Against Home Rule (1912) Part 17

[Footnote 72: In this connection attention may be called to the remarkable increase of wealth in Ireland in the past twenty years. The deposits in the Joint Stock Banks have increased from 33,700,000 in 1891 to 56,011,000 in 1911, the balances in the Post Office Savings Banks in Ireland from 3,878,000 in 1891 to 12,253,000 in 1911, and the number of accounts from 261,352 in 1891 to 662,589 at the end of 1910.

Irish investments in Government Funds, India Stocks, and Guaranteed Land Stock have increased from 26,609,000 in 1891 to 41,363,000 in 1911.

But more noteworthy still, perhaps, is the increase in Irish trade.

Figures are only available since 1904, but in that period Irish imports have increased from 54,078,399 to 65,044,477--an increase of 10,966,078 in seven years. Irish exports have increased in the same period from 49,712,400 to 65,844,255, or an increase of 16,131,155.

Or, if we take the aggregate trade, there has been an increase from 103,790,799 in 1904 to 130,888,732 in 1910, an increase of 27,097,933. In other words, the aggregate import and export trade in Ireland in the year 1910 amounted to nearly 28 sterling per head of population, while the corresponding figure for Great Britain is just over 20. These figures are, I submit, eloquent testimony that the general policy of the Imperial Parliament in relation to Ireland during recent years has been wisely conceived, and that the successful solution of the "Irish Problem" is to be found in the steady pursuit of methods which have already achieved such striking results.]

[Footnote 73: It appears that Mr. Dillon was under a misapprehension on this point. He thought he had obtained an amendment to the Bill which prevented the I.A.O.S. from getting a subsidy. This, however, was an entire mistake. See App. B. to the Report of the Committee on the Dept.

of Agriculture. Cd. 3573 of 1907.]

[Footnote 74: The _voluntary_ contributions to the I.A.O.S. for the work of organisation amounted to no less than 100,000.]

[Footnote 75: See his evidence before the House of Lords Committee on the Thrift and Credit Bank Bill (Paper 96 of 1910).]

XIV

THE COMPLETION OF LAND PURCHASE

BY THE RIGHT HON. GEORGE WYNDHAM, M.P.

The case for resisting all attempts at impairing the Union between Great Britain and Ireland can be made unimpeachable without reference to the Irish Land Question. It would be our duty to defend the Union as a bulwark of national safety, an instalment of Imperial consolidation, and a protection to the freedom of minorities in Ireland, even if it could be shown that agriculture, the chief industry of Ireland, had little to gain under the Union and nothing to lose under Home Rule. Fortunately, this cannot be alleged except by those who shut their eyes to the results of State-aided Land Purchase in Ireland, and refuse to consider the consequences of tampering with the mainspring of that beneficent operation: I mean the credit of a joint exchequer under one Parliament for both countries. "England's Case against Home Rule" coincides with Ireland's need for retaining the prosperity that has come to her, after long waiting, under, and because of, the Union. It is, therefore, fitting that a place should be found in this book for a brief account of what Irish agriculture may hope from the Union and must fear from Home Rule.

The history of Irish Agriculture until recent years differed from the history of English Agriculture at many points, and always to the marked disadvantage of Ireland. Dynastic and religious controversies which--if we except the suppression of monasteries and the exile of a few Jacobites--left English countrysides untouched, in Ireland carried with them the confiscation of vast territories and the desolating Influence of Penal Laws. Changes in economic theory contributed even more sharply to the decay of Irish enterprise. When England favoured Protection Irish industry was handicapped out of manufactures. When England adopted Free Trade Irish agriculture, on which the hopes of Ireland had perforce been fixed, suffered in a greater degree. The doctrine of _laisser faire_ wrought little but wrong when applied by absentee buyers of bankrupt estates to tracts hardly susceptible of development by capital, amid a peasantry wedded to continuity of tenure, and justified in that tradition by the fact that they and their forbears had executed nearly all the improvements on their holdings. Most of the nation were restricted to agriculture under conditions that spelt failure, and imposed exile as the penalty for failure, since other avenues to competence were closed. The climax of misfortune was reached a generation after the triumph of Free Trade. Ireland, being almost wholly an agricultural country, suffered as a whole, whereas England, an industrial country, suffered only in districts, from the collapse of agricultural prices in 1879. That catastrophe in rural life precipitated Mr. Gladstone's Land Law Act (Ireland), 1881. Being precluded by his political tenets from protecting Irish agriculture against foreign compet.i.tion, or a.s.sisting it with the resources of the State, Mr.

