Читать книгу One Irish Summer - William Eleroy Curtis - Страница 9

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While the circumstances of the agricultural class in Ireland are by no means ideal, a great deal has been done to improve them. At the present rate of progress, however, it will take from twenty to twenty-five years, if not much longer, to accomplish the results intended by the Wyndham Land Act of 1903, which was expected to bring about the Irish millennium. That act provides that an owner of a large estate may sell to his tenants the holdings they occupy, and his untenanted land to any one who desires to buy it, in such tracts and at such prices as may be agreed upon, corresponding to the income now derived from that particular property. No landlord can sell a few acres here and there of good land under this act, although, of course, he is at liberty to dispose of any part of his estate at any time at any price that he may consider proper. But the terms and privileges of the Wyndham Act can only be enjoyed by a community of tenants in the purchase of the whole or a considerable portion of an estate. A board of commissioners which sits in the old-fashioned mansion in which the Duke of Wellington was born, on Merrion Street, Dublin, is authorized to use its discretion in the application of the law and in granting its privileges to those for whose benefit it is intended. Nothing can be done without their approval. The landlord and the tenants may arrange their own bargains to their own satisfaction, but they must be submitted to the board before they are carried out.

When such agreements are reached and approved by the commission,—including the area sold, the price, and other terms,—the government is expected to furnish the purchase money from the public treasury. The landlord is entitled to receive the cash in full, and the tenant, who pays nothing, gives a mortgage, as we would call it, upon the property to the government for sixty-eight years or less, and agrees to pay an annual installment of 3¼ per cent of the purchase price, of which 2¾ per cent is interest and ½ per cent goes into a sinking fund to cover the purchase money at the end of sixty-eight years. A purchaser may pay off the mortgage at any time he pleases, and receive a clear title to the land; or he may sell it whenever he chooses, subject to the mortgage, which follows the land and not the person. If he is unable to pay his annuities, the government can turn him out and dispose of the land, subject to the same terms and conditions, to another person. It can make no allowance for crop failures or cattle diseases. It cannot extend or modify its credits.

Nearly all of the landlords are willing to sell their estates; many are glad to get rid of them, because the average tenantry in Ireland are a very determined class, and are always making trouble. There have been almost continuous disturbances over land questions of one form or another in Ireland since the beginning of time. The rents are low compared with the American standard, but have been difficult to collect, and when there is a failure of crops they cannot be collected at all. The landlords complain that all the laws that have been enacted of late years are entirely in the interest of the tenants; that the landlord has no show at all. And perhaps that is true, because public sympathy is invariably with the tenants, and they cast many votes, while the landlord has only one, even if he tries to vote at all.

Since 1881 the land courts have adjusted the rents of 360,135 farmer tenants, involving 10,731,804 acres of land. The total rents paid for these lands annually before adjustment was £7,206,079. They were reduced by judicial order to a total of £5,715,158, a difference of about $7,500,000 a year in American money, in favor of the tenants.

Therefore it is perfectly natural that landowners—and especially those who have had a good deal of trouble with their tenants—are anxious to dispose of their estates for cash, which they can invest to much better advantage. The Duke of Leinster, for example, who is a minor, has realized more than £800,000 in cash, which his trustees have invested in brewery stocks, railway bonds, and other securities which pay regular dividends and give him no anxiety.

Mr. Bailey, one of the commissioners, told me that the good estates have been disposed of without difficulty. The disposition of the poor land has been more difficult, because the tenants are not as eager to get it, the owner is not always satisfied with the price, and the commission is not willing to make advances upon small bits of land among the bogs and rocks and other tracts of unfertile soil that would not be considered good security by anybody. The commissioners have treated these transactions very much as they would have done if they were mortgage bankers. They have refused to make advances on land that a banker would not have considered good security. They have not been willing to make advances on farms that cannot be made to pay. There have been complications in certain cases that have perplexed them, but, as a rule, the law has been working out in a most satisfactory and gratifying manner. The chief object of the commission and the purpose of the law has been to break up the great estates of Ireland so far as possible in farms of not more than one hundred acres, and sell them to the occupants, so as to create a nation of peasant proprietors, and that, he says, is being accomplished more rapidly than any one had reason to expect. Of course Mr. Bailey does not pretend that everybody is satisfied. That would be impossible. The millennium has not yet come, and the Wyndham Act has not brought it, although it has undoubtedly done more than any previous legislation to promote peace in this distracted country, and offers promises of future prosperity and contentment.

Naturally some of the landowners have not been willing to sell their property, and their tenants have been trying to force them to do so. That accounts for the “cattle driving” and similar disturbances that you read about in the newspaper cablegrams from Ireland. It is to be regretted that the tendency of the newspapers is to publish sensational occurrences and unfortunate events. If a man commits a great crime it is advertised from one end of the world to the other. If he does a good deed very little is said about it, and a false impression concerning conditions in Ireland has been created by the widespread publication of every little outrage or disturbance that occurs over there, while the enormous usefulness and the satisfactory application of the Wyndham Land Act has been almost entirely neglected by newspaper writers.

