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THE LAND DIFFICULTY; 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 # 
 
 
THE 
 
 LAND DIFFICULTY 
 
 OF 
 
 IRELAND, 
 
 WITH AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 BY 
 
 GERALD FITZGIBBON, ESQ., 
 
 MASTER IN CHANCERY; 
 
 AUTHOR OF “IRELAND IN 1 868 .” 
 
 AVhat to shun doth no great wisdom need, 
 But what to follow is a task indeed. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, READER, AND DYER. 
 
 DUBLIN: M C GLASIIAN AND GILL. 
 
 1869 . 
 
DUBLIN: 
 
 Jjrmteb at % ftmforsttg |tos } 
 BY M. H. GILL. 
 
REMOTE STORAGE 
 
 S33 
 
 F5 77 £ 
 
 ooo.z^ 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 &c. &c. 
 
 The proprietors of the London “ Times” have spared no 
 expense in constructing and maintaining a machinery 
 by which to learn the views and sentiments, for the 
 time being, of the Club-house and Coffee-house States¬ 
 men by whom the legislation for this Empire is guided. 
 These statesmen, and their associates, divide as dis¬ 
 tinctly, in passing to their several places of resort in 
 town, as members do, when going into different lobbies 
 of the Parliament House. To learn, and to express— 
 to advocate, and to promote the views and policy of 
 that party which happens to be, or seems likely soon to 
 be, in the ascendant, is the function of the organ which 
 has assumed the name, and wears the varying complexion 
 of the “ Times.” As an exponent of what is to be hoped, 
 or feared from the predominant party, this journal is 
 gratifying and useful to all who take an interest in pass¬ 
 ing events. The “ Times” is prophetic ; for it has learned 
 I vhat those intend to do, who have the power to do it, 
 4 r for good or for evil, and who thus accomplish the pro¬ 
 phecy of their oracle. 
 
 B 
 
 /qOoIOB 
 
 5 
 
2 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 This organ has recently expressed impatience of the 
 delay occasioned by the Irish Church Bill, which, for a 
 time, obstructs the intended legislation on the relations 
 of landlord and tenant in Ireland. The law which 
 regulated these, up to* 1860 , was nearly identical with 
 the law of England, and had been so for centuries. 
 Two special Acts were passed for Ireland in that year, 
 one of which proved a mere abortion, and remains a 
 dead letter ; and the other has produced no other effect 
 than the creation of some difficult, and some insoluble 
 questions of law, and consequent litigation. 
 
 The law of real property had been as wisely framed 
 for Ireland, and was there as clearly understood, as 
 it had been in England. If it had not been as well 
 observed, or as well administered, the fault was in the 
 people themselves, or in the functionaries employed, 
 not in the law. 
 
 At all times, and in all countries, the desire for pro¬ 
 perty in land has been a governing passion in the mind 
 of every thriving man, and the purchase of it a favourite 
 investment. The laws for the protection of this pro¬ 
 perty have ever been, and ever must be, the most 
 complicated and difficult part of every code. The 
 proprietors themselves have very generally, if not uni¬ 
 versally, a preponderating influence in making and 
 maintaining these laws, and this influence is but a 
 natural incident of such property, and is essentially 
 necessary for the protection of it. 
 
 It rarely happens that in any country, as a general) \ 
 rule, the cultivators and occupiers of the soil are the 
 owners of more than some limited interest in it; and 
 this is especially rare in the old European countries, j 
 
I 
 
 AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 3 
 
 Every scheme for raising these by legislation, or other¬ 
 wise, than by the ordinary course of thrift and labour, 
 to the position of owners of the land which they cul¬ 
 tivate has been hitherto regarded as Utopian, and every 
 attempt at such legislation has ended in disappointment. 
 No legislature in which the proprietors of land are 
 adequately represented would entertain schemes of this 
 kind, or consent so to alter the law as to enable the 
 occupier to hold permanent possession, without paying 
 to the owner, an adequate price, or giving some equiva¬ 
 lent consideration for such a privilege. The owners of 
 land in England have still in their own hands the 
 salutary power of protecting their property from legisla¬ 
 tive tampering in derogation of their rights ; and the 
 recognition of this power prevents the clamour of tenants 
 for liberties and immunities inconsistent with the land¬ 
 lord’s property. Such also was the position of proprie¬ 
 tors in Ireland, when Irishmen were the sole legislators 
 for their own country. But their case is fast assuming 
 a very different complexion. Vilified as they have been 
 by landless enemies, lay and clerical—negligent of the 
 duties which they owed to the public, to their tenants, 
 and to themselves, as too many of them have been, the 
 Irish landlords have lost the sympathy of those in Eng¬ 
 land. The Irish representatives in the United Parlia¬ 
 ment are but one-sixth of the house, and of this small 
 ihinority a great proportion have no common interest 
 with the Irish landlords. These are returned in opposi¬ 
 tion to the landed interest; are addicted to party; bent 
 on personal advancement, and must be subservient to 
 their leaders, whether in office or in opposition. Under 
 
 ? ese circumstances, the owners of Irish land are practi- 
 
 b 2 
 
4 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 # 7 
 
 cally unrepresented, and unprotected in the United Par¬ 
 liament ; and they have now very little influence in 
 promoting or opposing the legislation by which their 
 property and rights may be affected. 
 
 Such being their position, any threat of legislation, 
 specially affecting their property and their rights, must 
 create anxiety, if not alarm, amongst them. That they 
 have been alarmed is quite certain ; and that, for some 
 years, they have been endeavouring to weaken the posi¬ 
 tion of their tenants, and to fortify their own against the 
 invasion which they apprehend, and the innovations 
 which are threatened, is equally certain. How much 
 mischief this has done, and is daily doing, it is difficult to 
 exaggerate, and impossible to estimate. No proposed 
 alteration in the law of tenure, if clearly defined, could 
 be so formidable to the owners of property as that which 
 they are left to conjecture from the published sentiments 
 of those who have assumed the position, and now pos¬ 
 sess the power of legislators. Mr. Mill, a speculative 
 innovator, when a Member of Parliament, was an ally 
 of the party then in opposition, and now in power. 
 AVhile in that position, he expressed his views, not in 
 debate, in which allowance might be claimed for hyper¬ 
 bole and extravagance, but in a didactic lecture upon 
 the government of Ireland, delivered ex cathedra , with 
 all the assumed confidence of philosophical superiority, 
 and with all the courage which profound ignorance on 
 the particular subject could impart, according to the 
 sailor’s maxim of “ know nothing, fear nothing.” His 
 deliberate assertion was (whatever may be the weight o:' 
 his authority), “ that the government of Ireland then 
 rightfully belonged to those who, by means consisten^ 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 5 
 
 with justice, would make the cultivators of the soil of 
 Ireland the owners of it.” He made no attempt to de¬ 
 fine, or in any way to describe the means by which the 
 pauper cultivators of the Irish soil can be made the 
 owners of it, consistently with justice to the present 
 proprietors. The party for whom the rule of Ireland 
 was thus claimed, de jure , have since got it, de facto , 
 upon a pledge to legislate for relief of the Irish tenan¬ 
 try. Although this party has lost the vote, it may be 
 assumed that they still respect the opinion, and may act 
 on the advice of their unseated ally. 
 
 The leader of this party, when canvassing for the 
 power to rule, recommended himself by asserting, “ that 
 Ireland must be governed according to Irish ideas.” 
 This loose expression might* have passed without notice, 
 devoid, as it manifestly was, of any practical common 
 sense, or intelligible meaning. But when construed by the 
 more explicit language of the same candidate for power 
 the vagueness disappears, and the government with which 
 Ireland is menaced means a levelling tyranny, without 
 precedent in the history of the world. This pretender 
 de jure to the rule of Ireland, when claiming to be ruler 
 de facto , had the boldness to assert, that the Protestant 
 Church of Ireland; the land of Ireland (meaning the 
 proprietary right to that land), .and the education of Ire¬ 
 land (by which he could mean nothing else but that part 
 of the educational system which is not yet in the hands 
 , of the Roman Catholic priests) were branches of a pesti¬ 
 lential Upas tree, to which he gave the name of Protes- 
 j tant ascendancy. In turgid language, he called upon the 
 I Protestant people of England to put down this Protes- 
 1 tant ascendancy. He told them that he and his party 
 
I 
 
 6 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 were banded together, to make war upon that system— 
 viz. upon Protestant ascendancy in the Church, in the 
 land, and in the education of this country. Passing over 
 the half amputated and rudely mangled Church branch 
 of this Upas-tree, what does the land branch mean ? 
 This Mr. Bright, the second in power of this levelling 
 band, explained in Limerick, when he held it up, as a 
 grievance to what he called the people of Ireland, that 
 eight-ninths of the land belongs to Protestants. That 
 a remedy is intended for this asserted grievance he has 
 more recently, and from his place on the Treasury Bench, 
 in explicit terms announced; and, assuming the tone of 
 a leader, he promised that he would soon propose a Bill 
 by which it was too plainly threatened, that the property 
 in the land of Ireland was in*some way, and to some ex¬ 
 tent, to be taken from present owners, and conferred 
 upon the native Irish race. How this is to be accom¬ 
 plished, if justice is not to be violated, is left entirely un¬ 
 explained. Justice being a very elastic term, which may 
 be stretched, as it has been stretched, to cover acts of 
 grievous oppression and wrong, the present owners of 
 Irish estates have good reason to feel uneasy at the pros¬ 
 pect of this Bill to redress that grievance which consists 
 in the Protestant majority of land owners in this country. 
 According to the Upas-tree illustration, this Protestant 
 ascendancy in land, being a branch of the pestilential 
 tree, the axe must be laid to it, as a nuisance, and it must 
 be lopped. The Protestant proprietors depending upon, 
 and supported solely by this branch, must fall to the 
 ground with it, and be reduced to equality in the owner¬ 
 ship of land with the Roman Catholics, who, at present, 
 are grievously stinted to one-ninth of the property, be¬ 
 ing numerically three to one of those endowed with 
 
V 
 
 AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 7 
 
 eight-ninths of it. If this inequality is to be levelled, 
 whether this levelling is to be up or down (as the phrase 
 now is) should not be left unexplained, unless good states¬ 
 manship requires, that those who have property shall be 
 kept in a state of dread and alarm; and that those who 
 have not shall be excited to visionary hopes by the forth¬ 
 coming measures of the government. 
 
 The lopping of the land branch of the Upas-tree (by 
 whatever means to be accomplished), according to the 
 language of the canvassing governor de jure , who is now 
 the elected governor de facto , will be only an instalment 
 of justice to Ireland. In explicit terms, this candidate 
 statesman, and leader of his band, in popular harangues, 
 told the mass of the Irish people, “ that they would not 
 be worthy of liberty if they could be satisfied with instal¬ 
 ments, or with anything else than justice.” What justice 
 means he then explained—viz. the total extirpation, root, 
 and trunk, and branch of this Upas-tree, which he told 
 them (without a shadow of proof) “ is still there—a tall 
 and noxious growth, lifting its head to heaven, and 
 darkening and poisoning the land, as far as its shadow 
 can extend; and that now, at length, the day has come, 
 when the axe has been laid to the root of that tree, and 
 that it nods and quivers from the top to the base.” 
 
 This inflated language of the Prime Minister of Eng- 
 land crosses the Channel, to stimulate the masses of the 
 Irish people, and to keep them discontented; and should 
 occasion arise, it cannot fail to rouse them to active vio¬ 
 lence against the Protestants, who rest upon the land 
 branch of this poisonous tree; and it cannot be doubted, 
 j that, in the mean time, those who commit, and those who 
 I abet agrarian murders will find a justification, and en¬ 
 couragement in this recognition of their just right to pull 
 
8 
 
 / 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 down the Protestant ascendancy of their landlords. This 
 inflated language of the Prime Minister of England flies 
 across the Atlantic, to stir up and encourage the already 
 too bitter hostility of the republicans there; and to assure 
 them, that if they can pick a quarrel with England, and 
 throw a few thousands of their armed Fenians on the 
 shores of Ireland, they may reckon safely on the fury of 
 the masses of the Irish people, to aid them in exter¬ 
 minating the prostrate and spoliated Protestants, by 
 whose ancestors the Upas-tree is assumed to have been 
 planted, and by whom themselves it is asserted that it 
 has been nurtured into a tall growth, ascending to hea¬ 
 ven, and spreading a noxious and poisoning shadow over 
 the land of Ireland, until this pacifying Ministry laid the 
 axe to its root, and felled it, as an instalment of justice 
 to Ireland. 
 
 When it is asserted that Protestant ascendancy, like 
 the Upas-tree, spreads a baleful shade over this devoted 
 island; and that one branch of that tree grows from the 
 fact, that eight-ninths of the land belong to Protestants, 
 the inquiry is, at once, suggested to the owners of other 
 property, whether eight-ninths, or even more, of all the 
 other property in Ireland do not also belong to the 
 Protestants. How much of the Government Stock ; of 
 Bank Stock ; of Railway and Canal Stock ; of current 
 money, and money in Bank ; of mortgage and other 
 securities upon land; of cattle, horses, and carriages; of 
 mills and machinery ; of manufactured goods; of plate, 
 furniture, and other chattels of a thousand forms, 
 whereof nothing of value belongs to the millions of 
 Roman Catholics, who live in hovels, and appear in rags. 
 If it shall be found that Protestant ascendancy as clearly j 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 9 
 
 exists in the other property of the country as it does in 
 the land, here is also a branch of the Upas-tree, not 
 hitherto noticed, the lopping of which will soon be called 
 for, as another instalment of justice still due to the 
 pauper, and discontented mass of the Irish people, ac¬ 
 cording to whose ideas Ireland must be henceforth 
 governed, and Protestant ascendancy pulled down, and 
 destroyed, root and branch. 
 
 No one residing in Ireland, and familiar with the 
 present feelings and temper of the people of every class, 
 can fail to observe the disturbing effects of this revolu¬ 
 tionary language, coming from men to whom power is 
 entrusted, which never before was conceded, for the pur¬ 
 pose of exciting strife, and creating revolutionary confu¬ 
 sion, but for the maintenance of peace and order: not 
 for the purpose of invading property and abrogating 
 long-established rights ; but for the purpose of securing 
 that protection which the very nature of property and 
 rights demands; and which it is the first duty of every 
 form of government to afford. 
 
 The sense in which this language is understood by the 
 
 masses to whom it is addressed, and whose discontent it 
 
 / 
 
 applauds and encourages, is too obvious, and the effect 
 Is ruinously subversive of all subordination and docility 
 in the working classes affected by it. The alarm created 
 in the ranks whose position is menaced forced those who 
 would support a Conservative policy to demand some 
 explanation of the levelling measures which the ignorant 
 classes were thus encouraged to expect, and stimulated 
 to demand. This explanation was refused; and anxious 
 inquiry was answered by an incredible assertion, that the 
 concealed scheme contemplated by this menacing Govern- 
 
10 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 ment will, when disclosed, “be satisfactory to all parties.” 
 This is more like derision than serious reassurance : no 
 one can believe that it was intended to beget confidence; 
 and it certainly has not, except in those who pant for 
 revolution. Nothing is now certain, except the inten¬ 
 tion of the Ministry to lay before the next Session 
 of Parliament some novel scheme of land tenure for 
 Ireland, involving something of redistribution of pro¬ 
 perty, as a second instalment of justice to what they 
 call the Irish people. The present owners, whose pro¬ 
 perty and rights are to be affected by this novel scheme, 
 are left to conjecture what its nature and tendency are to 
 be, and their only means of guessing are supplied by the 
 published sentiments, expressed in letters, in pamphlets, 
 and in popular speeches, by those who have undertaken 
 to devise it. This novel law of tenure is not to operate 
 in England. The Englishmen who are to assume and 
 exercise the power of imposing it on Ireland will, there¬ 
 fore, themselves have no interest at stake to excite their 
 jealousy of this levelling innovation, or to prompt them 
 to vigilance in scrutinizing, and discovering its possible, 
 or probable, if not certainly ruinous effects. 
 
