished an important
quota to the immense numbers of emigrants that
have left this country.
But the poor class of farmers who are com¬
pelled to remain, to whom land is an imperative
necessity, who possess very little money, and who
have not means to emigrate, will be obliged to pay
rack-rents for a few acres, just as much as they
may be able to manage with their very small capi¬
tal: men in their circumstances, will of necessity,
submit to almost any conditions to get the land ;
but such cultivators cannot improve their holdings ;
indeed, as tenants at will, they have a direct
interest against improving, for being wholly in the
agent's grasp, he would be sure to raise the rent
the moment he saw any indications that the tenant
was doing well.
IRISH LAND-LORDS' POWER.
37
I do not limit these observations to farm hold¬
ings. Tenants in towns often find it impossible to
get leases, and are subjected to arbitrary eviction,
and raising of rent, as farm tenants are. I know
instances in which tenants made a good trade
reputation, created a business, as the phrase goes,
had advertised freely, and were evicted, though
the rent was paid to the day ; such a proceeding is
likely to prove the ruin of the unfortunate sufferers.
In another case a tenant has submitted to have his
rent raised three distinct times sooner than give
up a position in which he has made a character,
and he does not know how soon his rent may be
further raised.
Another tenant at will, depending on his land¬
lord's promise not to put him out so long as he
paid the rent, went to an outlay of nearly twenty
pounds in putting in a new shop front and making
some other little improvements ; on the next rent-
day he received notice to quit, his eviction being
the result of his improvements having so far
increased the * value of the premises that another
tenant agreed to give an increased rent.
■ Another case I may mention that occurred to a
relative of mine. This farmer, having a family of
well-grown sons, was induced, by the owner of
one of the uncultivated Kerry hills, to take a part
of it for a farm, at a moderate rent, without a
lease; he and his sons built a dwelling, fenced the
38
IRISH LAND-LORDS' POWER.
land, stumped up the furze, sunk or removed the
loose rocks, blasted others, drained the wet springs,
and, after some years' hard labour, a comfortable
farm was the result—remember the land was held
on the landlord's promise of possession so long as
the rent was paid, yet he was evicted to make way
for another who offered a higher rent, though my
relative did not owe a penny ; the result was, that
the sons levelled the house and the fences; for
these outrages some had to fly, one was transported,
the whole family was ruined, and certain news¬
papers were filled with an account of " an atrocious
outrage."
I remember a circumstance that occurred about
thirty years ago:—Aland-lord endeavoured to
seduce either the wife or the daughter of a farmer,
who resented the outrage in strong language ; the
land-lord, in spite, prosecuted his tenant, and cast
him into prison ; while the man was incarcerated
a seizure was made for rent, the tenant's little pro¬
perty was sold, and the family turned out ; none
of the other tenants would dare to give them
shelter, but a hovel was built against a bank for the
poor outcasts ; there a fever soon carried off his
wife and one of his children. After the farmer
got out of prison he attempted to shoot, or did
shoot, his late landlord—either way he was hung.
The papers rang with the story of " another atro¬
cious murderr The peasantry whispered that the
IRISH LAHD-LORDS' POWER.
39
villain wlio was shot had got only what he richly
deserved ; land-lords and very respectable people
called the farmer a scoundrel ; tenants and people
not so very respectable thought the land-lord was
the scoundrel who deserved hanging. I do not
decide ; I tell the tale as I found it in the papers
of the day, and heard it from the whisperers-
Such fearful anecdotes might be told by the
hundred. Land-lords who have unbounded power,
and tenants who have human passions, are sure to
produce tragic events.
Another incident or two will be quite enough
to illustrate this very melancholy part of my
subject.
In the year 1851 there appeared in the Times a
statement from S. G. O. relative to a trial for
murder which took place in Kerry. It seems
that a widow woman held a small farm on the
Kerry estate of the Marquis of Lansdowne. A
daughter of the old woman had gone to America,
leaving her son, a boy about ten years old, in the
care of the child's grandmother. Receiving this
child under her roof was a violation of the rules
of the estate, which forbade any but the actual
resident members of the family to sleep more than
one night on any of the farms, and for this viola¬
tion she was evicted. The orphan, released from
almost any control, naturally became a wanderer.
One dreary wintry night he came to the house
40
IRISH LAND-LORDS' POWER.
where the grandmother had been allowed by the
agent to take up her residence with a relation,
another tenant on the estate; the poor outcast
boy sought a shelter with his grandmother, which
she would have willingly given, but the tenant
feared expulsion if he harboured the boy,—I should
have mentioned that the tenants had been warned
not to give him shelter,—a struggle ensued ; the
poor little fellow was roughly used ; he crawled
away, and next morning was found dead against a
wall near the house.
This occurred on an absentee's estate — an
English nobleman's.
The Marquis of Lansdowne's property is in the
South of Ireland. The North of Ireland can boast
of as thorough landlordism as we find in Munster.
Isaac Butt mentions, in one of his publications on
the Irish land-lord and tenant subject, the eviction
of a tenant in Ulster for giving a temporary
shelter to a widowed daughter, who had, on the
death of her husband, returned to her father's
house till her affairs would be arranged. The
father lost his farm for thus harbouring his
bereaved child.
As for the rule against marrying without the
agent's leave, I have seen a similar notice
mentioned in English papers respecting a Welch
property belonging to certain maiden ladies; so
Irish estates are not the only ones on which God's
IRISH LAND-lords' POWER.
41
command to increase and multiply is counter¬
manded by landowners.
In order to properly comprehend tbe relative
positions of land owners and land tillers, we must
bear in mind that land is an imperative necessity
to those farmers who are in needy circumstances,
that the few land owners have a thorough mono¬
poly of the soil, that they are not restrained by
any law, and that on one side there are the few
wealthy and powerful land owners, on the other
the numerous and needy tillers of the soil ; any¬
thing like a fair competition is under such circum¬
stances impossible. The only competition is be¬
tween the tiller and death ; he must have the land,
or die ; and the land owner, having every advan¬
tage on his side, will force up the rent to the last
penny the tenant can pay and live;—he does more ;
he forces up the rent beyond the bare existence
point, and if prosperous harvests bless the land,
then the land-lord squeezes out the debt which
the tenant contracted from his inability to pay and
live ; or possibly cants everything the tenant
owns, turns him out a beggar, and replaces him by
some other unfortunate agricultural adventurer.
Such small farmers will pay the highest rent, hence
they suit the land-lords.
Another advantage land-lords derive from such
serf-like tenants is political power ; their votes are
considered as much the property of the land-lord
42
IRISH LAND-LORDS' POWER.
as the farms the tenants hold, and woe to the voter
who dares to use his suffrage contrary to the will
of his land-lord.
A few days before writing the last sentence, a
case was tried between land-lord and tenant, I
will not mention names,—it is the land-lord system,
not land-lords, that I am censuring,—the land¬
lord, a captain in the army, took proceedings to
evict a tenant who holds five acres of land at £2
an acre. The ground, when the tenant took
it, was a useless bog, most of it swamped with
water during the wet season, which in this country
implies the greater part of the year, but the tenant
knew that it could be drained, and might then be
made productive. This man was bailiff to the
captain, and about six years back he took the five
acres of bog on a promise of ten years' possession ;
at the last election the tenant voted against the
captain's wishes, this gentleman thereupon dis¬
missed him from his office, and sought to evict
him ; at the hearing of the case the land-lord swore
that the ten years' promise had never been given,
the tenant swore it had, so did the agent, so did
some others ; the court believed that the tenant
told truth, and ruled accordingly.
Very little need be said on this case; we cannot
conclude that the land-lord perjured himself, for
he may have forgotten his promise ; I do not judge
him, but that he wanted to deprive his tenant of
IRISH LAND-lords' POWER.
43
the just results of his labour in reclaiming the five
acres of worthless swamp, is clear enough, and is
a sad illustration of land-lord honour ; the tenant
lost his situation for voting against his land-lord's
will, and his farm was sought to be taken from
him also, an act of injustice against the tiller
who had by his labour converted a waste into
productive soil.
The papers of the first month in 1868 contain
accounts of evictions, though the tenants had paid
all rent due. These cases very probably have re¬
ference to voting.
In Donegal, some years back, a bailiff was found
dead on a hill side, from violence ; no clue could
be got to the perpetrators of the crime ; the land¬
lord noticed all the tenants of the locality, that if
they did not divulge who was the murderer they
would be all evicted ; no revelation was made, and
the tenants were evicted: there was no proof
whatever that these tenants had any act or part in
the murder, or any knowledge as to who had com¬
mitted the offence.
Nearly 300 persons were thus driven off the
estate.
English proprietors can act an arbitrary part as
well as Irish land-lords; an English baronet not
long since evicted a tenant because he quarrelled
with a neighbour !
Isaac Butt has shortly expressed his opinion, and
44
IRISH LAND-LORDS' POWER.
that of those who know the land-lord and tenant
relations, when he said that, from the coercion of
a vote to purposes of the basest kind the land-lord
has used his power against his tenant.
As nine-tenths of the land-lords are Protestants,
and the greater part of the tenants Roman Catho¬
lics, and as the Protestant interest in Ireland is
aggressive, a new element of unpleasantness is in¬
troduced ; instead of being linked in social kind¬
ness, the land owner and the tenant have too often
that adverse feeling which religious antipathy
creates.
Under the serf-like state of tenancy at will,
and with the greed for land which prevails in
Ireland, it may be naturally supposed that evic¬
tions are very frequent here. Lord Belmore, last
session, moved for a return of evictions during
the last six years, including 1867 ; the total was
37,164, this gives an average of 6,194 a year.
But in one year, 1840, there were 50,000 evictions.
Mr. Pim states :—
(P. 58.) " Sometimes ejectments have been effected on a
large scale. The inhabitants of whole villages have been
turned adrift at once, without a home to go to, without
any prospect of employment, or any certain means of sub¬
sistence."
No wonder that the people are flying from
land-lord oppression! We cannot be surprised
^hat hundreds of thousands leave Ireland annually.
EMIGRATION.
45
CHAPTER VII.
EMIGRATION.
" A home and a country remain not for me."—Campbeli,.
WHILE every lover of Ireland mnst deeply deplore
the excessive emigration which is going on, and
which has been going on for a long time, it
would be a great mistake to ascribe it wholly to
landlordism. I had recently a conversation with
a captain of a vessel ; he came over with timber
from British America. This captain told me that
he had purchased fifty acres of land for £50-,
there was no rent to pay; he held his farm as an
estate. The land was good, and about three miles
from a small town, where a market could be had
for the farm produce ; but that in general he kept
his corn till dealers came to him, purchased it, and
took it away.
So long as America offers estates for a smallerl
sum than a farm can be rented for in Ireland, we
cannot expect that emigration will cease. Such a
farm as the captain's would, most likely, be mode-'
rately rented at £100 a-year, if in Ireland.
Men possessed of energy or ready cash will have
strong inducements to emigrate, so long as estates
can be got at the other side of the Atlantic on
46
EMIGRATION.
anything like the favourable terms America offers
at present.
There are other advantages which induce
young men of spirit to go to America. The
American constitution is one especially framed for
the productive classes, as that of England is for
the aristocracy ; and a country where all men are
politically equal ; where there is no alien church,
nor any state church ; where the whole com¬
munity is industrious, energetic, prosperous; in
which there is no feudal, idle, ruling class, is that
to which young men of spirit and energy will
resort as an asylum from the poverty, the abject-
ness, and the serfdom which constitute their lot
in this country.
Republican America will for many years to
come, be the holy-land of those who long for liberty
and equality. Such men will go westward. If
they ever return, it will be as armed foes to that
power from whose rule they have fled, with such
feelings of hostility as the Israelites had, when
they flung off the rule of the brick-exacting
monarch of Egypt.
While, then, it would be a mistake to suppose
that Irish landlordism is the sole cause of emi¬
gration from this country, it is well to know the
extent of it, and at the same time to recollect that
this landlordism has a good deal to do with the
Irish Exodus.
EMIGRATION.
47
Emigration from this country has been at the
rate of one hundred and fifty thousand for the
last twenty-five years; nearly four millions of
persons have left Ireland in that time—a number
equal to the population of a nation. Each year
now about two hundred thousand are quitting
the country ; this amounts to the whole of the
residents in a very large town. Except Dublin,
there is no city or town in Ireland with a
population equal to the vast host of fugitives who
quit this country in a single year.
A great change must be made in the govern¬
ment of Ireland—its laws and its management—
in order to check this fearful drain of the most
energetic part of the people. One of these
changes is to do away with landlordism, and make
the land national property, so that every native
of Ireland who resides in it may know that Ireland
is for the Irish.
While we have tenancy at will, rack-renting,
voting at land-lord dictation on pain of eviction,
and the other evils of landlordism in Ireland;
and estates free of all rent in America, emigra¬
tion will go on.
So impatient of landlordism are land tillers
on the other side of the Atlantic, that, in
Prince Edward's Island, British North America,
a movement was made some years back to do
away with land-lords altogether, the rent being
48
EMIGRATION.
only one shilling an acre ; yet this trifling
exaction was borne so impatiently by the farmers,
that government bought up the land-lords' rights,
and so made the land rent free.
