Against Home Rule (1912) Part 15

CONSTRUCTIVE

XIII

UNIONIST POLICY IN RELATION TO RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN IRELAND

BY THE RIGHT HON. GERALD BALFOUR

"_For the last two and twenty years, at first a few and now a goodly company of rural reformers with whom I have been a.s.sociated, and on whose behalf I write, have been steadily working out a complete scheme of rural development, their formula being better farming, better business, better living."_--SIR H. PLUNKETT, letter to the _Times_, December, 1911.

"_Ireland would prefer rags and poverty rather than surrender her national spirit."_--MR. JOHN REDMOND, speech at Buffalo, September 27, 1910.

It should never be forgotten that the maintenance of the legislative Union between Ireland and Great Britain is defended by Unionists no less in the interests of Ireland than in that of the United Kingdom and of the Empire. That the ills from which Ireland has admittedly suffered in the past, and for which she still suffers, though in diminished measure, in the present, are economic and social rather than political, is a fundamental tenet of Unionism. Unionists also believe that economic and social conditions in Ireland can be more effectively dealt with under the existing political const.i.tution than under any form of Home Rule.

Ireland is a poor country, and needs the financial resources which only the Imperial Parliament can provide. She is, moreover, a country divided into hostile camps marked by strong racial and religious differences. As Sir George Trevelyan long ago pointed out, there is not one Ireland, there are two Irelands; and only so far as Ireland continues an integral part of a larger whole can the antagonism between the two elements be prevented from forming a dangerous obstacle to all real progress.

Nationalist politicians, of course, diagnose the situation very differently. Apply suitable remedial measures, say the Unionists, to the social and economic conditions of the country, and it is not unreasonable to hope that political discontent--or, in other words, the demand for Home Rule--will gradually die away of itself. Give us Home Rule, say the Nationalists, and all other things will be added to us.

The main object of the present paper is to give a bird's eye view of Unionist policy in relation to rural development in Ireland during the eventful years 1885-1905. It does not pretend to deal with the larger issue raised between Unionism and Nationalism; but incidentally, it will be found to throw some interesting side lights upon it.

The Irish Question in its most essential aspect is a Farmers' Question.

The difficulties which it presents have their deepest roots in an unsatisfactory system of land tenure, excessive sub-division of holdings, and antiquated methods of agricultural economy.

Mr. Gladstone endeavoured to deal with the system of land tenure in the two important Acts of 1870 and 1881; but the system of dual owners.h.i.+p which those Acts set up introduced, perhaps, as many evils as they removed. It became more and more evident that the only effectual remedy lay in the complete transference of the owners.h.i.+p of the land from the landlord to the occupying tenant. The successful application of this remedy with anything like fairness to both sides absolutely demanded the use of State credit on a large scale. The plan actually adopted in a succession of Land Acts pa.s.sed by Unionist Governments, beginning with the Ashbourne Act of 1885, and ending with the Wyndham Act of 1903, is broadly speaking as follows:--The State purchases the interest of the landlord outright and vests the owners.h.i.+p in the occupying tenant subject to a fixed payment for a definite term of years. These annual payments are not in the nature of rent: they represent a low rate of interest on the purchase money, plus such contribution to a sinking fund as will repay the princ.i.p.al in the term of years for which the annual payments are to run. The practical effect of this arrangement is that the occupier becomes the owner of his holding, subject to a terminable annual payment to the State of a sum less in amount than the rent he has had to pay heretofore.

The successful working of the scheme obviously depends on the credit of the State, in other words, its power of borrowing at a low rate of interest. In this respect the Imperial Government has an immense advantage over any possible Home Rule Government: indeed, it is doubtful whether any Home Rule Government could have attempted this great reform without wholesale confiscation of the landlords' property. Here then in Land Purchase and the abolition of dual owners.h.i.+p, we have one of the twin pillars on which, on its constructive side, the Irish policy of the Unionist party rests. But to solve the problem of rural Ireland--which, as I have said, is _the_ Irish problem--more is required than the conversion of the occupying tenant into a peasant proprietor. The sense of owners.h.i.+p may be counted on to do much; but it will not make it possible for a family to live in decent comfort on an insufficient holding; neither will it enable the small farmer to compete with those foreign rivals who have at their command improved methods of production, improved methods of marketing their produce, facilities for obtaining capital adequate to their needs, and all the many advantages which superior education and organised co-operation bring in their train.

