THE 



COUNTRY GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE 



OCTOBER 1868 



A PRACTICAL VIEW OF THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. 



IN FIVE CHAPTERS. 



CHAP. II. 



Landlords and Tenants. 



I HE history of the past, as briefly 

 sketched in the preceding chapter, 

 gives us some reasonable explana- 

 tion of the presentstate of things in 

 Ireland, and a consideration of the existing 

 necessities of the country will help us to under- 

 standthe requirementsof the future. It is clear, 

 then, that a country, ruined twenty years ago 

 by famine, her system and habits broken up, 

 over-populated, pauperised, undeveloped, and 

 in a great degree unskilled in agriculture, had 

 much, and still has much, to combat. That 

 her difficulties were of no ordinary kind 

 must be apparent, and to say that in 

 the short space of time which has elapsed 

 since the disaster befel her, she has made 

 material progress, is stating a fact which the 

 most ardent agitators cannot deny. The 

 agricultural statistics prove a steady increase 

 in the value of stock, and a considerable 

 annual reclamation of waste land; our 

 Savings' Bank and other deposits are on the 

 increase, and there is no lack of capital ; our 

 railway system continues to be developed, 

 and our labour has risen within the past ten 

 years fully thirty per cent. — altogether, I ques- 

 tion whether there is any country in the world 

 -icdiere the population can more readily obtain 

 employment, or where in the same time such 

 rapid progress has been made. One would 

 VOL. r. 



naturally suppose that these results would aid 

 in making the people happy and contented ; 

 such, however, is not the case, and it is to this 

 anomaly that I now propose to turn my atten- 

 tion. In speaking of Ireland, or considering 

 any question affecting her, anything bearing 

 on agriculture may be looked upon as em- 

 bracing every interest and class in the whole 

 community, and it is on this account that a 

 settlement of the Land Laws or Tenant- 

 Right Question would produce such universal 

 good, and find so many adherents. Devoid 

 almost of mineral resources, with an absence 

 of mechanicalskillortastein herpeople, Ireland 

 up to 1846 had trodden the rude path of agri- 

 culture, with her system almost unquestioned. 

 On the downfall of that system, when tenants 

 and labourers were in a state of starvation — 

 with prostration in trade, heavy rates and 

 unpaid accounts, landlords with unpaid 

 rentals, and priests with diminished dues — 

 there was no difficulty in making the people 

 believe that there was something radically 

 wrong in the laws. The tenants having 

 bought interests in their farms, fined down 

 their rents, and created what they conceived 

 to be considerable improvements, and having 

 made capital bargains with their landlords 

 of a most permanent character, found all 

 suddenly swept away, from their temporary in- 

 ability to fulfil their contract. These men 

 conceived that their downfall 7<.>as directly due 

 to landlord injustice, and tliat the whole difli- 



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