Gladstone aimed at alleviating the distress due to the decadence of a national industry by defining with meticulous nicety the respective shares which the two parties engaged in agriculture--landlord and tenant--were to derive from its dwindling returns. He believed that the proportion of diminis.h.i.+ng profits due to the landlord, because of the inherent capabilities of his property, and to the tenant, because of his own and his predecessors' exertions, could be roughly determined by a few leading cases in the Land Court; and, further, that landlords and tenants throughout Ireland would conform to such guidance as these decisions might afford. In this antic.i.p.ation he ignored the vital function of agriculture in Irish life, and the effect which the growing stringency of agricultural conditions would have on a population that loved the land and rejoiced in litigation. He created dual-owners.h.i.+p throughout Ireland, and this led, as Lord Dufferin and other far-seeing statesmen had foretold, to the land being starved of both capital and industry. Irish agriculture was brought to the brink of ruin. The misery of those involved in that pa.s.s was exploited to engineer an attack on the fabric of social order, and the lawlessness so engendered was adduced as an argument for dissolving the Union under which such tragedies could occur.

The leaders of the Conservative Party, when confronted with this situation, determined that their duty, in accordance with the spirit of the Act of Union, demanded some use of the resources of a joint exchequer for ministration to the peculiar needs of Ireland. They decided that the credit of the State should be employed to effect the abolition of dual-owners.h.i.+p by converting the occupiers of Irish farms into owners of the soil. Let it be granted that this policy had been advocated by John Bright and enshrined in the Land Law Acts of 1870 and 1881. It must be added that these pious intentions remained a "dead letter" until adequate machinery for giving them effect was provided by the Land Purchase Acts, commonly called the Ashbourne Acts, of 1885 and 1889. The method pursued was as follows. Any individual landlord could agree with any individual tenant on the price which he would accept for the extinction of his interest in that tenant's holding. The State facilitated the transaction by advancing that amount to the landlord in _cash_ whenever the holding offered sufficient security, and accepting from the tenant an undertaking to pay an instalment of 4 a year for every 100 advanced over a period of forty-nine years. The instalment comprised 3 for interest, 2_s._ 6_d._ for expenses, and 17_s._ 6_d._ for sinking fund. The loan from the exchequer was secured against individual failures to pay by the realisable value of the holdings.

The salient features in this procedure were that the landlord received cash and that the tenant paid interest at the then existing rate on Consols, viz. 3 per cent. Both these features are important. A payment in cash, or its equivalent, is preferable for such transactions to a payment in stock, with a fluctuating value, because, if the stock appreciates the landlord gets more than he bargained for, and this, by arousing the suspicions of other would-be tenant-purchasers, produces a disinclination on their part to buy. Again, if the stock depreciates, the landlord cannot carry out contemplated redemptions of mortgages on his property, and this produces a disinclination on the part of other landlords to sell. In the second place it is difficult to persuade Irish tenants that the State is a.s.sisting them if they, the poor, are asked to pay higher interest for the State's credit than the State pays for the credit of the rich. The chief defect in this procedure lay in its restriction to separate bargains in respect of single holdings. It made a patchwork, whereas the untoward results of the historic and economic causes on which I have touched demanded the wholesale treatment of convenient areas.

Under these Acts, in the course of six years, more than 27,000 tenants became owners by virtue of advances which amounted to over 10,000,000.

The largest number of applications for purchase in any one year was 6,195 for 2,271,569 in 1887, and the average price for all the holdings bought under these Acts was 396.

When the sums provided by the Ashbourne Acts were exhausted, Mr. Arthur Balfour carried the Act of 1891, subsequently amended by the Act of 1896. Under these Acts the landlord was paid in stock instead of cash.