Looking back to-day, the wide field that in these directions was open to the beneficent action of the State, and to the equally beneficent action of voluntary a.s.sociations, seems evident and obvious. It was by no means so evident or obvious twenty years ago. At that time the traditional policy of _laisser faire_ had still a powerful hold over men's minds, and to abandon it even in the case of rural Ireland was a veritable new departure in statesmans.h.i.+p. The idea of establis.h.i.+ng a voluntary a.s.sociation to promote agricultural co-operation was even more remote; and, as will be seen in the sequel, it was to the insight and devoted persistence of a single individual that its successful realisation has been ultimately due.

So far as State action was concerned, a beginning was naturally made with the poorest parts of the country. Mr. Arthur Balfour led the way with two important measures. One of these was the construction of light railways in the most backward tracts on the western seaboard. These railways were constructed at the public expense, but worked by existing railway companies, and linked up with existing railway systems. The benefits conferred on those parts of the country through which they pa.s.sed have been great and lasting.

Mr. Balfour's second contribution to Irish rural development was the creation of the Congested Districts Board in 1891. The "congested districts" embraced the most poverty-stricken areas in the western counties, and the business of the Board was to devise and apply, within those districts, schemes for the amelioration of the social and economic condition of the population comprised in them. For this purpose, the Board was invested with very wide powers of a paternal character, and an annual income of upwards of 40,000 was placed at their free disposal, a sum which has been largely increased by subsequent Acts.

The experiment was an absolutely novel one, but no one who is able to compare the improved condition of the congested districts to-day with the state of things that prevailed twenty years ago can doubt that it has been amply justified by results.

Every phase of the life of the Irish peasant along the whole of the western seaboard has been made brighter and more hopeful by the beneficent operations of the Board. Its activities have been manifold, including the purchase and improvement of estates prior to re-sale to the tenants; the re-arrangement and enlargement of holdings; the improvement of stock; the provision of pure seeds and high-cla.s.s manures; practical demonstration of various kinds, all educational in character; drainage; the construction of roads; improvement in the sanitary conditions of the people's dwellings; a.s.sistance to provide proper accommodation for the livestock of the farm, which too frequently were housed with the people themselves; the development of sea fisheries; the encouragement of many kinds of home industries for women and girls; the quarrying of granite; the making of kelp; the promotion of co-operative credit; and many other schemes which had practical regard to the needs of the people, and have contributed in a variety of ways to raise the standard of comfort of the inhabitants of these impoverished areas.

It will be noticed that among the other activities of the Congested Districts Board, I have specially mentioned the work of promoting co-operative credit by means of village banks managed on the Raffeisen system. The actual work of organising these co-operative banking a.s.sociations has not been carried out directly by the Board, but through the agency of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (generally known by the shorter t.i.tle of the I.A.O.S.), to which the Board has for many years past paid a small subsidy--a subsidy which might well have been on a more generous scale, having regard to the immense advantages which co-operation is capable of conferring on the small farmer.

The I.A.O.S. is a voluntary a.s.sociation of a strictly non-political character. "Business, not politics," has been its principle of action; and partly, perhaps, for this very reason it may claim to have contributed more than any other single agency towards the prosperity of rural Ireland. To its work I now turn.

THE I.A.O.S.

The movement which the I.A.O.S. represents was started by Sir Horace Plunkett, and he has remained the most prominent figure in it ever since. Sir Horace Plunkett bears an honoured name wherever the rural problem is seriously studied; but, like other prophets, he has received perhaps less honour in his own country than elsewhere. At all events, in the task to which he has devoted his life, he has had to encounter the tacit, and indeed at times the open opposition, of powerful sections of Nationalist opinion. Happily he belongs to the stamp of men whom no obstacles can discourage, and who find in the work itself their sufficient reward.