There have, however, been a good many little disturbances occasioned by the efforts of the tenants of certain estates, particularly those that are now devoted to cattle-breeding, to force their landlords to divide up the pastures and sell them. At present there is more money in the cattle and sheep business than in any other kind of farming in Ireland, and, as you drive out into the interior, you can see the loveliest pastures in the world filled with fat, sleek animals feeding upon the luscious grass. I do not believe there are richer or more beautiful pastures in any land, and Irish beef and mutton command a premium because of their flavor and tenderness. Hence prosperous cattle-breeders cannot be blamed for refusing to sell their pastures and go out of business, and there is no law to compel them to do so. But the rough and reckless elements in the villages, and in many cases among their own tenantry, often try to persecute them by cattle and sheep “driving,” as it is called, until they are willing to cry quits. The popular method is to break down the gates or the hedges,—they do not have fences in Ireland,—turn the cattle and sheep into the road, and run them as far as possible away from their proper pastures, scattering them over the country. This is done in the night, and the next morning the owner is compelled to take such measures to recover as many of the strays as he can. Various means are adopted to prevent such outrages. Armed guards are employed who defend their cattle, sometimes at the cost of life and bloodshed, which, of course, provokes bad feeling and greater trouble. Hundreds of men have been arrested and punished by long terms of imprisonment, but “cattle-driving” still goes on in various parts of the country with some serious results. But it is comparatively insignificant when compared with the great good that is being accomplished by the breaking up of the big estates whose owners are willing to dispose of them.

Thus far the Wyndham Act has been carried out without much friction; the chief difficulty having arisen from the eagerness of the landlords to dispose of their estates, which is so much greater than anticipated, that the funds provided have not been sufficient, and the landlords who have sold their property have been compelled to wait for their pay. In November, 1908, Mr. Augustine Birrell, chief secretary for Ireland in the British cabinet, introduced into the House of Commons a bill for the appropriation of more than $760,000,000, to be raised by an issue of bonds to pay for the estates that have already been sold and for those that may be sold in the future. That amount of money he asserted would be necessary to carry out the plans of the government under the Land Act of 1903.

This proposition of Mr. Birrell is without doubt the most stupendous munificence ever offered by any government to its subjects. The money thus appropriated does not pay for any service performed. It is a direct appropriation from the public treasury to the people of Ireland for the simple purpose of relieving their poverty and placing them in circumstances which will permit them to enjoy life without the hardships and sufferings and fruitless labor which they and their forefathers have for generations endured.

The advances of the British government to the Irish peasants, if this bill becomes a law, will reach nearly $1,000,000,000, but it is to be repaid by them in small installments. Mr. Birrell, in his explanation of the purpose of the bill to the House of Commons, stated that up to the 31st of October £25,000,000 in round numbers (which amounts to about $125,000,000 in our money) had already been expended by the estates commissioners in purchasing farms from the large landholders in Ireland for the benefit of the tenants who occupy them, and that £52,000,000 (which is the equivalent of about $260,000,000) is due to other landowners who have sold their estates under the Act of 1903. These transactions have been completed with the exception of payment of the price.

The transactions concluded under the Land Act of 1903 up to Oct. 31, 1908, provide farms for about 126,000 Irish families, at a cost of $385,000,000 to the British treasury, which is to be refunded by the owners of the farms in sixty-eight years, with interest at 3¼ per cent. Three-fourths of 1 per cent of this annual interest, to be paid by the man who owns the farm, goes into a sinking fund to meet the principal of bonds which have been issued to provide the purchase money. The remaining 2½ per cent is paid by the farmer in lieu of rent, and is used to meet the annual interest upon the bonds. Thus the farmer gets his land in perpetuity by the payment of sixty-eight annual installments of an amount equal to 3¼ per cent of its present value. The average cost of the 126,000 farms thus far purchased is $1,790.

The British government advances the money and becomes responsible for the payment of the interest and principal. The annual interest is only a trifle. In some cases it is only a shilling a week, and it runs up to as high as a pound or two a week in special cases, the average being estimated at $59 a year for the 126,000 farms, or $5 a month for the purchase of a farm, and whatever improvements may happen to be upon the land. If these improvements are not adequate, if the house is not comfortable, and if barns, stables, fences, and other permanent improvements are needed, the government advances the money to provide for them upon the same terms,—sixty-eight annual payments of 3¼ per cent of the cost.

Mr. Birrell in his explanation estimated on Oct. 31, 1908, that the additional sum of $760,000,000 will be necessary to complete the work, to provide every family in the rural districts of Ireland with a farm of their own, and with the intention of doing that he asks an appropriation of that amount, which will bring the cost of the Irish land policy of the British government up to nearly $900,000,000.

This does not include the expenditures of the Congested Districts Board, which have been $440,000 annually for several years, and in the future are to be $1,250,000 a year.

Nor does it include several millions of dollars which have been expended under previous land acts, to purchase farms for the tenant occupiers.