The tenant still paid an instalment of 4, which was, ultimately, divided into 1 5_s._ for sinking fund and 2 15_s._ for interest. This large sinking fund, 1 5_s._ instead of 17_s._ 6_d._, was retained after interest had been reduced to the rate on Consols, 2-3/4 per cent., chiefly to avoid a discrepancy in the total of annual instalments as between purchasers under the Act of 1891 and purchasers under the Ashbourne Acts. Difficulties were feared if the earlier purchasers were to pay 4 and the later purchasers only 3 15_s._ for each 100 advanced, so the spare five s.h.i.+llings was put in the sinking fund. This speculative difficulty was afterwards discounted in order to deal with one of a more practical character. Under Mr. Gladstone's Land Law Act of 1881, which dealt with rent-fixing, statutory rents were revised every fifteen years, and the second term rents, beginning in 1896, seemed certain to reveal considerable reductions on the rents payable during the first period. It was felt that the security for the earlier advances would be endangered if rents throughout Ireland fell below the level of the purchase-instalments, and that purchase would be r.e.t.a.r.ded if the purchaser did not obtain immediate relief by agreeing to buy. To meet this practical difficulty Mr. Gerald Balfour, in 1896, permitted the purchaser to write off the amount repaid by sinking fund during the first and two successive periods of ten years. These "decadal reductions" were optional. If the purchaser forewent them he paid 4 per 100, and extinguished his debt in 42-1/2 years. If he availed himself of them he paid 3 8_s. 7d._ per 100 after the first ten years, and continued to pay, with two further reductions in prospect, till the debt was extinguished in a period undefined, but estimated at about 72-1/2 years. But this privilege was made retrospective, so that purchasers under the Ashbourne Acts could also reduce their instalments of 4 to 3 11_s. 10d._

The salient features in the procedure of the Acts of 1891 and 1896 were that, (1) the landlord was paid in stock instead of cash. But owing to the rise in the value of gilt-edged securities, Irish Land Stock, with a face value of 100, became at one moment worth as much as 114; (2) the purchaser's interest was at 2-3/4 per cent. _i.e._ the existing rate on Consols; but (3) his instalment, prospectively fined down by decadal reductions, enabled him to offer an acceptable price and yet pay far less to the State, by way of instalment, after purchase than was due to his landlord, by way of rent, before purchase. The operation of purchase was still confined, almost wholly, to single bargains. But in Mr. Arthur Balfour's Act of 1891 a new departure was authorised which, after development in Mr. Gerald Balfour's Act of 1896, has led to important and far-reaching consequences. The Congested Districts Board was established to deal with scheduled areas in the West of Ireland that comprised a large number of holdings at once too limited in area, and too poor in soil, for any one of them to support a family by farming or to afford security to the State, under existing facilities for purchase, in the event of the occupier wis.h.i.+ng to become the owner. A select committee of the House of Commons, so long ago as in 1878 (No. 249, pp.

4 and 5), when Disraeli was Prime Minister, had recommended that a properly const.i.tuted body should be empowered to purchase, not single farms, but whole estates, and to re-sell them after amalgamating, enlarging, and re-distributing what are now called "uneconomic"

holdings. Provisions to this end had been inserted in earlier Acts, but, in the absence of administrative machinery and financial resources, they remained abortive. It had for long been evident that the small, impoverished holdings, which had supported a dense population before the famine, stood in need of fundamental remodelling if they were to support even a largely reduced population. The efforts made by wealthy Irish landlords in this direction were arrested by the Land Law Act of 1870 and rendered impossible by the Land Law Act of 1881. With the Purchase Acts of 1891 and 1896 a beginning was made.

Another feature must be noted. In addition to the value of any one holding, as a security against individual failure, a further security was provided against the risk of a combined refusal to repay. The Exchequer was empowered to retain grants due for various purposes in Ireland and to recoup itself in proportion to the defalcation in any county. It should be added that individual failures have been rare to the point of insignificance, and that no combined refusal has been attempted, or advocated, even during periods of agricultural unrest.

Under the Acts of 1891 and 1896 in the course of just over twelve years more than 44,000 tenants became owners by virtue of advances which amounted to over 13,000,000. Here we must note that the success of these Acts coincided with, and depended on, a rise in the price of gilt-edged securities. The number of applications rose from 1503 in the year ending March 31, 1896, to 6911 in the year ending March 31, 1900.

But, with the fall in the price of stock, land purchase showed signs of coming to a standstill. By 1902 it was evident that new legislation was needed, and in the next year the Irish Land Act of 1903 was carried.

The Irish Land Act of 1903 was not, as some suggest, a short cut to the millennium, evolved on the spur of the moment, and translated into fantastic finance. It had two bases, the one practical, the other moral.

In the first place, it was founded on the ripe experience garnered during eighteen years from the operation of preceding purchase Acts. In the second place, it was founded on the historic agreement spontaneously arrived at in 1902 by accredited representatives of Irish landlords and tenants. They resolved that dual owners.h.i.+p ought to be abolished throughout Ireland, and that this primary policy should be accompanied by effective remedies for the uneconomic conditions prevalent in the West, but existing elsewhere, though sporadically, to a limited extent.