Sir Horace Plunkett's leading idea was a simple one, and has become to-day almost a commonplace. He compared the backward state of agriculture in Ireland with the great advance that had been made in various continental countries, where the natural conditions were not dissimilar to those of Ireland, and asked himself the secret of the difference. That secret he found in the word _organisation_, and he set himself to organise. The establishment of co-operative creameries seemed to afford the most hopeful opening, and it was to this that Sir Horace Plunkett and a few personal friends, in the year 1889, directed their earliest missionary efforts. The difficulties to be overcome were at first very great. "My own diary," writes Sir Horace, "records attendance at fifty meetings before a single society had resulted therefrom. It was weary work for a long time. These gatherings were miserable affairs compared with those which greeted our political speakers."

The experiences[70] of another of the little band of devoted workers, Mr. R.A. Anderson, now Secretary of the I.A.O.S., throw an interesting light upon the nature of some of the obstacles which the new movement had to encounter.

"It was hard and thankless work. There was the apathy of the people, and the active opposition of the Press and the politicians.

It would be hard to say now whether the abuse of the Conservative _Cork Const.i.tution_, or that of the Nationalist _Eagle_ of Skibbereen, was the louder. We were 'killing the calves,' we were 'forcing the young women to emigrate,' we were 'destroying the industry.' Mr. Plunkett was described as a 'monster in human shape,' and was adjured to 'cease his h.e.l.lish work.' I was described as his 'man Friday,' and as 'Roughrider Anderson.' Once when I thought I had planted a creamery within the town of Rathkeale, my co-operative apple-cart was upset by a local solicitor, who, having elicited the fact that our movement recognised neither political nor religious differences--that the Unionist-Protestant cow was as dear to us as her Nationalist-Catholic sister--gravely informed me that our programme would not suit Rathkeale. 'Rathkeale,' said he pompously, 'is a Nationalist town--Nationalist to the backbone--and every pound of b.u.t.ter made in this creamery must be made on Nationalist principles, or it shan't be made at all.' This sentiment was applauded loudly, and the proceedings terminated."

Eventually, however, the zeal of the preachers, coupled with the economic soundness of the doctrine, prevailed over all difficulties. By 1894 the movement had outgrown the individual activities of the founders, and the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society was established in Dublin in order to promote and direct its further progress. That progress has been rapid and continuous, and to-day the co-operative societies connected with the I.A.O.S. number nearly 1000, with an annual turnover of upwards of 2-1/2 millions. They extend over the length and breadth of the land, and include creameries, agricultural societies (whose main business is the purchase of seeds and manure for distribution to the members), credit societies (village banks), poultry keepers' societies (for the marketing of eggs), flax societies, industries societies, as well as other societies of a miscellaneous character.

In 1892 the Liberal Party came into power. During their three years'

tenure of office a Home Rule Bill was introduced and pa.s.sed through the House of Commons, but little or nothing was attempted by the Government for the economic regeneration of the country.

The Unionist Party came back with a large majority in 1896, and the attention of the new Irish Government, in which the post of Lord Lieutenant was held by Lord Cadogan and that of Chief Secretary by the present writer, was from the first directed to the condition of the Irish farmer. The session of 1896 was largely devoted to the pa.s.sing of a Bill for amending the Land Acts, and for further facilitating the conversion of occupying tenants into owners of their holdings. Time, however, was also found for a new Light Railways Act, under the provision of which railway communication has been opened up at the expense of the State in the poorest parts of North-West Ireland.

It was in the following year that the first attempt was made to establish an Irish Department of Agriculture. The Bill was not carried beyond a first reading, because it was ultimately decided that a Local Government Act should have precedence of it. But the project was only put aside for a time, and it was always looked upon by me as an integral part of our legislative programme. In framing the Bill of 1897, and also the later Bill of 1899, which pa.s.sed into law, we received the greatest a.s.sistance from the labours of a body known as the Recess Committee, concerning which a few words must now be said.

THE RECESS COMMITTEE.

To be the founder of agricultural co-operation in Ireland was Sir Horace Plunkett's first great achievement; the bringing together of the Recess Committee was his second. He conceived the idea of inviting a number of the most prominent men in Ireland, irrespective of religious or political differences, to join in an inquiry into the means by which the Government could best promote the development of the agricultural and industrial resources of Ireland. This idea he propounded in an open letter published in August, 1895. The proposal was a bold one--how bold no one unacquainted with Ireland will easily realise. Amongst Nationalist politicians the majority fought shy of it. Mr. Justin McCarthy, the leader of the party, could only see in Sir Horace's letter "the expression of a belief that if your policy could be successfully carried out, the Irish people would cease to desire Home Rule." "I do not feel," he added, "that I could possibly take part in any organisation which had for its object the seeking of a subst.i.tute for that which I believe to be Ireland's greatest need--Home Rule."