Nor does it include the $25,000,000 appropriated several years ago upon the motion of James Bryce, now British ambassador at Washington, to build cottages for the agricultural laborers,—the farm hands of Ireland.

Mr. Wyndham, the author of the Land Act of 1903, stated in the House of Commons that 159,000 farmers had applied for the assistance of the government to purchase their holdings, and that 176,000 more would probably apply, out of a total of 490,000 farmers in Ireland. His estimates are not so high as those of Mr. Birrell; he believed that $600,000,000, or $800,000,000 at the outside, would be sufficient, instead of $900,000,000, as estimated by Mr. Birrell. He is convinced that 20 per cent of the 490,000 farmers in Ireland would not apply for farms, and that the average price of the farms purchased would not exceed $1,500.

Of the farms already purchased, the average price in Leinster province was £528 ($2,640); in Munster, £452 ($2,260); in Ulster, £242 ($1,210); and in Connaught, £211 ($1,055).

Connaught is the poorest of the poor provinces, and in 1908, out of a total of 29,000 farmers who applied, only 2,000 came from Connaught. Taking the most liberal estimate that he could imagine, Mr. Wyndham stated that $800,000,000 would be the maximum required.

The Wyndham Land Act is not the first experiment of the kind. It is not the first attempt of the government to break up the big estates of Ireland into small farms and homes for the people who are now working them under the present system. W.F. Bailey, one of the commissioners who are carrying out the provisions of that act, gave me an interesting sketch of the history of the movement from the date of the passage of what is known as “the Irish Church Act” in 1869, which was the original endeavor to create a peasant-proprietor system by the aid of state loans.

“Under the Irish Church Act,” said Mr. Bailey, “commissioners were appointed to sell to the tenants of lands belonging to the church their holdings at prices fixed by the commissioners themselves. If the tenant refused to buy on the terms offered, the commissioners were authorized to sell to the public for at least one-fourth and as much more as they could get in cash, and the balance secured by a mortgage to be paid off in thirty-two years in half-yearly installments. They sold farms to 6,057 tenants, and the government loaned the purchasers a total of £1,674,841 which was issued by the commissioners of public works.

“In 1870, the following year, what is known as the Landlord and Tenant Act was passed by Parliament, under which the commissioners were authorized to advance two-thirds of the purchase money agreed upon instead of one-fourth, to be repaid in thirty-five years with 5 per cent interest, and all agricultural and pastural lands in Ireland were included in its provisions. Under this act 877 tenants purchased their holdings for a total of £859,000, of which the government advanced £514,526.

“This act was amended in 1881 to provide that three-quarters instead of two-thirds of the purchase money might be advanced by the government on the same terms, and 731 tenants took advantage of it. The advances amounted to £240,801.

“What was known as the Ashbourne Act was passed in 1885, appropriating the sum of £5,000,000 to enable the commissioners to purchase estates for the purpose of reselling them to the tenants and others, and they were authorized to furnish the entire purchase money, to be repaid in annual installments extending over a period of forty-nine years, with interest at 5 per cent. In 1888 an additional sum of £5,000,000 was advanced for the same purpose, and 25,368 tenants on 1,355 estates purchased their holdings with £9,992,640 advanced by the government.

“These funds having been exhausted, Mr. Balfour in 1891 introduced a new system under which the landlord, instead of cash, was paid in guaranteed stock exchangeable for consols equal in amount to the purchase money, and running for thirty years with interest at 2¾ per cent. This stock was guaranteed by the Irish probate duty, the customs, and excise taxes, and certain local grants. The amount of stock that could be issued for any county was limited, however, and when that limit was reached the sales had to stop. The advances under this act were £39,145,348.

“The Act of 1891 was amended in 1896 in various respects. The annual installments were fixed at 4 per cent, 2¾ per cent being for interest and 1¼ per cent to create a sinking fund for the repayment of the capital. The number of purchases arranged under this act was 36,994, and the total amount advanced was £10,809,190.

“The following table will give the number of tenants who have purchased their holdings from their landlords with the assistance of the government under these various acts and under the Wyndham Act of 1903 from 1869 to the 31st of May, 1908:

	No. purchasers.	Amt. advanced.
Irish Church Act of 1869	6,057	£1,674,841
Act of 1870	877	514,536
Act of 1881	731	240,801
Act of 1885	26,367	9,992,536
Act of 1891	46,806	13,633,190
Act of 1903	46,576	17,657,279
Total to date named	127,414	£43,713,183”

The following table shows the number of tenant purchasers under the three land purchase acts of 1885–88, 1891–96, and 1903; the amount due from them annually, the number who were in arrears, and the amount of money unpaid on July 1, 1908:

	Number purchasers.	Installments	Number and amount unpaid.
Act of
1885–88	25,382	£369,130	354	£2,900
1891–96	46,837	517,943	374	3,920
1903	44,773	561,858	305	3,312
Total	116,992	£1,448,931	1,033	£10,132