MOTION FOR A PAPER. (Hansard, 2 May 1887)

THE EARL OF BELMORE
said, he rose to call attention to the question of improvements made on their estates by owners of land in Ireland; and to move for a Return in tabular form of—I. 520 Totals of Loans by the Board of Public Works in Ireland for land improvement made between 1847 and 1881 inclusive to owners of land for (a) Erection of farmhouses and offices; (b) Labourers' cottages; (c) Drainage, reclamation, and improvement of lands; II. Totals of Loans between the same years to Drainage Boards; III. and IV. Similar Re-turns since 1881. He was impelled to move for this Return in consequence of the statements made in the debate on the second reading of the Irish land Bill by his noble Friend Earl Cowper, who had been both Lord Lieutenant and also President of the late Royal Commission, and whose utterances therefore commanded such attention, and had been, indeed, since quoted in another place against the landlords by a late Minister. His noble Friend had then rather astonished him by saying that the impression left upon his mind by the inquiries he had made—whilst presiding over the Royal Commission—was that except upon as many estates as one could count upon one's fingers, the landlords had not been in the habit of making in any expenditure upon their estates, and that in cases where the tenants had effected improvements it had been a general custom with the landlords to raise the rents. He had only one word to say with regard to the latter point, and he would say that first of all. He had no doubt read of such cases in the Press, and he had heard of one single case of late years on the part of a gentleman who was now dead, but he denied that the practice was a general one. With regard to the question of expenditure, he entirely dissented from the statement of the noble Earl. He was prepared to admit that in former days it was not the custom for landowners to spend money upon their estates. But to take the case of the North of Ireland, which had been settled by the plantation of Ulster in the reign of James I.—which was a colonizing scheme—it was governed by the rules of the Plantation, and one of the most important provisions of that system was the giving very long leases for lives or for other long terms, which grew into a custom. Upon that he did not believe much improvement was made until the middle or end of the last century. They gathered from the 521 very interesting account given of a tour by Mr. Arthur Young in Ireland in 1776, that an extensive system of overcropping then prevailed among the tenants. That clearly showed that no agricultural value could have been added to the land at that time or, indeed, for a very long time afterwards. He believed that in the latter part of the last century landlords were alive to the desirability of the maintenance of their estates, and by way of illustration he might say that he had in his possession the counterpart of a lease granted by the first Earl of Belmore in 1795, in which, in addition to rent, the tenant was bound to make some 50 yards of fences every year, and plant trees along them, during the term of a lease for three lives, or else pay 8s. extra a year. Further, he had to build two farmhouses or cottages or pay a small penalty. When the lease fell in all these improvements were to belong to the landlord, and all this was fully understood by the tenant. He always maintained that the landlord paid for the improvement by taking a smaller rent for the farm than he otherwise would have taken if he had to pay separately for the improvements made. The tenant was thus paid for his improvement by the long lease of his farm at a low rent. In modern times the landlords had spent large sums of money in improving their estates. There were some estates which, no doubt, his noble Friend had in his mind's eye when he spoke of landlords who did not make all the improvements themselves. But these, which were generally known as the English managed estates, were very exceptional, probably not more than five. There were landlords who had spent in improvements large sums obtained from the Board of Works, which sums could be shown in a Return made to Parliament. It was impossible on some estates to show how much had been spent on home farming, or how much upon improving the estate, but there was no doubt that in the aggregate it amounted to a very large sum of money. But besides that, there was another very large source of expenditure which it was impossible almost to get at—namely, the money paid for timber and slates allowed to-tenants by landlords in many parts of the country. He understood that there had been a very large expenditure in that direction 522 by the late Duke of Abercorn, in addition to a large amount of loans borrowed from the Board of Works. The late Earl of Caledon also had, he had heard, made a largo outlay in improvements on his estates after the famine time. He therefore felt that it was extremely unfair that landlords who had made sacrifices in this way should be condemned, as they had been condemned by implication in the statement of his noble Friend (Earl Cowper). He quite admitted that his noble Friend had a perfect right to form his own opinion. But in moving for this Return of money spent on their estates by improving landlords between the years 1848 and 1881, he wished to show their Lordships that the great bulk of the landlords in Ireland did not neglect the duties of their position, and spent large sums in providing for the welfare of their tenantry. He believed that some expenditure had been made since 1881, and he, therefore, included a head for such, in his Motion, and also for loans made to Drainage Boards, the interest of which would be paid partly by tenants and partly by landlords.

§ THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (Earl CADOGAN)
said, there was no objection on the part of the Government to the Return being given for which the noble Earl moved. It should be laid on the Table as soon as possible.

