the Act of 1872' to two-thirds of the value of the holding) these purchase clauses failed signally. The new purchase clauses of the Act of 1881 also provided for the advance of money to the purchasing tenant, but regulated the advances in a different way. The Land Commission was empowered, if satisfied with the security, to advance sums to the purchasing tenant to the following amounts.

1. If the tenant is about to purchase from the landlord for a principal sum-then not more than three-fourths of such

sum.

2. If the tenant purchases by paying a fine and engaging to pay a fee-farm rent-then any sum not exceeding one half of the fine, on condition that the fee-farm rent is not more than seventy-five per cent. of what the Commissioners think a fair rent for the holding.

And the Act further sought to facilitate sales to the tenants by allowing the Commission under certain conditions to purchase estates from the landlords and to sell them again to the tenants*; and by allowing the Commission to indemnify the tenant purchasers of an incumbered estate against incumbrances.

This then being an outline of the provisions of the celebrated Act of 1881, which again remodelled the whole of the system of agricultural holdings in Ireland, it is possible in the light of after events to detect many flaws and also to observe many good points. The Act, as has been pointed out, was greatly marred for practical purposes by its own subtlety, and in addition the details as to procedure proved at first to work but indifferently, and complaints were made that the judgments as to improvements, etc. by the Commissioners were

1 35 & 36 Vict. c. 32, sec. 1, subsec. (1).

2 44 & 45 Vict. c. 49, sec. 24, subsec. (1).

3 Such advances to be repaid by an annuity in favour of the Land Commission for 35 years of £5 for every hundred advanced, and so in proportion for every less sum, sec. 28; and

until the whole charge was paid off the tenant might not subdivide or let his holding without consent. Sec. 30, sub-sec. (1) a.

4 Sec. 26, sub-sec. (1); and see Field, p. 341.

5 Sec. 26, sub. -sec. (5).

6 See post p. 179 note 1 as to provi sions for emigration.

not sufficiently specific to set vexed questions finally at rest1.

A large amount of criticism was focused on the Act, and various objections to its principle were raised. It was urged that (apart even from what many considered a most unwarrantable inroad on the rights of the landlord') a dual ownership was established in the soil, a thing which was termed radically evil. Yet this dual ownership is to be found all over Europe, and Ulster tenant-right presents about the one satisfactory feature of the land history of Ireland. Again, another body of the opponents of the Act deplored the vanished rights of the landlord, which they declared to be now reduced to a rentcharge on his estates. Yet he still possessed the remedies of distress, ejectment, action, and injunction; while he had a right to enter on the tenant's land for the purpose of mining, quarrying, hunting3, etc.; possessed rights to woods and minerals, held the reversion of the tenant's estate, and had a right every fifteen years to a revision of rent. It was stated that the principle of the Act was adverse to the making of improvements by the landlord; but where most of the holdings are small, and the works are therefore usually the result of the labour of the tenant, this does not apply as it would in a country where large farms and valuable holdings are the rule".

6

Another class of objections was, that no Government machinery could properly value rents, which were purely local matters and could only be settled fairly by persons intimately acquainted with the particular district under consideration; that the landlord would still incur odium by having to resort to eviction on breach of the statutory conditions; that the rent

1 See Report of Select Committee of the House of Lords, 1882.

2 And without expressing an opinion as to whether the exigencies of the Irish situation made the recognition of tenant-rights in the land imperative or not, there is no doubt that his rights were largely restricted.

3 Sec. 5, sub-sec. (5).

4 O'Connor Morris, Land System of Ireland, part II. L. Q. Review, January, 1888.

5 Ibid.

6 This objection was urged by Mr Bonamy Price in his special report on the Richmond Commission.

which would be fair from a poor tenant would be too small if paid by a richer one; and that despite the provisions against subdivision and subletting, the ultimate effect of the Act would be to increase or at least perpetuate 'starvation holdings.'

In all of these last objections there lies a germ of truth, but none of them were sufficiently developed to cause serious harm, and had the Act succeeded in other ways it would have compensated for the smaller evils caused. Unfortunately the purchase clauses, which were held the most vital portion of the measure, failed completely. The Select Committee of the House of Lords, which in 1882 examined the working of the Act, cast some light on the reason of this failure', the evidence tending to show that the Land Commission should be empowered to advance the whole purchase-money2 of his holding to the tenant to render purchase possible; the amount which might be advanced under the Act being insufficient. The Committee themselves ascribed the failure of the purchase clauses to the fact, that:

3

1. When a limited owner sold to a tenant the money passed into Chancery, and was invested on the low interest of Government Stock, while the expenses of the process were heavy.

