IRELAND. 



403 



continue in undisturbed possession so long as 

 they act properly and pay their rents." This 

 gave the yearly tenant a perpetual lease for 

 good behavior, and rendered him independent 

 of the landlord. 2. " The correlative right of 

 the landlord periodically to raise the rent, so 

 as to give a just, fair, and full participation in 

 the increased value of the land, but not so as 

 to extinguish the tenants' interest by imposing 

 a rack-rent." As far as the sections of the 

 Gladstone Land Act referred to Ulster, they 

 gave to the landlords and tenants of that 

 province entire satisfaction. Three sections of 

 the Land Act affected particularly the prov- 

 inces other than Ulster. By the third section, 

 any tenant who is " disturbed " in his holding, 

 may receive compensation upon quitting it; in 

 other words, a pecuniary fine is placed on evic- 

 tion. By " disturbance" any eviction caused 

 by no fault of the tenant is understood. The 

 non-payment of rent, as cause of eviction, would 

 not be included under this head; eviction for 

 the purpose of putting cultivated land into pas- 

 ture-land would be judged a disturbance. By 

 the fourth section, the tenant is secured com- 

 pensation for improvements which he or his 

 predecessors in title may have made. Previ- 

 ously the landlord had, at the close of any 

 tenancy, considered himself entitled to all im- 

 provements made on the land except recog- 

 nized fixtures. This is one of the most impor- 

 tant sections of the Land Act of 1870. By the 

 seventh section it was declared that, if a tenant 

 had paid money on account of coming into his 

 holding, on quitting it, he should receive some 

 compensation for such payment. The tenant 

 right created by these three sections for the 

 peasants of southern Ireland, though not ex- 

 actly the Ulster right, is something like it, but 

 the hope of the Gladstone Government that it 

 would place the three provinces on a level with 

 Ulster in regard to prosperity were not ful- 

 filled. It became apparent to the landlords 

 that an estate in the hands of a few large farm- 

 ers was more manageable, and in every way 

 more desirable, than an estate divided among 

 a large number of peasant tenants; and it was 

 also discovered that, on account of the new kind 

 of property which could be created under the 

 act, the process of change was not altogether 

 unprofitable to them. Accordingly, evictions 

 have not ceased since 1870, and farmers have 

 found it nscessary to form clubs to "protect 

 tenants' rights under the act, and to have the 

 act amended." 



The second great principle embodied in the 

 Gladstone Land Act of 1870 is a recognition of 

 the superiority of peasant proprietorship over 

 any form of tenure whatever, and the right of 

 the Government to assist peasants to become 

 proprietors in full of their holdings. The act 

 permitted the Government, through a Board of 

 Works, to advance two thirds of the purchase 

 money in any case where the landlord was 

 willing to sell. If the supporters of this claim 

 expected any rapid change in the tenure of 



land, they were doomed to disappointment. 

 The landlord, not being forced to sell, would 

 only part with his estate for pecuniary consid- 

 erations, and it has ever been found to be more 

 advantageous to him to sell his estate as a 

 whole to an incoming landlord than to sell in 

 small farms to the tenants. 



Previous to the reaccession of the Liberal 

 party to power, in 1880, Sir Stafford Northeote, 

 a member of the Disraeli Government, intro- 

 duced a bill, which afterward became a law, 

 proposing that the Government be empowered 

 to loan money to Irish landlords at the rate of 

 one per cent, for the improvement of their es- 

 tates. On the Liberal side Mr. Bright proposed 

 that the Government buy all estates offered for 

 sale, and resell in small farms on thirty-six 

 years' time, and further, that the Government 

 buy by forced sales, for this purpose, all lands 

 held by corporations. Irish dissatisfaction with 

 English law greatly increased in 1877 and 1878, 

 when the harvests were bad, and still more in 



1879, when the harvest was a total failure. In 

 October, 1879, Mr. Parnell organized the Nation- 

 al Irish Land League, of which he was chosen 

 president. The League declared its objects to 

 be a reduction of rents, and refusal to pay if 

 such a reduction were refused ; and, finally, an 

 entire change in the land laws, peasant pro- 

 prietors to be substituted for the landlord. 

 (See "Annual Cyclopaedia" for 1879.) 



The violent agitation, of which Ireland had 

 been the scene in 1879, continued unabated 

 throughout th e year 1 880. Severe distress pre- 

 vailed in Ireland during a part of January, 



1880, and the attempts of the agents of land- 

 lords to collect rent were frequently attended 

 by disorders. The Roman Catholic Bishop of 

 Elphin said, in a letter to the Dublin Mansion 

 House Relief Fund, that the failure of the crops 

 and the loss and depreciation of live stock had 

 pressed with exceptional severity in Sligo and 

 Roscommon. In the towns the tenants were 

 unable to pay rents, landlords were strait- 

 ened and embarrassed, and the distress was 

 universal, while in the cottier and small tenant 

 class thousands of families were suffering from 

 hunger. The conviction was general that re- 

 lief should come from the treasury. Mr. Da- 

 vitt reported to a meeting of the National Land 

 League that, in Connemara, all expressed the 

 belief that private charity would not be able to 

 cope with the distress between March and June, 

 and that Government aid alone would prevent 

 starvation. 



The Government determined, in order to help 

 to relieve the distress, to extend the facilities 

 for loans that had lately been offered under the 

 Board of Public Works by taking 250,000 

 from the Church Surplus Fund, to be advanced 

 so far as might be required, with the expecta- 

 tion of obtaining from Parliament an act of in- 

 demnity for the step. It was proposed that 

 each of the loans should be paid back at the 

 end of thirty-five years, making the annual 

 charge for repayment of principal and interest 