 Using the light which, at certain moments, has fallen 
 on this dark scheme from the flashes of inflammatory 
 eloquence in which its inventors have indulged, one 
 gleam discloses that it will be something in accordance 
 with Irish ideas; which must mean the ideas of that por¬ 
 tion of the people who are poor, and who have been by the 
 Prime Minister told, that they ought to be discontented 
 with the existing state of things. Another flash shows 
 us, that it must be remedial of that asserted grievance 
 which has left to the Roman Catholic majority of the 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 11 
 
 people only one-ninth of the land of Ireland. This land 
 having been, for centuries, appropriated, the agrarian 
 grievance cannot be redressed by any other process than 
 the resumption, and redistribution of the land. No one 
 can understand how this is to be achieved in favour of 
 the Roman Cathplic and Irish numerical majority, with¬ 
 out ousting the Protestant owners from an adequate 
 number of the eight-ninths which they possess—a thing 
 to be done only by force, by fraud, or by purchase. 
 Presuming (not without some misgivings) that neither 
 force, nor fraud will be tolerated, or deemed consistent 
 with justice, purchase alone can be resorted to. If a 
 compulsory power to purchase be not given, the ac¬ 
 quisition of land for distribution will be an uncertain, 
 and, at best, a tedious and costly process. If the rights 
 of property are to be respected, a sale cannot be com¬ 
 pelled upon any other terms than payment of the outside 
 value. As to this value, the owners and the claimants 
 will in but few cases agree, and some tribunal must be 
 instituted to decide between them. Some means must 
 be found for selecting the owners upon whom the com¬ 
 pulsory sale is to be enforced, and defining the extent of 
 their property with which they must part. Our expe- 
 ence in thus acquiring a small fraction of the land for 
 
 r 
 
 railroads affords a very inadequate measure of the com¬ 
 plications in which such a process as this, upon an 
 :tensive scale, must involve the country. But suppose 
 jCvese complications to be cleared, and assuming it pos¬ 
 sible, that an extent of territory may be acquired 
 [fficient to put down Protestant ascendancy in the 
 mership of land, we arrive at the question how much 
 [nd will be required to answer the purpose ? The 
 
12 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 landless Roman Catholics are to the Protestants more 
 than three to one, and therefore three-fourtlis of the 
 Irish land, with the buildings and improvements upor 
 it, must be acquired, and paid for, before the means o: 
 redressing this grievance, and putting down Protestani 
 ascendancy in the ownership of land, can be attained, b} 
 means consistent with justice. Granting that even thii 
 may be possible, monstrous as it appears, the work o 
 newly distributing this land will yet remain to be ac 
 complished. No part of it must be given to Protestants 
 for their pestilential ascendancy is not to be revived. T( 
 reconcile the people of England to the enormous draf 
 upon their Treasury, necessary to pay for this land, w< 
 must assume that some scheme of indemnity must b< 
 devised, such as a sale of each lot to the new grantee 
 The question of payment here presents itself. Discon 
 tent, arising from privation of property, being th< 
 mischief for which this great political remedy has beei 
 invented, prompt payment is not to be expected fron 
 the destitute grantees for whose relief and endowmen 
 the land is to be acquired. Some mode of charging th 
 price, in the way of mortgage, upon the lots, must be re 
 sorted to, and, therefore, the first outcome of this Stat; 
 project must be an unexampled multitude of incumbere' 
 estates. 
 
 As nothing is more universally agreeable to th 
 people, and especially to the peer people of Ireland, tha: 
 to get property of any kind upon a promise of paymen - 
 it may, with great certainty, be anticipated that mi. 
 lions will rush to the scramble for land, upon the* 
 terms. Some court must be instituted to determine to 
 numberless contests that must arise. No one whoknov 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 13 
 
 the people can, without dismay, contemplate the scenes 
 of strife and confusion which must result from any at¬ 
 tempt to carry such a scheme into execution. 
 
 Assuming that, by some deus ex machind , this cruel 
 ‘scramble may possibly be adjusted ; and that some sort 
 of equality may be produced in the ownership of land, 
 there will still remain such a thing as Protestant energy 
 5 and thrift ; and that principle, whatever we may call it, 
 t which has created the glaring contrast between the Pro- 
 Westant and the Roman Catholic counties in Ireland, and 
 ‘the equally striking contrast between the Protestant and 
 'the Roman Catholic Cantons of Switzerland, will soon 
 ( begin to operate, and the old Protestant ascendancy in 
 ( property will, in the course of time, and by the ordinary 
 J process of sale and purchase, become as great a grievance 
 tupon improvident vendors and their posterity as that 
 1 which now exists, and will hereafter present to the 
 ^ imagination of some aspiring statesman an Upas-tree as 
 ^ pestilential as that which our peace-making Ministry 
 i now take the glory of extirpating. This relapse into 
 bProtestant ascendancy will be all the more certain from 
 Pthe terms on which, at the outset, the new proprietors 
 tiwill have acquired their estates. What they shall have 
 rigot without labour, they will use without thrift; and 
 r *where something to sharpen was sadly needed, much 
 pwill have been done to dull the edge of Irish husbandry, 
 e: But it requires not much wisdom to see, that the 
 
 Cscheme of acquiring by purchase any extent of land for 
 * redistribution must, at the very outset, be condemned as 
 a dreamer’s vision. That such a project should have 
 entered the mind of a sober man, at any other than a 
 time of the wildest revolution, unless for election pur- 
 
14 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 poses, is not to be credited, and no reflecting man 
 believes that anything more will come of it, than 
 the hollow speeches in which it was suggested, and 
 the rabble shouts in which these speeches were ap¬ 
 plauded. 
 
 On the kindred delusions of tenant right, fixity of 
 tenure, and the abortive Act for securing to outgoing 
 tenants compensation for unexhausted improvements, 
 I have expressed my opinion, in the fourth chapter of 
 the book entitled “ Ireland in 1868.” I refer to it 
 from page 160 to 167 ; from page 313 to 315 of the 
 second edition, which correspond with pages 155 to 161, 
 and 296-297 of the first edition, and I refer also to the 
 seventh chapter, which was added to the second edition, 
 from page 326 to page 332. I shall not here repeat 
 what I have there submitted. 
 
 Notwithstanding the assertion (assuming that it is 
 not made in derision) that the embryo scheme of a new 
 law of tenure, and for putting down Protestant ascend¬ 
 ancy in respect of the land of Ireland will, when pro¬ 
 duced, be satisfactory to all parties, my belief is, that no 
 scheme has been devised, which is thought likely to be, 
 or which can possibly be, in any degree, satisfactory to 
 the present expectations of the Irish tenants. My belief 
 is, that whatever may be the fluctuating intention of the 
 Ministry to produce some scheme, in the next session, 
 they have not yet determined what that scheme shall 
 be. 
 
 At page 293 of the first edition, corresponding with 
 page 310 of the second edition of the book above referred 
 to, it is stated, “That special legislation for Ireland, under 
 present circumstances, is a formidable spectre, and that 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 15 
 
 the Union with England begins to assume an entirely 
 new complexion.” 
 
 Before this Union, the King of England was also the 
 King of Ireland : but Ireland had a House of Lords and 
 a House of Commons entirely its own. The Irish House 
 of Lords consisted exclusively of Irish nobility ; and the 
 House of Commons was chosen exclusively by Irish con¬ 
 stituencies. The King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland 
 had plenary power to legislate ; and the people were 
 bound by any laws made, or adopted by them, when in 
 Parliament assembled. These three estates, according to 
 the settled constitution of Ireland, formed its proper and 
 only authorized legislature. 
 
 Constitution means a law which coerces and binds 
 the sovereign power by which the people are governed. 
 The distinction between a constitutional and a despotic 
 sovereign is, that one governs according to a known 
 law; the other according to his will or caprice, which 
 never can be known, until he pleases to express it. The 
 constitution of England was the result of a long con¬ 
 troversy between the king and the people, and was ex¬ 
 pressed in charters, from time to time, extorted by the 
 people, and granted by the king, under the pressure of 
 popular power. In like manner, the king granted simi¬ 
 lar charters to Ireland, the effect of which was, that no 
 laws were binding, but such as the king, with the advice 
 and consent of the Irish Lords and Commons, in Parlia¬ 
 ment assembled, should enact. Once enacted, no law 
 could be repealed, altered, or dispensed with, unless by 
 the act and concurrence of the same three estates. In 
 the year 1495, being the 10th of the reign of Henry VII., 
 an Act was passed by the Irish legislature, by which the 
 
16 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 common and statute law of England, as it then stood, 
 was adopted, and made thenceforth the law of Ireland. 
 At that time, it was not pretended, that those English 
 laws could bind Ireland, unless by force of the Irish Act 
 by which they were thus constitutionally adopted, and 
 once so adopted they were unalterable, unless by an Act 
 of the Irish legislature. 
 
 In the reign of Charles II., the English legislature, 
 consisting of the King, Lords, and Commons of England, 
 set up a claim to make laws for Ireland, without the 
 concurrence of the Irish Lords and Commons. This pre¬ 
 tension was repudiated by the Irish nation ; and, in 
 1698, Molyneux wrote and published an able and con¬ 
 clusive legal argument against it, entitled “ The Case 
 of Ireland.” Amongst other reasons, he relied on the 
 absence of any English Statute declaratory of any such 
 right to legislate for Ireland. In 1719, twenty years 
 after the case of Ireland had been thus advocated, the 
 argument was answered by a short and contumelious 
 declaratory Act (6 Geo. I., cap. 5), passed in the parlia¬ 
 ment of England, by which it was dogmatically asserted, 
 “ that the King, Lords, and Commons of England had, 
 and ought to have, full power and authority to make 
 laws of sufficient force and authority to bind the king¬ 
 dom and people of Ireland.” Every one knows how this 
 sophism, false, and insolent, as it was, continued to be 
 the rule for the government of Ireland, until, by a for¬ 
 tuitous combination of events, the Irish Volunteers, 
 with arms in their hands, Protestant and Eornan Ca¬ 
 tholic, as they were, and actuated by a patriotism which, 
 at that bright moment of Irish history, silenced every 
 expression of sectarian hostility, extorted the English 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 17 
 
 Act 22 Geo. 3, cap. 53, by which the declaratory Act was 
 repealed, and its falsehood sullenly admitted. 
 
 The substance and practical meaning and effect of 
 that false, and insulting declaratory Act were, that spe¬ 
 cial laws for Ireland, devised and enacted by Englishmen, 
 ought to be and were of sufficient force and authority to 
 bind the kingdom and people of Ireland. 
 
 In 1868, a party of Englishmen, combining with a 
 section of the Irish representatives in the united Parlia¬ 
 ment, have invented a policy, by which, under a pretence 
 of doing tardy justice to Ireland, long after the injured 
 generations have passed away, to whom alone the atone¬ 
 ment was due, the tyrannical power of making special 
 laws in the English Parliament is revived, whereby to 
 bind and rule the people of this country, without affect¬ 
 ing the people of England, and without the consent, in 
 any rational sense, of the Irish nation. The power thus 
 arrogated by an Anglo-Irish junto may, as many believe, 
 be exercised in a manner more subversive of rational 
 liberty, and just rights, and immeasurably more ob¬ 
 structive of national progress, and social tranquillity than 
 ever was the justly odious usurpation of the seventeenth 
 century. By this new phase of Irish policy, the whole 
 spirit of the Union compact is perverted, and the diaboli¬ 
 cal practice of ruling Ireland by fomenting dissension and 
 discord is too likely to be resumed. The partisans of one 
 Irish faction may be enlisted to aid and assist in swelling 
 the majority for an English party, on the base and wicked 
 terms of being aided, in turn, to crush an envied party in 
 the country which they misrepresent. On the pretext 
 of reducing the provident and prosperous minority of the 
 people to a level with the reckless and querulous majority, 
 
18 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 rights may be violated, and religious animosity roused, 
 with all its train of fiends and furies, to lash the divided 
 people into deadly contest with each other. That such 
 is the immediate effect of the first special Act for Ire¬ 
 land, produced by this banded combination of an English 
 party with an Irish faction, is already lamentably evident, 
 and admitted by all, except the authors of it. These 
 coolly look on, and assert, that the flames of discord 
 which have burst forth are but as rockets, at which we 
 should be amused, and not fires at which to be alarmed. 
 What the ultimate result of all this will be, time alone 
 can disclose, but the present mischief is painfully evi¬ 
 dent, and indignantly endured. 
 
 Before the Union, Ireland had adopted the constitu¬ 
 tion and laws of England. The spirit and legitimate 
 object of the Union was to secure for both countries, as 
 if they were one, the benefit of one constitution, and one 
 code of laws. It was assumed, and reasonably assumed, 
 that one united Parliament could more effectually, and 
 more conveniently preserve for both countries, when thus 
 combined, one common constitution, and one common 
 code of laws than two separate legislatures acting one in 
 imitation of the other, as they previously had acted. It 
 never was contemplated, that the united Parliament, in 
 which the representatives of Ireland were to be only one 
 in six, should arrogate the power of determining that 
 the constitution of England, and the English code of 
 laws, were unsuited to the Irish people, and that a legis¬ 
 lature, of which five-sixths are aliens to Ireland, should 
 assume the power of abrogating or altering the constitu¬ 
 tion and the laws which a native legislature had adopted 
 for the country of which they were the legitimate repre- 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 19 
 
 * 
 
 sentatives. The great argument for the Union was the 
 , expediency of promoting amalgamation and identity of 
 laws and manners. Those who, on the part of Ireland, 
 consented to the Union, did so on the assurance, that the 
 united Parliament would legislate for one united king¬ 
 dom, of which the constituent parts were to have an 
 equal right to one common constitution, one united and 
 established Church, according to the reformed faith, by 
 that constitution imperatively imposed upon the Sove¬ 
 reign of this United Kingdom. 
 
 It became an obviously wise policy, consequent on 
 this Union, to aim at a perfect amalgamation of the two 
 nearly similar codes which had been sanctioned and 
 enacted by the separate legislatures, before the Union, 
 and which that Union left for each kingdom, as each 
 code stood, at the moment when the compact was made. 
 There is no policy connected with the government of 
 Ireland upon which there has been such a perfect con¬ 
 currence of opinion, and such a coercive weight of autho¬ 
 rity as that whiqh prescribes uniformity of the laws in 
 both the countries. The Irish Parliament, before the 
 Union, constantly and persistently aimed at this unifor¬ 
 mity. Legislation since the Union, with a few excep¬ 
 tions, was directed to it. Parliamentary Commissioners 
 have recommended it. The judges were, at all times, una¬ 
 nimous in desiring it; and the opinion of the .Bar was 
 uniformly and strongly expressed in favour of it. With 
 the exception of the Chancery Act of 1850, the laws 
 specially confined to Ireland produced inconvenience 
 and mischief greatly overbalancing any good derived 
 ( from them. 
 
 The penal laws, which were the foul blot upon the 
 
 c 2 
 
 * 
 
20 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 Irish statute book, were all enacted during the degrading 
 thraldom in which this country was held, while England 
 asserted the right of dominant legislation over her. Shortly 
 after this tyranny was shaken off, the native Parliament, 
 exclusively Protestant, as it was, began to relax the ri¬ 
 gour of those laws ; and, seven years before the Union, 
 this Parliament had granted the elective franchise, by 
 which the repeal of what remained was made a mere 
 question of time. Those savage laws had been devised 
 and dictated by the English Cabinet to support a revo¬ 
 lution, and a new dynasty against the attacks of an 
 expelled pretender. They were the work of laymen, 
 English and Irish, combined, like the present Ministry, 
 for political purposes. Unlike the persecuting laws 
 made at the instigation of the Papal hierarchy, they did 
 not emanate from theological hatred, or from clerical 
 assumption of divine right to compel universal obe¬ 
 dience to the dogmatical rule of a pretending infallible 
 Church. Nothing can exceed the absurdity of holding 
 the Protestant clergy, or the Protestant people of the 
 present century, in any degree, responsible for those 
 penal laws, except the iniquity of doing so. They 
 were designed as a protection to the new dynasty from 
 those who were assumed to be hostile to it, and not for 
 creating or supporting Protestant ascendency, which 
 was another invention of the same rulers for the same 
 political purpose. 
 
 Neither of the contracting parties had the least sus¬ 
 picion that the Union could ever be made subservient 
 to such a policy as that of the present ministry. The 
 Koman Catholic clergy are morbidly anxious to put 
 down the Protestant religion and Church : they are 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 21 
 
 equally anxious to destroy the political power and in¬ 
 fluence of the landlords over their tenants : they are 
 anxious to make these tenants independent of their 
 landlords, at the landlords’ expense, that the tenants 
 may be more subservient to themselves : they are deter¬ 
 mined to abolish the ancient University, because it is 
 governed by a Protestant corporation, although its edu¬ 
 cational powers are efficiently exercised in the propaga¬ 
 tion of science, and most liberally extended to all creeds 
 and classes, and without the least interference with the 
 religious convictions of those who resort to it: they are 
 hostile to the Queen’s University, because it is not ad¬ 
 dicted to any sect, and professes no object beyond the 
 propagation of secular knowledge and useful science : 
 they object to the national schools, because some of the 
 teachers do not set the example to the children of sign¬ 
 ing themselves with the cross, and going to Mass. 
 