Lord LiiFord, in his " Plea for Irish Landlords,"
mentions the attachment of the Irish peasantry to
their land-lords prior to 1826. I will not stop now
to dispute this erroneous assertion, but merely
mention that in the year stated O'Connell broke
through the system of tenants voting according to
their land-lords' will ; that, in three years after, the
penal laws were repealed; that after that came
steam navigation across the Atlantic, and penny
newspapers; these have been prime causes in the
changes which have taken place respecting the
question of land-lord and tenant,—changes which
national education has powerfully aided.
We can never expect to have the same content¬
ment on the land-lord question now as of old with
democratic newspapers at a penny, and democratic
America accessible in a few days ; that " the
sympathy of the whole population is with those
who would down with landlordism "—as Lord
Lifford states—I do not think is the case; if
it be so all the better, provided the change be
accomplished justly. That there is also a desire to
do away with the British crown, may or may not
be a fact ; as I have nothing to do with that matter
1 leave it alone, merely observing that if we would
EMIGRATION.
49
have people loyal we must have them comfortable,
—an empty belly, an empty pocket, and a raggedy
back, united with an intellect not wholly unculti¬
vated, are sure sources of disloyalty.
There are duties which are stronger than a
deep veneration for an absentee supreme ruler;
those which we owe to our family and our friends,
and if some of the Irish are convinced that
the British crown is to them but a worthless
bauble, and that the British sceptre is to them a
rod of iron, that by its power over them they and
all dear to them are suffering injustice, I am not
surprised at their disloyalty, however much I may
regret whatever amount of error there may be in
their opinions.
Do justice to Ireland, and depend on it people
will not trouble themselves with that very trouble¬
some topic, disloyalty.
Ourselves and our families are our first concern.
Until those causes of suffering are removed, which
our rulers can remove, we cannot reasonably be
expected to be a thoroughly loyal people.
D
50
the english press.
CHAPTER VIIL
THE ENGLISH PRESS.
" Art thoa some god, some angel, or some devil ?"
Shakespeare, Julius CcEsar.
That Ireland has just cause to find fault with the
way she has been ruled by England, is admitted
by all who understand the past and present state
of this island.
From the time of King John to that of
William III., that is, for five hundred years, our
country was engaged in an almost continuous
struggle to repel our English invaders. In 1699
we suffered our last defeat. The party of the
nation was conquered; and from that time, for
many a long day, legislation was against the
people of this country. The heinous laws which
were then passed tended not alone to degrade the
whole of the Roman Catholic population; their
effect was also to degrade the small portion of
Protestants who belonged to the Anglo-Irish
party, and who were the only section of the Irish
people—although only a very small part of the
population—to whom the benefits of English free¬
dom were allowed. This comparative handful of
Episcopalians, thus unjustly cherished by England,
THE ENGLISH PRESS.
51
accustomed to the gross intolerance which the
laws enacted, were necessarily rendered rampant,
bigoted intolérants themselves. Religion was pros¬
tituted for purposes of the greatest wrong. So com¬
pletely had the principles of ascendancy become
engrafted on the intellects of the members of the
Anglo-Irish Church that they do not seem to have
ever dreamed of the possibility of acting otherwise
than as oppressors of the nation. Their oppression
was combined with that special fatuity of mind,
that disease of the moral sense and the reasoning
powers which party—either in politics or religion
—produces, and by which the patient is reduced
below the level of rationality. This party mono¬
mania is a dreadful evil ; I have seen its religious
form in full operation for many years before the
passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Bill, and
speak from my own knowledge. Although that
act has removed the legal disabilities of the
nation, it has not cured the moral disease of
Protestant ascendancy ; in fact the parliamentary
prescription has not had time to work ; thirty-
nine years have elapsed since the Bill was passed,
but no one who knows the very slow progress
which has been made in the way of clearing the
minds of many Protestants from the virus of their
old ailment, can hope that it will be totally
eradicated under many years of political counter-
irritation.
52
TÍV^ENGLISH F^pss.
Bearing in mind what has been stated in the
previous chapters on the subjects of the relations
between landlord and tenant, the unsatisfactory
state of land cultivation, and the poverty and
vassalage of our agriculturists, we need not wonder
that they are said to be " the worst fed, worst housed,
and worst clothed peasantry in Europe;" this
assertion has been iterated so often that it is pro¬
bably right, I, however, have no means of judging ;
that the country presents such advantages as
would, if rightly used, make the population com¬
fortable I do know, and that is what I have to do
with.
A people cannot be contented or prosperous
while afflicted with such great evils of landlord¬
ism as I have stated in the foregoing part of this
work, to say nothing of the effects of so many
hundred years of English misrule.
The want of knowledge which the writers for
English journals show about Irish affairs, is a sub¬
ject of astonishment to us, we must regret that
they have not taken the trouble to make them¬
selves acquainted with facts ; statements not
founded on truth are likely to produce evil,—in
our case they do,—they irritate the Irish against
the English, and they mislead the English with
respect to the Irish.
For example—the Weekly Times, a London
penny paper (January 26th, 1868), has these
THE ENGLISH PRESS.
53
passages :—" The great bulk of the Irish people
who sympathise with Fenianism are ignorant and
miserable to an extent of which English people
can scarcely form an idea." . . ' . . .
" Englishmen who only know Irish gentlemen,
or an occasional good-humoured labourer engaged
in rough work, have no conception of the uncivil¬
ized condition of millions of the Irish people in their
own country; they are centuries behind ourselves,
if indeed at any time which history records our
peasantry was in such a wretched plight."
" Ireland is a land of sedition and rags. It may
not flatter Irish vanity to recognise, in plain terms,
the fact of her deplorably barbarous condition."
These passages are taken from the leading article
in the above-named extensively circulated paper.
It is above forty years since I first left my native
country for England; I have resided fourteen years
there, and have had fair opportunities forjudging
of the civilization of that country ; I have also
been in thirty of the thirty-two counties of Ire¬
land,—in fact for forty years I have been travelling
more or less through Ireland, a good deal on foot,
often late at night, through some of the wildest
and thinnest populated districts ; sometimes where
not a word of English was spoken by the greater
part of the population, and when benighted or
otherwise obliged to seek a night's shelter in these
places, I have, in perfect confidence, often sought
54
THE ENGLISH TRESS.
it in the cabin of the Irish peasant, have been
granted it most kindly, and I have slept in these
humble abodes with as great a feeling of security
as if I lay in the finest hotel, and have never been
treated otherwise than with courtesy and good
nature,—I can testify from this experience that I
found none of that rudeness and grossness of con¬
duct which I found in England.
I have experienced obliging civility in those parts
where there were no English or Scotch settlers ; I
cannot say the same of the Plantation districts, but
even there I found the peasantry passably civil ;
the actual rudeness was shewn by those who were
far above them in social position. From my own
experience I can safely pronounce the statement
respecting the barbarism of the Irish people a mere
invention, and must doubt that the writer knew
anything about the people of this country.
Does not this writer's statement, if true, tell badly
against the results of English domination here ?
What have our English rulers been doing that
they have left us centuries behind ? for nearly two
hundred years they have had complete dominion
,oyer us, they passed penal laws, they enacted our
expulsion from our own soil, they transported the
Irish by shiploads to be West Indian slaves, they
sent cargoes of our females to gratify the licentious¬
ness of English planters, they deprived us of the
means of getting property, of getting education, of
THE ENGLISH PRESS.
55
getting social position ; these, and much more have
our English rulers done. Were these things done to
civilize us? Who are the barbarians? We are poor,
we are discontented, but we are not barbarians.
" I have had a great deal to do with the people, and I
never met anywhere a more orderly, peaceable, or indus¬
trious population."—Rev. Mr. Darcy^s Evidence before the
House of Commons.
Turning from the penny paper to the Times.
The statements in which this great journal in¬
dulges respecting Irish matters are as destitute
of accuracy as assertions well can be ; and, to
make the matter worse, they are characterized by
a bitterness of hostility against the Irish nation
which one finds difficult to explain otherwise than
by assuming a madness on the subject of Ireland,
or a covert purpose which is yet to be revealed.
Her priesthood are, according to this organ, " a
band of surpliced ruffians" ; the people, " a nation
of assassins" ; Ireland, " the mother of assassins."
One could smile at the mendaciousness of such
statements were it not that so skilfully conducted
a paper as this, the leading English journal, must
have an object in so belying our country. Thus
it presents the sad picture of writers of undoubted
ability prostituting their powers for the base pur¬
pose of libelling, in the most atrocious manner, a
whole nation.
Another journal whose articles respecting Ire-
56
THE EXGLTSH TRESS.
land are equally rancorous with those of the
Times, is the Saturday Review. On the 28th
November, 1863, that periodical had the follow¬
ing terrible paragraph in reference to Irish emi¬
gration : — " The departing demons of assassi¬
nation. So complete is the rush of departing
marauders, whose lives were profitably occupied
in shooting Protestants from behind a hedge, that
silence reigns over the vast solitude of Ireland."
What a pity it is that the writer of the above,
when he ascended into the regions of pure imagi¬
nation, did not invent something original in the
way of an accusation. The Times has already
used the term assassination so often that it might
have been left as the sole property of that paper.
With the Saturday Review this baseless calumny
even wants the poor merit of originality.
That the entire statement is a fabrication, is
easily shown from internal evidence.
Marauders are persons who roam about in quest
of plunder. Persons who are leaving their own
country, even if flying from justice, are not,
therefore, marauders.
How could the Saturday Review writer have
known that the millions of Irish people who
were emigrating had occupied their lives in
" profitably shooting Protestants from behind a
hedge ?'' What hedge ? In what part of Ireland
is that verdant screen growing ? and who, except
THE ENGLISH PRESS.
57
a writer of fiction, ever conceived a complete rush
of a nation's population while silence reigns ? I
have seen many batches of emigrants—".the de¬
parting demons of assassination " of the Saturday
Review,—and know that during this rush " from
their native land the effect was the reverse of
silence. Had the writer of this very censurable
passage witnessed these scenes, if he had the
feelings of a man, he would assuredly have felt the
deepest commiseration for the agony—loud and
thrilling in its manifestation—which was displayed.
That our people have rushed from Ireland, is too
true ; but that they are assassins, marauders, or
that they shoot Protestants from " behind a hedge,"
or, lastly, that even now Ireland is one vast
solitude, are, thank God, baseless fabrications.
Painful as it is to me to have to condemn, in
such strong language, the statements of the writers
I have quoted from, it is with a deeper sense of
pain, and a profound feeling of humiliation that I
turn to the pamphlet of an Irish peer, who has
needlessly and unjustly joined his testimony to that
of the English calumniators of his country. This
has been done by Lord Lifford, in his letter to
Isaac Butt, Esq., Q.C., entitled, " A Plea for Iiish
Land-lords."
Mr. Butt proposed, as a plan to get over the
disadvantages under which the land tillers are
placed, as tenants at will, that land-lords should
D 2
58
THE ENGLISH PRESS.
be obliged to lease farms at properly-estimated
rents for a term of sixty-three years. This
proposal of Mr. Butt's, Lord Lifford stigmatises
as subversive of the rights of property. To avoid
an irrelevant topic, I will not consider Mr. Butt's
plan ; what I have to do with is his lordship's way
of meeting it. The effect of the plan would be to
stop arbitrary evictions, and the power which the
land-lord possesses of raising rents at pleasure.
Thai these checks on land-lords'powers are needed,
no one who is not blinded by self-interest can
doubt ; but I may supposé that the plan is un¬
reasonable, is an unnecessary interference with
land-lords' rights. Had Lord Lifford said so, and
proved his assertion, he would have done right ;
but not only has he not done so, but he has un¬
necessarily insulted a gentleman of eminent ability,
and in so doing has used language which is grossly
offensive to every native of Ireland. I quote his
words :—Irish contempt of law and of the rights
of property are paramount in the proposal of the
Irish lawyer."
There is no one who knows Ireland, much less
an Irishman, who must not feel indignant at this
fabrication. To assert that all the people of Ireland,
or even the major part of them, are contemners of
law and of the rights of property, is so monstrous
that one must charitably suppose 'his lordship
could not have understood the import of his own
THE ENGLISH FRESS.
59
words ; certain I am that he cannot believe what
they imply. What a pity that he has thus, I must
suppose inadvertently, added his testimony to the
British vituperation of his country. An Irish
gentleman, an Irish representative peer thus falsely
libelling his native land, is a fact at which all rightly-
constituted minds must feel shocked, and which I
hope the better sense of his lordship has, when his
anger subsided, caused him to regret.