This agreement, in itself unprecedented, was rendered the more remarkable by the fact that the signatories a.s.sumed the responsibility of telling the Government how the first object could be achieved. They advised that landlords could not be expected to sell, as a cla.s.s, unless the price paid to them in cash would yield from sound securities 90 per cent. of their income in terms of a rent that had been twice revised under the Land Law Act of 1881; and that tenants could not be expected to buy, as a cla.s.s, unless their instalments due to the Treasury after purchase were from 15 per cent. to 25 per cent. less than such rents so revised. They invited the Government to give effect to that agreement.

The Government accepted and, in the Act of 1903, tendered the costly but, under the circ.u.mstances, not extravagant _imprimatur_ of the Treasury on a political treaty thenceforward to be binding on all three contracting parties: landlords, tenants, and the State. The Nationalist members, as spokesmen for the tenants, and the representatives of the landlords, subscribed to the provisions offered, and the reports of the Estates Commissioners prove that these have been fulfilled so exactly that, in the case of second term rents, landlords and tenants have obtained average incomes and reductions that differ only by a decimal from the mean advocated at the Conference.

The objects of the Irish Land Act were, in conformity with the conclusions of the Conference, to abolish dual owners.h.i.+p rapidly and, at the same time, to deal systematically with "agricultural slums." Its salient features fall under four heads.

A. _State a.s.sistance to voluntary bargaining._ For this purpose it was provided that (1) cash payments should be resumed to the landlords; (2) that the tenants' instalments should be 3 5_s._ for each 100 advanced, divided into 2 15_s._ (2-3/4 per cent.) for interest and 10_s._ for sinking fund. This was not, as the able and well-informed special correspondent of the _Times_ suggests (February 9, 1912) a sudden departure from an instalment of 4. "Decadal reductions" under the Act of 1896 had, as I have said, diminished the instalments of purchasers under the Act of 1891 to 3 8_s. 7d._ after ten years with further prospective diminutions, and subjected the instalments of purchasers under earlier Acts to a similar process. A wholesale expansion of purchase was impossible unless would-be purchasers were offered terms comparable to those accorded to their predecessors. For this reason the tenantry of Ireland were offered repayment at 3 5_s._ per 100 for a period of about 62 years, in lieu, under the Act of 1896, of repayment at 3 8_s. 9d._, with further reductions, for about 72-1/2 years, and their representatives accepted the offer. They would certainly have refused, and rightly, the offer subst.i.tuted by Mr. Birrell in the Act of 1909, viz. an instalment of 3 10_s._ with the same sinking fund--10_s._--and interest increased to 3. The third feature to be noted under this head is, that the terms agreed to by representatives of landlords and tenants at the conference could not be ratified unless the State added some help by way of cash to the a.s.sistance of its credit. It was agreed by all parties that 12,000,000 should be available to bridge the gap, at the rate of 12 per cent. on the amount advanced, with the right to revise that rate after five years, but _only for the purpose of extending the bonus_--as it was called--_to all future transactions_. It was an integral part of a solemn covenant that the bonus should not be diverted to any object other than the abolition of dual owners.h.i.+p and the remedy of "congestion."

B. _The subst.i.tution of speedy purchase for dilatory litigation._ To all members of the Conference of 1902 and of the House of Commons in 1903, with, I believe, the exception of Mr. Dillon, who was away in America while the Conference sat, it was evident that, if dual owners.h.i.+p was to be abolished, our choice was confined to two courses. We could, on the one hand, pursue, under the guise of purchase, the metaphysical and costly distinctions between landlord-right and tenant-right, which Mr.

Gladstone had established under the guise of rent-fixing; or else, as the only alternative, we had "to cut the cackle" and get to business.

Under this head the House of Commons--Mr. Dillon ingeminating dissent--decided in so far as landlords and tenants were concerned, two things: (1) It was agreed that where the tenant-purchaser's instalment, after purchase, was substantially less than his statutory rent revised at great cost--140,000 a year for Land Courts--then, in those cases the State needed not to inquire at further cost and delay into either its own security in the holding, or the metaphysical distinction between value due to the landlord's owners.h.i.+p of the soil and value due to the tenant's improvement of the soil. This close approximation to unanimity will not surprise those who grasp that every landlord and tenant was to make a voluntary bargain on precisely those terms which the representatives of their cla.s.ses had combined to obtain from the State.