 To attain the power of effectually assailing these 
 objects of their hostility, they have been for forty years 
 systematically cultivating what is called religious influ¬ 
 ence over the minds of the people, whose destitution and 
 ignorance expose them to the crafty machinations of all 
 who pretend to sympathize with them, and delude them 
 with promises of redress on earth, and happiness in 
 heaven. By the influence so propagated, they have 
 succeeded in returning an united band of professing 
 patriots, to aid in special legislation for this devoted 
 country. The union between England and Ireland has 
 thus become a union between an English party and this 
 plighted band of pseudo-patriots. To effectuate the 
 designs of the priests, who have procured the return 
 to Parliament of this band of addicted partisans, has 
 
22 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 become the Irish policy of this spurious and perverted 
 union. The boasted policy of this banded junto is to legis¬ 
 late for this country in conformity with what English 
 aspirants to office shall be instructed by their Irish con¬ 
 federates to adopt as Irish ideas. Thus the public wor¬ 
 ship, the municipal rights, the property, public and pri¬ 
 vate, of the Protestant minority, will soon become the 
 object of levelling tyrannical laws, devised, and enacted, 
 not by representatives of those affected by them, but by 
 this junto, who have significantly boasted that they are 
 “ banded together” to put down Protestant ascendency, 
 which, in truth, has had no living existence in Ireland 
 for the last forty years. The ghost of this ascendency is 
 now raised ; and the leader of this ministerial band, as 
 they represent themselves, clasps his hands, like Hamlet, 
 in the play, and apostrophizes this imagined ghost by the 
 bombastic description of “ a tall tree of noxious growth 
 lifting its head to heaven, and darkening and poisoning 
 the land as far as its shadow can extendconcluding this 
 bombast by the still more bombastic boast, that “ the day 
 has come when the axe has been laid to the root of that 
 tree, and that it nods and quivers from its top to its 
 base.” This extravagant ranting would provoke nothing 
 but laughter and ridicule, if it were not uttered by one 
 who may have, and may be permitted to exercise the 
 power of laying his axe to the root of all prosperity, 
 peace, and concord, in a deluded nation. 
 
 Under present circumstances, and with power in the 
 hands of such men, special legislation for Ireland is a 
 truly formidable spectre. The union being thus per¬ 
 verted into a combination of an English ministry with 
 an Irish faction, presents a terrifying aspect to the 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 23 
 
 peaceable and prosperous portion of the Irish people. 
 Justice to Ireland, according to the views of such a con¬ 
 federacy, can mean nothing but vengeance and triumph 
 to one section of this divided community, and ruinous 
 spoliation and oppression to the other. To this new com¬ 
 plexion assumed by the union with England, I alluded 
 prophetically in June, 1868. In June, 1869, it has be¬ 
 come an accomplished and an astounding reality. 
 
 Laws made for Ireland by a Parliament of Great 
 Britain, without any Irish representatives, would not 
 be so subversive of justice towards the Protestant part, 
 or, in truth, towards any part of the Irish people, as 
 laws to be moulded according to Irish ideas, as defined 
 by that majority of Irish representatives, who have been 
 returned at the dictation of the Roman Catholic priests, 
 and are now leagued with a ministry, whose leader has 
 boasted that they are banded together for the purpose 
 of putting down Protestant ascendency. 
 
 The policy and the measures of this confederacy, sub¬ 
 versive, as they profess to be, of the hitherto cherished 
 institutions of the country ; insulting, as they are, to 
 the prosperous and educated classes of society, and dan¬ 
 gerous to their property and rights, must be opposed by 
 what is called the Conservative party, unless this party 
 shall abandon all the principles upon which it has ever 
 acted, and still professes to act. The threatened special 
 laws for Ireland will, therefore, each involve a party 
 question, on which the rival Liberals and Conservatives 
 will be sharply divided. The so-called Liberals must 
 have on their side the large, and, while they hold office, 
 the increasing majority of the Irish members, composed 
 of those elected at the dictation of the Roman Catholic 
 
 n 
 
24 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 clergy, of lawyers, and other expectants, whether Pro¬ 
 testant or Roman Catholic, whose efforts, fair and foul, 
 to get into Parliament, will be stimulated by the cer¬ 
 tainty of promotion to some of the twenty-one seats for 
 judges in the Dublin Courts, and about forty seats in the 
 County Courts, not reckoning the multitude of places of 
 minor dignity and emolument at the disposal of the 
 Government. The Upas-tree, with its existing, and its 
 endlessly sprouting branches, will thus supply a peren¬ 
 nial succession of questions, and party issues, for the dis¬ 
 cussion of which the attention of Parliament will be , 
 engrossed, session after session, for some years, if not 
 generations to come, unless the envied Irish victims of 
 this policy shall become extinct, and disappear from the 
 country ; or unless Ireland shall cease to be part of the 
 United Kingdom, events either of which can be produced 
 only by an amount of sanguinary strife, of social misery, 
 and of human suffering, which it is appalling to contem¬ 
 plate. 
 
 The raising of the ghost of Protestant ascendency, in 
 the form of this branching Upas-tree, is, therefore, the 
 cunningest and most notable invention in the history of 
 party warfare; and the most profitable contrivance of 
 state craft that has yet appeared in this western world. 
 The Church Bill is but the first fruit of this spreading 
 tree, to be gathered in the autumn of 1869, and the bit¬ 
 ter taste of which remains to be experienced in the years 
 to come. A Land Bill will blossom next spring. It is 
 surely time to consider the kind of fruit into which it 
 may ripen. Some Bill affecting the proprietary rights of 
 Irish landlords, and not extending to England, may, with 
 certainty, be anticipated, for it is the next move in the 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 25 
 
 party game. It is vain to contend that the condition of 
 Ireland, as it is now viewed by the people of England, 
 can be allowed to continue as it is. No one can enter¬ 
 tain a rational doubt, that some legislative measure, 
 professing to be a remedy for agrarian evils, the ex¬ 
 istence of which is universally assumed, will be the mi¬ 
 nisterial business for the next session of Parliament, 
 whether for weal or for woe. 
 
 That something is wrong, in connexion with the 
 tenure of land, which injuriously affects and disturbs the 
 social state of Ireland, is asserted by all parties, and no¬ 
 body denies it. What that something is, the wisest of 
 our statesmen widely differ; and there is but little con¬ 
 currence of opinion, as to the cause, and still less, as to 
 the cure for it. But whatever is the cause, the effect is 
 seen in the discontent of the tenantry, and the consequent 
 flight from the country of some; the disposition to agra¬ 
 rian outrage and crime of others; and the destitution of 
 the great majority in number of those who occupy the 
 land of Ireland, in, at least, the western and southern 
 provinces. All agree that this evil exists, however they 
 may differ as to the source of it. 
 
 Yet the chief cause of this discontent and suffering 
 is exhibited, in bold relief, upon the surface of the coun¬ 
 try, and strikes the eye of every intelligent stranger who 
 passes over it. The traveller, in whatever direction he 
 moves, sees, at intervals, large tracts of land saturated 
 with water, and producing a vigorous growth of rushes 
 and other aquatic plants, but scarcely anything valuable 
 to the starving population existing upon it, and dwelling 
 in hovels which shock and disgust the unaccustomed eye 
 of every stranger who sees them. In numberless in- 
 
 i 
 
26 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 stances, these spewy tracts are intersected by rapid 
 streams, fed by the water which the saturated soil cannot 
 absorb, and thus inviting the hand of man to tap the 
 sponge, and let off the stagnant water, by a subterra¬ 
 neous passage, to the deep channel of the passing stream; 
 and thus remove what feeds the rush and the flagger, 
 and sours or destroys every succulent plant. Other tracts 
 are seen of great extent, in which a soil of rare fertility 
 is covered over with stones which have lain upon it un¬ 
 disturbed ever since the convulsion of nature which cast 
 them on the surface. One of these tracts may now be 
 seen beside the railway to Galway, not far from the 
 Woodlawn Station, some eighty miles from Dublin, and 
 twenty miles from Galway. I remember this tract, like 
 many others in the same county, nearly as barren as a 
 beaten road, encumbered, as it was, by a natural pave¬ 
 ment of stones. About twenty years ago, a Mr. Perry 
 purchased the landlord’s estate in this stony land, then 
 of little value; and, with the stones by which its ferti¬ 
 lity was destroyed, he, by the hands of common labourers, 
 built massive dry-walls, by which he divided it into regular 
 fields of large and convenient extent, and thu’s suddenly 
 transformed a dreary waste into one of the most verdant 
 tracts of first class pasture to be seen in the country, and 
 now yielding a large return for the labour and capital 
 thus expended. 
 
 There are also regions of bog, which have been, for 
 centuries, and still are dismal wastes, but capable of 
 abundantly productive cultivation. In these bogs many 
 hovels are to be seen, surrounded by patches which the 
 squalid inhabitants of these hovels have, by the unaided 
 labour of their hands, reclaimed, and for which they now 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 27 
 
 pay rent, and raise scanty crops barely sufficient to keep 
 them and their children alive. In most instances, these 
 patches were, by sufferance, occupied rent free, for six 
 or seven years, until the poor tenant, by expending his 
 labour upon them, enabled the landlord, at the end of 
 the limited term, to fix a rent upon them, which is in¬ 
 variably done. I ask especial attention to this practice, 
 which is of frequent occurrence, and which, I think, no 
 person will be bold enough to deny. 
 
 Extensive tracts of what, in Ireland, is called moun¬ 
 tain common, have for centuries been, and still are used 
 as poor and scanty pasture for stunted cattle and sheep, 
 the property of tenants who hold the arable and rent¬ 
 paying portions of the landlord’s estate. A right of com¬ 
 mon of very small value, and often the subject of ran¬ 
 corous disputes, is given, proportionate to the extent of 
 the rented land held by each tenant. In these mountain 
 districts may be seen many rude enclosures of portions 
 of the common, which have been reclaimed and culti¬ 
 vated, and converted into farms with a wretched class of 
 cabins upon them, in which the poor people live who 
 were allowed to enclose and reclaim a part of the barren 
 mountain, exonerated from rent for a few years, until 
 the land, by their labour, became able to produce the 
 stunted crops which may now be seen upon it. Here is 
 another instance in which sterile land has been -made 
 comparatively fertile by the unaided toil and labour of 
 the poorest class of tenants. 
 
 The people who have thus imperfectly reclaimed bog 
 and mountain seldom hold by lease. When they come 
 under rent, they do so, as tenants from year to year, 
 liable to be turned out on a six-months’ notice to quit. 
 
28 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 As soon as the poor tenant has brought his farm to that 
 degree of fertility which enables him to pay a rent and 
 live, all further improvement is studiously avoided, as a 
 thing which the tenant believes will only increase his 
 labour to produce a larger rent for the sole benefit of 
 the landlord, whom he regards as a vigilant spy upon 
 every symptom of ability to pay more rent. The tenant 
 dreads an increase of rent, even though it should be 
 only half the increased value of the land. The value of 
 further improvement, he thinks, will be a subject of dis¬ 
 pute between him and his landlord, and may entice his 
 neighbours to outbid him. He therefore avoids every 
 exhibition of prosperity and comfort, in his dwelling, in 
 his dress, and in the condition of his wife and children. 
 Fie believes that his safety lies in the deplorable appear¬ 
 ance of his hovel, his family, and his rags. 
 
 This feeling is not confined to the poor reclaimers of 
 bog and mountain, it pervades the great majority of 
 tenants from year to year of all the land so held in the 
 country. This is the feeling which makes tenants hos¬ 
 tile to improvement, even when the landlord proposes 
 to bear the cost of it. This is the feeling which suggests 
 to the tenant the exhausting process of repeated corn 
 crops, by which the condition of the farm and the farmer 
 is constantly deteriorated, until it arrives at the lowest 
 stage of wretchedness. 
 
 By a succession of events, commencing in the spring 
 of 1814, after the peace by which Napoleon was deposed 
 from his imperial throne, and made the petty king of 
 Elba, the habit of granting leases, which had previously 
 been nearly universal in Ireland, was changed, and 
 yearly tenancies became, and now are, the general rule. 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 29 
 
 This change, as far as I know, has never been traced to 
 the events which really produced it, although it is pos¬ 
 sible, and not very difficult, to demonstrate how it arose. 
 The fact that yearly tenancies are numerous, and nearly 
 universal, in Ireland, is alone material in the present in¬ 
 vestigation, I, therefore, refrain from further tracing it 
 to its causes. 
 
 Take away the squalid poverty, the despairing sloth, 
 the sullen discontent, the fierce hostility to their landlords, 
 and the consequent crimes committed by yearly tenants, 
 and tenants whose leases have expired, or are soon to ex¬ 
 pire ; remove these tenants out of view, and with them the 
 wretched agricultural labourers who depend upon them, 
 and you will have obliterated every trace of what is 
 lamentable in the condition of Ireland. It is from these 
 the ports are crowded with emigrants. These are the 
 objects of galling evictions; these supply inmates to the 
 jail and the poorhouse; these degrade the nation by the 
 exhibition of their wretchedness; these furnish to the 
 priest and the pseudo-patriot the topics upon which to 
 alarm and to worry England with inflammatory pastorals, 
 essays, and harangues. These are the opponents of the 
 law, and the obstacle to what their governors call justice, 
 but what they regard as vindictive tyranny. Towards 
 these, as they believe, the law arms their enemies with 
 a sharp sword, and mocks themselves with the colour¬ 
 able protection of a pervious and worthless shield. 
 These writhe under a sense of injustice; and despair 
 prompts them to criminal acts of atrocious vengeance. 
 These derive their only means of existence from the 
 land; eviction, therefore, drives them to the emigrant 
 ship, to the highways, as mendicants, or to the poor- 
 
30 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 house, which they regard as an earthly purgatory, and 
 not as a charitable asylum. Political justice to these is 
 certainly a pressing necessity; but justice to these ought 
 not to be done at the expense of cruel injustice to others, 
 many of whom, although accused, have never done 
 them any wrong. To find the means of doing justice to 
 these sufferers, without inflicting injustice on any one— 
 this, in very truth, constitutes the Irish difficulty. Solve 
 this difficulty, find and honestly apply the remedy, and 
 Ireland will soon begin to prosper; and all her woes 
 and dissensions, in due time, will be forgotten. Their 
 poverty, their discontent, their almost morbid sensibility; 
 their irascible temper; their passionate affection for pro¬ 
 geny and kindred (which sharpens the stings of penury 
 and want), all combine to make this multitudinous and 
 suffering class of the Irish people lawless and desperate, 
 and to goad them to the commission of crime. Those 
 of them who would not commit murder (and the great 
 majority would not) still are weak enough to believe, 
 that the murder of one landlord, or of one interloping 
 tenant, will deter others from disturbing the possession 
 to which each individual clings, and on which, as they 
 believe, the existence of the whole race depends. They 
 further believe, that the ruffian who commits the mur¬ 
 der has been goaded to it by oppression, and the viola- 
 lation of what they credulously regard as his just right 
 to the possession of some bit of land. The criminal act 
 is regarded as sufficient proof of the provocation, and 
 the commission of it is excused, if not applauded, in 
 honour of the vengeful motive to which it is attributed. 
 The odium justly due to crime is thus perverted into 
 sympathy with the criminal; and duty to society is over- 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 31 
 
 borne by what they feel as a sacred obligation to screen 
 a fellow-sufferer from a law which they neither value nor 
 respect. 
 
 The power of the landlord to evict, and the imbecility 
 of the tenant, by lawful means, to resist, is, beyond all 
 doubt, the true cause of all this evil. Those tenants 
 who happen to have a legal defence to their landlord’s 
 process never fail to resort to it, and never prefer an 
 appeal to the Ribbon Code. This is so obvious, and so 
 universally believed, that the cry for fixity of tenure, 
 for tenant right, and for compensation to the tenant for 
 his improvements, is heard with favour by all except 
 the landlords. But these words are used without any 
 care to define their meaning. The tenant understands 
 them in the sense of giving him a right to hold posses¬ 
 sion, so long as he pays his present rent; or excuses the 
 non-payment by some misfortune, such as the death of 
 his cattle, or the failure of his crop. In the existing 
 moral, and physical condition of these tenants, it is im¬ 
 possible to take away the power to evict them, and thus 
 to fasten them on the landlords, without violating the 
 rights of property, and inflicting great injury and in¬ 
 justice on the owners of it. To do so will be to per¬ 
 petuate, and not to remedy the wretched condition of 
 the agricultural population. Something must be done 
 to improve the tenants, before their right to hold pos¬ 
 session of the land is corroborated or prolonged. Some 
 equivalent must be given to the landlord, before the 
 right to evict his tenant can be justly taken from him. 
 No legislative interference with this right can be justified, 
 until some breach of duty attached to the property, and 
 correlative with the right to resume the possession, is 
 
32 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 first established against the proprietor. I cannot anti¬ 
 cipate that these clear principles of justice will be denied, 
 or questioned. The solution which I propose of the 
 agrarian difficulty must not violate any of these prin¬ 
 ciples of justice, else it is no solution, and ought to be 
 rejected. 
 
