§ Motion made and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £124,215, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1907, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Irish Land Commission."
§ MR. JOHN REDMOND (Waterford) moved to reduce the Vote by £100, so that an opportunity might be given for discussion of that particular Vote, which was most vital to the welfare of the people and the future of the country. He wished to repeat a protest he had made in previous sessions against the system which governed the discussion of Supply, and especially Irish Supply. On the question of Irish taxation, the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other day stated that although the general taxation of Ireland had increased by £2,000,000 or £3,000,000, yet the Imperial contribution had not increased. That was to say that the whole of the additional taxation had been caused by an increase in the cost of the government of Ireland. One of their most serious complaints was that the government of Ireland was increasingly costly and was an extravagant as well as an inefficient government. Notwithstanding that great and increasing cost no opportunity was given of criticising the items of the expenditure or endeavouring to curtail the extravagance. Under the Rules of Supply three days were graciously vouchsafed to Ireland for the discussion of the entire cost of Irish government. Three days only were given to discuss an expenditure of £8,000,000, and to discuss the proceedings of some forty-five public boards, as to whose proceedings this Committee was in absolute and blank ignorance. The representatives of the Irish people who had to pay this money were 749 not given any opportunity of discussing the system of government, because, of course, hon. Members would see that three days for the discussion of all these various boards was practically no opportunity at all. If the whole of the twenty-three days allocated for the discussion of Supply generally were given for the examination of the proceedings of these various Irish boards and for the discussion of the daily increasing cost of the government, it would not be too long a period. The present system meant, therefore, that no opportunity was given them of investigating how the money was spent and of exposing to the House of Commons the monstrous extravagance of every single Department in the government of the country. So far as Supply was concerned, the House of Commons might as well not exist at all. Every year at the end of the session all the Irish money—;such of it, at any rate, as had not been voted—;was voted in the course of a few minutes without any discussion at all, and the most they could hope for was that in the course of one session they would be able to discuss two or three subjects of Irish expenditure. On this occasion they had selected for discussion the Land Commission Vote, because in their judgment it more vitally concerned the welfare of the people and the future of the country than any other department of Irish government. The Irish Land Commission was engaged at present in the task of endeavouring to settle the Irish land question. All parties in the State were in absolute agreement that there never could be peace and prosperity in Ireland until that question was settled, and all parties were also agreed that this must be carried out by the purchase by the tenants of their holdings on fair and equitable terms. The carrying out of this on a sound and equitable basis by the Land Commission concerned the welfare and the future of every man, woman, and child in Ireland, and ought to concern all in that Committee and every Statesman who looked forward to a future of peace and prosperity in Ireland. The Irish Land Commission was engaged in rent fixing and land purchase. These two operations were indissolubly connected. Rents were the basis of 750 purchase. If unfair rents were fixed either maliciously or ignorantly by the agents, that reacted on purchase. If the rent fixing was wrong, then inevitably the land purchase would be wrong. The whole of the rent-fixing machinery of the Land Commission had been manned and run for the last twenty years by the Tory Party in the landlord interest. He said that that was true of the officers of the Land Commission from top to bottom. Those at the head of the Land Commission had more to do with giving the tone to the actions of all the officers of the Commission right through than anybody else; and if those at the head were partisans, say, of the landlord interest, that would be felt down through every ramification of the machine. In his judgment, and in the judgment of his colleagues, the whole staff from top to bottom, with the exception of the recently-appointed Estates Commissioners, was a packed staff that had been put in, within the last twenty years, by Tory Governments in the interests of the landlord class. Most of the appointments to the Land Commission were, he believed, ordinary permanent Civil Service appointments, and so far, no doubt, the hands of the Chief Secretary were tied, but that right hon. Gentleman could still do something by rearrangement of offices, by judicious promotion, and by other such means to improve the permanent