Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1901-1910; Land tenure -- Ireland
these, by this Act; they are not within the protection of the Act of 1870,
if improvements of any kind are excluded by it; if a tenant, therefore,
makes an improvement on his farm, which is not 'suitable' to it in a real
sense, say, builds a mansion upon a petty holding, he will not be entitled
to compensation, should he quit it, even though dispossessed for
non-payment of his rent. But tenants, in these circumstances, like those I
have referred to before, would assuredly proclaim that they had here a
great and real grievance; and they would be relieved from it, doubtless,
by another law, giving them compensation, perhaps, to their landlord's
ruin. A dangerous principle is thus hidden within the Act; this will
probably be asserted against the owners of ground rents, not only in
Ireland, but in England and Scotland; and the law, taken as a whole, has
strengthened the claim of the Irish landed gentry to be indemnified, as
was solemnly promised, for what they have suffered from the legislation
begun in 1881.
While the Irish land system was thus being dealt with, on the side of
occupation, during many years, experiments were made on it, likewise on
the side of ownership. Resenting the legislation that had produced the
'Three F's,' Conservative politicians took it into their heads that Mr.
Gladstone had 'created' 'dual ownership,' as they gave it the name, in
Ireland; they insisted that this was simply an intolerable thing.
Unfortunately Mr. Gladstone had no more 'created dual ownership' than he
had created the mountains and lakes of Ireland; he had only developed the
joint ownership, which the Irish tenant possessed in his holding, in
thousands of instances, if he had developed it under the very worst
conditions. This theory, however, at which Burke would have laughed with
contempt, and which revealed the incapacity to understand Irish land
tenure, ingrained, it would appear, in the English mind, was eagerly taken
up and found much support; it was resolved to extend the process of
converting tenants in Ireland into owners of their farms, by a method
hitherto untried, and unknown in any part of Europe. Under the Church
Disestablishment Act, and the Land Acts of 1870 and 1881, the State had
advanced money to the occupier of the Irish soil, in order to enable him
to acquire his farm; but it had made it incumbent on him to contribute
part of the price; the transaction, therefore, was, in a real sense, a
purchase. This, the only security for honesty and thrift, was taken away
in 1885; Parliament passed an Act enabling the Irish tenant to become
owner of his holding without paying down a shilling; the State was to
advance the whole price; and the State was to be repaid by a terminable
annuity, charged on the land, and extinguished at the end of less than
half a century. This terminable annuity was to be much less than a true
rent, or even than a 'fair rent' adjusted by the State; the transaction,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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