§ MR. J. C. FLYNN (Cork, N.)said, the question to which he wished to draw the attention of the House was one which excited great attention in Ireland. There was no doubt that the administration of the Land Acts by that Commission went to the root of the land question, and probably affected the prosperity of Ireland more than any other which could be named offhand. Many a good Act had been spoiled by bad administration, and he contended that the system under which the Commissioners and Sub-Commissioners worked had done much to reduce the Land Acts to a nullity, and had deprived the tillers of the soil of the benefits intended to be conferred on them by the Legislature. Previous to the Act of 1891, the Commissioners were responsible to Parliament, but their salaries were then put on the Consolidated Fund, so that the public had no control over their decisions. This Act stereotyped officialism in the administration of the Land Act in a manner which was detrimental to the interests and prosperity of Ireland. The Assistant Commissioners were placed in the position of permanent civil servants, but as to that he had no damaging criticisms to make. Altogether, the administration of this Department cost the enormous sum of £86,000 a year. All the appointments were practically in the hands of the Chief Secretary. Complaints now came from all parts of the country, Ulster being more vehement in her protest and more prone to agitation than any other part of Ireland. [''Hear, hear!''] It was thought that instructions would be given to the Sub-Commissioners in pursuance of which rents would not be fixed on improvements, and that the principle of live and let live would prevail. But, under the blighting influence of the administration of the present Commissioners, there was dissatisfaction all over the country. In 1887, it became necessary that an Act of Parliament should be passed to deal with the condition of things; there was just the same necessity now. He did not exaggerate when he said that the present administration gave rise to feelings of resentment and wrong in every corner of the country. The farmers of Ulster had joined in the popular agitation. In Ulster there was 879 more intense dissatisfaction and discontent at the administration of the Act, and at the personnel of the Commission, than in those parts of Ireland which were supposed to be identified with popular agitation. That, he contended, proved his case. It might be asked what alternative he would suggest. He thought some elective principle ought to be introduced into the system under which the Commissioners and Assistant Commissioners were appointed, so that the tenant-farmers, who formed the bulk of the community, should have some fair voice in determining what Gentlemen should be appointed to carry out the Acts. The statutory term of 15 years was running out in some thousands of instances, and, therefore, the case was urgent. The appointments might even be made by the Irish Parliamentary Party. He was sure they would be more just, more openminded, and more impartial, than their friends had been, and they would not consent to the appointment of rabid tenant righters on the one hand, or of rabid landlord partisans on the other hand. But if for a moment that proposal was considered too elastic, perhaps, he might suggest that the appointments might be vested in the elected representatives of Ireland as a whole. Every class of the community would thus be represented. These appointments might be entrusted, for instance, to a little Round Table or Select Committee, composed, say, of the hon. Member for South Tyrone, the hon. and gallant Member for North Armagh, and a few Members of the Nationalist Party. He had no doubt they would choose impartial and fair-minded Commissioners, who would administer the Acts in the sense in which it was intended they should be administered. His proposals might be considered crude and hasty. Whether they were deemed worthy of even a passing thought by the Chief Secretary or not, he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would give the House some assurance that the present system would be abandoned, that the Commissioners would not in future be placed beyond reach of Parliamentary criticism as at present, that the system of administration should be subject to some elective and popular control, and thus command the confidence of the varied interests of the country.