The alternative method of delay and litigation had been further discounted, for everybody except Mr. Dillon, by the fact that in the cla.s.sic case--_Adams_ v. _Dunseath_--tried out in accordance with Mr.

Gladstone's panacea, Adams, after repeated lawsuits, improved his financial position by an infinitesimal sum per annum without becoming an owner of his farm. It was also agreed that the Estates Commissioners appointed to administer the Act, should be administrative officials under the Government, and not amateur judges. This was essential, not only to subst.i.tute cheap speed for costly delay, but also to ensure that the benefits offered by the State should not be absorbed, say, in the rich province of Leinster to the detriment of the poorer province of Connaught, or--for who knows what may happen in Ireland?--absorbed in the Home Rule province of Connaught to the detriment of the Unionist province of Ulster.

C. _Dealing with Estates as a whole instead of with single holdings._ This process, till then applied tentatively in the congested districts of the West, became the general method throughout Ireland, and was a.s.sisted by the provision of working capital for carrying out necessary amalgamations and improvements before resale.

D. _Increase in the 'borrowing power and funds of the Congested Districts Board,_ for the purpose of dealing systematically with "agricultural slums."

The features of the Irish Land Act (1903), founded, as they were, on experience and the consent of all parties concerned, became widely popular in Ireland. But, by Mr. Birrell's Act of 1909, they were all distorted or destroyed. A solemn treaty, framed in the interest of Ireland, was torn up to deck with its tatters the triumph of Mr.

Dillon's unholy alliance with the British Treasury. The effect of this betrayal on the prospects of Irish agriculture will appear from a recital of the changes made by Mr. Birrell's Act, followed by a comparison of the results obtained under the two Acts. From that comparison I shall proceed to an examination of the reasons alleged for the breach of faith, and a statement of the Unionist party's pledge to continue their policy of 1903. I shall then conclude by inviting all who care for Ireland to weigh the prospects of Irish Agriculture under the Union against its prospects under Home Rule.

_Changes made by the Act of _1909.--(1) Instead of cash payments landlords are to receive stock at three per cent. issued on a falling market, and this stock cannot appreciate because, owing to the embarra.s.sment of Irish estates, about half of each issue must be thrown back on the market for the redemption of mortgages; a result fatal to land purchase and detrimental to the credit of the State. (2) Instead of paying 3 5_s._ per 100, tenants are to pay 3 10_s._ without any reduction in the period of repayment. The sinking fund remains at 10_s._ and the interest 3 is, for the first time since land purchase was attempted, placed at a higher rate than in the preceding Purchase Act, whilst the whole instalment of 3 10_s._ is raised, not only above the rate of the Act of 1903, but also above the rates, diminished by decadal reductions, of purchasers under still earlier Acts. This again, in view of these reductions and of periodic revisions of _rent_ under the Land Law Act of 1881, is fatal to purchase. (3) The bonus of 12,000,000--on the application of which all parties agreed in 1903--was diverted from the unanimous policy of that year and brought in aid of Mr. Dillon's hobby, which all parties then rejected. Mr. Dillon is at liberty to rejoice over the ruin of one landlord more than over the salvation of 99,000 tenants. The laws of lunacy do not, and ought not to, touch him.

But there is no reason why taxpayers should minister to his peculiar pleasure, with the result of postponing indefinitely any settlement of the Irish land question. (4) By reverting to inspection for security delay is subst.i.tuted for speed, and speed is necessary in the conclusion of bargains that are themselves the result of prolonged negotiations; the more so when, as now, owing to the subst.i.tution of stock for cash, the seller cannot know what his bargain will turn out to be; and the buyer, owing to the block in agreements under the Act of 1903, cannot know when his bargain will take effect. In most cases it will not do so for from six to eight years, which must be added to the period of repayment, although his instalment has been increased. (5) The reversion to attempts at defining the metaphysical rights of the landlords and tenants revives the social poison of litigation of which, in 1903, every one but Mr. Dillon was weary. (6) The revival of litigation in respect of single holdings defeats the policy of dealing with convenient areas.

