FullReads

The supremacy of the Imperial Parliament over all parts of the Empire is an inherent quality of which Parliament cannot divest itself, inasmuch as it cannot bind its successors or prevent them from repealing any prior Act. In order, however, to prevent any misapprehension on this point clause 37 was inserted, the efficacy of which, owing in great measure to a misprint, has been doubted. It is enough to state here that it was intended by express legislation to reserve all powers to the Imperial Parliament, and had the Bill gone into Committee the question would have been placed beyond the reach of cavil by a slight alteration in the wording of the clause. This summary may be concluded by the statement that the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords over actions and suits arising in Ireland (except in respect of constitutional questions reserved for the determination of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as explained above), and with respect to claims for Irish Peerages, is preserved intact.

The object of the Land Bill was a political one: to promote the contentment of the people, and the cause of good government in Ireland, by settling once and for ever the vexed question relating to land. To do this effectually it was necessary to devise a system under which the tenants, as a class, should become interested in the maintenance of social order, and be furnished with substantial inducements to rally round the institutions of their country. On the other hand, it was just and right that the landlords should participate in the benefits of any measure proposed for remedying the evils attendant upon the tenure of land in Ireland; and should be enabled to rid themselves, on fair terms, of their estates in cases where, from apprehension of impending changes, or for pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves from the responsibilities of ownership. Further, it was felt by the framers of the Bill that a moral obligation rested on the Imperial Government to remove, if possible, “the fearful exasperations attending the agrarian relations in Ireland,” rather than leave a question so fraught with danger, and so involved in difficulty, to be determined by the Irish Government on its first entry on official existence. Such were the governing motives for bringing in the Land Bill.

To understand an Irish Land Bill it is necessary to dismiss at once all ideas of the ordinary relations between landlord and tenant in England, and to grasp a true conception of the condition of an Irish tenanted estate. In England the relation between the landlord and tenant of a farm resembles, with a difference in the subject-matter, the relation between the landlord and tenant of a furnished house. In the case of the house, the landlord keeps it in a state fit for habitation, and the tenant pays rent for the privilege of living in another man’s house. In the case of the farm, the landlord provides the farm with house, farm-buildings, gates, and other permanent improvements required to fit it for cultivation by the tenant, and the tenant pays rent for the privilege of cultivating the farm, receiving the proceeds of that cultivation. The characters of owner and tenant, however long the connection between them may subsist, are quite distinct. The tenant does no acts of ownership, and never regards the land as belonging to himself, quitting it without hesitation if he can make more money by taking another farm. In Ireland the whole situation is different: instead of a farm of some one hundred or two hundred acres, the tenant has a holding varying, say, from five to fifty acres, for which he pays an annual rent-charge to the landlord. He, or his ancestors have, in the opinion of the tenant, acquired a quasi-ownership in the land by making all the improvements, and he is only removable on non-payment of the fixed rent, or non-fulfilment of certain specified conditions. In short, in Ireland the ownership is dual: the landlord is merely the lord of a quasi-copyhold manor, consisting of numerous small tenements held by quasi-copyholders who, so long as they pay what may be called the manorial rents, and fulfil the manorial conditions, regard themselves as independent owners of their holdings. An Irish Land Bill, then, dealing with tenanted estates, is, in fact, merely a Bill for converting the small holders of tenements held at a fixed rent into fee-simple owners by redemption of the rent due to the landlord and a transfer of the land to the holders. Every scheme, therefore, for settling the Land question in Ireland resolves itself into an inquiry as to the best mode of paying off the rent-charges due to the landlord. The tenant cannot, of course, raise the capital sufficient for paying off the redemption money; some State authority must, therefore, intervene and advance the whole or the greater part of that money, and recoup itself for the advance by the creation in its own favour of an annual charge on the holding sufficient to repay in a certain number of years both the principal and interest due in respect of the advance.