HC Deb 25 July 1879 vol 248 cc1373-6
MR. O'DONNELL

said, he did not propose, at that late hour, to go on with the Motion which stood in his name; but he desired to correct an impression which was current in this country. He had proposed to call attention to the severe agricultural distress now existing in Ireland, and to move— That the power of landlords to exact by eviction in times of scarcity the rents imposed upon tenants in prosperous times is a fertile source of discontent and dissatisfaction, and a gross violation of natural justice and equity. County after county in Ireland had placed on record, by great public meetings, its sense of the imminence and seriousness of the crisis; and, accompanying these protests, had been declarations in favour of a reduction in rents. It had been represented in this country that the demand of these meetings was in favour of the abolition of rents and the non-payment of rents. He was not going into the question; he only wished to place on record his emphatic testimony—which was also the emphatic testimony of many Irish Members—that no such cry was being raised in Ireland. In England, reductions of rent, to the honour of landlords, were taking place, while in Ireland that was only happening to a very limited extent. An idea was abroad that Communism was prevalent in Ireland. He only wished to say again that no such thing had been mentioned at public meetings, and that all the tenant farmers asked and pleaded for was a just reduction of rents in some proportion to the severe and exceptional crisis.

MR. P. MARTIN

said, he wished to correct a misapprehension which appeared to exist as to the extent and nature of the demand made by Irish tenants for fixity of tenure. If Englishmen moved amongst the farming class in Ireland and attended their meetings, as he had done, they would find no desire existed amongst the farmers as a class to become the possessors of property by unfair means. They simply claimed legal protection and safety of tenure in their holdings, and an adjustment of rents on fair and equitable terms. Various causes peculiar to Ireland rendered it necessary that legislative protection should be given against capricious or arbitrary rent-raising by giving the tenant the power of appeal in the matter of rent to some important tribunal. The justice and expediency of this had been conceded in principle by many Members who, though opponents of the measure brought in by the Member for Cork (Mr. Shaw) had themselves, in this very Session, introduced Bills which professed to prevent the landlord from arbitrarily imposing on a tenant such conditions in respect to his holding as the landlord thought fit to impose. It was idle to attempt to represent the claim thus made as communistic in its character. It was but too true that strong and uncalled-for expressions had been used by the Chief Secretary for Ireland; but he (Mr. P. Martin) could not believe that the sentiments of the Chief Secretary had the assent of the Government, and they were certainly at variance with the expressed opinions of many Members who sat on his own side. Indeed, so far as related to the Land Question in the Province of Ulster, there had been presented already by Conservative Members, obedient to the command of those who occupied the Ministerial Benches, a succession of Tenant Eight Bills, which, if they meant anything, were Bills to settle, on equitable bases, the grievances under which the tenant farmers suffered. Actual support was given by the Government to a Bill to create tenant right in the Northern Province at the expiration of, and notwithstanding the contract created by, lease. It was high time for the House to give a fair consideration to the demands made by the tenantry in the other Provinces in Ireland. If it was imagined that there was a general outcry for the abolition of rents in Ireland, the House was utterly deceived, and any man who asserted it was giving false information. What the farmers had asked in their meetings was the same thing as that stated over and over again in that House. What they wanted in the other parts of Ireland was the extension of the Ulster custom in its pristine integrity. In Ireland a totally different state of things existed, as compared with England. In Ireland they had not a resident gentry to aid their tenants in times of difficulty; but in too many instances they had completely absentee proprietors, who looked only to the amount of the rent-roll. The tenants, he admitted, had prejudiced their interests by over-bidding for land; but how could that be helped, when the land was the only resource to which they could look? In Ireland they had no manufacturing pursuits, and so they were compelled to over-bid for land. It was all very well to praise freedom of contract in the abstract. But the question was, having regard to the circumstances and past history of Ireland, and the tenure of land in that country, was that principle to be permitted uncontrolled power in regulating dealings in land? On the contrary, over and over again, it had asserted that it could not. He heartily believed that if the House would carefully and diligently search out an equitable adjustment of this difficulty, the great number of those speeches preaching disaffection to British rule would be at an end, and the Irish people would see that Parliament was anxious to arrive at the true solution of the difficulty. Tenant right had created the prosperity of the North. Why not, then, boldly extend it to the rest of Ireland? Was it likely to spread content that the Government should sanction a Bill which caused in the Northern part of the Island tenant right to spring into existence, despite contract, and to leave in the other parts of Ireland the tenant at the mercy of the landlord? Why, then, should not one law be applied to the whole country? Let similar principles in respect to tenant right prevail over the entire country. The Bill of the noble Lord the Member for the County Down (Lord Arthur Hill-Trevor) gave a convincing proof of the esteem in which the Ulster custom was held; and he trusted the Government would extend, perpetuate, and strengthen that custom, not merely in the North, but over the entire country.

Question put, and agreed to.