(7) By transforming the Estates Commissioners, much I imagine to their disgust, from administrative officers into amateur judges, a further premium is put on litigation and delay, whilst the interests of one province as against the interests of another, are left without protection from the State. (8) Although more than half the holdings of Ireland are valued at less than 10 a year, a presumption is created that all holdings below that value are to be deemed "uneconomic." The whole of Connaught with the counties of Donegal and Kerry and part of County Cork are branded as "congested," and the Board, charged with conducting purchase in that area, is swollen to unmanageable size, whilst three commissioners are held sufficient for the rest of Ireland, which is twice as large.

To these eight changes, all inimical, and, as I believe, fatal to the abolition of dual owners.h.i.+p, two have been added of a more insidious effect. Compulsion has been adopted. This of itself checks voluntary purchase. It kills it when, as under this Act, compulsory purchases are to be paid for in cash and voluntary purchases in depreciated stock.

Finally, the Act contemplates diverting the resources, applied under the treaty of 1903 to the abolition of dual owners.h.i.+p and the remedy of congestion, to a new purpose, for which Ireland can make no special claim. I mean the creation, over all Ireland, of new tenancies, to be sold to new men, who have never suffered from dual owners.h.i.+p or uneconomic conditions, and may be presumed to be ignorant of farming.

This new policy amounts to a repeal of the policy sanctioned by all, viz. of giving special State aid to meet the peculiar needs of Ireland.

_A comparison of the results obtained under the Acts of_ 1903 _and_ 1909.--In order to gauge the respective efficacy of these two Acts for the purpose of abolis.h.i.+ng dual owners.h.i.+p, it is necessary to distinguish between applications for purchase, and advances actually made in respect of completed transactions. The applications exhibit the comparative popularity and convenience of the two Acts. The advances exhibit only the readiness of the Government to proceed with purchase. They pertain to the financial, rather than the political, aspect of the problem, and may be examined later together with the reasons alleged for the delay of its solution. The fact of the delay appears from the following figures:--

Under the Irish Land Act (1903) the number of purchase agreements lodged in respect of direct sales by landlords to tenants was 217,299 in the course of less than six years from November 1, 1903, to September 15, 1909. To these should be added proposed purchasers in other categories, viz. in respect of estates sold to the Land Commission for subsequent re-sale, or to the Congested Districts Board, or in the Court of the Land Judge, or in respect of offers to evicted tenants. These bring the total of potential purchasers up to 248,109. Under the Act of 1909, in two years from December 3, 1909, to December 1, 1911, the number of applications in respect of direct sales stands at 8,992. In the other categories the number of potential purchasers amounted to 373 up to March 31, 1911. Since then tentative negotiations have been essayed, under the threat of compulsion and the menace of Home Rule, which suggest a far larger figure. But these transactions--to which I shall return--are of an eminently dubious character. We are on safe ground if we compare the number of tenants who were ready under the two Acts to acquire their holdings. After discounting whatever may be claimed on the score that the operation of the Act of 1903 was expedited by the fear of its destruction, a comparision of 217,299 would-be purchasers in six years with 8,992 in two years demonstrates that the abolition of dual owners.h.i.+p has been thrown back to the conditions which called for the Treaty of 1903. Furthermore, it is proper to discount, in turn, even the meagre total of 8,992. For it includes the remainders of estates, other parts of which had been sold under the Act of 1903 and the spurt of applications expedited, in this case, by the revolution of last August.

To the over-sanguine and the over-timid this seemed to foreshadow the rapid pa.s.sage of Home Rule, and, bad as are the terms of the Act of 1909, they are estimated to be better than any obtainable after the Union has been thrown on the sc.r.a.p-heap of the Const.i.tution. One other comparison may be noted. It was part of the Treaty of 1903 that landlords should be encouraged to remain in their native land by a.s.sistance in the repurchase of their demesnes--that is, homes--after selling their properties. Under the Act of 1903 the advances on resale to owners sanctioned by the Land Commission numbered 205. Under the Act of 1909 they number two.

It will readily be inferred, even by those unacquainted with Ireland; that a process for healing ancient wounds has been turned into a process for exasperating future conflicts. A blister has been subst.i.tuted for a poultice on the sores of centuries. Existing agreements are blocked.

Future agreements--for this is their appropriate, if cynical--designation, are relegated to a future which few can foresee. Landlords who have contracted to sell are threatened with bankruptcy by the foreclosure of mortgages. Tenants who have contracted to buy see their hopes deferred with sick hearts. Whilst to owners and occupiers who have not completed their bargains "no hope comes at all." The newly won prosperity of Ireland is doomed because the Nationalist party and British Government have not kept faith; and with prosperity peace is departing. The environment that breeds agrarian disorder and crime has been restored, and agitators, in expectation of Home Rule, are already at "their dirty work again." A new plan of campaign menaces the peace of Ireland in those districts whose past records are most darkly stained.