 Let the tenant have fixity of tenure; let him have 
 tenant right, not dependent on mere custom and the 
 force of public opinion, but supported by positive law: 
 let him be secured in the enjoyment of his improve¬ 
 ments. But when these advantages are offered to him, 
 let him understand, and clearly see, that they are attain¬ 
 able only by his own labour, industry, and thrift. 
 Open to him a road through which, by honest and meri¬ 
 torious effort, he can lawfully, and certainly arrive at 
 fixity of tenure; at tenant right; and at undisturbed en¬ 
 joyment of his improvements; and, if he will not enter 
 upon and pursue this legitimate way to prosper, the 
 fault must be his own, and all grounds of just complaint 
 will be taken from him. Let the Irish tenants have an 
 option to choose between a meritorious and a criminal 
 course of proceeding for redress of their grievances, and 
 the responsibility of taking the wrong road will justly 
 lie upon them. I would fain believe, and my opinion 
 is, that he makes a false estimate of the reasoning facul¬ 
 ties and moral instincts of the Irish race, who assumes, 
 that, having the power to choose once made obvious to 
 them, they will turn into the paths of villany and guilt, 
 deserting the open road to peace, prosperity, and safety. 
 I have long been of opinion that a safe and just means 
 exists of exciting the tenants to industrial and moral im¬ 
 provement, without injuring the property or abridging 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 33 
 
 the legitimate rights of the landlords, or taking from 
 them anything which society has expressly, or impliedly 
 undertaken to protect for them ; or which common jus¬ 
 tice towards their fellow-men can suffer them to retain. 
 
 The chapter which I added to the second edition of 
 “Ireland in 1868” is headed with the aphorism “that 
 property has its duties as well as its rights.” This 
 aphorism applies with peculiar and irresistible force to 
 property in land, which is an artificial institution, founded 
 upon, and supported by no reason, except the social ne¬ 
 cessity for a provident encouragement of agricultural 
 industry in the production of sustenance for mankind, 
 when congregated in civilized communities. The orga¬ 
 nized force of the State is applied to protect exclusive 
 possession for the proprietor of land, in order to induce 
 him to cultivate and sow, in the confident assurance, 
 that what he sows will be allowed to grow and ripen ; 
 and that no other than himself will be suffered to reap 
 it. The expectation that rational regard for his own 
 interest will prompt him to cultivate the land is the con¬ 
 sideration which moves society to abridge the liberty of 
 others, and to protect for him an exclusive possession of 
 a part of the soil and surface of this globe, to every part 
 of which all would seem to have an equal right of access. 
 The motive upon which this protection is thus given 
 implies a reciprocal duty, and imposes a moral obligation 
 on him who claims and enjoys the protection to make 
 the soil so guarded for him reasonably fruitful. This is 
 the only rational foundation for the law which entitles 
 him to exclude all others from the land which he claims 
 as his own. 
 
 A man who neglects the duty of cultivating the land so 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 confided to him, and leaves it in its original sterility, or 
 who lets it out toothers upon such hard or uncertain terms 
 as to disable, or discourage them from performing the duty 
 which follows the land, and attaches to the precarious 
 possession which he hires to them, not only justifies in¬ 
 terference on behalf of the State, but he makes it the 
 duty of the Government to apply a legislative remedy 
 for this plain abuse ; and the only question is what 
 the remedy should be, and how it can be justly and 
 efficiently applied. To point out this remedy and a 
 practicable method of using it, in the present condition 
 of Ireland, is the task which 1 have undertaken, and I 
 shall best perform it by taking one of those cases in 
 which the disorder appears in its most aggravated 
 form. 
 
 Consider the case of a tenant who squatted upon, or 
 in some way got possession of ten or twenty acres of 
 barren bog or mountain, free of rent, until he made it 
 such as it now appears, with a rude hovel upon it, in 
 which this tenant and a half-starved family live, by 
 raising scanty crops barely sufficient to pay a small rent, 
 and keep themselves alive. When by unaided labour, 
 and without capital of any kind, this poor man raised a 
 mud hovel, in which to shelter, and scraped into ground 
 the seed for his first crop, by working before and after 
 the hours which he was obliged to give for wages to buy 
 food, he subdued a difficulty greater than any which he 
 had subsequently to encounter. In each succeeding year 
 his condition was better and easier than in that which 
 preceded, until the year arrived in which he was forced 
 to pay a rent. Up to that, he had been working for 
 himself, and his course was clear and simple. Now that 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 35 
 
 the half yearly visit of the driver is to be provided for; 
 now that an advance in the rent is not to be provoked, 
 or the alternative notice to quit encouraged, further 
 effort is paralyzed, and further improvement must be 
 carefully avoided. Leave him as he is, subject to the 
 power of his landlord, and he transmits to his children 
 the misery which he endures himself; and the landlord 
 transmits to his heir the paltry rent which a humane 
 man would not think worth the painful process of ex¬ 
 torting from the wretch who pays it. 
 
 Enact a law by which this tenant may, by a cheap, 
 and simple process, and by an energetic application of his 
 labour, acquire a secure title to hold his land at the present 
 rent, and you alter his views, and excite in him new mo¬ 
 tives of action. Give him a right to transmit a written 
 notice to a certain public office, stating his intention, within 
 the next three years, to increase, by certain specified im¬ 
 provements, the annual and marketable value of his house 
 and land, by one-fourth, or some other substantial fraction, 
 or (it may be) multiple of its present value, estimated 
 by the rent which he pays; let no formality be required, 
 beyond a simple statement of his intention ; of the 
 amount which he proposes to add; and a concise de¬ 
 scription of the improvements which he desires to make ; 
 such as building a better house; building useful farm 
 offices ; draining so many acres of spewy land ; or exe¬ 
 cuting some other works, of which it is easy to exhaust 
 the variety. If this tenant cannot write, he will have 
 little difficulty in finding some friendly hand to write 
 this simple form for him ; and a postage stamp will 
 secure the transmission of it to the proper quarter. Make 
 it the duty of some official, upon receipt of this notice, to 
 
 d 2 
 
36 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 send a public officer (call him an Inspector of Works) to 
 inspectthe farm, and report whether the specified improve¬ 
 ments are such as the tenant should have liberty to make, 
 and, having made them, should be entitled to acertain term 
 of years, at the present rent. Let this report contain a 
 concise description of the house and land in their present 
 state, and let copies of the tenants’ notice, and of this 
 report be transmitted to the landlord by a registered 
 letter informing him, that any just objections shall be 
 duly attended to, if made before a specified time. If no 
 valid objection shall be made, let the tenant have a cer¬ 
 tificate entitling him to commence and prosecute his 
 improvements, and protecting him from a notice to quit, 
 on condition of commencing before a certain day, and 
 prosecuting his work to the satisfaction of the Inspector, 
 until completed ; and also paying his rent in the mean¬ 
 time, each half year before the next falls due. Give the 
 landlord a right to serve a written notice of default; and 
 if default be made, let the Inspector report that the cer¬ 
 tificate should be revoked, and the landlord restored to 
 his right of terminating the tenancy as it originally 
 existed. On the faithful performance of the undertaking, 
 to the satisfaction of the public Inspector, let the tenant 
 be entitled to a certificate by which his possession shall 
 be protected for a term of years, the length of which is 
 determined by the magnitude of his improvements. The 
 old rent to be recoverable, during the new term, by the 
 same process as before. 
 
 It is well known that, in Ireland, as a general rule, 
 the landlord spends nothing in the improvement of his 
 tenants’ lands. He leaves the tenant to build his house, 
 and farm offices, according to his means, on his own 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 37 
 
 plan, and in his own way. The tenant has to make and 
 keep up the fences. He takes his own course in culti¬ 
 vating crops by which to produce the rent. The sole 
 function of the landlord is to enforce the payment, which 
 is usually performed by an agent. Until recent times, 
 landlords did not much concern themselves in the ma¬ 
 nagement of their estates, beyond the collection of rents, 
 and keeping them up to the value of the land. In this 
 the agent has a common interest with the principal, be¬ 
 ing paid by a percentage on the amount collected. This 
 negligent, and vicious system has been so long and so ge¬ 
 nerally pursued, in Ireland, that any landlord who now 
 seeks to reform it, or to interfere with the tenants’ treat¬ 
 ment of the land, meets with opposition and obstacles at 
 every step. Reciprocal distrust is so inveterate, and so 
 general, that the united and consistent action of landlord 
 and tenant, essential to the improvement of the land, is 
 not possible; and every attempt to produce it creates 
 jealousy, rancour, and hostility, which too frequently 
 ends in the commission of crime. 
 
 It would answer no good purpose to demonstrate that 
 the landlords are the cause of this pernicious distrust: 
 and equally useless it would be to trace it to the miscon¬ 
 duct of tenants. There is no foundation for assuming 
 that the fault is entirely at one side or the other. In 
 truth, it lies at both sides; and it would be difficult, if 
 not impossible, to determine now how much of the vices 
 of one class are the cause, and how much are the effect 
 of the vices of the other. To determine this would be 
 useless, even if it were possible. The distrust exists, and 
 its natural consequences must follow, no matter who is 
 to blame for it. Mutual recrimination has produced, and 
 
38 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 > 
 
 is still producing empirical remedies; but the malady 
 continues, and its intensity increases by the notice which > 
 
 is taken of it. 
 
 Nothing Iffis been done to refortn the industrial habits, 
 or improve the morals of the tenants: nothing has been 
 done to take away or lessen the power of the landlords. 
 
 This power cannot be justly abolished or diminished, 
 unless some concurrent steps be taken to improve the 
 tenants. These parties, at both sides, have the power 
 of reciprocally injuring each other; and it is painful to 
 see with what baleful effect they use it. This power can¬ 
 not, with justice, be taken from either, unless it can be 
 taken from both. To paralyze this ability for evil, and 
 to invigorate every useful faculty, and to stimulate the 
 exertion of it, is the sum and substance of the solution of 
 the agrarian difficulty, which I am endeavouring to work 
 out, with all sincerity, however inadequate my ability 
 may be to the completion of such a task. 
 
 It is notoriously true, that the tenant will not expend 
 his labour, or the capital which he may have, upon a pro¬ 
 mise of the landlord to forbear from raising the rent, or 
 evicting the possession: that the landlord will not bind 
 himself to forbear, on a promise of the tenant to improve 
 the land. Thus they stand at bay with each other; in¬ 
 dustry is paralyzed; and the whole community suffers. 
 
 My proposition is, that the occupier should, under speci¬ 
 fied conditions, in all cases, have liberty to increase, per¬ 
 manently, the fertility of his land, the value of the build¬ 
 ings upon it; and to enhance the price which his holding 
 would fetch, if brought to sale in the market; and by so 
 
 doing entitle himself to a fixed term. 
 
 ° . . f , >• 
 
 The classes of improvement by which an occupier 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 39 
 
 may thus increase the permanent market value of his 
 farm are not numerous, and may be clearly defined. 
 The erection of a suitable farm house, and the prostra¬ 
 tion of the smoky hovel : the addition of convenient 
 offices, where no sufficient offices existed before: effec¬ 
 tual drainage, where the land requires it, and where it 
 is practicable, and promises an adequate return : making 
 useful fences of approved construction, suitable to the 
 locality: straightening crooked fences; and levelling 
 such as are useless or wasteful: clearing a fertile soil from 
 stones which encumber and make it barren, or materially 
 diminish its productiveness : reclaiming and bringing 
 into cultivation a defined extent of mountain waste or 
 bog. 
 
 The capacity of land for such improvements as these 
 may, with great ease and certainty, be ascertained, on a 
 bare view, by any one of ordinary skill and experience 
 in such matters. Where that capacity exists, and where 
 it has been neglected, the interests of society have been 
 disregarded, and the duty attached to property has been 
 evaded. The capacity for improvement, no doubt, is an 
 incident inherent in the land, and belongs to the owner. 
 But this word “ belongs,” when used in relation to land, 
 has a meaning essentially different from its import, 
 when applied to a chattel. One who gets lawful pos¬ 
 session of material, in its natural state, and by his inge¬ 
 nuity and labour, converts it into a valuable fabric of 
 any kind, may truly and justly say that fabric belongs 
 to him, in the most unlimited sense ; and he may destroy 
 it, or do with it what he pleases. But when a man says 
 land belongs to him, he means nothing more than the 
 
40 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 t 
 
 fact, that the State, of which he is a subject, protects his 
 exclusive possession of it. This protection imports no 
 right to destroy the land ; but it does import an obliga¬ 
 tion, more or less perfect, to use it as the common inte¬ 
 rest of society, and of a rational owner would dictate. 
 The identity of these interests, and individual thirst of 
 gain is the only security which society has for the due 
 cultivation of the land. Capacity for improvement is 
 entirely useless, both to the owner and to the commu¬ 
 nity, so long as no improvement is made. The man 
 who, and whose ancestors have never derived any 
 other benefit from the land than the rack-rent which a 
 half-starved tenant has paid for it—who has taken no 
 steps, and has no intention to take any steps to alter 
 this ancient and present condition of his estate, has 
 no right to complain, if his tenant, or any other per¬ 
 son, be allowed to double, or quadruple the value of 
 the land, and be protected in the enjoyment of the im¬ 
 provements which he has made, so long as he pays the 
 accustomed rent, and upholds his improvements. It is 
 a mere abuse of reason to say, that by this process the 
 capacity of the land for improvement, which is an inci¬ 
 dent theoretically belonging to the landlord, is taken 
 from him, and bestowed on the improver. This process 
 of promoting improvement, by protecting the possession 
 of him who makes it, simply decides, that the landlord 
 shall not any longer be allowed to act as a dog in the 
 manger, the moment a person undertakes to utilize that 
 which, hitherto, has been utterly, and for the common¬ 
 wealth, mischievously neglected. It is a palpable fallacy 
 to say, that this injures the landlord, and equally a fal- 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 41 
 
 lacy to deny, that it confers a great benefit upon him, and 
 very much betters his condition. It makes the rack-rent 
 secure, which before depended on the wind and the 
 weather ; on the health of a tenant too frequently fever- 
 stricken, and famine-stricken ; on the fluctuation of mar¬ 
 kets ; on the absence of the murrain, and the sheep-rot; 
 on the labour of a disheartened pauper. It secures pay¬ 
 ment of the rent, without recourse to a process which 
 sends the wife and children of the tenant to the poor- 
 house, broken-hearted ; arms the assassin, sacrifices the 
 landlord’s life, and condemns his slayer to the gibbet. 
 The landlord who complains of this change, thus ob¬ 
 viously as beneficial to him, as it is salutary to the 
 country, is querulous without just cause, and no atten¬ 
 tion should be given to his complaint 
 
 Pass an Act by which every tenant in the country, 
 great and small, having a term less than seven years in 
 his land, shall be entitled to transmit to some public 
 functionary, constituted for the purpose, a written notice 
 that he desires to improve his farm, and undertakes, 
 within three years, to add twenty per cent., or some 
 other substantial and specified amount, to the present 
 yearly value, and let him have liberty to do so, if he only 
 specifies before-hand a reasonable and practicable plan 
 of his intended work. If, on inspection, his proposal be 
 approved of by an impartial public officer, let him have 
 a protecting certificate, during the time of execution, and 
 on completion of the work, to the satisfaction of the 
 public Inspector, let him be entitled to a certificate 
 equivalent with a Parliamentary grant of a term, at the 
 old rent, and of duration proportional to the magnitude 
 of his addition to the permanent agricultural value of 
 
42 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 his farm. Let an addition of twenty-five per cent, entitle 
 him to thirty years. Give him sixty years, if he adds 
 fifty per cent. ; ninety years, if he adds seventy-five per 
 cent. ; 120 years, if he doubles the present value ; and 
 let the scale ascend, so as to make it possible, in certain 
 cases, to acquire a perpetuity, and convert the old pecu¬ 
 niary payment into a fee-farm rent. This would be pos¬ 
 sible only when the original value was small, and the 
 capacity for improvement very great. Provide justly 
 for the case in which the tenant may have miscalculated, 
 and fallen short of the improvement which he under¬ 
 took to make. Visit him with no worse consequence 
 than to curtail the term in proportion to the deficiency 
 in the effect of his works. Give him a term equivalent 
 with the improvement which he has produced, and en¬ 
 courage him to continue his efforts, if perseverance is 
 likely to succeed. 
 
 The liberty to improve neglected land, on the terms 
 here suggested, of paying to the owner a rent equal to 
 its present annual value, should not be confined to 
 tenants. Justice to society demands, that this liberty 
 should be given to any man who will undertake, within 
 a specified time, to expend a certain amount of capital, 
 and to produce a certain increase in the agricultural 
 value of land, which has never been reclaimed, although 
 profitably reclaimable. This difference, however, should 
 be made between a stranger and a tenant in occupation, 
 that the right of strangers should be confined to waste 
 lands, or lands uncultivated, and used, if used at all, 
 merely as common of pasture for stunted cattle, though 
 capable of large and reproductive improvement. The 
 right to take such land for reclamation should de- 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 43 
 
 pend on the decision of the tribunal constituted to 
 carry the Act into effect. A rent equal to the full 
 amount of profit or benefit of any kind, which, on an 
 average of twenty years, has been derived from the waste 
 now claimed for reclamation, should be reserved upon 
 the fee-farm grant. The title to this grant should be a 
 written undertaking to expend a specified amount, 
 within a certain time, on works defined in the under¬ 
 taking, and approved of by the public Inspector. The 
 Ordnance maps, the utility of which is not yet fully de¬ 
 veloped, will afford facilities of inestimable value to 
 undertakers of such works as this. 
 
