William Frederick Bailey

“ The Land Act of 1860 proceeded on the assumption that the land is the exclusive property of the landlord, and that the tenant's interest is nothing more than that of a person who has agreed to pay a certain remuneration for the use of the soil for a limited period. It simplified and increased the remedies of the landlord for recovering possession of the land, and rendered efficient the law of ejectment for non-payment of rent and on notice to quit. ”

“ Between these two evils the population of a country may, I would suggest, be considered as having come to a happy equilibrium when it has reached the maximum number that will allow to each person a proper standard of living, that will give to everyone who can work good food, clothing, and housing, and a reasonable amount of leisure and enjoyment of existence. Measured in this way, there may have been an excessive population in Ireland in 1844, while at the present day it may be much less than the country is capable of supporting in comfort. ”

“ He is neither in the position of the farmer nor of the labourer. He is the occupier of a piece of land on which he builds his cabin, and pays a rent which is supposed to be agricultural, but which is really not earnable out of the land, but out of whatever other supplementary income he is able to obtain by migratory labour or by contributions from outside sources. The Irish Fair Rents Acts are supposed to deal only with agricultural holdings. ”

“ Ireland at present occupies a position of great advantage in having almost a monopoly in the supplying of store cattle to the English and Scotch farmers, but the position is one of considerable danger. Should the restrictions on the import of live stock from Canada and the Argentine Republic be removed, as doubtless they would be, were it shown that the introduction of disease was no longer to be feared, a serious blow would be struck at the prosperity of the Irish cattle industry, and new economic conditions would have to be faced. ”

“ Generally speaking, the centre of the country is a great plain; a patchwork of rich pasture lands and immense turf bogs, drained by sluggish rivers, while the seaboard is mostly fringed by ranges of hills and mountains. The coast-line between Dublin and Dundalk is an exception. There, the plains of Meath and Louth run to the sea unguarded by any line of hills. These geographical characteristics largely explain the difference in the holdings and the agricultural methods that have been adopted by the farming population in the four provinces of Ireland. ”

“ The occupiers of Irish agricultural holdings are of two classes—those having economic and those having uneconomic farms. By an economic holding I mean one of sufficient productive capacity to support a family at a reasonable standard of comfort without help from outside sources. The occupier of an economic holding has land which, in fertility, quantity and situation, enables him to live at a reasonable standard of comfort out of the produce and pay a rent. ”

“ Section 93 of the Irish Land Act, 1903, provides that the expression "agricultural labourer" in the Labourers Acts shall also include "any person (other than a domestic or menial servant) working for hire in a rural district, whose average wages in the year preceding the lodgment of any representation under the Labourers Acts affecting him do not exceed two shillings and sixpence a day, and who is not in occupation of land exceeding one quarter of an acre."
The amount of land which may be given to a labourer under the Labourers Acts cannot exceed one statute acre. ”

“ In 1729 the Lord Lieutenant forwarded a report on the subject to the King, which states:—"One great reason given by the people themselves for leaving the Kingdom is the poverty to which that part of the country is reduced, occasioned in a great measure, they say, by raising of rents in many places above the real value of land, or what can be paid out of the produce of them, if any tolerable subsistence be allowed to the farmers using their utmost industry." ”

“ When, on the other hand, population is very sparse and too widely scattered to enjoy the benefits of social organisation, the country suffers equally. It requires a certain concentration of humanity to reap the full advantages of social life and the economy of time and effort produced by the division of labour. No one would deny, for example, that Canada, with less than two persons to the square mile, is much underpopulated. ”

“ In the middle of the last century economic and legal tendencies in England set strongly in the direction of definiteness. The scientific split was abroad, and the desire of reformers was to bring all social phenomena under a rule of law. In England the method and system of the occupation of land easily lent themselves to a contractual relation, and it was considered that the same system should be applied to Ireland notwithstanding that the conditions there were quite different. ”

“ Sales under previous Purchase Acts were carried out by holdings. A landlord could agree with one or more of his tenants to sell them their farms, and if the Land Commission, after examination, found that the particular holding was security for the advance asked for by the tenant to buy out the landlord, such advance was made irrespective of any other sales on the estate. The Act of 1903 introduced the system of sales by "estates." ”

“ Section 30 of the Land Act of 1881 provided that if the tenant purchaser sub-divided or let his holding without the consent of the Land Commission before the purchase annuity was paid off or if the title to the holding was divested from the proprietor by bankruptcy, or if on his decease the holding would become sub-divided or vested in more than one person, the Land Commission might cause the holding to be sold. ”

“ It will be convenient to pause for a moment at the stage we have now reached and take a retrospective glance at the progress made in Land Purchase with a view to ascertaining how far actual experience confirms the theoretical advantages of peasant proprietorship, and what, if any, are the drawbacks attendant on the establishment of such a system in Ireland. The materials for this retrospect are to be found in the Report [1] of an Inquiry instituted in November, 1902, into the condition of Tenant Purchasers who had acquired their holdings under the Land Acts. ”

“ It was an admission that the Whig policy of laissez faire had broken down—at any rate, that it was not applicable to the relations between landlord and tenants in Ireland. It failed because of the timidity with which it was administered, and because it allowed landlords full power over the rents. The years that followed the passing of the Act were agriculturally prosperous in Ireland. Industrial prosperity in England was reflected in Ireland in the rise in the price of meat and farm produce. Ireland was the main source of supply to England. ”

“ It is evident to anyone who has examined the circumstances of the small holdings of the West of Ireland that the rents assessed on them under the Land Acts in many cases are not agricultural rents, but are payments more of the nature of site rents, or the rents of non-agricultural holdings which were not supposed to be subject to the provisions of the Irish Fair Rent Acts at all. ”

“ The Land Commission was empowered to advance the entire purchase money subject to the retention of one-fifth by way of guarantee deposit for a period of about seventeen and a-half years, by which time an equivalent amount of the capital advanced had been repaid by means of the sinking fund. The deposit could be utilised if the tenant purchaser made default in his repayment, and if the landlord vendor was made a guarantor for the repayment of the annuity by the tenant purchaser. ”

“ Under this system, what Adam Smith termed "the higgling of the market" is the easiest test of land value, as it is of all other commodities with regard to which competition is free. In Ireland, on the other hand, the landlord, speaking generally, owned only the soil. The agricultural equipment of each farm was the property of the tenant, who was practically an hereditary occupier. He or his predecessor in title had undertaken the drainage and reclamation, bad made the fences and farm roads, had built the houses. ”

“ Men's minds were ever turned to the examination of economic and social questions. All manner of theories were preached, and doctrines propounded for the amelioration of the condition of the people. It was universally recognised that the country was not prosperous, that the economic condition of the people was miserable. ”