Democracy and Liberty. William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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interest, as well as a public interest, must have been presented to the elector. The statement is perfectly true, and I have no wish to dispute or evade its force. Public and private interest are, undoubtedly, often so blended in politics that it is not possible wholly to disentangle them. The difference between an election which is mainly governed by low motives of private interest, and an election which is mainly governed by high motives of public spirit, is very great, but it is essentially a difference of proportion and degree. All that can be said is, that it will depend largely on a minister to determine at an election which of these classes of motives preponderate. Each dubious case must be judged by the common sense of the community on its own merits, and in the light of its own special circumstances. In former days, private interest was chiefly brought to bear upon elections by the process of corruption applied to individual voters. In modern days, bribery has changed its character, and is much more likely to be applied to classes than to individuals. Manipulations of taxation, and other legislative offers dexterously adapted to catch in critical times the votes of particular sections of the electorate, are the evils which are chiefly to be feared, and, of this kind of evil, the course adopted by Mr. Gladstone in 1874 still appears to me to have been a conspicuous example.
Many other illustrations might be given. No one who has carefully followed Irish politics during the period of the Land League agitation can doubt that appeals to the cupidity of electors formed the mainspring of the whole machine. Other motives and elements, no doubt, entered largely into the calculations of the leaders; and with them a desire to drive the landlord from his property was not in itself an end, but rather a means of obtaining political ascendency and separation from England. But it is notorious that the effectual inducement they held out to the great body of the farming class to support them was the persuasion that it was possible by the use of political means to break contracts, lower rents, and confiscate property. Nor can it be denied that the legislation of the Imperial Parliament has gone a long way to justify their prevision.
I do not include in this charge the Land Act of 1870, which appears to me to have been, in its main lines, though not in all its parts, a wise and comprehensive effort to deal with one of the most difficult and complicated questions that have appeared in English politics. The elements of the problem were very numerous. There was the imperfect sympathy between the land-owning and land-cultivating classes, arising originally from historical causes, from differences of religion, politics, and, in some degree, of race, and in modern times strengthened by the Famine and the Encumbered Estates Act, which created a multitude of new landlords, largely drawn from the trading classes, who had no knowledge of the traditions and customs of the estates they acquired, and who often purchased with borrowed money and as a commercial investment. Improvements, too, in Ireland were for the most part made by the tenant, and not by the landlord; and although the rents were in general proportionately lower than in England, although on most old estates a long tenure at low rents amply compensated the tenant for his outlay, there were, undoubtedly, cases where the advent of a new proprietor, or a sudden rise in rents or depreciation in values, led to a virtual confiscation of tenants’ improvements. Leases had been for some years diminishing, and tenancies at will became general. The custom of tenant-right was general in Ulster and occasional in other provinces, though it subsisted without the smallest sanction or protection of the law. Usage unsanctioned by law played a large part in Irish agrarian life; and there was a bad custom of allowing rents to be paid, in many parts of the country, with extreme irregularity, according to the good or bad seasons, and leaving the arrears of many years outstanding, not claimed, and not wiped away. It must be added, that the small number of manufactures had thrown the population, to an unhealthy extent, for subsistence on the soil; that political agitation had already done much to inflame class animosities and accentuate class divisions, and that there were grave faults on both sides. Wretched farming; thriftless, extravagant, unbusinesslike habits in all classes; a great want of enterprise and steady industry; much neglect of duty, and occasional, though not, I think, frequent, acts of oppression and extortion, all contributed to complicate the task of the legislator.
In my own opinion, it should have been his object to secure to the tenants compensation for all future improvements; to bring back by special inducements a land system resting on definite written contracts; to give legal character to tenant-right when it was generally acknowledged; and to assist by Government measures in the formation of a peasant proprietary, or, what was politically scarcely less valuable, of a class of tenants holding land for ever at a low fixed rent.
The question of tenants’ improvements especially was of vital importance, and it is one of the most real of Irish grievances that Parliament, in spite of the clearest warnings, so long neglected to attend to it.
Some years before the Famine Sharman Crawford had devoted himself with much zeal to the subject, and had repeatedly brought into the House of Commons a Bill which would have effectually met it. He proposed that when a tenant made improvements which were of a nature to produce an increased rent, and which had not been included in the terms of his existing lease, these improvements should be duly valued; that the tenant, at the expiry of his term, should have the right to claim either immediate money compensation from the landlord or a prolongation of his tenancy; and that, in fixing the new rent, the value of unremunerated improvements should be taken into account, so that the tenant might be repaid for them in the course of the succeeding tenancy.13
The Devon Commissioners, who sat under a commission ordered at the end of 1843, collected a great deal of valuable information on the subject, and treated it in an eminently judicial spirit. They acknowledged that ‘there had not been brought many cases to show that it had been the practice of land-proprietors to take advantage of improving tenants who had invested money without a lease or other security.’ They acknowledged also, that ‘it had not been shown that tenants possessing long and beneficial leases of the lands had in general brought them to a high state of improvement;’ that, in fact, there was evidence ‘that lands let upon very long terms, and at very low rents, were in a worse condition, and their occupiers even more embarrassed, than others.’ On the other hand, they urged that cases of the confiscation of tenants’ improvements had occurred; that a tenant at will or a tenant with a very short lease was always liable to them; that ‘a single instance occurring in a large district would naturally paralyse exertion to an incalculable extent;’ that the possibility and extreme facility of such confiscation in the existing state of the law was a gross injustice to the tenant, discouraged in the most powerful manner a kind of investment which was naturally very profitable both to the tenant class and to agriculture in general, and directly or indirectly contributed largely to most of the social evils of Ireland. They recommended, as of the highest importance to Ireland, a law giving tenants in the future compensation for permanent and productive improvements, and framed upon the following principles. Agreements between landlord and tenant relative to such improvements were to be duly registered, and, in cases where it was found impossible to arrive at such agreement, a tenant was to serve a notice on the landlord of his intention to make suitable improvements. Mutually chosen arbitrators were to report upon them, and the assistant barrister, after such report, and after examination, was to certify the maximum cost, not exceeding three years’ rent. If the tenant was ejected, or if his rent was raised within thirty years, the landlord was to pay such a sum, not exceeding the maximum fixed, as the work shall be then valued at. The improvements were to be completed within a limited time, and the landlord was to have the option of making them himself, charging 5 per cent. on the outlay.14
A Government measure based on this report was introduced by Lord Stanley, in a speech of great power, in 1845, and by Lord Lincoln in 1846. In the first case it was abandoned in the face of very determined opposition. In the second, it fell through on account of the overthrow of the Government of Sir Robert Peel, which had introduced it. Several attempts in the same direction were made in the following years, the most remarkable being the Bill of Mr. Napier, the Irish Attorney-General of Lord Derby's Government, in 1852, which had a retrospective character applying to all past improvements. None of these measures, however, ultimately succeeded, and the advice of the Devon Commission was neglected.
Besides the question of improvements, it was clearly recognised that something must be done to prevent the too frequent evictions, or threatened evictions, and the Land Act of 1860 did something in this direction. This Act,