But the question maybe asked. What is the object
of the English Press in thus persistently calum¬
niating Ireland and the Irish ? Why this delight
at " silence again reigning in the vast solitude of
Ireland?" Is it caused by a wish to carry out
now the system of Elizabeth, James, Cromwell,
and William III.? namely, to drive the Irish out
of the country altogether, and occupy the fertile
plains, the smiling valleys, the length and breadth
of this glorious island, the last home of the noble
Celts. Or is it merely to apologise to the civilized
world for the injustice England has inflicted on
us ? We have the sympathy of Europe and of
America. A portion of the English press has
been attempting to write us down. No lie has
been too audacious, no charge too scandalous for
this purpose. If these calumniators can succeed
in their nefarious purpose, if they can persuade
the intelligent people of other nations that the
Irish are a nation of assassins and marauders, that
60
THE ENGLISH FRESS.
Ireland is the mother of assassins, whose people
amuse themselves behind some mythic hedge
shooting fabled Protestants, we would be abhorred
by the nations ; and then some modern Cromwell
could make Ireland one vast solitude, and thank
heaven for " a crowning mercy," as " Old Noll "
did after he had been for five days butchering the
people of Drogheda in cold blood. Such are the
ideas which these abusive tirades are calculated to
engender in Irish minds.
England is distinguished among nations for
benevolence. Not only does she act kindly to
the halt, the lame, and the blind among her own
people, but she is a sort of political Samaritan to
suffering nations. " Enslaved Greece,^' " oppres¬
sed Poland," " downtrodden Italy," have become
stereotyped sentences in English newspapers.
" Freedom to oppressed nationalities,^' has been
trumpeted forth all over the world, and no doubt
a very excellent blast it made; it served to en¬
courage disaffection against misrule, and gave a
moral support" to the Continental nations who
were struggling by force to gain freedom.
This encouragement to rebellion and to revo¬
lution (on the Continent only) has, however, been
suddenly discovered by Lord Viscount Stanley to
be " talking unadvisedly about the sacred cause
of nationality ;" this very diplomatic sentiment
having been elicited by the fact of English news-
THE ENGLISH TRESS.
61
papers being read in Ireland ; and, deplorable
result, very many of the Irish people imagining
they might think about the sacred cause of their
own nationality—a result, of course, never con¬
templated by the hot advocates of freedom for the
Continental people—strictly limited to them.
" Thus self-pleased still, the same dishonouring chain
She binds in Ireland, she would break in Spain;
While praised at distance, but at home forbid,
Kebels in Cork are patriots at Madrid."
Moore.
As the opponents of Continental rebellions might
naturally be expected to turn round on these
preachers of sedition, and tell them to look to
Ireland and set it right, if it were only for the
sake of example and the good of England^s cha¬
racter, there must be a reply to such an appeal ;
that reply is. What can we do ? All the Irish are
assassins—would you believe it ? They send out
bands of marauders to catch poor innocent Pro¬
testants, and when they have caught a large num¬
ber, they assemble at the shooting ground, and,
just as we used to set the dog Billy in a pit to see
could he kill a hundred rats in ten minutes, they
fire at the Protestants from behind a hedge, each
Irishman being allowed so many shots, and he
who succeeds in bringing down the largest number
is declared the victor at this dreadful immolition.
So profitable is this found that millions join in
it, and then they rush in silence out of the country!
62
THE ENGLISH FRES8.
This explanation must satisfy all upbraiders ;
a nation of assassins and marauders that can thus
occupy itself in shooting Protestants, is only fit for
what it gets from England.
Even at the mischievous ability of stating false¬
hoods, people progress by practice. In old time
the current English lie of the day was that Irish¬
men had tails, and lived on horse-flesh ; our
modern writers of political fictions far surpass the
English writers of Queen Elizabeth's days.
I appeal to the calm reflection of the thinking
part of the people of England against the slanders
which the aristocratic press of England publishes
against my country. Were we the marauders,
the assassins, the contemners of law and of the
rights of property we are stated to be ; if we
employed our time in shooting Protestants from
behind a hedge, what are the twenty or thirty
thousand soldiers in Ireland about ? What are the
twelve thousand armed and disciplined constables
about? What is England about, that these horrors
are not prevented ? Who are the Protestants we
have shot? Where were they shot? When were
they shot? Were the assassins not brought to
justice ? Is not the whole a batch of brutal lies ?
I appeal to the reformers of England for their
aid in the endeavour to get our island for ourselves,
for their aid to raise a deserving people from their
present vassalage. The heart of a trueborn Eng-
BY WHAT RIGHT, &C.
63
lishman responds to the call for freedom. The
freedom I seek for Ireland is a just, a peaceful, and
a noble revolution. English reformers, aid us
with all your power.
CHAPTER IX.
BY WHAT RIGHT DO THE LAND-LORDS HOLD
IRELAND ?
" Force first made conquest, and that conquest law."—Pope.
A STORY is told of a Scottish king who hinted to
his nobles that he purposed making an inquiry
into the titles to their estates ; those belted war¬
riors cut the proposed inquiry short, for, drawing
their swords, they one and all exclaimed, " by
these we won our lands, and by these we mean to
keep them."
No inquiry followed.
This story recalls the commencement of the
sword chant of Thorstein Raudi :—
" 'Tis not the gray hawk's flight o'er mountain and mere ;
'Tis not the fleet hound's course when tracking the deer;
'Tis not the light hoof-print of black steed or gray,
Though sweltering it gallop a long summer's day,
Which mete out the lordships I challenge as mine;
Ha ! ha ! 'tis the good brand I clutch in my strong hand,
That can their broad marches and numbers define.
Landgiver ! I kiss thee."
Motherwell.
64
BT WHAT RIGHT DO THE
The sword—violence—is the original title-deed
by which lands are held in most countries ; the
old land-winners went bv
tf
" The good old rule, the simple plan,
That he should take who has the power,
And he should keep who can."
Except in the case of William Penn, who pur¬
chased Pennsylvania from the original inhabitants,
I cannot remember any foreign incomers who did
not seize the lands of the natives by force, or cheat
them out of their property by trickery.
Still, though force or fraud is the original basis
of possession, conquest or duplicity is not a title
suited for a peaceful state of civilization.
If the land-lord were to proclaim the doctrine of
force, if his motto were " Might constitutes right,"
he would invite an agrarian war ; and even were the
insurgents successful, their title would be as in¬
valid as that of those they expelled. The blood¬
stained authority of the sword will not be accepted
by civilized society.
Although violence and fraud were the means
by which the people of Ireland lost their lands
(as well as the people of most other countries),
a better title, one founded on reason and justice,
has been attempted to be made out by political
philosophers.
That extremely able writer. Archdeacon Paley,
has, in his " Moral Philosophy," endeavoured to
LAND-LORDS HOLD IRELAND?
65
prove that landlordism, even such landlordism as
we have in Ireland, is the best possible state of
things—is the will of God.—Book iii. chap. 1.
But this solution, though very suitable for a
well-to-do ecclesiastic, is not philosophic, hence it
was necessary that another reason should be found.
Paley commences with the following very remark¬
able illustration :—
" If a man saw in a field of corn a flock of pigeons, all
of whom, save one, were engaged, not in choosing for
themselves the best food, but the worst, and reserving the
best for that single pigeon, the weakest and, perhaps, worst
of the flock ; and if, while that single pigeon was devouring
or wasting at pleasure, he should see, when another hungry
and hardy pigeon touched a grain of the hoard, all the
other pigeons fly on the intruder and peck it to death, he
would see nothing more than what is practised every day
among men. In civilized society ninety-nine persons toil
to find superfluities for one, sometimes the least deserving
of his species, getting for themselves only the worst and
smallest share, and though quietly looking on while they
see the fruits of their labour spoilt or spent by that one or
his minions, joining to hang a man Whose necessities may
have led him to take the smallest particle from the general
hoard so unequally distributed."—Paley^s Moral Phil., b.'m.
This philosopher had previously given another
illustration of the land monopoly subject. He
supposes several persons to land on a desert
island, on which is an apple-tree in full bearing ;
all the new comers want apples, and if the tree
has plenty for all of them, there is no necessity for
66
BY WHAT RIGHT DO THE
a lord or proprietor over it ; but if the fruit be
" not enough for all," then that scarcity shows
clearly " that God intended the tree to be given to
one or a few individuals." So far Paley.
The effect of landlordism over the apple-tree
would be to allow a superabundance to the tree
owner, and to leave the outsiders only the parings.
A similar result is stated to arise in the instance
of the pigeons,—a result which Paley truly pro¬
nounces to be apparently absurd and unnatural,—
we must look for a better plan than Paley's.
The practical common sense of mankind has led
to the adoption of methods very diflferent from
landlordism ; for instance, if the crew of a vessel
at sea find provisions running short, they do not
collect the whole stock, deposit it in the captain's
cabin, empower him to gorge himself, and to give
them whatever scanty allowance or refuse he may
choose to allow from the superabundance ; neither,
if water was scarce on board, would the crew col¬
lect what little remained, give it to the captain to
wallow in, if he thought proper, and leave them¬
selves perishing of thirst. Such a mode of deal¬
ing would not do even for the marines. Yet, un¬
natural and absurd as it is, Paley recommends it
to us landlubbers.
As the Archdeacon has given an illustration
from a number of persons landing on a productive
but uninhabited island,—such as Ireland is hoped
LAND-LORDS HOLD IRELAND ?
67
to be in a few years by some writers for the aristo¬
cratic English journals, when silence shall reign in
" the vast solitude of Ireland,^' and not even one
Paddy be left, like Thomas Campbell's Last Man,
to shout to the sun, and shake the sere leaves from
the wood with ever so many feet of tall talk. I in
like manner shall suppose the mythic period when,
as the aristocratic Times has said—" The Celt
shall be gone with a vengeance." Let us suppose
Ireland depopulated, and England again reduced
to its pristine barbarism ; let us suppose that the
civilized New Zealander has finished his poetic
sketch of the ruins of St. Paul's, with the broken
arch of London Bridge in the foreground, and the
surrounding solitude animated by a characteristic
group of a family of bare breeched Britishers swal¬
lowing their dinners al fresco. This valuable
sketch completed, the Antipodean rambler and his
friends order their balloons and set off on a cloud-
companioned trip
" To the west, to the west, to the land of the free,"
where Liberty reigns supreme, because there is
nobody to hinder her.
Arrived at the last abode of the extirpated
Celt, they descend, and, charmed with " the
vast solitude," they determine to form a settle¬
ment, and send back their balloons—by the over¬
land route, of course,—with orders for their wives
and children to join them (and in a few cases
68
BY \THAT RIGHT DO THE
their sweethearts with their marriage certificates
from the government registrar in blank ready for
filling in), so that they may duly settle down in
this newly-discovered, totally-depopulated island.
Now comes the land question. Two courses we
will assume are open to them. To make " one or
a few individuals"—I use Paley's words—owners of
the whole island, just as a few individuals own the
island now—to make Irish land-lords in short,—
What would be the result?
Not a house could be built, not a tent could be
set up, not a seed could be put into the ground,
not a trout could be hooked, not a hare could be
snared, not a snipe shot, nothing over which the
monopolists had been thus foolishly given a power
could be meddled with, unless the monopolists
gave leave,—that is, unless they were paid for
granting permission ; in fact the many would be
the slaves of the few land-lords ; they would have
so many tiernas in the Irish language [tyrannus,
Latin), land tyrants in plain English. That would
be a bad course.
But if, in addition to the complete possession
which these foolish New Zealanders had given to
the land-lords, they had also granted them liberty
to quit the country, and to reside at the other side
of. the globe, or, it may be, in the moon—Edgar
Poe's imaginary trip will, I dare say, be a realised
fact by that time—to become, in short, what we
LAND-LORDS HOLD IRELAND?
69
have so numerous, absentee land-lords, draining the
country of millions of hard cash annually ; then,
indeed, the New Zealanders would have made a
pretty mess of it, and would soon come to be as
badly off as we are now ; and they would be glad
to fly from poor old Ireland to any retreat, even
at the farthest corner of the earth, to escape from
Irish landlordism.
If the owners of the island were not New
Zealanders at all, but so many Caffres, or, mayhap,
Australian aborigines, the case would be still worse.
And if these Caffres or other foreigners had
placed one of their own people over the inhabitants,
some man or some woman of foreign breed to
reign over them, the case would be worse still.
And if that one who reigned over them resided
in Caffre land or in Australia, the case would be
still worse and worse.
With absentee land-lords, and an absentee
monarch, is it reasonable to expect that these
unfortunate poor people would be contented with
their lot, or loyal towards their government?
The innocent-minded English people wonder we
are not perfectly contented. If they were ruled
over by the Emperor of France ; if their country
was owned by French people ; if most of these
French land owners lived in France and ^id
nothing to benefit England, although they drained
some millions of pounds every year out of England
70
BT WHAT RIGHT I)0 THE
as rent ; if the Emperor of France filled England
with Romish priests, and, further, if these priests
were a meddling lot, setting up home missions foi
converting the Protestants from the ^^blasphemous
fables and dangerous deceits " of Protestantism ;
if these were the conditions of the English peoplcj
would they not be discontented ?
Such is the way with us in Ireland.