§ MR. DILLONassured the House that this subject was one which had long excited the most intense public interest in Ireland, and the strong opinions which were entertained as to the unfairness of the present administration of the Land Acts and the appointment of Land Commissioners were by no means confined to men who sympathised with the Nationalist Party in general politics. On the contrary, the Unionist farmers of Ulster and other parts of Ireland were just as much exercised in their minds on the question as were the Nationalist farmers. The greatest possible differences were observed in the judgments of the Commissioners in fixing fair rents, and it had been made obvious that in administering the Acts the Commissioners approached the question of fair rents in a very different spirit, one from another. In fact, so great had been this difference that the tenant farmers had come to believe that the fate of their cases depended in a large measure not upon the law, but upon the fact who was the particular Commissioner that heard them. He was ready to admit that in the political and social conditions of the country, it was a matter of enormous difficulty to obtain men in Ireland to administer the Acts who were free of all suspicion of political or social bias. It was one of the curses of the social condition of Ireland—that in consequence of agrarian and political disputes, it was almost impossible to obtain men to administer the Acts in whom the people would have confidence—men free from the suspicion of being so bound by social ties or relationship of interest, as to warp their judgments towards one side or the other. He would repeat that this was a great difficulty in the administration of the Land Acts, but, after all, it was only one of the many difficulties which had to be faced by those who governed Ireland under existing conditions. At the same time that fact did not relieve the Irish Government of finding some solution of it—of making such arrangements in regard to the appointment of Land Commissioners—on whose judicial impartiality the very means of existence of Irishmen depended—as would ensure the selection of men from whom the tenant-farmers and the people generally felt confidence they would get even-handed justice. The Commissioners were appointed 881 by the Government of the day; and the present Government had the confidence of only a small section of the people. He would admit that in its general Unionist policy this Government had the support of a considerable section of the farming interest of Ulster, but he asserted without fear of contradiction that the administration of the Land Acts, and the appointments made in relation to them by the Government—or rather, he should say in this particular, by their predecessors—were not approved by even a large number of Unionists in the North of Ireland. The Government, therefore, were in a difficult position in this matter; they had to depend on the support and confidence of the landlord class only, and hence they would experience difficulty even with the best intentions in finding men who could, or would, in the belief of the people administer the Land Acts with strict justice. Another difficulty that any Minister would have to meet, in approaching the great task of the Government of Ireland, under the existing system, or in dealing with this particular matter of the administration of the Land Acts—a difficulty the present Chief Secretary would have to meet if he made any new appointments—was to keep free of the old and evil traditions of the Castle. Those traditions still prevailed, would dog the steps of the right hon. Gentleman, and would perhaps urge him also into the old course. It was impossible for any one who was unacquainted with the system of Government in Ireland to understand the different spirit in which appointments of any judicial character were made in the two countries. Fortunately in England the bitterness of Party spirit and civil strife had cooled down for many years but in Ireland those influences were still strong. In England, therefore, such appointments were made by the executive free of political or Party bias, but in Ireland they were made subservient to it. Hence he feared that whatever might be the nature of the Land Bill to be introduced, the people of Ireland would not be able to accept it with any hope of a substantial remedy of their grievances, or of obtaining a fair readjustment of their rents until a new departure was made in respect to the appointment of 882 the Land Commissioners. There was one other point to which he wished to refer. There was an element connected with the appointment of the Land Commissioners which was foreign to the knowledge and experience of the English people, and it was hard to make them understand it. In this country nobody ever dreamt of extending to the Crown, or to any official or magistrate, any disrespect, or any political pressure, on account of the action of Her Majesty's ministers. Her Majesty and her Court stood high above such consideration in this country, and any such proceeding would arouse public indignation. But what was the case in Ireland? The Lord Lieutenant, who represented Her Majesty, was actually subjected to a system of attempted intimidation and boycotting if his administration of the law did not please a certain section of the people who frequented his Court. The intimidation which prevailed during the late Administration was well-known. Certain appointments were made which were highly approved by the great bulk of the Irish people, and immediately the ladies and gentlemen of the landlord class who frequented the Court in Dublin undertook to strictly boycott Her Majesty's representative, a more gross outrage than which by men professing to be loyal was never heard of. That boycotting