 Undertakings to reclaim considerable tracts of ne¬ 
 glected land will not be entered upon by any but men 
 of some capital, and no other should be encouraged to 
 attempt such operations. To such men it will not be a 
 discouraging condition to require, as a security for due 
 performance of the undertaking, that a sum equal to 
 one-tenth of the estimated outlay be invested in Govern- 
 men stock, as a condition precedent to the liberty of 
 commencing ; the stock to be transferred to the credit 
 of the undertaking, with the privity of the Accountant- 
 General of the Court of Chancery, and to abide the 
 orders of the tribunal for carrying the Act into execution. 
 On the investment of this deposit, and the lodgment of 
 a written undertaking to execute the works according to 
 the approved specification, the possession should be given, 
 subject to be resumed if the works be not commenced 
 before a certain time, and prosecuted with due diligence, 
 to the satisfaction of the public Inspector, whose inter¬ 
 vention the original owner of the land should have a 
 right to demand, in cases of wilful default. At the end 
 
44 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 » 
 
 of the time limited for completion of the works, the 
 undertaker should be entitled to have an inspection ; 
 and a certificate of performance, if the public Inspector 
 be satisfied with the result of the inspection. The new 
 tribunal should have jurisdiction, from time to time, to 
 make such order as justice should require, to meet con¬ 
 tingencies ; such as enlarging the time for completion, or 
 discharging the undertaker from further prosecution of 
 works rashly undertaken in ignorance of hidden diffi¬ 
 culties, detected by the operations in the course of execu¬ 
 tion. Due regard should, in such cases, be had to the 
 effects, beneficial, or injurious to the original owner’s ad¬ 
 joining property, in adjusting the terms of such final 
 order. If the undertaker, at the end of the time, or 
 enlarged time, shall have performed his contract, and 
 entitled himself to a certificate equivalent with a Parlia¬ 
 mentary fee-farm grant, at the rent at first adjusted, the 
 original owner should have the option of releasing this 
 rent, and accepting a certain amount as the price of it. 
 In the case of settled estates, the fee-farm rent, or the 
 income arising from the investment of the price, should 
 go according to the trusts of the settlement, by a familiar 
 process, of constant recurrence in taking land for rail¬ 
 roads and other public uses. 
 
 Here again recurs the objection, that, by this pro¬ 
 ceeding, the capacity for profitable improvement, which 
 is a valuable incident of the waste land, is taken from 
 the owner, and conferred on a stranger. The answer 
 before given applies as forcibly in this case, as in 
 that of an improving tenant. The same principle of 
 justice between the community and the owner of land, 
 which sanctions a compulsory purchase for public roads, 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 45 
 
 railways, and other uses beneficial to the community, is 
 equally applicable to the reclamation of wild land. If 
 it be just, on the ground of public expediency, to take 
 from the owner the house which he has built ; in the 
 construction, and furnishing of which, he has spent 
 much thought and personal labour ; to which he has 
 become attached, as a residence suited to his taste and 
 convenience ; and from which it may be a painful mor¬ 
 tification tojbe removed, it may be in his old age ; if it 
 be just to take a broad stripe of his planted demesne, 
 or even of his garden, and thereby disfigure the whole, 
 merely because public convenience demands a railroad 
 for its traffic, it cannot be a just cause of complaint that 
 a tract of waste land is taken at its present value from 
 an owner, who, and whose predecessors, have utterly 
 neglected, and suffered it to lie a dreary waste for cen¬ 
 turies, it being now claimed for a purpose highly bene¬ 
 ficial, if not essentially necessary, to the prosperity of 
 the nation. If the owner himself has earnestly com¬ 
 menced the work of reclamation, and is, bond fide, pro¬ 
 ceeding with it, let no person interrupt him ; and a single 
 sentence in the Act will be sufficient to protect him. 
 But if his complaint be, that the plough and the harrow 
 will banish the grouse from his moor ; the snipe from 
 his marsh; and the foxes from his cover, reason, com¬ 
 mon sense, humanity, and justice to society, are all 
 against him, and no honest statesman should attend 
 to his frivolous complaint. 
 
 The increase,* in value, which is to confer a right 
 to fixed tenure, should be confined to value founded on 
 improved productiveness. To this category belong the 
 erection of a commodious house, and farm offices of a du- 
 
46 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 construction, and size suitable to the extent of the farm; 
 the construction of straight and lasting fences, sufficient 
 for security of the crops; erection of corn stands ; or 
 sinking wells where water is deficient. These are all 
 ancillary to production, and to the preservation of pro¬ 
 duce ; and, therefore, justly come within the principle 
 of tenant right improvement, to be encouraged and se¬ 
 curely protected for the improving tenant. 
 
 The conversion of land into building lots for houses, 
 or villas, should not confer any right to tenure, beyond 
 what voluntary contract had previously given. Im¬ 
 provements of this kind create only an artificial value, 
 which may depend on fashion, and on changeable cir¬ 
 cumstances, which in time may destroy the value of the 
 buildings, and with it the value of the ground on which 
 they stand. This distinction is easily defined, and there 
 is no difficulty in providing for it. 
 
 It may be said that, in what I am now suggesting, I 
 depart from the principles which I last year advocated, 
 in the book before referred to, where legislative inter¬ 
 ference in the contracts between landlord and tenant is 
 deprecated as useless or mischievous. My answer is, 
 that, in that book, I was commenting on schemes of 
 special legislation for Ireland, productive of nothing but 
 an injurious divergence of the law of tenure in this 
 country from that in England ; legislation conceded to 
 unreasoning clamour, and factious agitation—legislation 
 by which the tyranny of changing laws was inflicted, 
 and no improvement whatever produced. I am not 
 advocating special legislation for Ireland, but endeavour¬ 
 ing to point out a remedy for a great social mischief, 
 assumed to exist extensively in this country ; and which 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 47 
 
 may, and probably does exist also in England, but to a 
 much less extent, and in a less injurious degree. As this 
 remedy is not applicable where the mischief does not 
 exist, there is no reason for any express clause to limit 
 it to Ireland ; and it should be an imperial Act. 
 
 The solution of the land difficulty which I am now 
 submitting has not recently occurred to me. I have 
 long reflected on it; and I never had a doubt that the 
 social principles on which it rests are clear and well 
 founded. I have long been convinced, that, if adopted, 
 not as a party measure, or as a concession to agitation, 
 but in the true spirit of remedial legislation, it would, in 
 due time, produce salutary effects. This conviction is 
 entirely consistent with my silence on the subject. 
 Hitherto proprietary rights in land were guarded, in 
 both countries, with a jealousy, which intuitively re¬ 
 jected every innovation having any tendency to dero¬ 
 gate from the power of the landlord. I would have 
 earnestly advised the landlords to adopt a resolution 
 never to take any other benefit from improvements, 
 made at the expense of their tenants, beyond the addi¬ 
 tional security for the old rent which would result from 
 them. Had such a resolution been promulgated, I 
 would have anxiously persuaded the tenants to place 
 confidence in it; but I never believed that I could per¬ 
 suade the landlords to publish any such resolution, or 
 the tenants to confide in it, if it were not legally bind¬ 
 ing. Tenant right resting on the voluntary forbearance 
 of the landlord is held valuable in some counties in 
 Ulster; everywhere else, it is believed to be worthless. 
 
 In Ulster this right had its origin in the peculiar 
 circumstances attending the settlement of these counties 
 
48 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 in the reign of James I., after the lands had been 
 devastated by civil war. These lands were granted 
 on an undertaking to plant them. Colonists were in¬ 
 troduced by the grantees under an assurance, express 
 or implied, that, if they would reclaim the waste lands, 
 the low rents which represented the then present value 
 should not be raised ; and that, if the tenant, after 
 reclaiming his land, desired to sell it, the landlord would 
 accept the purchaser, as his new tenant, at the old rent. 
 Original confidence in this salutary compact stimulated 
 industry, and produced the prosperity of which Ulster 
 so justly boasts. While the compact was recent, and 
 memory of it fresh, the landlord dared not the violation 
 of it. To do so would have broken up his colony, and 
 spoiled all his hopes. Forbearance thus enforced by 
 obvious interest, became, in the course of time, a settled 
 habit of the landlord. The right to claim this forbear¬ 
 ance was traditionally remembered by the posterity and 
 successors of the original tenants ; and upon this tradi¬ 
 tional memory tenant right now rests in Ulster. It is 
 both cause and effect of energy, and of successful labour. 
 It emanated from the voluntary adoption by landlords 
 of the principle for which I am contending. Persistent 
 adherence by the landlords to the spirit of their contract 
 confirmed the confidence of their tenants, and the happy 
 effects followed, as a natural consequence. The custom 
 thus originated is now corroborated by time; and, al¬ 
 though it is unsupported by law, it stands in defiance of 
 it, and is enforced by public opinion. 
 
 The cause which produced tenant right in Ulster 
 never existed in the other provinces. Events which it 
 is worse than useless to commemorate, created distrust 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 49 
 
 between landlord and tenant, which spreads a wither¬ 
 ing blight over some of the fairest portions of the Island. 
 The vices, at both sides, which produced this national 
 scourge are epidemic ; and no matter what means are 
 used, or what remedy is applied, time is essential to the 
 cure. Little can be done to reform the habits of those 
 who have passed the meridian of life. No vice is more 
 incurable than habitual sloth in one who has passed the 
 age of fifty. The absence of all taste for decency and 
 comfort is a moral defect of which it is difficult to make 
 an old man or woman sensible. These are amongst the 
 most prominent defects of the pauper peasantry of Ire¬ 
 land. No remedy can be more than partially effectual 
 in removing the ignorance, and reforming the industrial 
 habits of the declining generation. I hold a different 
 opinion of their sons, and their daughters. Once con¬ 
 vince these, that in the land of their birth, and in the midst 
 of their kindred, the fruits of their labour will be their 
 own, and they will not fly to a foreign land for a bless¬ 
 ing which they may enjoy at home. Let the sons and 
 daughters of a disheartened tenant be assured that the 
 spewy farm will be their own, for a substantial term, at 
 the present rent, if, by the labour of their hands, they 
 can materially increase its value, as represented by the 
 present rent, and it will soon be seen with what alacrity 
 they will go to work, and how suddenly they will change 
 their views, and improve the aspect of their affairs. 
 
 We have been, for many years, and we are still 
 beholding, groups of stalwart young men, and comely 
 women, in all the vigour of health and youth, well 
 dressed, and exhibiting every appearance of energy and 
 intelligence, following carts, laden with boxes and chests, 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 in which are packed the goods abstracted from the 
 wealth of their own country, and from the working 
 capital of their kindred. These are the very flower of 
 the rural population, flying from a country in which 
 the labour and the capital which they are bearing to 
 a foreign land would yield an ample and secure return, 
 if applied to the soil which they are now deserting. 
 The evils which scare them away are multiplied, and 
 aggravated by their flight, and hopelessly perpetuated 
 upon those who remain, and who cannot fly. The aged 
 father, whose sons and daughters desert him, sinks under 
 the difficulties which drove them away. The capital 
 which the family had is carried off by those who could 
 have used it with effect. The expenses of the transit 
 consume a large proportion of it. Loss of the remain¬ 
 der, and ultimate failure, is too often the final result of 
 painful toil in a foreign land, in unaccustomed extremes 
 of alternate frost and burning sun. There are but few 
 instances in which the farms deserted by these emigrants 
 are not susceptible of large improvement, well within 
 the power of the unbroken family to accomplish, and 
 which would be cheerfully undertaken upon such terms 
 as I have described, if the people were convinced that 
 these terms were secured to them. 
 
 If the experiment which I suggest, upon a fair trial 
 of it, prove a failure, the case of the Irish peasantry is 
 hopeless, and the notion of ever making them, in this 
 country, better than they are, is a mere chimera. If 
 they will not comply with the inflexible conditions of 
 civilized life, and bend to the task of subduing the earth, 
 and making it fruitful by industrious labour, according 
 to God’s ordinance, then the fate of the Red Indian awaits 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 51 
 
 them, and the) 7 must move Westward, until the ocean 
 stops them, or bears them to the new world, to be there ab¬ 
 sorbed in that growing multitude whose governing prin¬ 
 ciple is progress, and at whose stern command the 
 stranger must go ahead, or sink and be trampled under 
 foot by the bustling and pitiless crowd in which he has 
 rashly mingled. What proportion of the myriads who 
 have left Ireland, in the full enjoyment of health and 
 hope, have met this fate, and have sunk under difficul¬ 
 ties and trials which they did not foresee, we know not, 
 and never can know. 
 
 That they leave behind them a subject upon which 
 their labour would be much less painful, and the return 
 greater and more certain, I have no doubt. When the 
 population of Ireland was but two millions, famine, and 
 pestilence made annual havoc amongst them: when it 
 exceeded eight millions, as it did from 1840 to 1846, 
 nothing was heard of but monster meetings, and wan¬ 
 ton agitation for repeal of the Union, and the people 
 never had less of real evil to complain of. 
 
 It cannot be said, with any colour of truth, that the 
 land which supported these eight millions owed much of 
 its fertility to the skill or labour of those who lived upon 
 it. How many times the produce of the same fields 
 might have been multiplied by better cultivation has 
 never been calculated, nor much attended to. That it 
 might have been so multiplied is perfectly certain. How 
 many millions of industrious people the waste lands of 
 Ireland might be made to support, in comfort and plenty, 
 has never been computed. But nothing is more certain 
 than that where hnndreds now starve, in querulous 
 sloth, and tattered rags, thousands might live in con- 
 
 e 2 
 
52 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 tented happiness; not by sickening labour in crowded 
 factories, and noisome workshops; nor by delving in the 
 dark coal-pit, exposed to the deadly damp; but by rural 
 and congenial industry, in cheerful day and open fields, 
 made fruitful by wholesome labour, in the mildest cli¬ 
 mate upon earth. 
 
 Upon the Irish people, compounded, as it is, of dif¬ 
 ferent races, and divided, as it ever has been, into jarring 
 factions, kind Providence has bestowed an ample inheri¬ 
 tance, upon no harder conditions than those imposed 
 upon the most favoured nations in the world. They 
 have this inheritance in the very plight to which they 
 themselves have brought it. Those whose duty it is to 
 reflect and to think, and justly to govern those who 
 work, are feared, hated, and distrusted by those who 
 should, by wise and proper treatment, be made docile, 
 loyal, and industrious. Those who are called the Irish 
 race—who are the discontented, slothful and pauperized 
 peasantry, to whatsover race they belong, are by the ora¬ 
 tors of all parties lauded for natural sagacity, and intel¬ 
 lect above the average of other nations. This is true, 
 to the full extent which enables them to see whether the 
 fruits of the labour which they are called upon to bestow 
 are to be enjoyed by themselves, or by those who invite 
 them to work. In this particular, they are peculiarly 
 sharp-witted; and their willingness to work being below 
 the average standard, while their love of ease is above 
 it, nothing is more futile than to expect that they will 
 toil upon the terms of sic vos non vobis. The landlord 
 who annually repeats his notice to quit, and thus secures 
 the power of evicting his tenants; and the landlord who 
 refuses to give an enduring term, and yet expects that 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 53 
 
 his tenants will labour to improve the land, will certainly 
 be disappointed; and every just man will say that he 
 deserves no other result. He may pledge his honour, 
 and pledge his word, and repeat his verbal promises with 
 any amount of asseveration; but while his hands are 
 loose, the tenants will not believe him. They receive his 
 assurances with apparent assent, and repay them with 
 promises and protestations of equal value, which are in¬ 
 describable by any other than the vulgar term “ palaver.” 
 This has gone on until both classes have, in dealing 
 with each other, been demoralized to a lamentable ex¬ 
 tent. 
 
 I am far from asserting, that there are not, in Ire¬ 
 land, some very noble exceptions to this appalling de¬ 
 scription ; and other exceptions of inferior degree, down 
 to the lowest grade of tolerable landlords; but these 
 exceptions are just sufficient, and only sufficient, to 
 prove the rule; and they have no sensible effect in re¬ 
 deeming the country from the slough of misery in which 
 the rural population are involved. 
 
