AN IRISH TENANT-AT-WILL.
[To Tits EDITOR OP TUE SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—I have read with much pleasure a letter from Mr. Macfarlane, which I saw copied into a Belfast paper a short time ago. He does not state the whole truth. He does not mention the fact that the Irish landlord scarcely ever does any work ; but on the contrary, as a general rule, he is a hindrance to the investment of capital in the soil by the tenant-farmers. Suppose all the people of Scotland, including the farmers, had built their houses at their own cost, and made every other kind of improvements, and when all this had been done a lot of Irish landlords would proceed, from caprice or avarice, to com- mence a series of wholesale evictions. Such a state of affairs would exactly represent the condition of the 526,000 tenants- at-will, and the relationship which subsists between the owners and occupiers of the soil in Ireland. England, under such circumstances, may go on ruling Ireland for seven more centuries, and at the end of that time she will find the mass of the people just as poor, discontented, and as disloyal, and as full of resentment at her rule, as they are at the present time. There is great talk about the investment of English capital. We do not want it, as we always, from past experience, look upon it with suspicion. What we want is security for our own labour and capital. There are thirty millions of farmers' money lying idle in Irish Banks. Why could not the unfortunate people have security for the investment of that I myself am a tenant-at-will, but thanks to Mr. Gladstone, I enjoy some security. My landlord never expended a halfpenny on my farm: All the buildings, draining, roads, and everything else, have either been done by myself or my predecessor. I have always paid my rent to the day. Yet notwithstanding, I have been served with a notice for a rise of rent, I have been evicted, and my landlord, rather than pay the tenant-right, allowed me to remain. And again lately I was under notice for another rise of rent, and that notice was only withdrawn a few weeks ago. There is great talk about fixity of tenure, but I ask what is the use of it, if a landlord. has the power to send a valuator, and value the tenant's invested capital and improvements, and. then to drag a poor man into a Land Court, perhaps to fight a laud lordleague, and before a Judge who believes that the Laud Act of 1870 is "uncompensated confiscation of the landlords' pro- perty ?" The Pall Mall Gazette, speaking of flax-culture, says how easily this deficiency of flax might be made up, were capital and energy thrown into flax-farming. The observation is very fine in theory, but in practice it will not suit the region of Ireland. I have repeatedly asked both Englishmen and Seotchrnen would they invest their capital without security. "No, they would not." Then what would you do ? They 'answer invariably, "Nothing." So it comes to this,—that poor Paddy is a fool if he invests his money without security ; and if he does not invest or work, he is lazy. Flax-culture, to be carried out successfully, is a very expensive operation. In good, deep, well-drained. clay soil it will stand any kind of weather, and scarcely ever fail, and is the best of all paying crops when successful ; but where is the security for the great expense of bringing the land into a proper state of cultivation? I have some clay-fields which would produce splendid flax. But I am a tenant-at- will, and if I take my money out of the bank and put it into the land, I would get myself into trouble, and have the valuator. on ,me. We hear a great deal of talk about the folly of Irish agitators, but it appears to me that all their say- ings and doings are wisdom, in comparison to the nonsense talked about Ireland in some of the leading London news- papers. We Irish farmers are .asked to make bricks without straw, and to do what none of these fine writers would think of doing themselves,—give away our money without security. What astonishes me is the fact that any body of edu- cated gentlemen could imagine that auy country could be prosperous or contented, where the mass of the people have not security for the investment of their capital or labour. We see the result in Turkey, and we see the same in Ireland. The history of the past and of the present shows that both the Govern- ment and the landlord class have been obstructives in regard to the investment of capital and the industrial education of the cultivators of the soil, and until this obstruction is removed there will be nothing in this country but poverty and. discon- tent; and nothing is more absolutely certain than that whenever the British Government is prepared to perform the duties of a parent to the Irish peasantry, that peasantry will render to it the obedience and affection of a child.—I am, Sir, &c., FRANCIS SHEPHERD. Glaesdrummoncl, Saintfield, County Down, December 17th.
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