staff of the Land Commission and to increase enormously the confidence of the people in its impartiality and justice. Besides the permanent staff there was a staff of temporary officers who were in no sense Civil Service officers. These officers were appointed originally for temporary purposes and were reappointed from time to time. His criticism of the staff generally was more particularly true of these men, who were put into their positions by the Tory Government un-blushingly in the interests of the landlords. When he gave the names and qualifications of these men the Committee would be driven to the conclusion that he was strictly accurate in his statement. They were for the most part broken down landlords, aged land agents, retired military officers, and political hangers-on generally of the Tory Party. Was it not a monstrous thing, 751 when so much, depended upon the proper working of the Land Acts in Ireland, that persons of that sort should have been put into the Commission, and that a great English Party should have packed the tribunal in the way it had? Here was a field open to the Chief Secretary for immediate reform. A number of these persons had arrived at the end of their term of office—;in the case of twenty-seven their period of engagement would have terminated at the end of March. Representations were made to the Chief Secretary almost immediately he took office as to the way some of these men had been acting, how that, notwithstanding the fall in the value of produce, these men had been for some months past actually raising rents—;that there was good reason to believe that, ever since the Land Act of 1903 was passed, there had been a conspiracy on the part of certain people in Ireland, aided and abetted by these agents of the landlords in the Land Commission, to keep down second-term reductions in order to keep up the price of land. Moreover, they impressed upon the Chief Secretary by every means in their power that the great majority of these twenty-seven men were distrusted by the Irish people and that they had no proper qualification for their positions. They had therefore impressed upon the Chief Secretary the desirability of refusing to renew these appointments, urging him to fill up the vacancies thus created by men whose impartiality was proved to his satisfaction. In the King's Speech at the opening of Parliament there was a pledge that Ireland in matters of administration was to be governed in accordance with Irish ideas. That pledge had led the Irish Party to believe that in matters of this kind, which so vitally affected the prosperity of the country, the right hon. Gentleman would adopt the suggestions made to him by Irish representatives. On the contrary, however, he had rejected their views and advice. With the exception of five, he had reappointed all those Commissioners who had been the mere tools and agents of the landlord party, and a large proportion of whom were notoriously distrusted by the people and had no qualification for their posi- 752 tions. By refusing to reappoint the five he had incurred just as much opposition from the landlord class as if he had gone the whole way and refused to reappoint any at all. He had dissatisfied the people and profoundly stirred the souls of the Ulster Members of Parliament. The reappointment of these men was a very serious matter in regard to the working of the Land Act, and as showing the attitude of some of the right hon. Gentleman's advisers in Ireland. He could assure the Chief Secretary that the confidence of the Irish people in him and his Government would not stand many more shocks of that character. As regarded the general administration of the Land Commission he might say that they were, as was usual upon these occasions, in a very difficult position. They were under the disadvantage that when they had been able to seize on an opportunity of bringing forward a matter of this kind they were without the necessary facts and figures to enable them to discuss the matter intelligibly. It was more than twelve months since they had had a Report from the Estates Commissioners, and they did not know, except in the most fragmentary way by means of Questions across the floor of the House, what the figures were for the past twelve months, what these Commissioners had been doing, or what they had achieved. When the Land Act of 1903 was passing through Parliament they extracted from the right hon. Member for Dover a promise that periodical Reports should be published by the Estates Commissioners. That promise had not been kept from that day to this, and it was a serious scandal that when the Irish Party desired to raise a discussion upon the administration of this great Department, they were handicapped by the fact that they had not the necessary information before them. No facts, figures, or other information on the subject had been provided for the last twelve months.
§ THE CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND (Mr. BRYCE,) Aberdeen, S.The Reports are made up to the 31st of March in each year, and the Estates Commissioners are now engaged on their Report. They could 753 not have it ready before the 31st of March, but they will present it to the House as early as possible.
§ MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid that did not satisfy him. A pledge was given to the Irish Party by the right hon. Member for Dover, and the pledge was replaced after the right hon. Gentleman left office by a pledge given by the Estates Commissioners themselves that they would issue periodical Reports. They should have had within the twelve months at least two Reports, and perhaps more. The Land Commission issued Reports with regard to the fixing of rent periodically throughout the year, and to-day he was unable intelligently to discuss what had been going on in the last twelve months in the Estates Commissioners Department because his knowledge was only picked up casually. That was a serious scandal. He knew that the office in question had not had a sufficient staff, but it was the old question of the Treasury again. For the sake of saving the cost he supposed they refused to give the Commissioners additional assistance to enable them to prepare the Report, and the result was that the Commons had to discuss the matter without any information less than twelve months old. The Land Commission, he knew, had been hampered very seriously in endeavouring to carry out the Land Act of 1903 by the instructions and regulations under which they were forced to act for a considerable time. It would be remembered that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover issued no formal regulations for publication, but he did issue a number of regulations and instructions from time to time to the Commissioners, and when they called for the production of those documents (the Act having provided that regulations should be published) they were met with the statement that they were not really regulations at all; they were only letters and therefore could not be produced. It was unfair to denounce the regulations of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Dublin, which were published and then withdrawn, because the real responsibility rested on the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover, who, having passed the Land Act, proceeded immediately by secret instructions and 754 regulations to hamper and thwart its proper working. He now asked the Chief Secretary to set that question at rest in justice to everybody by producing and publishing the letters containing those instructions. The Estates Commissioners had them ready. They did not publish them because they had been forbidden to do so. Anyway, the regulations secret and public had all gone, and he congratulated the Chief Secretary most heartily on his action in tearing them up as soon as he got into office. Those regulations had prevented the effective working of the evicted tenants' clauses of the Land Act, and other clauses with reference to untenanted land, and so forth. And now the Commissioners had been working with perfect freedom of action in those matters, and with a sympathetic Government in office for four months, what had been the result? They were told that 100 evicted tenants had been restored to their holdings or to other holdings provided for them. It was possible for the Commissioners under the Act as it stood now, in a comparatively small number of months, practically to settle certainly seven-eighths of the whole evicted tenants' question. He wanted to know why had that not been done? The Chief Secretary had done his part, but the reason these clauses were not working was that for four months the Treasury had been haggling with the Irish Government over the appointment of five or six additional inspectors asked for by the Estates Commissioners to enable them to carry out that portion of the Act. The Chief Secretary had said the other day that now they were going to be appointed. He was glad to hear it, and he would be glad to know definitely if the appointments had been made.
§ MR. JOHN REDMONDI suppose it was the day before yesterday.
§ MR. BRYCEYes. Let justice be done to the Treasury. The Treasury had consented to the appointments before the day before yesterday.
§ MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid he did not imagine for a single instant that anything he said in the House would have such an effect. At the same time he did congratulate himself upon the coincidence that after this attack had been made on the Treasury, and after the Chancellor of the Exchequer had made a sympathetic reply, these men were immediately appointed. Anyhow, he congratulated the right hon. Gentleman upon their appointment. But what he complained of was that the whole operation of these portions of the Land Act were hung up by a hostile Treasury for four months after a friendly Government got into I office. That was a lesson with reference to Irish affairs. The Treasury had played the same part with regard to Irish affairs all through. It was just the same when the Act first came into operation. Here was a body created to effect a great national settlement of the land war in Ireland with £112,000,000 of money provided for the operation, and yet, forsooth, the English Treasury heckled and fought with them for months before they would give them an office to sit in or clerks to carry out the work. The delay in carrying out this portion of the Act up to the present had been entirely due to the same cause, and he urged the right hon. Gentleman, now that these additional inspectors had been granted by the Treasury, to see that this portion of the Act was put rapidly in operation. There was no portion of the Irish land question so vital. It was the promise of a settlement of the evicted tenants' question that made the passage of the Land Act of 1903 possible. No man on the Nationalist Benches would have agreed to that Act except on the distinct understanding that the evicted tenants' question was going to be settled. Three years had passed since then, and these poor creatures were still out on the road side, some dying through hope deferred. This had gone on for four months after a friendly Government had come into office. He did hope that the right hon. Gentleman would now insist that this portion of the Act should be worked rapidly, and if he did he felt certain that in a few months the greater portion of the evicted tenants' question could be settled. He did not say it could be completely settled. It 756 could not be settled without amending legislation dealing with grazing land and so forth. But an enormous amount of good could be done by a sympathetic and energetic administration unhampered by the action of the Treasury or anybody else, and he did appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to make up for the culpable delay of the last four months by pushing on this work in the immediate future. He was not able to discuss the Department with proper knowledge because they were without information. He moved this Motion in order to initiate a discussion in the hope that the right hon. Gentleman would be able to give them information, also as a protest against the action of the right hon. Gentleman in the reappointment of these temporary Sub-Commissioners, and in the hope that the discussion that had taken place and the dissatisfaction that had been expressed on the matter might lead him to take more seriously on other matters the well ascertained and clearly expressed views of the majority of the people of Ireland, in sympathy with whose views he was pledged to govern the country. He begged to move.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £124,115, be granted for the said Service."—;Mr. John Redmond.