 Outside this rural population, and their landlords, 
 the other classes of the Irish people are active, and 
 thriving; and would be happy and contented, but for 
 the alarm created by the agitation to which the land 
 dead-lock here described gives countenance and power 
 for mischief. This agitation has been gaining strength, 
 until, at last, the agitators have become an organized 
 force, worthy of a place upon the battle-field of the con¬ 
 tending English parties, who fight for the dignified office 
 of distributing the surplus of the seventy millions col¬ 
 lected from the industrious nation. These agitators 
 have been accordingly enlisted, and subsidized, at the 
 
54 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 expense and peril of the classes who produce whatever 
 there is of social order and prosperity in the country. 
 The accession of this unscrupulous contingent has turned 
 the scale, and given the victory to the band which they 
 have joined, and the junto has put the Conservative mi¬ 
 nistry to flight, and has scattered and dismayed the 
 whole party. The property set apart for support of 
 public worship, according to the reformed faith, by law 
 established, and by the national love of liberty approved, 
 is confiscated, to gratify the malignity of one Irish party 
 towards another, and this infliction upon a large section 
 of the people is called an instalment of justice to Ireland. 
 The next instalment must be taken from the land, by 
 what means is not yet disclosed. 
 
 In discussing the Church Bill, no more cogent argu¬ 
 ment was used by its promoters, than the inability of its 
 opponents to produce any counter scheme. It was as¬ 
 sumed, as an indisputable axiom, that the Church could 
 not be allowed to remain as it was; and the Conservative 
 party were taunted with the question, what had they to 
 propose as a counter scheme for reformation of the 
 Church, in opposition to the Government Bill? That 
 the relations of landlord and tenant cannot be allowed 
 to rest as they are, in Ireland, is asserted with greater 
 vehemence, and with much more appearance of truth 
 and reason, than the same allegation against the Church. 
 When the ministerial scheme against the landlords shall 
 be proposed, involving, as it must do, some form of re¬ 
 distribution, and some abatement of present rights, if 
 not confiscation of property, the absence of any counter 
 scheme, and the assumed necessity for some scheme, will 
 be a telling argument in support of any Bill brought in 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 55 
 
 by the Ministry, however trenchant; and however sub¬ 
 versive of proprietary rights. This will come next Ses¬ 
 sion ; the time to prepare for it is fast running out—the 
 wolf is already at the door ! 
 
 The owners of land have been long accustomed to 
 believe, that their rights, and their property are so well 
 fenced by the laws and constitution of this realm, that 
 they may securely disregard all threats, and listen with 
 composure to the vapouring speeches of agitators and 
 assailants. This was safe while the power of legislation 
 was in their own hands. By the Union, the Irish land¬ 
 lords lost this power, and it is now in other hands. It 
 is just twenty years since the united legislature to which 
 it passed, dealt a blow to the owners of property in Ire¬ 
 land which ought to have roused their attention to the 
 battery raised upon the Union, by which their fortress is 
 commanded. 
 
 In the book before alluded to (pages 202 to 212 of 
 the first edition, pages 212 to 222 of the second edition) 
 I exposed the ministerial blundering by which the visi¬ 
 tation of the potato blight was fatally aggravated. I en¬ 
 deavoured to demonstrate the iniquity of the Act for 
 Sale of Incumbered Estates in Ireland, with all the light 
 which could then be let in upon that cruel confiscation 
 of vested property. Since that book was published, -the 
 true origin of that measure has been accidentally dis¬ 
 closed, although no notice has yet been taken of the new 
 light let in upon it. The effect of that single Act of 
 Parliament was to take from landowners, and their cre¬ 
 ditors, property worth twenty-five millions, to which 
 they had a title as perfect as law could make it, and to 
 transfer that property to new owners for about ten mil- 
 
r 
 
 56 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 lions, thus confiscating Irish property in land, to the ex¬ 
 tent of fifteen millions, by legislation ex post facto , a spe- * 
 
 cies of tyranny unexampled, in any other free country 
 in the world. The true history of that Act assuredly 
 deserves attention, if history is of any use at all. That 
 crushing enactment has been strangely lauded by politi¬ 
 cians and their partisans; its real character has not yet 
 been fully exposed to the execration which it deserved; 
 and which unheeded victims, when sinking in despair, 
 bitterly uttered upon it. 
 
 In the present year, Lord Campbell’s daughter has 
 published a posthumous volume, containing her father’s 
 biography of Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Brougham. At 
 page 561, it is related, that during the Session of 1849, 
 u Lord Brougham was exceedingly factious,” and that 
 “ he vigorously opposed almost every Bill of which Lord 
 u Campbell had the charge—particularly the Irish En- 
 “ cumbered Estates Bill,” which the biographer asserts 
 (without a shadow of proof) has done more to tranquillize, 
 and civilize Ireland than any other Saxon measure. 
 
 Many passages in this volume were offensive to Lord 
 St. Leonards, and have provoked his lordship to publish 
 a pamphlet contradicting the misstatements which gave 
 him just offence. In this pamphlet, at page 48, it is 
 stated that the office of Chief Judge of the Incumbered 
 Estates Court was offered to Lord St. Leonards, and 
 refused. At foot of page 49, is a note in the following 
 words:— 
 
 11 1 may here mention that while the Bill was passing, the Govern¬ 
 ment gave some mysterious hints as to the manner in which the Chief 
 Judgeship was to be filled. As soon as it passed, Lord John Rus¬ 
 sell sent for me, and made the offer, which I of course declined. He 
 
 r 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 57 
 
 said he supposed I knew the nature of the Bill. I answered it would 
 be singular if I did not, as I was the author of the measure. He looked 
 incredulous. I explained to him that Sir Bobert Peel had a scheme 
 for relieving the incumbered estates in Ireland, and he sent it to me 
 for my opinion (I have it now before me, a long and elaborate paper). 
 I wrote to him to say that I thought his plan would not work, and I 
 then gave him a sketch of a Bill which would work; hut I observed 
 that I did not say I would pass such a hard measure, if I had the 
 power. I considered it as to property, like the suspension of the Ha¬ 
 beas Corpus Act as to person, and, like it, it should not be carried be¬ 
 yond the actual necessity of the case. That letter Sir Bobert sent 
 to Lord Clarendon in Ireland, and he sent it to the Government at 
 home, and upon that scheme the Bill was founded, as I think Sir 
 Bobert Peel informed me. I understood Lord John Bussell to say that 
 he believed some paper was sent.” 
 
 Now, that the organ of the party in power expresses 
 the impatience of that party to be again at the work of 
 legislating for the owners of Irish property, under the 
 pretence of redressing the grievances of their tenants— 
 now, when the leaders of this party peremptorily refuse 
 to disclose the nature of their intended measure, further 
 than the incredible assertion, that it will he satisfactory to 
 all parties , it ought to be useful to direct attention to the 
 way in which this same party, comprehending nearly all 
 who now survive of the same men, exercised their power, 
 when legislating for Irish landowners, and their creditors, 
 in 1849. 
 
 By this note of Lord St. Leonards, it now, for the 
 first time, publicly appears, that Sir Robert Peel had 
 designed a scheme for RELIEVING incumbered estates, 
 and had submitted it, in an elaborate writing, for the 
 opinion of Lord St. Leonards—that Lord St. Leonards 
 expressed his belief, that the plan so devised “would 
 not work,” and gave the sketch of a Bill that would 
 
 > o 
 
T 
 
 58 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 work. But, to guard himself from moral responsibility, 
 he candidly observed, that he would not himself pass * 
 such a hard measure, if he had the power ; and he gave » 
 his reason in a short, and singularly expressive sentence, 
 viz.—that, as to property, this Bill was like the suspen¬ 
 sion of the habeas corpus Act, as to person.” This pithy 
 description of a working purge for famine-stricken Ire¬ 
 land, devised by the most accomplished lawyer of his 
 time (held back, and not administered until the country 
 was collapsed), requires some explanation to make its 
 full meaning intelligible to ordinary minds. 
 
 If the Crown, or the Minister, or any other func¬ 
 tionary in power, seizes the person of the meanest sub¬ 
 ject of this realm, the habeas corpus Act gives that sub¬ 
 ject a right, and, under a heavy penalty, imposes on every 
 Judge an obligation, to compel the jailer to bring the 
 body of his prisoner into a court of law, and there, in 
 the presence of a public audience, and of a congregation 
 of independent, and highly informed lawyers, to show a 
 good and legal cause for detaining his prisoner; and, 
 failing to do so, he must restore him to liberty. Before 
 this Act, and during any suspension of its operation, 
 personal liberty had not, and has not any protection 
 from arbitrary power. 
 
 By the law of England and Ireland, as it stood be¬ 
 fore the Act of 1849, a creditor, seeking a sale of the 
 land on which his demand was a charge, should proceed 
 in a court of equity , in which the rights of other credi¬ 
 tors, and also of the debtor, were recognized, and pro¬ 
 tected. The existence of this protection was universally 
 known, and operated as an inducement to lenders to part ^ 
 with their money on landed security. Suddenly to take 
 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 59 
 
 away this protection, after allowing it for a century to 
 operate, and after an enormous amount of property had 
 been lent upon the faith of it, was the sum and substance 
 of the plan which Lord St. Leonards thought would 
 work, but which he branded as a hard measure, as de¬ 
 structive to property as a repeal of the habeas corpus 
 Act would be to liberty. 
 
 The scheme devised by Sir Robert Peel, and sub¬ 
 mitted to Lord St. Leonards, has never been before the 
 public; and ail we know of it is, that it was intended to 
 relieve! incumbered estates, and not to confiscate them. 
 In the debate upon the hard Bill, it was stated, that Sir 
 Robert Peel’s scheme made it a necessary condition of 
 sale, that the full value of the land should be obtained; 
 and this was stated as the essential difference between 
 that and the Government Bill for sale of Incumbered 
 Estates. Sir Robert Peel’s ministry went out in June, 
 1846, two months before the potato blight, and while 
 the value of land was at its highest point. Whether his 
 reference to Lord St. Leonards was before or after his 
 resignation does not appear, but from the note before 
 quoted, I would infer, that it was before, and that the 
 draft Bill, on the change of ministry, came to the hands 
 of the new Government, in the same way as Sir Robert’s 
 arrangement with Baring and Co., which they found in 
 the Treasury Office, and brought to light, for the pur¬ 
 pose of boasting that they would not follow the prece¬ 
 dent. 
 
 In the interval between the resignation of Sir Robert 
 Peel, in June, 1846, and May, 1849, when Lord Camp¬ 
 bell brought in the Bill for sale of Incumbered Estates, 
 the famine, aggravated by a blundering policy, had re- 
 
GO 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 T 
 
 duced the market value of Irish land to much less than 
 half what it had been until the end of 1846; and to * 
 force a sale, during that temporary depression, was to 
 confiscate more than half the property.* This was un¬ 
 understood and admitted by those who brought forward 
 the dormant sketch of the hard Bill ; and it was pro¬ 
 posed by the ministry, and discussed, as an avowed 
 scheme for confiscating incumbered estates in Ireland, 
 and as an improvement upon Sir Robert Peel’s plan for 
 relieving them. Lord Brougham, in a temperate reason¬ 
 ing speech, pointed out this effect of it; and, upon the 
 plainest principles of justice, deprecated and condemned 
 it, Very few of the Irish members opposed the Bill; Irish 
 eloquence was fluent in support of it; and an English 
 opponent sarcastically observed that “theIrish members 
 made a great chorus” in praise of it! 
 
 The ground on which this avowed scheme of confis¬ 
 cation was justified was, that those whose estates were 
 incumbered were but nominal owners, and unable to do 
 their duty to the land, and to the people upon it. That 
 the state of Ireland demanded some extraordinary 
 stimulus to accelerate the sale of land, for which pur¬ 
 pose, it was alleged, the Act of the previous Session had 
 proved abortive. That was entitled—“ An Act to faci¬ 
 litate the Sale of Incumbered Estates in Ireland,” but it 
 respected, and left untouched, the long established equity 
 which protected the interests of puisne creditors, and the 
 right of redemption. No novel Court was created to 
 carry that Act into execution, and the old Court was 
 
 * See Ireland in 1868, first Edition, pages 202-212, second Edition, 
 pages 212-222. 
 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 61 
 
 bound by the well-settled rule of justice, which forbade 
 a sale ruinous to all, except the owner of an early en¬ 
 cumbrance. This was the protection to property, ana¬ 
 logous to the Habeas Corpus Act, which Lord St. Leo¬ 
 nards rightly thought it a hard measure to take away. 
 
 A much louder cry has now been raised against the 
 Irish landlords than any that was heard in 1849. They 
 stand now denounced, and condemned as a rotten branch 
 of the pestilential Upas-tree. Can they hope, that, being 
 thus marked for amputation, this so-called mortified 
 limb can be suffered to remain as it is ? When the axe 
 shall be raised to lop it, the question will be asked, what 
 is the counter policy of those who would stay the 
 stroke ? 
 
 An enemy to mutilation—an enemy to the trenchant 
 policy which, in 1849, reduced some ancient families to 
 beggary, and destroyed the securities on which the pro¬ 
 vision for the widow and the orphan had been invested— 
 an enemy to the truckling policy which, under pre¬ 
 tence of putting down a Protestant ascendency which 
 does not exist, is confiscating the property set apart for 
 support of an independent, tolerant, and an usefully 
 laborious hierarchy, and thereby giving a galling ascen¬ 
 dency to an organization to which no power was ever 
 yet conceded that they did not cruelly abuse—an enemy 
 to the levelling policy which assails the stability of laws, 
 and ancient institutions, and tramples upon vested rights, 
 I am desirous, while there is yet a time for deliberation, 
 to suggest an answer to the anticipated question—what 
 is the counter policy to the Ministerial scheme for put¬ 
 ting down the Protestant ascendency in the ownership 
 of land ? 
 
62 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 When seeking an effectual remedy, we should know, 
 and keep constantly in view, the true nature of the dis¬ 
 order which we are desirous to cure. The corroding: 
 social disease of Ireland, from which all others radiate, is 
 the mutual distrust of landlord and tenant. In the 
 middle of the seventeenth century, England was affected 
 with the same evil, and in 1655 it was complained of to 
 the reforming Statesman of that time, as one of the 
 existing impediments to national improvement— u that 
 if a tenant were at never so great pains or cost for the 
 improvement of his land, he did thereby but occasion a 
 greater rack rent upon himself, or else invest his land¬ 
 lord in his cost and labour gratis, or at least lay at his 
 landlord’s mercy for requital.” This description of the 
 land grievance existing in England more than two hun¬ 
 dred years ago is preserved in one of the most authentic 
 and useful books extant upon the subject of agriculture 
 and land improvement; and it is as clear and accurate a 
 statement of the still existing grievance in Ireland as 
 any that can be found in modern complaints. For that 
 impediment to improvement no legislative remedy was 
 ever applied in England. But it appears that the land¬ 
 lords themselves became sensible of the mischief, and 
 found a cure for it. Those improvements which the 
 tenants were so discouraged from making, the landlords 
 began to make themselves, at their own expense, and it 
 has become the general custom in England for the land¬ 
 lord to build the house and offices suitable to the farm 
 which he lets. He also makes the fences, pays the cost 
 of draining, and keeps in repair the works which he so 
 executes. The tenant pays a rent which represents the 
 value of the farm, with the landlord’s improvements upon 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 63 
 
 it. A suitable homestead, with sufficient offices, upon a 
 fertile farm, is thus demised to the tenant, who, there¬ 
 fore, has nothing to provide except live stock, seed, im¬ 
 plements, and labour, in order to make his farm yield 
 what will pay the rent and leave a profit on which the 
 farmer and his family are supported. The improve¬ 
 ments, as well as the land, are the property of the land¬ 
 lord, who has, therefore, no temptation to evict his 
 tenant, while he has the strongest motive to see that the 
 tenant pursues a profitable course of husbandry, without 
 damaging the buildings, or exhausting the land. By 
 this system, the proper cultivation of land is secured, and 
 the duty which property owes to society is performed, 
 in return for the protection of it. 
 
 Those to whom James I. granted the wasted lands in 
 Ulster had not capital sufficient to build such a multi¬ 
 tude of houses, and to bring into cultivation such an 
 extent of territory, as the Civil Wars had devastated. 
 They, therefore, threw this obligation on the English and 
 Scotch Colonists, who became their tenants, who built 
 houses and reclaimed the land, protected by the tenant- 
 right custom, by which the distrust is still mitigated, so 
 pernicious to the other parts of Ireland. 
 