The other course which the new comers might
pursue is very simple. They could appoint " one
or more individuals" (the ungrammatical sentence
is Paley's, not mine) to attend to the land: so
many land commissioners—just as they might
appoint town commissioners, harbour commis¬
sioners, or commissioners for any other public
object ; — make them responsible for the land
management, and pay them for their trouble, but
keep the island for themselves, and put the profits
into a common fund—the consolidated fund of the
future Gladstone or Disraeli of the newly-resusci¬
tated land of Erin.
I ask the reader which course does he think
would it be best for the new comers to adopt ?
We have tried the first one for a long time, and
our misery shows its effects. I will further on
explain how the other course could be reahzed
peaceably and justly.
Returning from this fanciful digression to our
author Paley. He admits that " to explain the
land-lords hold ireland?
71
right of property in land consistent with the law
of nature, is no easy task and he gives us to
understand that the law of nature is, that the land
is the common property of all ; " for,^^ he inquires,
" as the land was once common to all, by what
right could any part of it be taken by one person,
to the exclusion of all others ?"
Or in other words. By what right do the
land-lords hold ireland?
After Paley has examined the reasons usually
assigned, and very properly rejected them, he
concludes truthfully—
" The real foundation of the right is the law of
the land."
The expediency of the law or its defectiveness
does not affect the right. So long as the law
fixes the right, so long does the right exist, and
no longer ; and whatever way the right is by law
established, in that way only is the right existent.
In one country an estate may by law go to the
eldest son ; in another it may be divided equally
among the children. Each mode is right, for law
is the only foundation of landed property.
Hence we conclude that any legalized mode is
equally right according to Paley ; and that those
who speak of the rights of property as opposed to
any proposed legal settlement of the land question,
have no support in the archdeacon's philosophy ;
the original or the abstract right is against them.
72
BY \THAT RIGHT DO THE
According to him, any way by which the use of
the earth is secured to man is consistent with the
will of God, or is " right."
So far Paley. His work is an English classic ;
it is the text-book at our University.
Landlordism is a legalized monopoly, maintained
by law for the advantage of the land-lords against
the interests of the nation.
Paley's works hold a very high character, yet on
the subject of property in land he has not dis¬
played those philosophical powers which his ad¬
mirers attribute to him ; his case of the pigeons
places landlordism in a position which he admits
to be apparently absurd and unnatural ; from this
absurd position he does not extricate it by his as¬
sertion that the system is based on the law of the
land, for that is merely declaring that an absurd
institution is supported by an absurd law ; neither
does he extricate it from the absurd and unnatural
position by stating that, by means of landlordism,
the fruits of the earth are preserved to maturity ;
for, as a philosopher, he had to show what the
present land system is, to point out its advantages
and disadvantages, and to suggest a plan by which
the utmost possible benefits could be got from the
land, and these benefits he extended to the largest
possible number of people. As he has treated the
subject he has appeared to philosophise, but he
has actually only narrated; we know that it is
LAND-LORDS HOLD IRRLAND?
73
absurd and unnatural to have the masses of man¬
kind (or pigeons) labouring to support a few in
complete idleness and in great wealth ; we know
that under the law of the land this is done, and we
know that, as things are, the fruits of the earth are
preserved to maturity—not, however, by landlord¬
ism,—but we know also that this absurd system
is not sound in philosophy or just in practice.
Paley has not investigated the land-lord subject as
a philosopher who should inquire not merely into
what is, but for the best way that is possible.
These remarks apply to what Paley has said in
his third book of Moral Phil., but in the 11 th chap,
of his fourth book, same work, he makes a remark
or two, by which he seems not to have understood
the land question at all,—one is :
" Property in land is the power to use it,"
Whereas the fact is that property in land is the
power of preventing others from using it, or it
is a monopoly.
Again he says :—
" It matters not to the public who may possess
the power over the soil if it be only properly
cultivated."
Let us suppose that the Emperor of France
possessed a land-lord's power over all Ireland,
that he planted a host of French or Belgian tillers
here, that every rood of Ireland was cultivated
like a garden, and that, the tillers being paid,
E
74
BY WHAT EIGHT, &C.
every portion of the fruits of the earth, when
arrived at maturity, was transferred, possibly to
Algeria, to feed the famishing Arabs. Would
this arrangement be a matter of no consequence
to us, the Irish public ?
The fact is that Paley, like Whateley, has a
plausible way of expressing himself ; but in none
of his writings has he shown himself a philosopher,
or better than a dexterous supporter of the opinions
of the powers that be by a cunningly entangled
sophistry.
Our lands are in some respects as if the Em¬
peror of France owned Ireland. The greater part
of this island being the property of absentees, and
many of the land-lords who rank as resident being
anti-Irish in their proclivities, we might just as
well be paying our rents to Napoleon III. as to
our present land owners ; indeed, if he were our
land-lord, it would probably be much better for us.
The present Emperor, with all his shortcomings,
has shown great public spirit, his feelings are not
against the people of his country, he is not the
man of the mountain seated on the neck of unfor¬
tunate Sinbad, and crushing his victim to the earth
with the burden of his oppression. We send our
rents, that is the produce of our soil, to those who
repay us with insult and contempt. A system so
utterly indefensible calls imperatively for a change.
Lord LiiFord, in his letter to Isaac Butt, advo-
what does ireland, &c.
75
cates land-lords' rights as being " the universally
recognized rights of property;" but he forgets
that the land is by strict right national property,
that land-lords' rights are only legal rights, and
that it is the duty of a wise legislator to take away
these rights if they are injurious to the people.
CHAPTER X.
WHAT DOES lEELAND PAY FOR
LANDLORDISM?
" Reason dumfounded gives up the dispute,
And before the stupendous extortion stands mute."
Moore.
The plan I have suggested for managing the
lands by commissioners responsible to the govern¬
ment, or, in other words, to the country ; these
land guardians to be paid good salaries if necessary,
and to be properly checked to prevent jobbery,—
this plan could not be costly. All the lands,
whether the highly rented ones in towns or the
lower rented ones in the country, could be managed
for about one million a-year at the utmost.
What are we paying for the present system of
land-lord mismanagement ?
76
WHAT DOES lEELAND
The first item is rent : rent varies from a few
shillings to several hundred pounds an acre ; the
low price is paid for coarse mountain land, from
which but little produce is got ; the high price is
paid for land in towns, from which there is no
produce at all,—a fact worthy of remembrance, as
the doctrine of some political economists is that
rent is the surplus after the farmer is paid for his
time, labour, and capital. In the case of towns
ground rents are paid for a monopoly and nothing
else ; in some very favourable places for business
the land rents in towns amount to thousands an
acre. Even at a short distance from Belfast (half-
a-mile) three and a-half acres of land were lately
sold for £3,210 ; this at five per cent.—or twenty
years' purchase—is nearly £50 a-year per acre.
This was for land for building purposes, outside
the town. What must rent be for the best posi¬
tions in Belfast?
I have no means of accurately ascertaining the
amount of money paid to the owners of Ireland,
but remembering that the island is twenty-one
millions of acres in extent, forty or fifty millions
a-year is, I think, a very moderate calculation—a
heavy sum to pay for landlordism. Besides the
direct money incomes of our owners there are poli¬
tical powers, church patronage, the game, the
fish, &c.,—these must be worth a great deal. On
every estate there is a residence in a good demesne,
PAY FOR t^ANDLORDISM ?
Y7
generally inhabited by agents, when the owners
are absentees. These demesnes are so much cost
to us ; they are residences in addition to rentals,
and are additional emoluments for the landlords.
We must not forget that all this fearfully heavy
charge for land management by landlords is not
even spent in Ireland ; some millions of rents are
paid to absentees. So far as we are concerned we
might as well every year pitch millions of money
into the ocean.
Land-lords are generally careful to make money
by any means within their power. The mines of
Ireland are thus made a source of large additional
income.
At Youghal the very sand on the sea shore has
to be paid for. Owing to peculiar circumstances,
access to the sea shore can be cut off by means of
an iron gate ; here a man is posted, who gets money
for every load of sand that passes. The Duke of
Devonshire—an absentee—owns miles upon miles
of that part of Ireland ; he owns many towns there,
yet the miserable cottier who wants a load of sand
to mix with sea-weed, that thereby he may grow a
crop of potatoes for his family, this poor creature
has to pay to England's proud duke one halfpenny
for an ass load of sea sand,—sand which is lying
in superabundance on the strand, but which the
duke has adroitly managed to appropriate, and so
squeeze from penury a miserable mite. One of
78 WHAT DOK8 IHELAKD
England's noble dukes selling ha'p'orths of
sand !
Not far from the town where I am now writing,
a predecessor of one of Ireland's best land-lords
had the shameful meanness to put bailiíFs on the
strand to exact fourpence from each person who
took a can and a spoon to collect cockles ; in case
a rake was used for gathering the bivalves, eight
pence were exacted. These sums were charged
every time the cockle-pickers went to collect.
This titled landlord was entitled "the cockle lord."
I need hardly say that the present excellent pro¬
prietor does not exact cockle-rent.
So much for the positive pay our landlords get
for such land management as they give us ; let us
now consider the negative side of this question.
Ireland was formerly called the wooded island ;
now it is lamentably bare of timber. I have in a
previous chapter mentioned, from my own obser¬
vation, how much this island requires to be planted.
The able writer of " Ireland, her present Condition,
its Cause, and its Remedies," thus mentions this
subject
(P. 12.) " Large material benefit would arise to Ireland
by including planting, and fencing preparatory to it, among
the objects of the Land Improvement Act. There are
thousands of acres fit for no other purpose, which, if planted,
would in a few years increase in value a hundred-fold,
especially as the demand for railway sleepers and telegraph
poles must greatly enhance the price of native larch,
PAY FOB LANDLORDISM?
79
which is superior to any imported timber for these purposes.
Plantations making but a slow return, the repayment of
loans for this purpose might take the form of a defeiTed
annuity ; for instance, that no repayments should be re¬
quired for the first ten years, and then increasing in amount
every five years till paid off ; the timber in the mean time
forming an ample security."—Jonathan Pim^ M.P.
This is an excellent passage. I have already
mentioned that our want of woods is owing to the
land-lords. They sold the timber, and did not
plant. Our losses from want of timber crops are
enormous.
North of Dundalk is a range of mountains, which
extend many miles every way ; these are dreary,
naked, profitless, untimbered ; Why not wooded ?
The reply is, landlordism.
Not only do we lose the money value of the
timber crops that might be grown on our lands
now lying worthless, but we also lose the benefits
of the employment which the fencing and planting
the lands would give to the people. The attend¬
ing to the crop after it was planted ; felling the
timber, conveying it for sale, and disposing of it,
would all be sources of employment. The waste
timber, which could be used for firing, would be
also of use and be a profit.
Had we timber, our iron mines at Arigna could
be worked again ; but timber is not a land-lord's
crop.
80
TiTHAT DOES IKELAND
But of more value than all is the living crop of
human beings that we are losing through land¬
lordism. The very flower of our population is
emigrating at the rate of two hundred thousand
a-year.
That such enormous cost as we are at for land¬
lordism, that so many millions as we pay each
year to absentees, that so large an extent of Ireland
lying waste in consequence of land-lords not
planting, and our population flying from their
beloved island, that these should cause discontent
and poverty is but natural ; the English Govern¬
ment has forced land-lords and land-laws on us,
behold the consequences,—we are miserable—we
are discontented ; and no wonder that the spirit of
rebellion broods over this ill-used island when that
Government supports this monster evil of land¬
lordism to the ruin of our country. That the
Irish land-lords belong to a church which is alien
to our country, and that they are imbued to a
great extent with anti-Irish prejudices, is another
embitterment of our lot.
We have seen Lord LifFord declaring that a
contempt of law and of the rights of property is
Irish, thus joining his Irish voice to the English
howl against us ; that nobleman was not content
with going so far, forgetful of the dogma which one
of Lord Lifford's Irish contemners of law and
property, Sheridan, puts into Mrs. Malaprop's
PAY FOU LANDLORDISM?
81
mouth, that " comparasins is oderus he couples
his national slander of his country—he says he
is an Irish gentleman !—with a bepraising of all
Englishmen. His words are, " The principle of fair
dealing and the respect for mutual rights inherent
in every Englishman." I respect Englishmen ;
I have been used very justly by many of them,
and have found some as thorough scoundrels as
could well be ; this, however, is only my own
experience ; but has not Lord LifFord seen that
there are policemen, magistrates, judges, jails, and
hangmen in England? Are these mere Govern¬
ment decorations, things only for mere idle
display ? Are there not such crimes committed
among the English, by the English, as picking
pockets, swindling, forgery, arson, wife beating,
rape, murder ? the English papers overflow
with accounts of such crimes ; his favourite slan¬
derers of Ireland, the Times, both daily and
weekly, are full of them. Are these proofs of " the
principle of fair dealing and the respect for mutual
rights inherent in every Englishman ?" Perhaps
I am in error in supposing that Lord LifFord has
taken his anti-Irish ideas from the Times', these
ideas may be wholly out of his own brain,—
perhaps so,—I give the benefit of the doubt to
this " Irish gentleman."
