The deep acquaintance with Irish character necessary to fully appreciate that while the peasants can be led to almost anything, they can be driven to nothing, was not likely to be found in the speculative purchaser of an estate; nor would he easily realise that in Ireland the ideas of justice and custom are inextricably mingled. Moreover the landlords of large estates are far more likely to deal liberally with their tenants than petty proprietors, and during the first eight years' working of the Incumbered Estates' Act, 3,197 estates passed into the hands of 7,216 purchasers. On the other hand the more business-like characteristics of the new landlords, and the practical interest which they took in the cultivation of their lands, tended to largely increase the surface prosperity of Ireland; while the more reasonable system of agriculture rendered possible by the relief afforded to the land by the removal of the surplus population, and the thinned numbers of the destitute (for the famine had resulted in a literal 'survival of the fittest'), operated in the same direction. Wealth grew and expanded, railways were increased and extended, and facilities for connecting the producing districts with the centres of sale sprang up. Everywhere an apparent prosperity was presented which, though afterwards proved to be illusionary and to have rested on no firm basis, for the time being deceived even shrewd observers. The Irish agrarian troubles seemed things of the past, and the 'Young Ireland' and Fenian risings were neither very considerable nor attended with much important result. The very causes, however, which were rendering the land more valuable, were but increasing the stakes for which landlord and tenant were playing. If the conflicting claims of the landlord's legal title and the tenant's (assumed) moral right had given rise to desperate bitterness of feeling even when only an acre holding and a mud hovel were at stake, naturally the passions were still more excited when interests of substantial value were concerned. The era too of Protestant ascendency had waned. The Catholic Church was now an institution of immense power. Exclusively interested in the tenant, it brought to bear against the landlord class the whole influence of organization, and became the binding force of the native element of disunion. The landlord grasped but more firmly at his rights when he felt the sceptre slipping from him, and under the smiling mask of order the two classes braced themselves for a struggle to the death. CHAPTER VIII. ULSTER TENANT-RIGHT AND THE DEVON COMMISSION. It has been shown that amongst the small holders in Ireland the system of tenure was, from various causes, almost exclusively reduced to a mere holding from year to year; and that under this system (despite the irradicable impression of the Irish peasantry that it amounted to a tenure in perpetuity) the landlord was able to crush out the tenant's interest in the land. It has been shown also that while all the improvements were the work of the occupier he neither acquired a secure interest in his holding, nor any right of compensation if the fruits of his labour were appropriated. In addition it has been pointed out that in the main part of Ireland no customary rights were acquired by the precarious holders. In Ulster, however, things were different, and almost from the time of the formation of the settlement in the reign of James the First, the Protestant tenantry began to rapidly thrive and prosper; whilst a customary usage, so widespread as finally to obtain the formal recognition of the Legislature1, gradually developed. The origin and spread of this Ulster tenant-right is both interesting and important in the history of Irish land law, and the custom has to many persons represented a system which, if extended throughout Ireland, would have solved the agrarian troubles. But as will be seen-though greatly preferable to the total insecurity of tenure prevalent in other parts of the country-it is in some ways unsatisfactory.. 1 See post, p. 140. |