112 GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND - MISCELIyANEOUS 



2. — THE PAIR RENT PROVISIONS OF THE IRISH LAND ACTS. 



By A. P. Magill, of the Estates Commission, Dublin. 



Introduction. 



" As long as a numerous population is cursed with a morbid craving 

 to possess land, so long will the owner of land be able to drive hard bargains 

 in spite of Queen, I/5rds and Commons." This sentence of Lord Duff erin 

 (" Tenure of Land in Ireland, " 1867) states in a few words the Irish Land 

 Question as it existed in the middle of the last century. 



Until the close of the i8th. century Ireland was a pastoral country, 

 for which its soil and climate made it eminently suitable. Even in Eliza- 

 bethan times we find Spenser complaining that " all men fell to pasturage 

 and none to husbandry. " A considerable change took place, however, 

 towards the end of the 18th. century, due to several causes. In 1783 and 

 1784 bounties were granted by the Irish Parliament on the exportation of 

 grain, while in 1806 all restrictions on the trade in corn between England 

 and Ireland were swept away. The great rise in the price of corn in Great 

 Britain caused by the Napoleonic Wars, and the growth of the industrial 

 population of England, which led to an increased demand for food stuffs, 

 largely increased the profits to be derived from tillage. The result was a 

 great increase in the amount of land tmder tillage. The change from 

 pasture to tillage was accompanied by a great extension of the system of 

 subdividing and subletting farms, and the fact that except in the North 

 East there were no manufactures in Ireland, and no market for labour 

 except on the land, strengthened the tendency to subdivision. The pos- 

 session of a plot of land was an absolute necessity to an Irish peasant ; 

 without it the only alternative to starvation was emigration, and it is not to 

 be wondered at that the ordinary farmer, realising this, strove to meet the 

 situation by dividing his farm amongst his family. The Report of the Devon 

 Commission (1844) gives abvmdant evidence of this tendency of the Irish 

 farmer to provide for his family by giving each of his sons, and often his 

 sons-in-law, a plot of land, with the natural result that in a generation or 

 two the holdings became so small that it was utterly impossible to support 

 a family out of the produce. It was this that drove the people to rely 

 solely on the potato, with the appalling result of the Famine years. Even 