Ireland has produced men of genius in every
department of refined civilization. Among the
E 2
82
WHAT DOES IRELAND
painters and the sculptors of Europe, Ireland's
artists hold a foremost rank ; Maclise from Cork,
Hogan from the same city, Danby from the Co.
Wexford, Mulready from the West of Ireland,
Foley from Dublin, M'Dowell from Belfast, and
many other talented artists are natives of Ireland,
but they have all been obliged to emigrate. What
Irish resident landlord has cherished the budding
genius of Maclise, one of the best painters in
Europe? Or of Foley, as great a sculptor as the
world can produce, I should have said the greatest
living sculptor ? Or of McDowell, whose realiza¬
tions of female loveliness have never been excelled ?
I ask what great resident proprietor has encouraged
the rising talent of our living artists ? out of their
own land they had to seek for that encouragement
which the owners of Ireland have not given.
These owners are foreigners, and, judging by their
acts, they care no more for Irish genius than they
do for an Irish pig,—indeed they regard the pig
more than the artist,—they encourage the produc¬
tion of pork, and neglect the producers of works
of genius. Ireland produces men of genius ; they
may perish for all the land-lords of Ireland care.
With the enormous amount of money which
the land-lords of Ireland receive from us as rents,
with the other great advantages which they have—
owning, as they do, the whole of this noble island,
a property which is worth to them one thousand
PAY POR LANDLORDISM ?
83
millions of hard cash. With this vast property
and their great incomes we might reasonably ex¬
pect that they would do all that would be required
for the good of this island—for their own property
—out of their own pay, that is, out of their rents.
Silly idea! to expect that the men who own Ireland,
and who receive such enormous sums of our money,
would do anything of the kind.
Ireland wants a wholesale svstem of drainino-.
•/ O
Many lakes could be lowered, and their levels
regulated. Some lakes that now cover hundreds
of acres of what would, if drained, be fertile land,
are capable of thorough draining. The banks of
the Shannon and other rivers are, in many parts,
worthless bogs. I have stood on an eminence
below Athlone, and seen nothing but bog ; as far
as the eye could reach, to the utmost horizon it
was bog ; a dreary brown waste for many miles
on every side—all reclaimâble land. Our owners
will not spend the money ; they waste their pay in
riotous debauchery, or some other way different
from that which their duty requires. Land-lords
call on Government to do what they should do
themselves.
As owners of Ireland, they should make the
roads, bridges, harbours, lighthouses, piers, quays,
and other public works. They should keep them
in repair, and provide our poor fishermen with
asylum harbours, for want of which so many lives
84
WHAT DOES IRELAND, &C.
are lost ; but no, not so much as a lifeboat will
they give. The Dundalk lifeboat, to the disgrace
of the land owners, was paid for by the subscrip¬
tions of some school children in England ! Grate¬
ful as we must ever feel for this kind gift, we must
also feel shame for our land-lords in not procuring
the boat out of their many thousands of pounds.
No ! they left it to be provided out of the pennies
of school children !
Our roadways were formerly turnpiked, our
market towns subject to tolls, our harbours and
lighthouses are still subject to exactions. Every
harbour ought to be free ; there should be no
charge for lighthouses ; the owners of Ireland
should supply and maintain these necessary
structures.
Captains of ships keep their vessels out in open
sea off a harbour during severe weather, when
they do not want to go into the port on business ;
this is done to escape harbour dues, to the manifest
danger of shipwreck, and sometimes shipwreck is
the consequence. A small bpx cannot be got from
Liverpool to Dundalk without harbour dues at
each port. Our ports ought to be free as our
highways ; above all things ports should be free,
and asylum harbours plentiful, so as to promote
commerce and protect the lives of our brave
seamen.
The miserable modes of access that farmers
FEUDALISM AND LANDLOUDISM.
85
have to their houses and farms—boreens, or loan-
ings—are disgraceful ; these should be made into
proper roadways, and in many districts tramways
should be laid to facilitate the conveyance of ferti¬
lizers to the farms and the getting off the crops ;
now every thing is done in a poor peddling way
that causes great loss of time, and time is money
everywhere except, one might think, in Ireland.
The owners of Ireland should do these things out
of the many millions of hard cash they get out of
us. It is not fair that we should have to pay
county cess, poor rates, and other dues for the
purpose of defraying the cost of those works the
owners of Ireland ought to execute.
CHAPTER XL
FEUDALISM AND LANDLORDISM.
"All that was abominable to God and oppressive toman was common."
Anglo-Saxon Chtonicle.
As some persons do not understand the feudal
system, I will explain it, for it is intimately con¬
nected with the land question.
The feudal system is essentially military ; under
it society was divided into two classes—the fighting
men or freemen, and the working men or slaves.
86
FEUDALISM AND LANDLORDISM.
If a powerful military chief led a successful in¬
road against a nation,—as William of Normandy
did against the English in 1066,—that chief would
seize on the lands of the natives, and reduce the
people to a state of slavery. As much of the lands
thus violently wrested from the conquered people
as the chief thought necessary he would reserve
for himself, the rest he would divide among the
principal men who formed part of the expedition
as managers of the allotted lands, those managers
to hold the lands at the will of the chief, or
monarch, as we may call him.
The lands would be held on certain conditions,
as loyalty or truth to the monarch, the keeping
a specified number of fighting men equipped and
disciplined, and giving their services to the
monarch when required.
There were also other aids from these grantees,
the estates were subject to fines, talliages, seisins,
rents, reliefs, benevolences, escheats for future
wardships ; these were various ways in which the
monarch managed to make money out of the holder
and maintain his supremacy.
The estates were fees—that is, they were
granted as pay—and the holders were feedatories
or feudatories ; the estates were, in effect, held as
so many military districts, subject to have a fixed
number of fighting men always ready, as well as
to assist the monarch with money on certain
FEUDALISM AND LANDLORDISM. 87
specified occasions. The owner of the estate held
it only during the king's pleasure, just as the
colonel of a regiment now holds his command.
At that time the Crown had no army; the
feudatories and the free tenants on their estates
were the national army.
As the monarch reserved for the general pur¬
poses of the crown a portion of the conquered
territory, termed crown lands, so the feudatories
reserved from the land granted to them by the
monarch a part—the demesnes,—and partitioned
ofiF the remainder into so many farms, to be held by
knights or by yeomen ; these latter were freemen,
who were to be armed, skilled in the use of their
weapons, and ready to attend their chiefs (or
land-lords) on occasions. Thus the country was
converted into an immense military body, armed
and disciplined, and bound to serve the monarch
on pain of death for treason.
Meantime the land was worked either by the
natives, who were in a state of bondage, or by
slaves bought in the market ; for in the feudal
times men and women were sold just as we sell
sheep now ; and, remember, these were not
blacks, but whites.
The head of the estate, the land-lord, built him¬
self a strong castle ; the subfeudatories or tenants
had also strongholds. The serfs or slaves lived in
hamlets or villages, collections of cabins incapable
88 FEUDALISM AND LANDLORDISM.
•
of defence, hence these people were called villains.
And as a degraded people will have certain mean
vices peculiar to a state of degradation, these
dwellers in villages had such faults ; thus a
dweller in a village, that is to say, a villain, and a
low unprincipled person, came to be identical.
And as all the laborious work was done by these
villains, and as all freemen were warriors, pro¬
ductive labour was held to be degrading, and
warfare the only honourable occupation.
The feudatories who thus served the crown, and
whose fee or pay was the land allotted to them,
were of various ranks ; some were dukes (Latin
dux^ a chief person, commander, general) ; their
power extended over large districts ; counts ruled
counties; barons were over baronies. Among them
they had the power to hear causes and administer
justice (or injustice). Some of them possessed
the power of life and death, and the beheading
block was a fixture to the great feudal castles,
almost as much as a drawbridge or a port-cullis.
The quick perceptive power of Byron, and
possibly, too, his knowledge of the feudal times, is
indicated in the following lines, referring to the
feudal strongholds :—
" Beneath these battlements, within those walls,
Power dwelt amid her passions ; in proud state
Each feudal chief upheld his armed halls.
Doing his fearless will."
BYROlb.
FEUDALISM AKD LANDLORDISM. 89
There was little or no check to the will of the
chief or land-lord. Then, indeed, " he could do
what he liked with his own," undisturbed by any
dread of the law, or any other opposition, so long
as he satisfied the love of his followers for warfare
and plunder, and he was sufficiently powerful to
repel the attacks of his neighbours.
The feudal ages are by many thought to be the
real good old times. Let us see what an eye¬
witness—one who lived in the early times of English
feudalism,—the author of the Saxon Chronicle—
says of this age of warlike nationality, twenty-one
years after the feudal conquest of England in 1087 :
" There was little righteousness amongst any,
the more men spake of rightful laws, the more
lawlessly did they act. They raised oppressive
taxes. All that was abominable to God and
oppressive to men was common in William's
time."
In 1135, that is sixty-nine years after William
the Norman had conquered England, Stephen
was made king ; he reigned for nineteen years,
thus extending the feudal age of England to
eighty-eight years, or only twelve years short
of a century.
" When King Stephen came to England, he held an
assembly at Oxford ; and there he seized Roger bishop of
Salisbury, and Alexander bishop of Lincoln, and Roger
the chancellor, his nephew, and he kept them all in prison
90
FEUDALISM AND LANDLORDISM.
till they gave up their castles. When the traitors perceived
that he was a mild man, and a soft, and a good, and that
he did not enforce justice, they did all wonder. They had
done homage to him, and sworn oaths, but they no faith
kept ; all became forsworn, and broke their allegiance, for
every rich man built his castles, and defended them against
him, and they filled the land full of castles. They greatly
oppressed the wretched people by making them work at
these castles, and when the castles were finished they filled
them with devils and evil men. Then they took those
whom they suspected to have any goods, by night and by
day, seizing both men and women, and they put them in
prison for their gold and silver, and tortured them with
pains unspeakable, for never were any martyrs tormented
as these were. They hung some up by their feet, and
smoked them with foul smoke ; some by their thumbs, or
by the head, and they hung burning things on their feet.
They put a knotted string about their heads, and twisted
it till it went into the brain. They put them into dungeons
wherein were adders and snakes and toads, and thus wore
them out. Some they put into a crucet-house, that is, into
a chest that was short and narrow, and not deep, and they
put sharp stones in it, and crushed the man therein so that
they broke all his limbs. There were hateful and grim
things called Sachenteges in many of the castles, and
which two or three men had enough to do to carry. The
Sachentege was made thus : it was fastened to a beam,
having a sharp iron to go round a man's throat and neck,
so that he might no ways sit, nor lie, nor sleep, but that
he must bear all the iron. Many thousands they exhausted
with hunger. I cannot and I may not tell of all the
wounds, and all the tortures that they inflicted upon the
wretched men of this land ; and this state of things lasted
the nineteen years that Stephen was king, and ever grew
FEUDALISM AND LANDLORDISM. 91
worse and worse. They were continually levying an
exaction from the towns, which they called Tenserie,* and
when the miserable inhabitants had no more to give, then
plundered they, and burnt all the towns, so that well
mightest thou walk a whole day's joürney nor ever
shouldest thou find a man seated in a town, or its lands
tilled.
" Then was corn dear, and flesh, and cheese, and butter,
for there was none in the land—wretched men starved
with hunger—some lived on alms who had been erewhile
rich : some fled the country—never was there more misery,
and never acted heathens worse than these. At length
they spared neither church or churchyard, but they took
all that was valuable therein, and then burned the church
and all together. Neither did they spare the lands of
bishops, nor of abbats, nor of priests ; but they robbed
the monks and the elergy, and every man plundered his
neighbour as much as he could. If two or three men
came riding to a town, all the township fled before them,
and thought that they were robbers. The bishops and
clergy were ever cursing them, but this to them was
nothing, for they were all accursed, and forsworn, and
reprobate."—Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
So you see those feudal nobles, from whom the
proudest of England's aristocrats boast of being
descended, were no better than a lot of unprincipled
marauders ; it would be more creditable to the
English aristocracy if they were descended from
industrious tradesmen.
The following extract is from Jonathan Pim's
' A payment to the superior lord for protection.
92
FEUDALISM AND LANDLORDISM.
" Condition and Prospects of Ireland." Dublin,
1848
(P. 5.) " The Norman adventurers exhibited in Ireland
the same daring spirit, the same military prowess, the
same lust of power, the same cruelty and disregard of the
rights of others which the unfortunate Saxons had already
experienced."
The quotations from the Saxon Chronicle relate
to the first century of the much-admired feudal
ages. Those who wish to know how the system
worked at a later period will learn a good deal from
ScotPs novel of Ivanhoe, or, indeed, from almost
any work that relates to the period extending
from William of Normandy to Henry VII. This
monarch broke up feudalism, and with that system
slavery in England and Ireland appears to have
been terminated, but when this actually took place
is not known.
That black slaves might be sold according to
the British law so late as one hundred years back,
the following advertisement may be taken as
proof : it is from the Dublin Mercury of August
18th, 1768:—
" A neat, beautiful, black, Negro girl brought from
Carolina, aged eleven or twelve years, who understands
and speaks English ; very fit to wait on a lady ; to be
disposed of. Application to be made to James Carolan, in
Carrickmacross, or to Mr. Gavan, in Bridge-street, Dublin."