_Examination of the reasons alleged for tearing up the Treaty of 1903_.--The Government defended their reversal of the policy of 1903, and departure from their pledges to carry out that policy, by making two a.s.sertions. They a.s.serted (1) that the size of the problem, which all parties undertook to solve, would exceed by far the speculative estimate put forward in 1903; (2) that the credit of the British Exchequer, which they have depressed, would prove unequal to the burden foreshadowed by the new dimensions, which they have a.s.signed. (1) _Size of the problem_.

The first a.s.sertion, that much nearer 200,000,000 than 100,000,000 must be borrowed in order to complete purchase, is based on two a.s.sumptions explicitly stated in the Return presented to Parliament (Cd.

4412 of 1908) as follows: "It will be observed that the purchase money of the agricultural land not yet brought before the Commissioners for sale under the Land Purchase Acts has been estimated _on the a.s.sumption that it will be all sold_ and that _it will be sold on an average at the price for which lands had been sold up to 30th April last, under the Irish Land Act_ (1903)." The a.s.sumptions on which the Government proceeded are not, therefore, in doubt, but the validity of those a.s.sumptions, on which the whole case of the Government depends, is refuted by the ascertained facts of Irish agriculture. The census shows that the number of agricultural holdings in Ireland is about 490,000, including nearly 19 million acres. The whole area of Ireland includes some 21 million acres, apportioned to 3-1/2 million acres under crops, 6 million acres of waste, and 11-1/2 million acres under gra.s.s. The Return to which I have referred (Cd. 4412 of 1908) cavils at the figures given in the census on the ground that the 490,000 "holdings" are more accurately 490,000 "land-holders," since a tenant holding "half a dozen farms in the same county is returned as having a single holding." But it is right to take "holders" when, as under the Act of 1903, the limit on advances applies to the person who receives them. Again, the Return throws over the census for figures supplied by the Department of Agriculture. But it is wrong to use these figures, for they include holdings not exceeding one acre, of which there are 80,000 in Ireland, and many more that cannot be described as "in the main agricultural or pastoral." No special pleading on the part of the Government can alter the fact that the 490,000 holdings given by the census include all the lands under crops and gra.s.s and two-thirds of the waste. They embrace 19 million acres, and more than cover the ground. For the purpose of an estimate it is an outside figure, the more so since, in respect of gra.s.s lands the value of a single farm may exceed the limit of any one advance, and it is not uncommon for a large grazier to rent many gra.s.s farms. If the Government, by conferring a judicial status on the Estate Commissioners, surrendered their control over the amounts of single advances; and again, if the Government, at the dictation of Mr. Dillon, embarked on a new policy of creating tenancies in gra.s.s land and selling them to new men, they are debarred from increasing the estimate to cover their own misfeasance. In tendering the speculative estimate of 1903, it was clearly laid down that the amount of one advance was only to be increased in rare cases, and the sub-division of permanent pasture was denounced as a "form of economic insanity." It was also explained that deductions must be made from the 490,000 holdings in respect of small town plots, accommodation plots, and market gardens; nor are these insignificant, for to the 80,000 holdings not exceeding one acre we must add 62,000 of from 1 to 5 acres. In the face of these facts, the a.s.sumption that "all agricultural land"--as defined in the Return--will be sold, is not only unsound but preposterous.

The second a.s.sumption, that the average price of future transactions will equal that of past transactions is opposed to the presumption that better, and therefore dearer farms, came into the market before worse and therefore cheaper farms. I am not referring to the number of years'

purchase offered, a point on which I have never expressed an opinion, but to the value of the property which pa.s.ses. It is with farms as with oranges, the good ones go first. The pertinence of this maxim to land purchase is proved by the reports of the Estates Commissioners. These contradict the Government's second a.s.sumption, for they exhibit a steady and continuous decline in the average of advances that have been made. The average amount of advances under the Act of 1903 to March 31, 1908, was in round numbers 361. On some such figures the second a.s.sumption rests. I ventured at the time to a.s.sert that the average in the future would not exceed 300. This estimate has been confirmed, for the average advances from March 31, 1908, to September 15, 1909--when the Act ceased to operate--was 287. A further reduction may be confidently expected, since the progress of purchase in the richer provinces has by far exceeded its progress in Connaught. In Leinster over 53,000 agreements have been lodged at an average price of over 481; in Munster over 58,000 at an average of over 420; in Ulster over 84,000 at an average of over 226; whilst in Connaught only some 26,000 at an average of just under 200.