Fortunately, then as now, the Irish party was divided into two camps, and Mr. Redmond, at the head of a small minority of "Independents," was at liberty to take a different line. "I am unwilling," he wrote, "to take the responsibility of declining to aid in any effort to promote useful legislation in Ireland."

Ultimately, Sir Horace Plunkett's strong personality, his manifest singleness of purpose, and the intrinsic merits of his proposal carried the day. A committee, truly representative of all that was best in Irish life, was brought together, and commissioners were despatched to the Continent to report upon those systems of State aid linked with voluntary organisation which appeared to have revolutionised agriculture in countries not otherwise more favoured than Ireland itself. A large ma.s.s of most valuable information was collected. In less than a year the committee reported. The substance of the recommendation was

"That a Department of Government should be specially created, with a minister directly responsible to Parliament at its head. The Central Body was to be a.s.sisted by a Consultative Council representative of the interests concerned. The Department was to be adequately endowed from the Imperial Treasury, and was to administer State aid to agriculture and industries in Ireland upon principles which were fully described."[71]

With the general policy of these recommendations the Irish Government were in hearty sympathy, and the Bill of 1897, already referred to, was a first attempt to give effect to it. But in the absence of popularly elected local authorities an important part of the machinery for carrying out the proposals was wanting.

IRISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT.

A reform of local government in Ireland had long been given a place in the Unionist programme, but the magnitude of the undertaking and the pressure of other business had hitherto stood in its way. It was now decided to take up this task in earnest, on the understanding that other measures relating to Ireland should be postponed in the meantime. The Irish Local Government Bill was accordingly introduced and pa.s.sed in the following session (1898).

Of this Act, which involved not merely the creation of new popular Authorities, but also an entire re-arrangement of local taxation, and some important changes in the system of poor relief, I will only say here that it must be counted as another of the great remedial measures which Ireland owes to the Unionist Party, and which it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to carry out in a satisfactory manner without a.s.sistance on a generous scale from the ample resources of the Imperial Exchequer.

IRISH DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION.

The way was now open for the measure to which I had looked forward from the first moment of my going to Ireland, and which was to const.i.tute the final abandonment of the old _laissez faire_ policy in connection with Irish agriculture and industries. Great care and labour were devoted to the framing of the new Bill, and I was in constant touch throughout with members of the Recess Committee. It contained clauses dealing with urban as well as rural industries, but these lie outside my present subject, and I shall not refer to them further here. On the side of rural development the Bill embodied a novel experiment in the art of government--novel at all events in British or Irish experience, though something like it had already been tried with conspicuous success in various countries on the Continent. It was the continental example which had inspired the Report of the Recess Committee, and it was the recommendations of the Recess Committee which in their turn suggested the main features of the Bill of 1899.

There was indeed one body in Ireland whose functions corresponded in some degree with those of the Authority it was now proposed to set up.

This body was the Congested Districts Board; and it might be said with some approximation to the truth that the object we had in view was to do for the rest of Ireland, _mutatis mutandis_, what the Congested Districts Board was intended to do for the poverty-stricken districts of the West. But there was this very important difference. The operations of the Congested Districts Board were carried out, and necessarily carried out, on strictly "paternal" lines; the dominant note in the new departure was to be the encouragement of self-help. This difference carried with it an equally important difference in the const.i.tution and methods of the administering Authority.

Out of a total endowment of 166,000 a year, a sum of over 100,000 was placed at the disposal of the Department to be applied to the "purposes of agriculture and other rural industries." These "purposes" are defined in the Act as including--

"the aiding, improving, and developing of agriculture, horticulture, forestry, dairying, the breeding of horses, cattle, and other live stock and poultry, home and cottage industries, the preparation and cultivation of flax, inland fisheries, and any industries immediately connected with and subservient to any of the said matters, and any instruction relating thereto, and the facilitating of the carriage and distribution of produce."