This advertisement relates to a negro, but Irish
FEUDALISM AND LANDLORDISM.
93
people were sent for slaves to work on the West
Indian plantations, and to supply women for the
lustful use of the West India planters during
Cromwell's days, two hundred years back.
Feudalism had radical evils that ensured its
destruction ; these evils were—by arming all free¬
men, and not providing a counterbalancing check,
the country was given up to anarchy. The history
of the feudal ages is one of domestic broils, of
rebellion, of falsehood, of treachery, of bloodshed
and cruelty.
By making the use of arms the business of
freemen, and honest industry the business of slaves,
a false splendour was diffused over the pernicious,
or at the best, less useful occupation of arms, and
the more useful occupation of steady productive
industry was degraded—an error which has been
transmitted to our own days.
The fearful bloody days of feudalism are past,
but some think that the present tenures of fee-
simple to lands are feudal tenures. The landlords
generally hold their lands in England as feudal
grants, but they have adroitly managed to make
them free of feudal dues ; they do not support the
army, nor pay a year's income on succeeding to an
estate, por the other exactions to which lands
were subject; above all, they have converted estates
held at will into properties with unlimited tenure ;
in fact they have changed the feefs, si^ject tö
94
FEUDALISM AND LANDLORDISM.
many special tributes, into allodial lands free of
them.
In Ireland numerous confiscations have rendered
the modes of tenure rather perplexing, but as
Ireland has been nearly wholly confiscated by
Elizabeth, James, Cromwell, and William III.;
and as all those who received those lands got them
subject to a rent to the Crown—very moderate
certainly, but which, trifling as it is, they have
contrived to get rid of ; even in this we see they
have escaped from the responsibilities attached to
their properties, and they have also not complied
with the condition of placing good, substantial
yeomen, holding large farms, on good leases at
reasonable rents. As respects these holders of
Irish lands, the error the various governments
made is in not appointing proper officials, say
commissioners of the Crown lands, to see that
these grantees paid their crown rents, and fulfilled
the other proper conditions connected with their
holdings. Be this as it may, the owners of Ireland
claim Ireland in toto, and cannot be expected to
give up rights established by laws, although these
laws have been made by themselves, without com¬
pensation. I say this, not as admitting their right
in the abstract, but as suggesting a fair, peaceable
settlement of the land question.
Before quitting the subject of feudalism I may
mention that of burghs or fortified towns. I have
FEUDALISM AND LANDLORDISM.
95
stated that villages and hamlets were the
abodes of the slaves (the labourers) ; these were
not fortified, neither had the labourers the privi¬
lege of carrying any weapon beyond a staff. There
were, however, towns in which merchants and
manufacturers lived, and to which the monarchs
granted charters of incorporation ; these formed
independent associations, they walled their towns,
formed themselves into bodies of fighting men,
trained and disciplined, for the purpose of defend¬
ing themselves against marauders, they owned the
land on which stood the town, and also to a certain
range outside; these were holders immediately
under the Crown, and naturally served the Crown
in two wavs — as armed bodies to assist the
monarch against his turbulent feudatories, and as
monied men to aid the Crown with cash. These
incorporated bodies helped much to free the slaves
any one who could get the freedom of a city or a
borough, that is of an incorporated or chartered
association, was entitled to all the protection his
associates could give, and as these associates were
workers—not mere fighters, with the false pride
and lazy abhorrence of good, honest labour which
feudalism engendered in the fighting class,—these
communities flourished and were the beloved of
ro}'alty.
Still, as in the case of feudatories, there was no
counterpoise ; as society changed, as the monarch
96
FEUDALISM AND LANDLORDISM.
gradually set up a standing army, as the owners of
the soil merged their army character into that of
mere land holders, and their holdings became inde¬
pendent of the monarch, as peace became the estab¬
lished order, and land dealing became general ; the
corporations began to part with their lands, jobbing
became universal, the corporate property was sold
or swindled away, and now nearly all the lands of
towns are private property ; this is owing to the
inhabitants having no check over the corporations.
Even now, with what are styled reformed corpo¬
rations, a proper check is sadly wanted.
I appeal to the citizens of Dublin ; their corpo¬
ration is a highly respectable one, but. What check
is there over their expenditure ? The want of a
proper check is shewn in the very heavy local
taxation : this remark may be applied to every
corporation.
As one instance of reckless extravagance, I cite
a case that occurred the other day, the appoint¬
ment of a city marshal for Dublin. The former
gentleman who held that office, Tom Reynolds,
was a sort of laughing-stalk to the idle gazers at
corporation shows. Tom, in addition to the office
of city marshal, held that of inspector of pawn¬
brokers, in which I have heard he did his part
well. His successor as city marshal has agreed
to accept £300 a-year, Tom's salary having been
£350. What are the duties of this well-salaried
FEUDALISM AND LANDLORDISM.
97
officer ? I read that the present officer appeared
once in public officially, that he wore a scarlet
tunic richly braided, and a cocked hat, a la
Française, rode a decent-looking horse, and was
admired by the crowd. Citizens of Dublin ! is
this raree-show value for £300 of your money? I
admire the abilities of the artist, and regret that
the owners of Ireland have so neglected his talent
that he finds it necessary to play the Jack pudding
before the mob of Dublin, and I more regret that
there is no check over corporate extravagance ; if
there were, I am sure we would not see the people
of Dublin paying £300 for such idle folly. There
can be very little to do for the money, since Tom
was able to inspect all the Dublin pawnbrokers,
as well as ride his well-known gray eharger as city
marshal ; but such things must be till there is
a proper check over corporations. The old
corporations beggared the towns, and the reformed
body is so like the old one, that, like Pepper's
ghost, one can hardly tell which is t'other.
98
ASSOCIATED PROPRIETARY.
CHAPTER XII.
«
ASSOCIATED PROPRIETARY.
" God has provided the ground for all."—Paleï's Moral Phil., b. iii.
So limited are the views of some otherwise well-
informed persons on the subject of landed property,
that they find a difficulty of comprehending a
condition of society in which land shall be held
otherwise than as private property.
According to Archdeacon Paley's view, land was
not private property in Britain anterior to the
Roman invasion ; this he deduces from there being
no mention of private property in land in Caesar's
account of Britain, and ' it is rendered more
probable from the fact that, except the royal
domains and those set apart for the chiefs—and
these were official, not family properties—and other
lands connected with offices, there was not private
landed property in Ancient Ireland, nor, I believe,
in Scotland.
In Ireland, anterior to the Anglo-Norman in¬
vasion, the lands belonged to the clan or tribe ;
and as Scotland resembled Ireland in being divided
into clans, I presume the same mode of land tenure
also existed there.
ASSOCIATED PROPRIETARY.
99
One of the evils of the English invasion was
the change from clan to feudal holding. At
the same time I am not insensible to the
defects of the clan system ; under it a nation could
never be formed that could resist a formidable in¬
vasion from without ; but still the principle of the
land system was good. Had the nation been made
proprietor instead of the clans, the plan would have
been complete ; still making the land the common
property ot each clan, instead of the private property
of individuals, was based on the sound principle
that the land should be the common property of
all, as God has given it.
The defect is, that the whole island was not
made one clan,—the sons of Erin.
Even under the brutal and bloody feudal system
the original principle which made all lands the
property of the Crown, as supreme enfeoffer or
bestower, and which only granted them during
the royal pleasure to private persons, as so many
official feofs, had in it the grand idea that land is
national, not personal property ; had the Crown
upheld that national principle, we would not now be
the prey to landlordism ; but the monarchs yielded
before the armed hordes of feudalism, and hence
feofs became allodial, or nearly allodial possessions,
held almost as independent of any superior as
Robinson Crusoe owned his desert island.
But thesè instances are from bye-gone times,
100
ASSOCIATED PEOPRIETAKT'.
ancient ages. What is wanted are cases of land
held otherwise than as private or- individual
property now. There are plenty of them.
The corporations have, in some cases, remnants
of their properties.
Various societies possess property, as the Royal
Dublin Society, the Royal Irish Academy, the
Royal Hibernian Academy, the Museum of Irish
Industry, the Clubs, the Banks, Hospitals. These
are bodies of men, not individuals j some such
bodies hold lands as well as chattels.
Trinity College owns above two hundred
thousand acres of land, the estates being distri¬
buted over a great part of Ireland ; the property
possessed by this body of associated proprietors is
very nearly equal to the entire of the Co. Louth ;
this county contains 200,484 acres, of which about
15,000 is waste, that is l-13th of the whole. Of
the College lands 63,258 àcres are in the County
Donegal alone ; that was a fine sweep of land for
this body of incorporated tutors to get ! nearly ten
miles square, or nearly one hundred square miles
of land ! and their entire landed property is above
312 square miles, independent of the very valuable
property of Trinity College in Dublin, which is
valued, for taxation, at £5,300, in addition to
which the college has various benefices in its gift,
and sends two members to Parliament. We may
fairly value the land income of this body of incor-
ASSOCIATED PROPRIETART. 101
porated tutors at £300,000 at the least : pretty
well for thirty-three teachers, being above £9,000
a-year each. The entire Protestant church of
Ireland is stated to cost about £600,000 a-year, this
body of tutors have half of that big sum from land
alone, to say nothing of their pay as teachers,
which, as they enjoy the monopoly of putting the
educational finish on our Protestant aristocracy
and middle classes, must be a goodly sum ; judging
by the results, these fellows cannot complain of
not doing well these bad times.
In addition to these advantages the College is
by law entitled to get a copy for nothing of every
book published in the kingdom. I must give
them a copy of this book, and this wealthy body
will not pay me a farthing for my property. This
appropriation being according to law is, of course,
honest, otherwise it would be looting ; but English
laws are sometimes apparently absurd and unna¬
tural, as Paley quietly terms landlordism.
Under this law of copyright, five copies of every
work published must be given gratuitously to
bodies which, like Trinity College, ought to help
literature instead of taxing it ; my work on the Irish
Crosses having been published at five guineas a
copy, the tax of five copies would be twenty-five
guineas on me—twenty-five guineas' worth of my
property for nothing 1 it is not pleasant to find
Jonathan Wild's freebooting notions embodied in
102
ASSOCIATED PROPRIETARV.
the copyright act, for the purpose of giving the
goods of poor literary men to societies that are
overflowing with wealth. If Trinity College
wants books, they ought to be paid for : except
by law they have no more right to take my
book than they would have to take a pair of
boots, a hat, or a coat, from the makers of these
articles.
They teach moral philosophy, and are very
urgent about religion in this Protestant University ;
they ought to illustrate their teaching by their
practice, and not take other peoples' goods without
payment.
But associated proprietors who hold far larger
property in land than even the gigantic estate of
Trinity College, is " The Irish Society," a body of
men termed Irish, I suppose, because not one of
them is Irish, or lives in Ireland. The fellows of
Trinity College are absentees to their tenants in
Donegal, but the Irish Society, being composed of
" the twelve chief companies of the London Cor¬
poration," is, if possible, still more absentee. Two
hundred and fifty years ago King James assigned
the entire County of Londonderry to the Corpora¬
tion of London. This body has lost part of its
Irish property since, but still it is an extensive
land owner in our country. M'Culloch states that
almost all the County Londonderry is held by
London companies {Geographical Dictionary),
ASSOCIATED PROPRIETARY.
103
The County Londonderry comprises 518,423
acres, being divided into
Cultivated land . 338,817 ^
Waste and bog . . 119,202 > Acres.
Water . . . 10,040 )
Being 810 square miles of our lands granted at one
sweep to the London companies, who, in virtue of
their possession, called the county Londonderry.
This grant was ten times the size of the Trinity
College estates ; What is its present rental ? The
rents of our lands sent to London aldermen !
Railway companies are also associated pro¬
prietors.
The Established Church is a corporation of
proprietors.
I might mention several other cases of similar
proprietorship, but these are enough. I now
proceed to explain the details of my own plan.
104
the perfect cure.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PERFECT CURE.
" What's to do ?
 piece of work to make a sick man whole."
Shakespeare, Julius Casar.
Ireland is sick of landlordism; mere quackery
will not do ; a plan that would only shift the
complaint from one part of the social body to
another, will not serve the purpose; the constitution
of " the sick man " is sound. To restore to sound
health, it is necessary that the destructive disease
shall be expelled from the system. Our state
physicians, speaking through Lord Stanley, declare
they do not know what to do : I, who have the
advantages of long experience and careful obser¬
vation, may be excused for offering my plan foj.
the salvation of my country.
Appoint persons, under an act of Parliament, by
an elective system, similar to that by which poor-
law guardians are now appointed, and according
to the poor-law union divisions, thus forming a
local acting body, whose business shall be to
attend to the buying, letting, and management of
land, as land agents do now.
These to be called land guardians.
THE PERFECT CURE.
105
Their territorial power to be the same as that
of the poor-law guardians, that is, each set of land
guardians to act for the same unions as the
poor-law guardians do.