 It is not possible for the southern landlords to pursue 
 the English course of building houses and farm offices 
 for their tenants—of making and reforming fences, and 
 of draining and otherwise improving the land, from the 
 present condition to which it is reduced. The cost of 
 doing so is out cf all proportion to the capital which the 
 landlords can command. But if the capital existed, and 
 if it were expended in the erection of comfortable farm 
 houses, in lieu of the existing hovels, and of adequate 
 
64 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 farm offices, where none now exist, and all this work 
 speedily completed, and the tenants, in their present 
 moral condition, put into possession of the new buildings, 
 a year or two would be sufficient to undo the work; and 
 to restore the reign of filth and dilapidation. The habits 
 of the people must be improved, pari passu, with the re¬ 
 formation of their dwellings, and the reclamation of 
 their lands. Unless a taste for cleanliness and comfort 
 can be, by some means, imparted to them, they will 
 undo the work of improvement as fast as it is done for 
 them. They must be induced to do it themselves , else they 
 never can appreciate , and never will preserve it. The first 
 step in the process must be to convince them, that, if 
 they do it, no one else can interfere with their enjoyment 
 of it. Those amongst them in whom the love of ease, 
 and the aversion from labour is most inveterate, and the 
 taste for decency and comfort most torpid, are still mor¬ 
 bidly attached to the hovel and the farm, such as they 
 are. This attachment, and the consequent dread of 
 eviction, present the strongest, if not the only hold, by 
 which you can draw them towards self-reliance and 
 moral improvement. Let them once clearly understand, 
 and make them secure, that to build a comfortable house, 
 and to keep it clean, and in good repair, when built— 
 that to build a separate house for the cows and the pigs, 
 and to remove them from the dwelling, and, with them, 
 the dung-pit from the door—that to work vigorously in 
 winter at making and repairing the fences, and digging 
 deep drains to carry off the water from the marsh—con¬ 
 vince them that, by doing this, they will effectually take 
 from the landlord the power to evict, and the power to 
 raise the rent—prove to them, that they can, by a short 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 65 
 
 and simple process, without employing an attorney, or 
 spending a shilling, obtain this security from the law, by 
 the labour of their hands, and you will have no difficulty 
 in persuading them, that the law which so protects them 
 is a surer friend than the pistol or the blunderbuss. 
 
 Here is the counter policy by which to level up the 
 condition of the tenants, and, at the same time, and by the 
 selfsame process, to raise the condition of the landlords, 
 by securing their rents, and protecting their lives, more 
 effectually than if you surrounded the person of each by 
 a troop of police. 
 
 Landlords, as a class, have vitally important func¬ 
 tions to discharge in a civilized community. The power of 
 recovering their rents, and of enforcing proper covenants 
 is the power of compelling good husbandry, and of enforc¬ 
 ing a reasonable amount of labour and industrial thrift. 
 I am not suggesting a measure by which one shilling of 
 the present rents is to be taken from them, or by which 
 their right and power to enforce these rents is to be, in 
 the least degree, shackled or reduced. I am not suggest¬ 
 ing anything by which their present rank is to be in the 
 least degraded; but, on the contrary, by which they will 
 be raised from their present position of hated enemies 
 and cruel taskmasters to that of respected lords of a fer¬ 
 tile soil and a prosperous people. I am not proposing 
 to curtail their demesnes, or to abate the splendour of 
 their mansions. I would leave them 
 
 “ Space for their lakes, their park's extended bounds, 
 
 Space for their horses, equipage, and hounds .” 
 
 He knows not the Irish peasantry who thinks that they 
 do, or ever did regard these badges of rank and nobility 
 
66 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 with envy, hatred, or malice. Make them secure in the 
 possession of their hovel and their bit of land, and the 
 splendour of the landlord excites no feeling in them but 
 admiration and respect. Let them know that while the 
 hovel remains in its present deplorable condition, and 
 while the bit of land remains barren, as it is, they must 
 continue subject to the dreaded notice to quit; but that, 
 if the hovel be reformed, and the bit of land reclaimed, 
 the landlord’s power to evict, or to raise the rent, will 
 cease for a term, the length of which will depend on the 
 magnitude of the improvement which their labour has 
 accomplished—do this, and you will soon discover the 
 true extent of their capacity for social, moral, and in¬ 
 dustrial improvement. If this capacity exists, I am 
 pointing out the means of rousing them to exert it. If 
 it do not exist, things must, and will remain as they are; 
 they will, in that case, take no advantage of the new 
 law; and, like the abortive Act of 1860, it will become 
 a dead letter, and do no mischief. I hope nothing worse 
 may come of the Ministerial operation on the land branch 
 of the Upas-tree ! ! 
 
 No sudden or universal change is likely to result 
 from this enactment. The expectations of tenants, ex¬ 
 cited by party craft, or puerile folly, will not be satisfied 
 by it. These must await the answer which practical 
 experience, in due time, will certainly give them. That 
 answer will be, that no human power is adequate, by any 
 summary process, to change the inveterate habits, and 
 purge the endemic vices which centuries of misrule have 
 engendered. Whoever proposes to work such a miracle 
 must be either a scheming charlatan, or a visionary 
 dreamer. 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 G7 
 
 The great section of the Irish people who live by the 
 land may be divided into three classes—viz., landlords, 
 tenants, and rural labourers. These have long been 
 dealing with each other upon a vicious and demoralizing 
 principle of action—the landlord exacting from the 
 tenant as much as the law entitled him to demand, and 
 as the condition of the tenant left it possible to extort, 
 doing nothing to reclaim the land—nothing to assist, 
 nothing to instruct, nothing to improve the tenant, or 
 induce him to regard the owner of the land as a partner 
 having a common interest, and as a friend, and a guide of 
 superior intelligence, to whom it would be safe and use¬ 
 ful to apply for advice and assistance in time of need. 
 The tenant, thus treated, and thus reduced, deals with 
 the labourer upon the same selfish principle of getting 
 as much, and giving as little as he can; never thinking 
 it his duty, or his interest to consider whether the wages 
 which he pays be, or be not sufficient to keep his men 
 in working condition. The men, thus treated, do as little 
 as they can ; always believing that they do too much, for 
 the wages which they get. But the last, and the worst 
 effect of the system falls upon the land, the exhaustion 
 and bad culture of which make a beggarly return, 
 which pauperizes all who depend upon it, and becomes 
 a scandal to the nation. 
 
 Many exceptions must be made to this general de¬ 
 scription ; but the exceptions may properly be regarded 
 as forming a distinct class, belonging to that section of 
 the Irish people who prosper, in spite of the obstacles 
 created by those to whom this description applies. The 
 landlords, and the superior class of tenants, who have 
 capital and intelligence, deal with each other upon equal 
 
 f 2 
 
68 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 terms, each being qualified to guard his own interest, 
 and legislative interference between these is neither ne- 
 cessary, nor useful. 
 
 The law which I am suggesting will not apply where 
 the tenant has a term of seven years, or more. It will 
 not apply where the condition of the farm is such, that 
 the tenant, by a profitable expenditure of capital and 
 labour, cannot add substantially to its permanent mar¬ 
 ketable value. It will not authorize the disturbance of 
 any occupying tenants from the farms by which they 
 live, on the pretext of spending capital in reclamation of 
 land ; for the right of speculative improvers is to be re¬ 
 stricted to waste lands, which are not occupied, in any 
 proper sense. 
 
 The attention of all parties who have any estate or 
 interest in land is now fixed with anxious fears, or san¬ 
 guine hopes, upon the forthcoming scheme, by which all 
 are to be satisfied, if the loose assertion of a partisan 
 statesman can be trusted. Whatever shall be that scheme, 
 certain it is, that, even before it can be law, all interested 
 parties will know its provisions in detail. 
 
 Let us suppose that nothing worse against the land¬ 
 lords, and nothing better for the tenants, shall be done, 
 than to make the enactment here suggested, the fair in¬ 
 quiry arises, what probable effects will such a law pro¬ 
 duce ? And, first, its effect upon the landlords ? De¬ 
 sirous to evade the operation of it, as some landlords 
 probably will be, these will negotiate with yearly tenants 
 as to the terms on which they will grant leases for terms 
 longer than that which would entitle the tenant to apply 
 for a license to improve. The tenants now, by the new 
 law, having this liberty, and conscious of the alternative 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 69 
 
 thus given to them, will not be forced, by the fear of 
 eviction, into a contract upon ruinous terms, at a rack- 
 rent which the tenant cannot pay, and live. It will 
 thus, and for the first time, in Ireland, place the humble 
 class of yearly tenants upon equal footing, in treating 
 with their landlords for leases of the land which they 
 occupy. I cannot believe that this will, to any just man, 
 appear a bad effect; and to most men, I think, it will 
 appear one most salutary and desirable. 
 
 Other landlords, anticipating compulsory improve¬ 
 ment by tenants, or in the case of waste lands, by stran¬ 
 gers, may proceed to purchase out small tenants, and 
 earnestly set about reclaiming their own lands, to bring 
 themselves within the clause by which such improving 
 owners are to be protected from interruption. No one 
 can say that this is not, for all mankind, a beneficial 
 effect. Some owners will not be able to do this; and 
 others will fail, in many instances, to settle the terms of 
 leases to their yearly tenants. This is most likely to 
 happen where the tenant is conscious of ability to ac¬ 
 quire a parliamentary term by improving his farm. It 
 cannot be doubted, that, at least, some of these tenants 
 will take the simple and easy step of sending in an un¬ 
 dertaking to improve their farms. In doing this, they 
 must resolve on some energetic effort to redeem the un¬ 
 dertaking, and obtain the Inspector’s certificate, by 
 which to secure a fixed, and indefeisible term in the 
 land. The resolution to serve this notice is itself a step 
 on the right road to moral improvement, to self-reliance, 
 to energetic effort, and to the attainment of the greatest 
 of all earthly blessings— 
 
 u The glorious privilege of being independent.” 
 
 If this be its probable effect upon even a few of the 
 
70 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 tenants, it will be a bold thing to deny that the experi¬ 
 ment is not worth a trial, if only to set a few examples, 
 and begin this work of industrial improvement. 
 
 When the written undertaking is sent in, and the 
 public Inspector has reported favourably upon it, and 
 recorded the present condition of the farm, the tenant 
 should be immediately protected from a notice to quit, 
 provided, within a specified time, he shall have substan¬ 
 tially commenced, and so long as he shall, bond jicle , pro¬ 
 secute the work specified in liis undertaking, to the satis¬ 
 faction of the public Inspector ; who, upon a written 
 notice of default, should be bound to revisit the farm, 
 and empowered, by a certificate of default, to withdraw 
 the protection, and thus restore landlord and tenant to 
 their original positions. It may safely be assumed, that 
 the landlord will be vigilant to see that the tenant shall 
 act up to his undertaking; and the only thing essential 
 to the beneficial working of the system will be an up¬ 
 right Board, and honest, skilful, and active Inspectors. 
 There will be no difficulty in getting these, if the scheme 
 be not made subservient to patronage, and if party job¬ 
 bing can be even moderately avoided. 
 
 The provisions of this Act may be clearly, and ade¬ 
 quately expressed in a moderate number of concise 
 clauses, which even a peasant farmer may, without diffi¬ 
 culty, understand. I cannot believe that any man of 
 ordinary capacity and skill can have much difficulty in 
 framing such an Act, and I cannot conceive any less 
 complicated remedy for the inveterate vices of the pre¬ 
 sent relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland. 
 
 Hostile, as I am to special legislation for Ireland, I 
 can see no just reason for confining the operation of this 
 remedial Act to this country. If the obstacle to national 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 71 
 
 improvement of which Walter Bligh complained, more 
 than two hundred years ago, still exists, even partially, 
 in England, or in Scotland, why should not the remedy 
 be made co-extensive with the mischief? If the mis¬ 
 chief do not anywhere exist in Great Britain, the very 
 nature of the remedy makes it impossible to apply it, and 
 the Act will require no express provision to confine its 
 operation to the locality in which alone the mischief 
 exists. As a general Act, affecting both countries, all its 
 provisions will be carefully and impartially considered, 
 not by a party, but by all the representatives of those 
 affected by it in both countries. There will be then no 
 ground for thinking—no pretext for asserting, that it is 
 a measure dictated by an Irish faction, leagued and 
 banded with English confederates, to create, or to swell 
 a majority, and force upon Ireland, for party purposes, 
 measures tyrannical and galling to that portion of the 
 people whose religion is maligned as a heresy, and whose 
 prosperity is envied. Such an imperial enactment could 
 never be regarded as the work of a tyrannical majority 
 of one house, adopted by a reluctant and timid majority 
 of the other. 
 
 The principle on which my solution of the land dif¬ 
 ficulty rests is, that property in land is charged with a 
 duty to the State—that this duty follows the land .and 
 is inseparable from it—that reasonable attention to the 
 cultivation of the soil is involved in this duty; and that 
 extensive neglect of cultivation produces disorder which 
 justifies legislative interference, and demands a remedy 
 coextensive with the mischief, and corrective of the de¬ 
 fault from which that mischief arises. 
 
 « 
 
 When, in 1832, the Duke of Newcastle asserted a 
 right to do what he pleased with his own, and applied 
 
72 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 this truism to his property in land, he roused public at¬ 
 tention to the logical consequences flowing from the 
 right which he claimed. When, in 1838, Mr. Drummond 
 asserted, that property has its duties, as well as its rights, 
 he practically contradicted the axiom relied on by the 
 Duke. Landlords were alarmed at the novelty of Mr. 
 Drummond’s aphorism; but reasonable minds recog¬ 
 nized the force and the truth of it. The exigencies of a 
 growing population—the poverty and discontent pro¬ 
 duced by contempt of this great moral and social prin¬ 
 ciple, have provoked discussion, and truth and justice 
 must eventually prevail. 
 
 The discontent, and the agrarian crimes of the Irish 
 peasantry, have brought this social principle to a plain issue 
 between the Irish landlords and their tenants; and the 
 question now is, how that issue is to be tried—whether 
 by a packed jury of banded partisans—or by the grand 
 Inquest of the British Nation. Let the y landlords look 
 to this in time, for their trial is approaching, and cannot 
 now be evaded. If they meet (and if they be wise they 
 will meet), let it not be for the useless purpose of mak¬ 
 ing noisy protests against change; for change there will 
 be, for good, or for evil, in utter contempt of their pro¬ 
 tests, however violent. If they meet, let them rationally 
 consider, and calmly, but firmly discuss the all-impor¬ 
 tant question what the inevitable change should be. Let 
 them, with a prudent fear that the ministerial measure 
 may be revolutionary, or may be communistic, be pre¬ 
 pared with some rational counter scheme of useful re¬ 
 form. It is not in any spirit of impertinent conceit, or 
 insolent presumption, that I have taken this liberty of 
 explaining the best alternative that I have been able to 
 design. I have no prejudice in favour of it, and would 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 73 
 
 gladly hail any better remedy, no matter by whom de¬ 
 vised. It is not for the vain purpose of gaining noto¬ 
 riety, that I have taxed the decline of life with the thank¬ 
 less, and, to national pride, the humiliating labour of 
 writing upon the social miseries of Ireland. It is im¬ 
 possible, with any colour of truth, to charge me with a 
 selfish, or a personal motive in one iota of what I have 
 written; and no such charge has been made. The policy, 
 
 by which the progress of this country has been for seven 
 
 • * 
 
 hundred years impeded, has been, as I most sincerely 
 believe, revived, in a shape more destructive of progress 
 and peace than it ever assumed before. However feeble 
 my ability, and humble my place, I was coerced by a 
 sense of duty to raise my voice against that policy. I 
 know nothing of its authors, except as public men—I 
 never saw one of them in my life. Nothing that I have 
 written can be truly ascribed to any insolent desire to 
 give offence. Public measures (and I have meddled 
 with no other), are, as yet, a legitimate subject of free 
 discussion. Whatever strength there may be in any ex¬ 
 pression which I have used, no word of mine has pro¬ 
 ceeded from a willingness to give personal annoyance to 
 any man, or party of men. 
 
 In the twelfth century, England invaded Ireland with 
 a force wholly inadequate to the conquest of an united 
 people, and was forced to adopt the diabolical policy of 
 fomenting the existing hostility of Irish factions against 
 each other, in order, by the corrupt and traitorous as¬ 
 sistance of some, to gain and exercise a tyrannical power 
 of crushing them all. It is now, for the first time, pre¬ 
 tended, that England has repented of this abominable 
 treatment of the Irish people, and a generous policy is 
 
74 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 on the lips of the present Ministry : their sincerity is 
 questioned ! 
 
 Divided, as England herself is, between rival parties, 
 one of these parties claims the credit of inventing a policy 
 for uniting the Irish factions in fraternal amity, and 
 cordial affection towards each other—promising to 
 govern, for the future, upon the principle of equal justice 
 to all. The first step of the party, thus professing to 
 unite the discordant factions, is to form a league with 
 that which appears to be the most powerful of them, 
 and to satiate the vengeance of these allies by degrading 
 the Church, spoliating the clergy, and confiscating the 
 ecclesiastical property of that party with which former 
 English Governments had allied themselves for the pur¬ 
 pose, as now asserted, of dividing Ireland, in order to 
 rule it wickedly, and corruptly. 
 
 That the retaliation of one party upon another should 
 be called an atonement for, and not a repetition of the 
 crimes of England against Ireland, is sufficiently absurd ; 
 but that any one should have the face to assert, that it 
 is intended to unite, in brotherly love, the parties thus 
 alternately persecuted and played off against each other, 
 is a miracle of unblushing effrontery, for which no 
 parallel can be found. 
 