2. When the land is subject to a quit rent*, all the holdings into which any estate is divided remain liable for it, the Commissioners not being able to apportion, &c.

3. "Under the present arrangements there is no sufficient inducement to the tenant to purchase his holding at any price at which the owner would be likely to sell it;" this arising not so much from the fault of the provisions for purchase as from the singularly good position of the tenant of a statutory term.

1 It must be remembered that this Committee was appointed in the face of the opposition of the House of Commons, and represented practically the landlord interest. A preliminary report was published but not a final one, as the evidence of the sub-commissioners working under the Act could not be obtained, owing to their duties

keeping them in Ireland.

2 The Committee suggested that the loans should be advanced at 3 per cent. or 4 per cent.

3 Preliminary Report of the Select Committee, 1882, Parliamentary Papers Vol. VIII.

4 And nearly one-third of the land of Ireland was so subject.

It is undeniable that the efforts of the agitation, which has exerted such an influence on the minds and methods of the Irish peasantry, has been employed rather against the acceptance by the tenantry of the advantages of the Act, while it' has pointedly prevented the working of the provisions for free sale'. As a result the Act of 1881 has failed to allay the popular discontent, and the tenantry have on the whole made scanty use of its provisions. A very large number of applications to fix fair rents' have indeed been made, but during the first year of the Act only forty cases of application for judicial leases came before the Court, and during the same period only 85 tenants made use of the purchase clauses. In some ways this would tend to show that the question of fair rent is the one which tenants regard as being of the most vital importance, and would rather militate against the idea that they are eager to possess the fee of the soil.

The position of the agricultural tenants in Ireland under the Acts of 1870 and 1881 is certainly remarkable; for their tenure, which before these Acts was marked by complete uncertainty, has been changed to one in the highest degree favourable to the tenant. The attempt to reconcile law and fact by constructing statutes on the basis of the ideas and expectations of the tenantry has been carried to a remarkable extent, and the position of the Irish tenant from year to year is absolutely unique in the manner in which it is fenced and protected by legislation, until it greatly resembles a tenancy in perpetuity. Despite the faults which have been pointed out in the Acts of over-subtlety and want of finality, it is hard not to believe that they contain within them the groundwork of a satisfactory settlement of the land question.

1 See O'Connor Morris, L. Q. Review, 1888.

2 See Field, p. 357. No less than 80,187 notices to fix being lodged in the first year of the Act.

3 "Three leases only were executed and sealed during the year. Twenty

applications for fixed tenancies, two of which were withdrawn, while 15 were pending and three had been granted, and the necessary documents sealed." See Field, p. 357, from Report of the Irish Land Commissioners of the first year's working of the Act.

CHAPTER XII.

RECENT LEGISLATION.

No sooner had the Act of 1881 granted to the Irish tenant a degree of legislative protection unexampled in the history of English law than popular demands again became heard, and it was apparent that instead of solving the agrarian difficulty the Act had but whetted the desire for further concession. Two objects were now aimed at by even the more moderate of the tenants, (1) the abolition of arrears, and (2) the creation of an absolute peasant proprietary. The political complications of 1882 are too much concerned with present controversial politics to fall within the scope of this essay. But, whatever the cause, the state of Ireland was most critical. The 'no rent' agitation which has met with such universal condemnation had been started at the end of 1881; and the following year was marked by a ghastly catalogue of crime, while disorder and disaffection ran riot through the land.

On the 15th of May 1882 Mr Gladstone introduced to Parliament a Bill dealing with arrears. It had been the complaint of the tenants in Ireland that despite the provisions of the Act of 1881 their liability to eviction had not been lessened owing to the burden of arrears of rent which incumbered them, and they stated that large numbers of evictions on this ground were taking place. On the second reading of the Arrears Bill, Mr Gladstone admitted that the interference of the Legislature with respect to arrears of rent was exceptional and extraordinary', and that neither on economic nor constitutional principles could State interference by compulsion and gifts with

1 Hansard, 3rd series, CCLXIX. p. 1270.