The land guardians to act on behalf of the
people.
Land commissioners should be appointed by
Government to serve as checks on the land
guardians, just as the poor-law commissioners do
with respect to the poor-law guardians. These
would act on hehalf of the Crown.
Thus the agency I recommend is exactly similar
to that by which the poor-law system is now worked.
The duties of the land guardians would be—
To purchase land offered for sale, either in town
or country.
To purchase lands, either in cultivation or lying
now uncultivated, but which are susceptible of
planting or being otherwise rendered useful.
To let such lands as farms, or otherwise to have
them cultivated.
And to account for the expenditures and receipts
to the land commissioners.
The purchase money to be advanced by the
Bank of Ireland, for which advances the Govern¬
ment shall be security.
The lands purchased and the profits resulting
from them to be Government property till the
debt of the purchasing be paid.
F 2
106
THE PERFECT CURE.
No act of purchase, of letting, of payment, or other
land agency on the part of the land guardians to be
valid if not approved of by the land commissioners.
The debt being paid, and so the purchased
lands being converted from private into national
property, the rents or other profits from such
lands are to be devoted to—
Paying poor-rates, county cess, and ail other
local taxes, so as to free both farmers and towns¬
people from local taxation.
To improving harbours and defraying all such
expenses connected with them, as may render
every port in Ireland free from all dues.
Shipping and the lives of seamen are at present
lost to a fearful extent. The newspapers state
that about fifty vessels a week are lost ! Every
possible means should be adopted to prevent these
calamities. Asylum harbours, life-boats, steam-
tugs, and whatever else can serve this great object
ought to be amply provided. In stormy weather,
during fogs, and other times of danger, steam-tugs
are particularly needed. At present such vessels
are kept by persons on speculation, and the prices
asked for their services are so heavy, that captains
sometimes risk the loss of the vessel and the
lives of all on board, sooner than pay a very large
sum for the tug. Tugs should, for cases of
necessity, be at every dangerous coast, to render
gratuitous service to vessels.
THE PERFECT CURE.
107
As the estates would be local, the application of
the funds derived from them should, in the main,
be local also, but a strict application of this plan
would be injurious ; there must be national objects,
for these every locality should contribute, such as
the keeping up the lighthouses, should it be decided
that they were to be kept out of the land fund ;
the building of asylum harbours on the dangerous
coast of the west and the south.
Other purposes will suggest themselves.
One might be freeing the country from income-
tax, from the tea-tax, and other such charges, and
paying all Ireland's taxation out of the land fund,
except such taxes as are held to be promotive of
morality, as those on intoxicating liquors, tobacco,
&c.
The probable land fund would be forty or fifty
millions a-year ; by the land fund I mean the
profits from all sources, such as the land-lords
derive their revenues from now, and also the large
profits which would accrue from our waste lands
when planted or otherwise made profitable ; and
also all mines, fisheries, game, &c.
The land fund should be strictly national income,
that is to say, Irish income ; Ireland to pay to
England her fair share to the consolidated fund,
either out of the land fund by taxes, or partly by
both J that share is now under seven millions
a-year.
108
THE PERFECT ODRE»
I make no suggestion as to the rules of tenancy ;
when the land guardians shall he elected they can
settle that point. I have no doubt that they would
be well inclined to grant favourable terms to the
tenants.
The advantages of this plan of having the land
national property, to be managed by local land
guardians, and these to be checked by land commis¬
sioners, are obvious. The questions of absenteeism,
tenant right, &c., are solved. Ireland gets a
revenue of forty or fifty millions for her own good
purposes ; she can do justice to all, not only the
farmers, hut the heavily taxed people in towns ;
she can furnish employment for all her population ;
she can cover her fields with " consummate culti¬
vation"—to use Lord DufFerin's phrase;—she can
cover her millions of acres of waste lands with
crops for food or for wood, and she can place her
people on a fair stage without any favoured
absentees or other land monopolists to prevent
her national prosperity.
I have spoken of the debt incurred by the
purchasing of the lands as one which the Govern¬
ment should guarantee, but for which the land
purchased .aod its profits might he responsible,
and thus 'all I ask from Government is to endorse
the bill ; say, in the case of farmed lands, a twenty
years^ bill ; in the case of lands to be fenced,
reclaimed, and planted, a bill of longer date.
THE PERFECT CURE.
109
Still, I think, the least our Government could do
would be to pay half the amount out of the
consolidated fund, and let the other half be a debt
on the land.
Twenty millions were paid to purchase the
freedom of the West-Indian blacks, we are spend¬
ing several millions to rescue a few of the British
people out of thraldom in Abysinnia; surely Britain
should rescue Ireland from a state of land slavery
and thraldom which is so -discreditable to the
statesmen of the United Kingdom, and which has
been caused by her own bad land laws and the
bad land-lords she has forced on us, and a state
which renders us poor, disloyal, and dangerous.
If we were all right, we should be the strength of
the united islands, instead of being England's
difficulty, danger, and disgrace.
Government, at the outset, might set men to
work for the purpose of effecting a thorough
drainage all over the country,—to drain the land,
to drain many of the lakes, to regulate the outfall
of the rivers ; next to fence and plant the millions
of acres of wild mountain and waste lands with
proper timber. At once employment would be
afforded to all our surplus workers.
Why not employ convict labour and military
labour at these useful occupations ?
In the County Wicklow the barracks are ready
built ; they are now idle ; they are on the military
110
the perfect cure.
road formed by the soldiers at the beginning of
this century, and which runs through the wild
district I have described in chapter iv. Govern¬
ment should purchase and plant this fifty square
miles of a desert, the work to be superintended by
local land guardians ; half the debt to be paid by
us, the other half out of the consolidated fund.
By England's bad land laws Ireland has lost at
least one thousand millions of money within the
last two centuries,—that's our bill. What part of
that will she give to rescue us out of our present
deplorable condition ?
If this plan were adopted, our farmers would be
well fed, well clothed, well housed, well off ; our
townspeople would not be weighed down with
heavy rents and oppressive taxation; our lands
well tilled, our mountains adorned with useful
timber, our naturally beautiful scenery vastly
improved by the beauty of our woods. Enjoying
our own dear island, this would be a happy
nation ; no agrarian outrages, no arbitrary evic¬
tions ; we would have a glorious national income,
we would have a country to be attached to ; no
idlers, plei^y of work for all, plenty of food for
all, plenty of money for all good purposes,—such
a people would be loyal, for they would enjoy their
just right—Ireland for the Irish.
But it may be asked. Would the land-lords sell?
Aye, and be very glad to do so if they could get
THE PERFECT CURE.
Ill
anything like fair prices. They have sold about
one-fifth of Ireland within the last few years in
the Landed Estates Court. They have been
compelled to sell their lands to railway companies.
If the plan be approved and adopted by Parliament,
plenty of land will be soon for sale.
In Lord Duiferin's letter to the Times, February
1st, 1867, his lordship says :—
" I do not deny the right of the State to deal in a
peremptory manner with private «property of all kinds,
and especially with landed property ; but, in assuming the
right, it must be made clear that its exercise will be of
indisputable benefit to the community at large, and the
individual to whose prejudice it is enforced must be
compensated to the full amount of the injury he sustains."
Adopting the views thus enunciated by his
lordship, sensible that any plan attended with
injustice or social convulsion cannot be good in
the end, I have proposed a peaceable and an honest
solution of our great national perplexity—one
which could be introduced so gradually that no
disruption of society would ensue, and one which
would, I think, be gladly accepted by the majority
of the land-lords themselves.
If I wished to advocate a forced sale of lands, I
would not want legal examples. Railway companies
have seized lands, houses, churches, churchyards ;
no property, public or private, is exempt from the
railway power : this is because public interests are
112
THE TERFECT CURE.
superior to any private ones. As Jonathan Pim
observes in his most excellent book, the ^'Condition
and Prospects of Ireland " : — " The soil of the
country is the property of the State, granted to its
possessors to use not to destroy. It is a trust for
the benefit of all" (p. 247). That trust must be sur¬
rendered when the public good requires the sacrifice.
Non-residence was not contemplated when the
lands of Ireland were granted to English persons.
The conditions of James's grants included the
erection of a fortified residence on each property ;
the design clearly was to create a strong Protestant
garrison of gentry and yeomen, who should expel
the Irish out of the country ; but the result has
been a weak Protestant body, and the greater part
of the land-lords non-resident.
I have stood on an eminence in the County
Galway, from which I could see the ruins of several
castles, probably the former residences of the
Sassanagh intruders who came over and took our
lands centuries back, but there was not one
respectable house to be seen—no person above
the condition of an humble farmer lived for miles,
around; all the present land-lords are non-resident.
During the time of the famine of 1847, in order to
form a committee of four resident land-lords or
clergy to distribute relief, one person had to come
thirty miles, another eighteen, another fifteen, the
fourth seven miles.
THE PERFECT CURE.
113
There are whole districts in Ireland of which
the land-lords are non-resident.
Almost the entire of the County Londonderry
is owned by London companies ; this land was
one of James's grants, and in thus giving it to
Londoners he violated his own rule of residence.
There are plenty of cases in which the British
Government has compelled land-lords to give up
the land. One I have met with in which not only
had the land to be surrendered, but the amount of
purchase money was fixed at fifteen years' rental :
this occurred at Prince Edward's Island, British
North America. At that place an anti-rent league
was formed,—not by Irishmen, but by English and
Scotch emigrants,—Government interfered, put
down the league by soldiery, but it had a bill
passed by which land-lords were obliged to re¬
linquish rents altogether. The above facts are
stated in the Athenœum for Dec. 28th, 1867.
So if the plan be agreed to, we are sure to get
the land.
The proposed purchase by Government of our
railways is an important fact; these are said not
to be so useful to the public as they might be,
hence the idea of converting them from private
into public property.
A nation, any more than an individual, should
not live beyond its means ; if it does, if debts
accumulate, the consequences are obvious,—a
114
THE PERFECT OCRE.
millstone is hung round its neck—the interest of
the money due cripples the resources of every one.
As the debt of England is above £20 for each
person, man, woman, or child, it is easy for every
one to reckon his own share of that responsibility ;
thus my family consists of six persons, so I am in
debt nationally above £120, and my annual interest
on my share is £4 or £5. This is fearful.
I suppose that Ireland, according to its popu¬
lation, owes, as its share of the national debt,
£100,000,000. Is not this state of matters
ruinous ?
If Ireland belonged to its own people, if she had
her own just land income of forty or fifty millions
annually, she would soon not only be free of debt,
free of all taxation, local or imperial, have free
ports, have asylum harbours, have plenty of money
to support her various societies that are now
craving, like beggars, and are repelled as beggars,
for aid from England,—aye, and are told they are
beggars by the brutal aristocratic Press of Eng¬
land,—she would soon have more money than she
could use.
Instead of poverty, discontent, and disloyalty,
as we have now, we would be great, glorious and
free, with every comfort reasonable people could
desire, with plenty of money in the national
treasury, and not owing a penny to anyone.
May heaven inspire our rulers with a proper
THE PERFECT CURE. 115
sense of justice to adopt the plan I have set forth.
May God save Ireland from the evils of that system
of landlordism under which our people have been
groaning for ages, and which have made this noble
island a byeword among the nations of Europe.
In order to attain this " consummation devoutly
to be wished," we must use every just and proper
exertion ; we must get, if possible, the assistance
of the enlightened and liberal English reformers.
We must form land clubs to free Ireland from
landlordism. We will get,lam convinced, plenty
of cordial, useful help from the other side of the
Channel so soon as we are earnestly striving to
help ourselves.
The carrying of the Emancipation Bill was a
triumph for which Ireland can never be too
grateful to the noble hero of peaceful, continuous,
unflinching, successful agitation ; that act freed
Ireland from religious tyranny by law, we have now
to free the land from the tyranny of landlordism.
Let not the example of the Great Liberator be lost
on us.
Rise, Erin, arise, from thy dark couch of sorrow.
Thy sky will yet brighten, thy grief fade away ;
The cloud which hangs o'er thee be gone by the morrow.
And this daik night give birth to a bright sunny day.
The cause of thy sorrow will not yield to wailing,
For ages thy groans have resounded in vain j
Determined, united, unflinching, unfailing.
Thy sons will win for thee thy full rights again.
116
sümmary.
Then will Ireland be—
" All that I wish thee,
Great, glorious, and free,
First flower of the land
And first gem of the sea."
Mooke.
SUMMARY.
" When I examine the state of European society with
the unimpassioned spirit which a philosopher can alone
command, I perceive that it is in a state of transition—
a state of transition from feodal to federal principles."—
Disraeli's Conlarini Fleming.
The present Prime Minister of England published
the above paragraph in 1831 ; events justified
and still justify this opinion of a keen-sighted
statesman, who is himself an illustration of his
own conclusion. He has triumphantly overcome
the hereditary claims of the English Feudal
aristocracy to be at the head of the Government
of Great Britain, and, so far, the new federal or
popular principle has triumphed over the ancient
one of feudal, aristocratic domination.