was carried out in the strictest way, and with the grossest disrespect to the representative of the Queen, and it was boasted of by the landlord class. But the moment an Administration came over to Ireland which it was expected would give satisfaction to the landlord class the Castle was hardly large enough to hold the crowds that attended the levées. Such proceedings were scandalous and disgraceful. They in Ireland knew very little what they meant. They understood perfectly well the spirit that dictated them. It was a deliberate attempt, so far as it lay within their power, to intimidate and to put pressure on the Executive so as to administer the law in accordance with the minority in Ireland. He was exceedingly glad his hon. Friend had availed himself of that Opportunity of bringing to the attention of the House a question which the Chief Secretary would find to be a burning question in Ireland, and he could tell 883 him that, until the question was solved in a manner satisfactory to the people of Ireland, there would be no confidence felt in the administration of the Land Law. The farmers of Ireland would not consent to recognise the judicial rents as fair rents so long as they were fixed by men in whose impartiality they had no confidence whatever. The hon. Member for South Tyrone, speaking, he thought it was in December, 1894, gave vent to his views as to the appointment of the Land Commission, and denounced it as being packed. The hon. Member for South Tyrone was then in a position of greater freedom and less responsibility, and he was at liberty to give voice to what he well knew to be the deliberate conviction of the farmers of Ulster. He supposed the hon. Gentleman would not be at liberty now to favour the House with his impressions as to the impartiality of the Land Commissioners. He fully recognised the enormous difficulties of this case, the difficulties of the Irish Executive, and the difficulties of this Government in getting impartial men. He was not going to propose an alternative scheme. He did not look upon the proposal of his colleagues as a practical proposal, but he did say that this was a difficulty which would remain, until it was solved, a burning difficulty in Ireland. It arose, in his judgment, from the very framework of the whole machinery of the Irish Government, when they had a gentleman who was placed in this position of being compelled to govern Ireland, without enjoying the confidence of the overwhelming mass of the population whom he had to govern. That was an anomalous and, practically speaking, an impossible condition of things. The evils of which they now complained, of which the right hon. Gentleman would hear until he was tired of listening to them, were evils which sprang, in his judgment, from the abnormal condition of Government, and he thought it would be found exceedingly difficult to remove them so long as such a condition of Government existed. If he were asked how the Land Commissioners ought to be appointed, he should say they ought to be appointed by a Minister responsible to the people of Ireland, and they could not get a Minister responsible to the people of Ireland. He confessed that, under these circumstances, it almost 884 surpassed the wit of man to devise a system that would meet the difficulty. He did not pretend under present circumstances that he could propose a remedy which would have the slightest chance of being accepted by the Government, but there did exist a substantial and real grievance—a grievance which was complained of by Unionists as well as Nationalists and which, so long as it remained unredressed, would influence the farmers of Ireland to refuse to recognise judicial rents as just rents.
§ THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. GERALD BALFOUR,) Leeds, CentralThe hon. Member for East Mayo has told us that the farmers of Ireland, not merely the Nationalists but the Unionists, are suffering under a grievance, and that that grievance arises from the fact that they have no confidence in the personnel of the Land Commission, which is intrusted with the fixing of rents. I listened with some attention to both the speeches which have been made in defence of this proposition. The hon. Member for North Cork considered that the farmers of Ireland suffered under a hardship because the Commissioners, with whom rested the fixing of rents, were withdrawn from the criticism of Parliament. That is to say, because the judicial Commissioners are in exactly the position which is occupied by Judges of this realm. I have always understood, hitherto, that for a person exercising judicial functions to be withdrawn from the criticism of Parliament and from the power of dismissal by the Executive, was considered not a danger but a safeguard. We have heard in this House from time to time a great deal about the iniquity of the system of removable magistrates. I do not know whether the hon. Member for North Cork would desire a system of removable Commissioners and Sub-Commissioners. That seemed to be the natural inference from the principle he has laid down. The hon. Member referred specially to the Act of 1891, which he condemned as making the Sub-Commissioners permanent Civil Servants, and then a few minutes afterwards he said, he did not complain of their being made permanent Civil Servants, but his real complaint was that the Government of Ireland appointed these Gentlemen, and that practically the appointment was 885 made by the Chief Secretary, and that the appointments which had actually been made had given rise to intense dissatisfaction. [Irish cheers.] The hon. Member has also said that the administration of the Act of 1881 and the Act of 1891 by the Land Commission, has deprived the tenants of the benefits they were entitled to enjoy under those Acts. I think