 Accounting for this policy, and professing to excuse 
 it, the organ of this new confederation has proclaimed, 
 that the Roman Catholic religion is the religion of Ire¬ 
 land, and that the Protestant religion is not—that the 
 Roman Catholic clergy have, and that the Protestant 
 clergy have not, a governing influence over the Irish 
 people. To sustain this pretext, the Roman Catholics of 
 Ireland are assumed to be the Irish people. It is further 
 assumed, that to have acquired great influence over the 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 75 
 
 laity is an exalted merit in one hierarchy, and that to have 
 failed in so doing is a just ground of contempt for the 
 other. That this clerical influence, exercised, as it has 
 been by the Roman Catholic priests at elections, is the 
 bond of union between the Government and this Irish 
 party, is self-evident, and the fact is neither concealed nor 
 denied. 
 
 To estimate the merits of a clergy by their influence 
 over the people, without regarding how that influence 
 has been acquired—with what moral effects it has been 
 exercised, or the principle upon which it rests, is a mon¬ 
 strosity so glaring, that no sane man could utter it, 
 without assuming, that those to whom it was addressed 
 were so stultified, or so blinded by party interests, as to 
 accept any absurdity offered in aid of their cause. If 
 clergy are justly estimated by the magnitude of their 
 influence over their votaries, then the Druids were the 
 most meritorious and estimable hierarchy that ever 
 governed any section of the human family. Their in¬ 
 fluence reconciled parents to the spectacle of their 
 children—reconciled brothers and sisters to the spectacle 
 of their kindred flesh and blood, caged in the monster 
 wicker Idol, and burnt alive as victims to the Moloch 
 which the influence of their clergy had taught them to 
 fear, and to worship with this hellish human sacrifice.* 
 Rivalling the Druids in merit, measured by the same 
 standard of influence, the Papal hierarchy succeeded the 
 Druids, and even surpassed them, in those past centuries, 
 when, by their teaching, and their influence, kings and 
 
 * See a picture of this infernal Idol, with scores of victims caged in 
 it—men, women, and children, and the minister of priestly influence in 
 the act of setting fire to it, in the presence of weeping relations. Clarke’s 
 grand edition of Caesar, at page 132. 
 
76 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 queens, surrounded by the nobility and gentle -folk of 
 both sexes, assembled upon state occasions, in the pre¬ 
 sence of the approving people, old and young, male and 
 female, ranged in theatric order, according to rank and 
 station, to do a great act of religious faith, and to behold, 
 and to enjoy the spectacle of their fellow-creatures, in 
 scores, and in hundreds, reduced to ashes by the flames 
 to which the influence of the clergy had condemned them.* 
 To elevate, and to reward the successors of the same or¬ 
 ganized clergy, who had acquired, and who so exercised 
 such influence, and to degrade and beggar the reformed 
 clergy, who have not, and who never sought to have the 
 power or the influence to work such a miracle of iniquity, 
 is too obviously a retrograde policy, tending to restore all 
 that now shocks us in the past history of Europe. 
 
 The Ministry who have adopted the policy of levelling 
 Protestants to an equality with Roman Catholics in Ire¬ 
 land—of abolishing the State Church—of disendowing 
 the reformed clergy, who have no other means of sup¬ 
 port, except the legal endowment thus taken from them 
 —and who profess that they, in doing this, are but re¬ 
 conciling Christian brothers, and promoting amity and 
 lasting peace, are powerfully recalling our attention to 
 the fraternizing process of the French philosophers in 
 the last century, which, professing to establish egalite et 
 fraternite, produced all the horrors of the revolution, 
 and of the long war which followed it. 
 
 The next step which the Banded Ministry are 
 pledged to take towards equality and fraternity in Ire 
 land is to appease the discontent, and to satisfy the ex- 
 
 * See, and, if you have strong nerves , READ the account of these 
 entertainments in Rule’s “History of the Inquisition,” chapters 16 and 
 17, pages 151 to 176. 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 77 
 
 pectations which they have excited in the tenantry. 
 Whether this is to be done by elevating the tenants, or 
 beating down the landlords, is not yet disclosed ; and 
 probably has not yet been determined. Let the Minis¬ 
 terial scheme be once announced, and the principle of it, 
 however revolutionary, or however Communistic, must 
 be accepted, or the Ministry must resign. The contest 
 will then be for office, and not for justice, or for right. 
 The country will again be bewildered by speeches, but 
 right and justice will be overwhelmed by votes. The 
 interval between the Sessions is, therefore, valuable, and 
 no moment of it should be lost. The torrent is coming : 
 to stop it is impossible ; to prepare a channel by which 
 to catch it, and to direct its course, before it strikes 
 upon their property, is the true policy of the landlords, 
 and all they can do to mitigate the damage, if damage 
 there must be. But if my aspirations be not visionary— 
 if the measure which I have suggested can be moulded 
 into something practically useful, may we not hope, that 
 this turbid flood may be thus made to pass away harm¬ 
 less, and that, in subsiding, it may leave behind it a fer¬ 
 tilizing deposit upon the surface of this impoverished 
 country ? This measure, whatever may be its defects, 
 as here described, is the result of anxious reflection, and 
 of a sincere desire to discover the best practicable remedy 
 for what I believe to be the agrarian disorder by which 
 Ireland is afflicted. It will not produce any violent, or 
 sudden change ; and will, in this respect, disappoint the 
 expectations of those whose sufferings, and whose dis¬ 
 content have been made subservient to party purposes, 
 and prolific of delusive hopes. Its operation, at first, 
 will be partial, and its progress slow. No fruit can be 
 gathered from it, until it gets time to grow, and ripen. 
 
78 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 However, it appears to me certain, that some tenants 
 will promptly avail themselves of the protection offered 
 by it, and will commence the work of improvement ; 
 and I feel confident the example will be followed, and, 
 by contagion, will propagate a disposition to exertion, 
 and industry never before evoked in the country. 
 
 My official experience encourages me to hope, that 
 a law such as I contemplate, if judiciously framed, and 
 honestly administered, will not disappoint any reason¬ 
 able expectation from it. Applications are constantly 
 made to me on behalf of tenants, sometimes of the poorest 
 class, to allow the Receiver to supply slates and timber 
 for roofing a new house, or a barn, or a cowhouse, upon 
 an undertaking of the tenant to build the walls and com¬ 
 plete the structure at the tenant’s own expense, amount- 
 in 2 : to three or four times the cost of the slates and tim- 
 ber. When the Court of Chancery takes into its charge 
 an estate in land, belonging to a minor, or a lunatic, or 
 a debtor, it undertakes the duty of reasonably attending 
 to the due management of the property, as a sensible 
 owner should manage it. This duty devolves on me, 
 and I assume, that it gives me jurisdiction to deal justly 
 with the tenants, as a judicious, and an attentive land¬ 
 lord ought to deal. On this principle, I uniformly com¬ 
 ply with such applications for assistance to build; and 
 also for assistance to drain, or otherwise to improve the 
 farm of the tenant who desires to be helped. Having 
 thus to deal with about four hundred estates, occupied 
 by nearly 20,000 tenants, it cannot be difficult to under¬ 
 stand that proper attention to claims of this kind entails 
 no small amount of labour. When I state that, in every 
 instance, I not only make the order, guarded with pro¬ 
 per stipulations, but carefully consider, and, to the best 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 79 
 
 of my ability, correct and improve the tenant’s plan, I 
 assert that which is in the personal knowledge of about 
 four hundred Receivers, many of them men of station, 
 and sterling worth. I mention this, not for a vain boast, 
 but as a proof, that tenants, even on the precarious te¬ 
 nure given by the Court, are willing to spend money and 
 labour in the improvement of their houses, and their 
 land, if moderately assisted, and rationally encouraged. 
 I mention it as a proof also that a public functionary 
 such as the Inspector of Works, before mentioned, 
 may render the country most valuable service, not only 
 in scrutinizing plans of improvement proposed by te¬ 
 nants, but in correcting them, in adding to them, or 
 prudently retrenching them. Such an officer will visit 
 the land, and inspect the works, a thing beyond my 
 power to do. 
 
 It will not be necessary, at the outset, to appoint 
 many of these Inspectors ; and the system may be 
 effectually started, at a trivial expense* If applications 
 for license to improve become numerous, the number of 
 Inspectors can be proportionally increased. A single 
 officer, with ordinary exertion, may efficiently attend to 
 the applications of some hundreds of tenants, in any one 
 county, or extensive district. The inspection of a farm 
 is but a small day’s work for a, man of ordinary diligence 
 and skill, and an hour will suffice for framing his report 
 and his certificate. Nothing better could happen for this 
 country than an extensive demand upon the attention of 
 such a functionary. Nothing more salutary than the 
 necessity for multiplying the number of them. Such a 
 demand, and such a necessity, could arise only from a 
 multiplicity of claims by the tenants for certificates to 
 protect them in their efforts to increase the agricultural 
 
80 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 value of their farms. If the Government desire to be 
 liberal, it is easy to authorize loans not exceeding a 
 certain per centage upon the value of the improvement 
 already effected, and for which that improvement will 
 enable the tenant to give good security for the redeeming 
 interest terminable in a certain number of years. If the 
 landlord sees his true interest, he will think it a good in¬ 
 vestment, to help his improving tenant with a loan, and 
 to increase the rent by a just and moderate interest. By 
 doing so, he will take the surest road to the respect and 
 confidence of his tenant, and gain a recognized right to 
 guide the course of his operations for the mutual benefit 
 of both. The priest may join, with power and effect, in 
 this good work of national regeneration, and use his in¬ 
 fluence for a truly patriotic purpose. That useful labour, 
 sedulously applied, and honest thrift in gathering and 
 husbanding the fruits of it, may be regarded as a species 
 of worship, acceptable to the Giver of all good things, is 
 proved by the reward which He uniformly annexes, as a 
 natural consequence, to this obedience of His first com¬ 
 mand. That sloth is sinful, follows from the penalty 
 annexed to it. To enforce this precept, found not only 
 in the Bible, but in the great book of nature, by the 
 weight of respected authority, would surely not be out¬ 
 side the province of a pious pastor. 
 
 If one can contemplate such an industrial agitation 
 as the thirst for fixity of tenure—for tenant right—and 
 for secure enjoyment of tenants’ improvements, may 
 create, when thus encouraged, controlled, and guided by 
 a well-digested, and well administered law—if one can 
 imagine the substitution of such an agitation for that 
 which is provoked by the wickedness of pseudo-patriots, 
 and by electioneering priests—if one can hope that the 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 81 
 
 discontent, so rashly lauded by aspirants to power and 
 office, may be converted into a strenuous effort of the 
 people to remove the cause, it will be easy to foresee and 
 understand the happy results which must flow from such 
 a change. 
 
 Very little of practical utility has ever been suggest¬ 
 ed—nothing of it has ever been pursued, to instruct, to 
 encourage, to assist, to protect, and to reward the poor 
 classes of the Irish tenantry ; or to inspire them with 
 some taste and desire for the blessings attendant upon 
 diligent rural labour, and self-relying thrift. These poor 
 people are very imperfectly known ; and their character 
 and ability are greatly misapprehended by those who 
 make laws for them, and administer these laws. The 
 judge who tumbles for applause upon the bench, and 
 fancies that the crowd of Irish peasants who gaze at 
 him are admiring his eloquent flourishes, and his insipid 
 platitudes, wholly mistakes the effect which he is pro¬ 
 ducing ; and if he could only hear and understand the 
 Irish commentaries often made upon his rhetorical Eng. 
 lish, he would learn that plainspoken justice is what 
 these people respect; and respect it, even when suffering 
 the punishment which that justice inflicts. 
 
 Nothing is more curious in the character of these 
 people than the estimate which they form of their priests. 
 They draw a sharp line between the sacerdotal power and 
 functions of the priest, and the moral conduct of the man. 
 While they value his blessing, and dread his curse, with 
 superstitious awe, they deride his folly, and condemn 
 his vices ; even the degradation which strips the priest 
 of his vestments, leaves him still in possession of sacer¬ 
 dotal influence over the devoted people. There is a dog- 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, 
 
 gerel in the Irish language (I know not how old), which 
 in my childhood, I heard repeated a thousand times, 
 and which, while Irish w r as commonly spoken, was in the 
 mouth of every peasant in the country. As many of their 
 sarcastic proverbs are, it is founded on a legend, which 
 is this :—A man was asked to name twelve persons such 
 as could not be found in the world—his answer (trans¬ 
 lated) was this :— 
 
 “ Four priests who are not selfish : 
 
 Four Frenchmen who are not yellow : 
 
 Four shoemakers who are not liars : 
 
 There are twelve who are not in the Land !!!” 
 
 You, the rulers of this astute people, have been practis¬ 
 ing, and cruelly practising upon them, for seven hundred 
 
 years, without knowing them, or caring to know. When 
 they have asked for bread, you have given them a stone— 
 
 when they have asked a fish, for a fish, you have given 
 them a serpent; when they have asked an egg, you have 
 offered them a scorpion. What is your title to their 
 gratitude or respect ? What is the first fruit of your 
 pretended penitence for your ancient crimes, and your 
 continued misrule ? When the infant pines at the breast, 
 wanting the nourishment which a starving mother cannot 
 give, the parson’s wife, and the parson’s daughters have 
 come to their relief; and it is to these the poor sufferers 
 fly for assistance in the hour of need ; and not to the 
 solitary recluse whom, in their own expressive language, 
 they have proverbially described as the selfish priest! !! 
 Under the misrule which produces their misery and des¬ 
 titution, they cry aloud for redress ; but the scales of 
 ignorance are on their eyes; what will effectually re¬ 
 dress them they cannot see ; and they are equally blind 
 to the difference between Gods and men. The men 
 
AND AN EFFORT TO SOLVE IT. 
 
 83 
 
 whom they mistake for Gods have spoliated the parson 
 and hunted him and his charitable family away, and 
 such is the answer which you give to their cry for jus¬ 
 tice ! ! There is no justice in Heaven or wisdom upon 
 Earth if this do not recoil upon you. 
 
 The newly invented church policy for Ireland .has 
 evoked a great majority in the House of Commons to 
 support the inventors of it. This dominant majority has 
 produced an ominous construction of the constitutional 
 law of England. That law, in its simple grandeur declares, 
 that there shall be three perfectly distinct, and indepen¬ 
 dent estates, each incapable of doing any wrong—which 
 means that each is irresponsible for its acts, except to 
 itself, under a conscious sense of right and justice. As 
 a corollary to this great rule, the law strictly forbids each 
 of these three estates from calling into question, or even 
 
 » 
 
 noticing the deliberations of the others, the meaning 
 and object of which is, to secure to them, severally, per¬ 
 fect freedom of thought and action. This constitutional 
 law declares that the representatives of the people, the 
 moment they are elected, shall thenceforth be unfettered 
 members of a deliberative assembly, entrusted with a 
 well defined share in the great duty of legislating for the 
 nation, discharged from every pledge to their particular 
 constituents. Every such pledge is a violation of the 
 law, and by the constitution, held to be null and void. 
 This assembly is subject to the control of the two equally 
 independent, and co-ordinate estates, which are them¬ 
 selves, in like manner, controlled. No resolution of this 
 assembly can have any legal force, until, on its own 
 merits, it is separately considered and approved by the 
 Lords, and by the Crown. These are assumed to be ig¬ 
 norant whether it was passed by a large or a small ma- 
 
84 
 
 THE LAND DIFFICULTY, ETC. 
 
 jority—whether with exulting cheers of one party, under 
 the groans and hisses of another, or whether in silent 
 unanimity by all. Many believe that it would be well 
 for the best interests of the country, if this theoretical 
 ignorance were more of practical reality than it is. A 
 precedent has now been made of clamorous, and indecent 
 threats by the organs of one party ; of timid hesitation, 
 and quailing concession to this open violation of consti¬ 
 tutional law ; which is treated, and disregarded as an 
 antiquated theory. Such is the precedent made by the 
 boasted policy of a dominant party ! ! ! 
 
 A general, at the point of battle, once addressed a short 
 exhortation to his troops, and pointing to the enemy 
 said, u behold those men, arrayed against you—kill 
 them or they will kill you.” 
 
 To the Sovereign who would sit, with intrepid secu¬ 
 rity, upon the ancient throne of England—to the Peers, 
 whose pride it is to surround, and whose duty it is to 
 protect that throne from the most distant approach of 
 danger—to all who understand, who value, and who 
 would continue to enjoy the great benefits of the tripar¬ 
 
 tite legislature of this realm, in its constitutional inte¬ 
 
 grity, descending as those benefits do upon every class, 
 to every grade, and upon every subject, I would fain 
 address the short exhortation—crush this revolutionarv 
 
 w 
 
 party which so domineers, and this policy by which le¬ 
 gislative freedom is destroyed, or this party, and this 
 policy will crush you. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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