The purpose of my present work is to advocate
the federal principle as applied to land, or, in
other words, the conversion of the property of the
Irish land-lords into national property.
SUMMARY.
117
The system of land ownership in this country
before the Anglo-Norman invasion was federal.
The principle was sound and just ; the defect of
that ownership being that it was limited.
The country was owned in sections : the owners
were the clans. Had that federal plan been
extended to all the island, had it embraced all the
inhabitants in one federal, brotherly ownership,
the people of this country would have escaped the
horrors they have endured for many centuries.
To combine the whole of the people against an
invading enemy was impossible under the clan
system. Brien Boru, one of the most talented
monarchs that ever lived, a monarch who was
able to defeat the Danish power in this country at
the very time it was completely triumphant in
England, and had succeeded in placing a Danish
monarch on the English Throne ; even the great,
the victorious Brian Boru was unable to conquer
the defects of a nation divided against itself
into a number of incoherent masses.
Unity is strength ; clanship and national unity
were incompatible.
I have endeavoured to give a correct idea of the
great natural capabilities of Ireland, and of the
Irish people ; that this very fine country is in the
hands of only a few thousand persons, who are
masters of it with the amplest powers that laws
can give j that these owners have been forced on
118
SÜMMABY.
US by England, who has also made the laws in
their favour, and who protects them by its power.
That under the management, or mismanagement,
of these land owners, Ireland is the worst cultivated
country in the United Kingdom, and that one-
fourth of it is lying waste, nearly the whole of the
waste land being capable of profitable cultivation.
I have shown that this defective and this neglected
cultivation is the consequence of the monopoly of
land-lords ; that the monopolists are a chief cause
of the distress and disloyalty which prevail in
Ireland, as well as of the emigration which is
threatening to depopulate the island.
I have also noticed the shameful vituperation
which the English Press has poured forth against
the Irish nation. I have noticed its mendacious,
continuous anti-Irish attacks, and how the Enghsh-
made proprietors of Ireland, and the aristocratic
press of England (I suppose Disraeli would call it
the feo dal press), agree in a hostile feeling to this
country.
Next comes the natural question. By what right
do these English-made monopolists of Ireland hold
their properties? I have proved from political
philosophy and by plain common sense that their
only right is English-made law, and that the
original right to Ireland is in the people of Ireland,
and that, as the rights of these monopolists are a
public injury, they ought to be abrogated ; I have
SUMMARY.
119
shewn the enormous cost land-lords are to us ;
explained the un suitableness of feudalism for our
present state of civilization, and that landlordism
is a result of feudalism.
By a variety of examples I establish the
rationality of federal owners, or, in other words,
of associated proprietors ; and, lastly, I explain
the plan by which the entire of the Irish people
could, in a peaceable and just way, be constituted
joint owners of Ireland, and the great advantages
that would result from this national proprietor¬
ship.
One most important subject is the great rents
charged for building ground ; this heavy payment
for land monopoly presses with almost ruinous
force on the persons who carry on business in
cities. In Dublin, besides the very heavy rents
which the inhabitants pay, and the heavy taxation
which the Government puts on them, there are
local rates of an extremely burdensome kind,
amounting, it is said, to about one-fourth additional
taxation on the estimated value.
How strange it is that while so much exertion
has been made to relieve the land-tillers from the
pressure of landlordism, nothing has been done in
that respect for the dwellers in towns, who really
feel the pressure far more severely.
The plan proposed by me would relieve both
town and country from land-lord injustice j it is
120
SUMMABT.
broad, comprehensive, simple, and just ; it removes
the curse of feudalism from the land.
It is the only plan that has been propounded
for doing justice to all, by making all partakers in
the advantages that would accrue from the land—
that which God gave as the common property of
all. God gave the land for the inhabitants
thereof ; man's injustice has monopolized it.
Land monopoly is doomed.
Ireland must become the property
of the Irish !
" Circamstances are beyond the control of man, but his
conduct is in his own power. The great event is as sure
as that I am now penning this prophecy of its occurrence.
With us it rests whether it shall be welcomed by wisdom
or by ignorsnce—whether its beneficial results shall be
accelerated by enlightened minds, or retarded by our dark
passions."—Disraeli.
I close my work with this appropriate extract
from Contarini Fleming.
THE END.
Fetbb Box, Printer, Uabbot-street, DubUu.
By the same Author.
ll0St Intmsting
OF THE
StuíptuKÍr Crosses d Irolanïr,
Drawn to Scale and Lithographed by H. O'Neill.
In imperial folio (22 by 15 inches), contains 36 plates in the
best style of tinted lithography, descriptive letterpress, and
an essay on Ancient Irish Art.
This work is allowed to be the finest that has ever been
produced on Irish Antiquities. Less than 200 copies have
been printed, the stones are cancelled, and a second edition
will not be published. Very few copies remain for sale ; the
price is now ten guineas, but it will probably be much
higher.
Some copies of Part II., containing plates 7 to 12 inclu¬
sive, still remain for sale, price l6s. each part ; also, some
Single Prints at 3s. 6d. each.
««the fine arts and civilization of
ancient ireland," imperial 8vo, price 15s.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
From the SAUNDERS.
" Without entering into any minute analysis of this book, or offering any
opinion upon the accuracy of its views, we may recommend it to the notice
of the Irish Scliolar ; it is from the pen of Mr. Henry O'Neill, and has been
published by Smith and Elder, London, and George Herbert, Dublin. The
appearance of the work is greatly in its favour, binding and paper good,
type good, illustrations excellent, and as varied as good, consisting of wood¬
cuts, chromo, and other lithographs The volume will excite
much interest, and lead to discussions in high and learned quarters in this
country and in England,"
Prem the EVENING MAIL.
" The chromo-lithographs are finished with the precision and delicacy of
touch and brilliancy and cleanness of colour of the early artists, the objects
of admiration of our artist-author. Our author holds no middle view where
the character and ancient glory of his country are in question, but then he
sets forth a mass of interesting, undoubted facts, and gives sound or very
specious reasons for all he asserts. He writes with the same mastery of
language as if the pen, instead of the pencil, had occupied his fingers the
greater part of his life. His country owes him gratitude for his vindication
of her early skill and learning in this and his work on the Sculptured Crosses.
The woodcuts display the rare skill of our countryman, Mr. Hanlon, in bis
peculiar walk."
Prom, the NATION.
" On the whole, Mr. CNeill's work is a beautiful, a valuable, and a most
welcome addition to the literature of our national antiquities."
Prom the KILKENNY MODERATOR.
" Henry O'Neill's ' Ancient Crosses of Ireland ' is a noble and a wondrous
example of private zeal and untiring labor. His other recently published
work on the ' Ancient Art of Ireland ' is no less a credit to the same author."
The ATHEN MUM.
A very lengthened and favourable notice of the work appeared in the
Athenœum, January 31st, 1863.
Prom the DAILY EXPRESS.
" Mr. O'Neill, in his preface, expresses a hope that this work maybe con¬
sidered a credit to the Irish Press. It certainly will be so considered by all
persons of taste. The illustrations are exceedingly beautiful ; tbe printing
is admirable; the binding is elegant; and altogether, so far as the getting
up of the work is concerned, it is a model of good taste and beautiful work¬
manship. The style of the Author is in keeping with the artistic execution
of tlie framework which he has chosen for his thoughts. It is correct, clear,
sensible, and genuine, with nothing tawdry or pretentious,—with no brilliancy
but what shines naturally out of the gems which he has set with so much
skill."
Prom the BUILDER.
" None but those who seem to be of opinion that out of Ireland ' cometh
no good thing,' can doubt that in ancient times a high state of Art-cultiva¬
tion there existed, whatever degree of general civilization may have accom¬
panied it ; and that eminence in Art could only co-exist with some consider¬
able degree of general civilization, one cannot but admit, since the history
of the whole world indicates as much ; although high Art, in ancient times,
has certhinly also co-existed with much that was savage and otherwise,
what we now decidedly call uncivilized. But so it is even now, and in
England, too : a few hundred years hence, doubtless, it will be a general
opinion that, notwithstanding our eminence in the mechanical and other
arts, we were a set of semi-savages. As for such art as that displayed in
ancient Irish metalwork, of which, more especially, Mr. O'Neill gives
colored and other illustrations, we are very much inclined to think with him
that—
"If our modem workers in metal could show us as much Art power, and use it as
skilfully, their works, even if based on common bronze, would be of many times more
value than so much solid gold; but, now-a-days, the mere intrinsic value of the metal
is generally the first consideration; 'Is it solid gold?' is the primary question: the
artistic part is not heeded, simply because decorative art is not properly cultivated.
Not so the Irish workers in metal: with them tlie artisticj^art was everything: the in¬
trinsic value of the materials was not minded by these talented men."
that in Ireland, six hundred years ago, and for an indefinite period
previously, there existed a peculiar order of civilization, which thereafter
gradually sank and expired, there appears to be every reason to believe,
notwithstanding the exertions of Dr. Petrie and others to disprove the ex¬
istence of such a state of civilization.
" Of the Art displayed during this ancient period, Mr. O'Neill admits the
defects, but upholds the real merits with all the enthusiasm of a true Irish¬
man.
"We find," he says, "that in figure, the remains of Irish Art are defective; but in
ornament, they show that in a knowledge of the sound principles of Art, in breadth of
effect, united to richness of detail, in fertility of invention, and delicacy of e.vecution,
the Irish Artists were consnmmate master's, and have, perhaps, never been equalled by
those of any other nation; that they excelled in color as well as in design: and that
they, probably, colored their public buildings and monuments."
Frmn the FREEMAÎTS JOURNAL.
"Theaiithor writes as an Irishman—proud of his country—desirous that
its past glories should be known and appreciated, and that the present gene¬
ration, learning from the past, should again take its proper place in the world
of Art. . . A more respectable cloud of witnesses than he brings forward
to testify to the excellence and pre-eminence of the Irish Art of the early
Christian period, cannot be well imagined. ... In his drawings and
lithographs we have beautiful and true copies of some of the most delicate
and intricate designs. He, as an artist, has given the subject deep study.
He thoroughly understands it ; he has mastered its principles^ and those
principles he enunciates with great clearness. From the artistic knowledge
he displays, and from the remarks which he makes on Art generally, and
the laws which govern Art, one cannot help receiving his criticisms on Irish
Art, laid down in chap. 8, as worthy the highest respect. He shows that
his statements are founded on long and careful observation. . . . The
chapter on the Round Towers shows great research and very careful obser¬
vation. One is struck with the great amount of information gained by
personal inspection and observation, which Mr. O'Neill displays. His remarks
on " Dr. Petrie's mistakes" seem to be complete, We are greatly struck
with the clever, witty, humorous, and masterly way in which he handles
this difficult subject. . . . Mr. O'Neill has shewn that for ages Ireland
has taken a high, if not the highest, place amongst civilized nations—he has
shewn and proved from authorities, not Irish, that she not only excelled in
Art (a first fruit of civilization), but that art in various countries is traceable
to Irish teaching ; that she assisted in spreading abroad that learning and
civilization for which she was so famous at home. Truly does he assign the
cause of her decline, and in a way not calculated to excite the anger of any
party, does he manfully set forth these causes. . . . The style of Mr.
O'Neill's writing is forcible and perspicuous-—the matters discussed are treated
in a manner which tnust prove interesting and instructive to all. No
previous knowledge of the subject is required as preparation for its perusal.
It is a work at once suited for the library of the student or for the drawing-
room table."
From the RELIQUARY.
" Mr. O'Neill has, by the publication of his excellent volume now before
us, done much towards enabling a correct estimate of the state of the arts
of, and of the high state of civilization among the early Irish people to be
formed, and he deserves the thanks of his brother archaeologists for producing
a volume sO acceptable and useful as it is, and for the very lucid and masterly
manner in which he has treated his subject throughout. . . . The third
part of the work consists of an able dissertation on the Round Towers of
Ireland, in which many of Dr. Petrie's statements are disproved, and his
opinions satisfactorily refuted. We again commend Mr. O'Neill's volume to
the notice of antiquaries, and trust to see other works from his able pen on
kindred subjects."
From the DUBLIN EVENING POST.
" An interesting, attractive, and really valuable work."
From the WARDER.
"The author and artist has put heart and intellect to the composition of
this monument to the ancient civilization and artistic skill of his country', and
the whole is the production not only of a superior artist, but of one who is
thoroughly up in the history of painting and sculpture, ancient and modern,
and a sound critical scholar in whatever tends to the highest excellence in
their various styles. There is nothing left to be desired in the type or qualify
or the paper, or the execution of the illustrations."
Frtm the KILKENNY AROHMOLOQIUAL S0CIETT8 JOURNAL.
" Tile Rev. James Graves called the attention of the members to the re¬
cent work issued by Mr. Henry O'Neill, ' On the Civilization and Fine Arts
of Ancient Ireland.' It was a credit to the zeal, artistic skill, and untiring
research of its author, and ought to be in the hands of every man who took
pride in the olden glory of Ireland. Mr. O'Neill deserved well of his country,
and, it was to be hoped, would find numerous purchasers for his work."