it would have been desirable if he had given to the House some evidence of the assertion which he put forward. The whole case of the hon. Member, as well as that of the hon. Member for East Mayo, rested on mere assertion. The tenant-farmers, he says, are dissatisfied with the rents fixed by the Commissioners; therefore, those rents must necessarily be wrong. It is a curious state of things, indeed, to have it laid down that the rightness or wrong ness of the decision of a Judge is to be estimated entirely by the view taken of it by one Party to the suit. ["Hear, hear!"] If the hon. Gentleman had given us any evidence to show that those rents had been unfairly fixed, or that the gentlemen who were appointed to fix them were by their antecedents ["Hear, hear!" from Mr. SWIFT MACNEILL] more likely to favour the landlords than the tenants, he would have done something to prove his proposition, but up to the present time no such evidence has been brought forward. Within the short time that has been at my disposal since this Debate sprang up, I have taken the trouble to look carefully through the list of the Sub-Commissioners, both legal and lay, and the judgment which I have been able to form, after looking at the antecedents of those gentlemen, is that at least half the Lay Sub-Commissioners are gentlemen who might be expected rather to take the tenants' than the landlords' view, and the same is certainly not less true in regard to the Legal Sub-Commissioners. Of course, every Government in making these appointments endeavours to select gentlemen who would approach their task with as little bias as possible, but the difficulty, not only in Ireland but anywhere, is to find gentlemen at once competent to fix rents upon holdings and having a bias neither in favour of landlords nor tenants. I do not think that difficulty is peculiar to Ireland; it 886 arises from the very nature of the facts and circumstances, but, as far as I can judge, it is quite untrue to say that the Sub-Commissioners as a class have been drawn from those who would be likely to favour the landlords' view of rent rather than, the tenants' view. The hon. Member for East Mayo told the House very candidly that he had no proposition to offer which it was the least likely that the present Government would accept; but what was the alternative to the present system put forward by the hon. Member for North Cork? It was that there should be introduced into the appointment of those gentlemen the element of popular selection. I should think this is the very first time that in this country it has been suggested that arbitrators who have to decide these difficult and delicate questions as between classes should be selected in any way by popular vote. Never, probably has such a suggestion been made before. I do appeal to the House just to consider what the result would be likely to be. Is it not clear that if justice is to be done as between landlord and tenant, and if it is impossible to get persons absolutely without any previous bias, what you ought to have is a certain number of gentlemen selected in such a way as fairly to represent both sides. That is what successive Governments have aimed at doing, and I believe, as a matter of fact, have succeeded in doing. It is very difficult for this House to sit in judgment on the decisions of these Commissioners. They are there acting upon evidence which they either acquire themselves by visiting the holding or the evidence of expert valuers, and on that they have to decide. How is it possible for this House to sit in judgment upon decisions given in such circumstances? The thing is impossible. If these Commissioners and Sub-Commissioners are not to be appointed in the way suggested by the hon. Member, is there any other way by which they can be appointed except by the Government of the day? I must confess I see no way myself, and while I am thankful to the hon. Member for East Mayo for believing that I have gone to Ireland with a sincere desire, in all the appointments I make, to hold the scales even ["Hear, hear!" from the Irish Members], I do not share his 887 apprehension that the task is impossible. I do not think it is true that appointments are made in a totally different spirit in Ireland as compared with England. I have not had any appointments of Land Commissioners to make as yet, but I have had other appointments, and I can honestly say that I have not been prejudiced in the smallest degree by the fact that this Government represents in Ireland a minority. I have endeavoured to hold the balance even between the two Parties in Ireland. [Cheers from Irish Members.] The task of fixing rents will be admitted by everyone to be an extremely difficult task. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable fact—and this was brought out by the investigations of Mr. John Morley's Select Committee—that the Sub-Commissioners, although in the first instance they arrive at their valuations independently, do, as a general rule, arrive at approximately the same figure. Where there were differences between them, it was shown there were comparatively few cases in which that difference was not smoothed away, not by the decision of the Legal Commissioner, but by his acting as a sort of intermediary; and even where an appeal was made from the decision of the Sub-Commissioners to the Legal Commissioners the valuation arrived at in the latter case did not differ largely from that previously fixed by the Sub-Commissioners. In these circumstances I cannot say that I think the hon. Member who moved the Amendment, nor the hon. Member for East Mayo, has really made out his case. In my judgment the Sub-Commissioners have a most difficult and delicate task to perform, and one which they approach in a spirit of impartiality. ["Hear, hear!"]