The reasons alleged in defence of the Act of 1909 failed to justify, or even to explain, the changes it imposed. An explanation must be sought in the real reasons, and they are not far to seek. The first was that the old methods of litigation and delay, abjured by all parties in 1903, were subst.i.tuted for the new methods of speed and ease, because Mr.

Dillon so willed it; and the second, that the policy of abolis.h.i.+ng dual owners.h.i.+p, to which Mr. Redmond stood pledged, had to be ousted, again at Mr. Dillon's dictation, to make way for the folly of creating new tenancies, of symmetrical size, throughout all Ireland. The Treaty was torn up because Mr. Dillon, acting as deputy for Mr. Birrell (whose main argument for Home Rule is that it bores him to be Chief Secretary), ordered Mr. Redmond to eat his words.

From this examination of the reasons for destroying the Act of 1903, the true size and nature of the financial problem emerges. From the total of some 490,000 holdings substantial reductions must be made in respect of waste lands, gra.s.s lands, and accommodation plots, and, again, in view of the limitation on the amount that may be advanced to one person. We ought probably to deduct 20 per cent., but if, to be on the safe side, we deduct only 15 per cent., 416,000 are left. These, however, include some 80,000 sold before the Act of 1903, or under the Land Commissioners as distinct from the Estates Commissioners. In respect of the 336,500 remaining, 257,474 agreements have been lodged under all categories in the Acts of 1903 and 1909. Indeed, a larger number have been lodged, for in most cases our information is only to March 31, 1911, leaving less than 79,000 holdings that may still come into the market. This is an outside figure, provided always that the policy of 1903 be adhered to, viz. that advances are made to _occupiers_ and not to new men, except as under the Act of that year (sect. 2 (I) _b_ and _d_, and sect. 75) in rare cases, rigidly defined, of the sons of tenants and of evicted tenants.

If the average price remains at the figure for the period March 31, 1908, to September 15, 1909--viz. 287--a further sum of 22,673,000 may be required in excess of 84,099,818 already required under the Acts of 1903 and 1909; making 106,772,818. This total includes nearly 1,000,000 for re-sales to owners and some provision for evicted tenants. Under these heads it will not expand in a greater relative degree. It includes, also, purchase of whole estates and of untenanted land by the Estates Commissioners and Congested Districts Board, and these may involve larger sums than were originally contemplated. I promised to return to that point, and will now do so. Since the Return under these heads up to March 31, 1911, tentative negotiations have been made for the purchase of a number of estates and for supplying more evicted tenants with holdings. But this does not increase the money size of the problem by much, because many of these estates--if sold to the new Congested Districts Board--are subtracted from business that would have been done by the Estates Commissioners; again, it is, as we know, impossible to spend much money, or move many migrants, or even enlarge many holdings, in one year. If the new Congested Districts Board attempts to handle some millions' worth of land in a hurry, one of two things must happen, either their work will be indefinitely delayed, or else they will sell off "uneconomic" holdings without amending their defects. The business will not cost more. It will only be scamped, or s.h.i.+rked. I doubt if the additions, which do not conflict with the policy of 1903, will increase the amount to be borrowed in the market, though they may increase the sums needed for working capital. Let us add for these expansions, which are strictly limited by physical impediments, 2,000,000 or even twice that amount. It still remains obvious that, even after expansions, good, bad, or indifferent, of the policy of 1903, the total sum to be borrowed cannot exceed from 110,000,000 to 113,000,000, as the outside figure that need be contemplated, provided we refrain from the "economic insanity" of distributing eleven million acres of permanent pasture among shopkeepers and "Gombeen" men. This figure of 113,000,000, indeed, exceeds what may reasonably be expected.

The average of advances fell from 426 on the earliest agreements, to 361 on all agreements to March 31, 1908, and to 287 on agreements between that date and September 15, 1909. We may count on a continuation of that fall until the average approaches 200, the price for Connaught, where purchase has proceeded most slowly. But let the total stand at 113,000,000. That sum neither warrants the breach of faith of which the Government and the Nationalist party have been guilty, nor does it present an insoluble problem to the resources of a united Exchequer.

41,097,939 has already been borrowed in the market, and advanced, in less than eight years.