Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1901-1910; Land tenure -- Ireland
Ireland; these men should visit, when required, estates; and having heard
what landlords and tenants had to say on the spot, should declare what
they consider the 'fair rents' of farms, making a deduction for
improvements as arranged by a reformed law, and taking waste and
deterioration into account. The reports made by the valuers should be
complete and explicit; they would probably satisfy landlords and tenants
in most instances; but dissatisfied persons should have a right to an
appeal, which should be a full rehearing of all the facts in issue; but
the appeal should be at the peril of costs against unsuccessful suitors.
The tribunals to decide the appeals should, I suggest, be composed of two
eminent judges, for each of the four provinces, assisted by trained
agricultural experts; but the authority of the judges should prevail on
all questions. From these Courts a further appeal should run to the Court
of Appeal in Ireland, on all matters of law and fact, and ultimately
should run to the House of Lords; the present restricted appeal to the
Land Commission has been little better than a sorry mockery of right.
The scheme I propose has obvious defects; it sanctions the vicious
principle of State-settled rents, a thing unknown in lands outside of
Ireland, a defiance of the simplest axioms of economic science. But it
endeavours at least to improve a bad system of tenure dealing with
accomplished facts now beyond recall; I certainly think it would make the
relations of Irish landlords and tenants better than they are, and would
tend to place both classes in the positions which, as affairs now stand,
they will probably, in the long run, occupy. As regards 'alternative
policies,' as they have been called, I have set forth the reasons that the
compulsory purchase of the Irish land would be, I believe, impossible,
and, were it possible, would be a confiscation of the foullest kind,
ruinous to Great Britain and Ireland alike. I have also shown how the
present system of so-styled 'voluntary purchase' is, in my judgment,
essentially immoral, and pregnant with dangers; and I have indicated the
results being already produced. That system, however, must go on; for the
present it cannot be arrested; a Conservative Government still pins its
faith on it, as a Whig Government, half a century ago, pinned its faith on
the Encumbered Estates Act; but a 'peasant proprietary' rooted in
corruption will hardly succeed, and 'voluntary purchase' draws the worst
kind of distinctions in Irish land tenure. The acceleration, indeed, of
this 'remedy' has been deemed advisable; and as long as the sum voted by
Parliament is not expended, the system evidently must continue in force.
Some of its evils, however, would be lessened were the State to reserve to
itself the woodland, which tenant 'purchasers,' as a rule, cut down and
sell; and if tenants proved to be solvent were compelled to advance part
of the money required to transfer their lands to themselves. It is
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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