§ MR. P. J. FARRELL (Cavan, W.)observed that no matter what Acts that House passed if those Acts were not properly administered, legislation of the Irish tenant farmers would be a nullity and a farce. The result of the working of the Land Acts in Ireland for the last 14 or 15 years had to some extent justified that view They found of the 600,000 occupiers who had claimed reductions of rent under the Land Act, only 300,000 had their cases dealt with by the Land Commission. He submitted it was of the utmost importance 888 that the fair-play and impartiality of the tribunal should be established. The Chief Secretary had said he thought no case had been made out against the impartiality of the Sub-Commissioners and that looking at the antecedents of the Commissioners at the very least it might be expected that one-half of the body took rather the tenants' than the landlords' side. That was a proposition which a study of the personnel of the existing Commission would show could not be sustained for a moment. The very names of the gentlemen who were appointed to administer the Land Act afforded ample evidence that two to one were in favour of the landlords rather than the tenants. When they found that 16 gentlemen, judging by the names, were followers of the Conservative administration as against eight on the other side, it shewed there was something wrong in the personnel of the Commission. The Land Act of 1891 had been described as a failure. On that point he thought there was a universal consensus of opinion. By the 28th Section, sub-Section 7 of that Act the Commissioners were withdrawn from the control of Parliament and converted into servants of the Crown. The Lord Lieutenant, as he understood the section, or the Lord Chancellor now created the Judicial Commission and the Judicial proceeded to create the Lay Commission, the House of Commons having no voice in the appointment or control of the men, whose names showed they were manifestly unfair to the interests of the tenant farmers. This was a most important question concerning the very life of the largest portion of the population of Ireland. He had had some experience of the difficulties that beset this question. As far as he had been able to see, the present working of the system was not, and could not be, satisfactory because of the course adopted by the Sub-Commissioners, when they went to value a holding. He was present not long since in Ballyhaunis, when a Sub-Commission was then sitting, the members of which, as far as he could judge, paid more attention to their personal comfort and convenience than to the interests of the tenants whose cases were before the Court. The Sub-Commissioners went out in a morning on a car 889 and perhaps they overworked themselves to the extent of visiting two or three farms. The tenant was called upon to turn a sod of earth to show the depth of the soil, the Sub-Commissioners looked at it in a cursory manner, and then walked away. They did not go into the tenants' houses to see the poverty which existed, or make any effort to obtain from the tenants a confession of their efforts to eke out a living on these small farms. They too often performed their duties in a dilatory and perfunctory manner. Last Session the Chief Secretary for Ireland had given him a kind of assurance that steps were taken by the respective Departments in Dublin to insure that the men appointed to these positions had the necessary qualifications. But he had not been able to discover that any examination was held, and at any rate no machinery was provided for the purpose in any Act of Parliament. His suggestion to the right hon. Gentleman was that technical knowledge ought to be made the qualification for the position of Sub-Commissioner. There ought to be an Examining Board to test the qualifications of candidates. The success of the Land legislation, present and future, would depend to a great degree upon the confidence which the people had in its administration, and if the Chief Secretary wished the Land Acts to succeed, he would do well to give most careful attention to the matters which had been brought to his notice. It would shed great glory on the right hon. Gentleman's administration if he should succeed in creating an impartial Commission commanding the confidence of the people.
§ MR. J. DALY (Monaghan, S.)said, that this was a question which affected Protestants and Catholics alike. The tenant farmers of Ireland were unanimous in holding that a satisfactory settlement of the Land question was necessary, and that the Sub-Commissioners who were appointed should be in sympathy with them. He strongly advised the Government to appoint men who would enjoy the tenant farmers' confidence. The Chief Secretary had produced no evidence to show that they were satisfied with the existing appointments.
§ MR. GERALD BALFOURobserved that what he had suggested was 890 that there was no evidence to show that the people of Ireland were dissatisfied.