§ EARL COWPER
said, that as reference had been made to some observations of his he desired to say a few words. He was exceedingly sorry if he gave any cause for annoyance or dissatisfaction to any noble Lords in that House. His remarks on the point referred to were quite unpremeditated, and were called forth by the speech of the noble Duke (the Duke of Argyll) who, speaking the same night earlier in the debate, had found fault with the 523 Land Act of 1881 on the ground that it stopped all improvements on the part of landlords. In answering that argument of the noble Duke, he pointed out that he did not believe that improvements as a rule were made by the landlords—that they were, in fact, usually made by the tenants, and that the only plan was to encourage tenants to make improvements, and to protect such improvements when made. He qualified his remarks by saying that "until recently" one could count on one's fingers the Irish estates on which improvements were made by the landlords. He was very glad that the Government had granted the Return, as he felt sure that the improvements which had been made by the landlords ought to be known to the public generally. In the course of the inquiry, which with the other members of the Commission, he recently made in Ireland, the question was often put as to the difference between the net and the gross income of an estate, and the difference was usually represented at 15 per cent. In some cases it was put at 20 per cent. This included agency and rates, and was very much less than was the case upon English estates. He would appeal to any noble Lord present to state whether he was not under the mark in saying that in one form or another fully one-half of the nominal income went back upon the land. In the case of a friend of his own, the owner of 70,000 acres, the carefully-kept accounts of the estate showed that in 22 years no less than £930,390 had been expended on the land and in improvements. In the face of those figures he thought he was justified in saying that as a rule improvements had been made in Ireland by the tenant, and in many cases the rent had been raised upon such improvements. Members of that House who were Irish landlords could not be taken as typical of the class of Irish landlords. Many landlords in Ireland had, owing to the improvidence of their ancestors, been placed in very straitened circumstances, and cases of rents being raised on improvements made by the tenant certainly had frequently occurred. As he had said, he should be glad to see this Return furnished, so that it might be shown what landlords had done in this matter. He fully realized that Irish landlords were at the present time, 524 owing to no fault of their own, in a very difficult position. Many of them were trying to do their duty under very adverse circumstances, and he was sorry if he said anything that caused offence to them.

§ THE EARL OF ERNE
said, he was sorry that the noble Lord had not withdrawn the statements more fully than he had done. Such statements, coming from one who had filled the high position of Viceroy, and who lately presided over an important Royal Commission in Ireland, could not fail to unduly prejudice public opinion against the Irish landlords in the settlement of the Irish Land Question, which now could not be very far distant. He merely rose to express his regret that this was not done, and to give one reason why Irish landlords could not improve their estates in the way that English landlords did, and that was the immense number of small holdings that existed on most of them. He had taken some figures on the subject from a Return which had been made to their Lordships' House. Prom this Return it appeared that there were 660,000 agricultural holdings in Ireland. Of these 415,000, or nearly two-thirds, were under £10 rental, and of these 215,000 were under £5 rental, while the average value of the holdings in that country was only £13 and a fraction each. Now, under these circumstances, was it possible for Irish landlords to improve their estates in the same way as English landlords? Nevertheless, the Irish landlords had spent large sums of money on improvements, as can be shown by the statistics asked for; and, in addition, had given very large remissions of rent to their tenants to aid them in making them. He believed that in many cases these improvements, which had been made with money given by the landlord, had been confiscated by the Sub-commissioners when fixing the judicial rents.

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL
said, that the speech of his noble Friend (Earl Cowper) failed to show that the criticisms which he had recently passed on the Act of 1881 were ill founded. His noble Friend said that it was the object of that Act to secure to the tenant the benefit of his improvements. Of that object of the measure he entirely approved. But he must point out that the promoters of the measure also intended 525 to secure to the landlords a fair share of the benefits of the improvements made by them. By the proviso at the end of Section 5 permission was given to increase the rent of a holding, subject to a statutory term in respect of capital laid out by the landlord on improvements. This proviso, in fact, allowed free contract between landlord and tenant in a material particular. Unfortunately, the provision was rendered worthless by the rule that at the expiration of every 15 years a tenant might ask for a revision of his rent. Fifteen years was not in itself a sufficiently long term to secure the repayment of capital spent on improvements and interest thereon, and as the rent might be revised at the end of that term, the landlord could not be certain that his improvements would be paid for. There was no probability whatever, under the Act of 1881, that a landlord would effect any improvements on the land held by his tenants, for he could not be sure that he would ever recover the capital spent upon them. That was the great defect of the Act. With reference to the question of raising rent on a tenant's improvements, he would like to know whether those who condemned the practice so vehemently disapproved what were called "improvement leases." In England leases of that kind were common. A tenant was granted a lease at a low rent in consideration of the improvements which he might affect, and at the end of a given period the rent could be raised. Surely there could be no objection to a contract of that sort. As to the Return which had been asked for, he feared that it would not cover the whole ground. It would not present any estimate of the amount of assistance given by landlords to the small tenantry in the improvement of their cottages. Landlords often contributed slates, wood, and lime—in other words, all that cost money—towards the improvement of thatched cottages, while the tenants only contributed the labour. If the system of landowning was to continue in Ireland, some means ought to be taken to encourage landlords to lay out capital on the land. Modifications ought to be introduced into the Act of 1881 for the purpose of rendering unassailable bargains made by landlords with their tenants with a view to the improvement of the land. In the absence of such 526 modifications landlords would not ex-spend a single farthing. He could conceive no greater calamity than that the whole rental of a country should be withdrawn out of the fund which, in happier circumstances, would be available for agricultural purposes. In Ireland there was still a vast field for the introduction of agricultural improvements, a great portion of the country being absolutely unreclaimed. He trusted that some system would be devised under which landlords would be encouraged to make improvements.

THE EARL OF BELMORE
said, in reply, that the noble Earl (Earl Cowper) had, in making his comparison between what he thought the small expenditure of Irish landlords, with the large amounts spent by English ones, entirely omitted to notice the very valuable tenant-right interest of the Irish farmers in their farms, which, of course, the English ones, who did not make improvements, did not acquire. To make a fair comparison this should be taken into account.