§ MR. J. DALYsaid, that not long ago, at a meeting which he attended, and which included a very large number of Protestants, a strangely-worded resolution was carried, asking the Chief Secretary to appoint Sub-Commissioners who would administer the Land Acts in a manner satisfactory to the tenants. The fact that such meetings were held ought to be sufficient evidence that the farmers were not satisfied with the way in which the Sub-Commissioners fixed the rents. The tenants ought to have fair treatment as well as the landlord. The Sub-Commissioners ought not to be appointed mainly from one class. At present the tenant-farmers knew that the duty of fixing fair rents was to a large extent discharged by men who were not in sympathy with them, and in those circumstances, no matter how fair the rents might be, there would always be a suspicion in the tenants' minds that justice had not been done to their interests. He mentioned that in the case of yearly tenancies the Sub-Commissioners made a reduction of 21.52, and in leasehold tenancies of 24.7; but the County Court Judge had made reductions in the one case of 23.4 and in the other of 27.7. What had been the result? Landlords, seeing that the County Court Judges were more free from the influence of the landlords, had withdrawn 10,374 cases out of 34,553 cases for the purpose of getting them tried before the Sub-Commissioners. The Chief Secretary had stated that there was no evidence showing that the people of Ireland were dissatisfied, but the hon. Member for South Tyrone received a copy of resolutions to this effect. The hon. Member was asked to attend the meeting in Ulster, but he wrote a letter stating that the present system was satisfactory. He should like to hear the views of the hon. Member who in times past had professed to be such a great friend of the tenant-farmers.
§ MR. MICHAEL MCCARTAN (Down, S.)said, that though this might be a difficult undertaking it had yet to be faced, because if the people had no confidence in the administration of the laws by which they were governed it would be a long time before they 891 were either satisfied or order and prosperity reigned. The Chief Secretary appeared to ask for some evidence. The report of the Select Committee teemed with evidence. He cited the case of a man who had spent a great deal of money on dwellings, but when he came into Court he found that it was obliged to charge him rent on the buildings which he had himself erected.
§ MR. GERALD BALFOURThis is not a question of personnel. If anything, it was a question of law, and the Commissioners have to administer the law.
§ MR. MCCARTANsaid he was speaking of the administration and interpretation of the law, and the class of persons who had to interpret it. One of the largest merchants in Belfast had a large farm which he held under the Marquess of Downshire. He expended a considerable amount of money in erecting buildings and making improvements, but he found that the Court charged him rent on the improvements which he had made and paid for. The man appealed to the Court above, and the same spirit which he and his hon. Friends complained of as existing in the Sub-Commissioners also pervaded the chief Court. As to the personnel of the Commissioners, that was a matter with which he hardly liked to deal, but he would give the case of a Sub-Commissioner, whose name, however, he would not mention. A Presbyterian farmer told him that this Commissioner had visited his land, and when going over the first fence, a single-stone fence, he put up his foot and knocked it down, and it took some trouble to put it up again. Such conduct on the part of Sub-Commissioners was not likely to inspire the farmers with confidence. Another Sub-Commissioner was examined before the Morley Committee, and that gentleman, who was supposed to have the necessary qualification for deciding on the question of fair rents, frankly avowed that, in his opinion, it would be far better for the landlords if the land in Ireland were allowed to lapse into a prairie state. Every day in the North of Ireland meetings were being held at which resolutions as to the appointment of competent Sub-Commissioners were being passed. He remembered a gentleman to have applied to a Unionist Member of Parliament 892 to give him his influence in obtaining an appointment as Sub-Commissioner, and the reply was that he would not have the slightest chance if he was or ever had been connected with the Home Rule movement. He told this gentleman that he could not have believed it. Unless there was appointed a large number of Sub-Commissioners who had the confidence of the farmers of Ireland, it would be a thousand times better that no appointments at all should be made. The farmers of Ireland had looked with the greatest confidence to the Morley Committee, and he still hoped that the hon. Gentleman the Member from South Tyrone would be able to influence the Government to shape into law the report of that Committee, to which he was a party. There was no place in all Ulster where this was such a burning question as in South Tyrone. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would be induced to seriously consider this question and to endeavour his best to devise some plan by which to appoint Sub-Commissioners who would have the confidence of the people and would act justly by both landlords and tenants.