§ MR. HAYDEN (Roscommon, S.)said he desired to supplement the remarks of his hon. friend in reference to one particular phase of the land question, namely, the question of purchase as affected by the untenanted land. The part of Ireland which he represented was intensely interested in the action of the Government in respect of the restitution of such land, and whilst it was true to say that it would have been impossible to have passed the Land Act of 1903 if it had not involved the possibility of a settlement of the evicted tenants question, it was equally true to say that it would have been utterly impossible for the Government to face Parliament with the Bill unless they were ready to promise a settlement of the questions of congestion and depopulation which existed side by side in the West of Ireland. Previous to the passage of the Act of 1903 there had been a fierce agitation in the West of Ireland because 757 of the separation of the people from the land, and the aid of coercion was invoked in order to suppress it. Over and over again agitation had been accompanied by coercion, and coercion had been immediately followed by legislation to remove the grievance which gave rise to the agitation. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover when Chief Secretary was warned from the Irish Benches that he could not accomplish the reforms which he described as being so necessary unless the clauses of the Act in regard to untenanted land in the congested districts were made compulsory. Time had justified the prophecy that was made. Only the mere fringe of the question had been touched in the West of Ireland. The little that had been done was accomplished, not by the Estates Commissioners, but by the Congested Districts Board, and considering the extent of the work still to be done, it was true to say that if the action of both bodies was to be continued at the rate of progress made during the last two-and-a-half years it would take at least two or three generations before the question was settled. In the part of the country he represented the land was in the hands of a very few people, and the inhabitants were huddled together upon bogs and marshes. Ninety per cent, of the people occupied holdings under £12 valuation, and at least two-thirds of the land, which meant all the good land, was in the possession of 3 per cent, of the agricultural population. Most of this land was untenanted, unprofitable, and uncultivated. Those who were experienced in the question knew that the feeding capacity of good land, even in the best counties of Ireland, was not nearly so great as it was ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, because of the absence of cultivation. Were they going to have cultivation by allowing a thousand or five thousand acres to remain in the hands of an absentee grazier, who often let his land go to waste? That was not the way in which the country would be regenerated, and it was admitted by the late Government and no doubt it would be equally admitted by the present Government. At least they had the right to expect a declaration from the Chief Secretary, who was responsible for the administration of the country, as to the future policy of the Government, of the Estates Commissioners, and of all the bodies connected 758 with the administration of the land laws of Ireland. Unless they got such a declaration and unless it was followed up by performance, the consequences to the country would be very serious. In the first place the people were, still fleeing from the land, the hopes which arose in their breasts by the promises made by Ministers in 1903 not having been fulfilled by the performances. The people now were beginning to despair, and the Chief Secretary knew what had been the consequence of former periods of despair among the Irish people. He warned the right hon. Gentleman that unless his declaration was satisfactory on this question of untenanted land—;the distribution of these ranches, the bringing together of the people who worked the land and the land itself—;and unless that declaration was immediately followed up by prompt and energetic action, there must spring up in a very few months in Ireland, in the West, at least, an agitation which would very quickly set the machinery of land purchase in motion, and once again teach the people of Ireland that it was really upon themselves that they must rely, and that if they showed themselves quiet the Government became negligent of their desires. That was the lesson that had been taught the Irish people, but the lesson had come, not from the Irish Benches, but from the Treasury Bench. They had reason to hope a few months ago, and they still clung to the hope that with the present Government in office the lesson would be reversed, and that the people of Ireland might really feel there was some attention paid to the representations made on their behalf. But the people were losing heart, and it would require a great change to bring them back to the state of feeling which existed two years ago. With reference to the action of the Estates Commissioners, there was a case in his own constituency where the Commissioners bought a small estate that was owned by the Rev. Mr. Birmingham, a rector of the Protestant Church, in county Meath, but the Commissioners left ninety-five acres in the hands of the owner. In other words they had resold ninety-five acres with the use of public money to the non-residential landlord. In reply to his question the Chief Secretary informed him that the reason the rev. gentleman 759 was left those ninety-five acres was that the land surrounded a residence. He had known the place from his childhood, and he was rather taken aback when he heard that there was a residence. But he did not like to contradict the right hon. Gentleman in the House, without making a little inquiry. He was on the estate a fortnight ago, and he found as he expected that the residence of which the right hon. Gentleman spoke—;on information of course supplied to him by officials—;was an ordinary herd's house and had always been a herd's house, and had the character and appearance of one. There was a curious circumstance connected with that estate. An inspector came down before, he believed, the price was fixed, and with the landlord he visited the tenants, who believed that the estate had been purchased by the Estates Commissioners, and that this gentleman was selling it to them, certain amounts having been named; but as a matter of fact he was there with the landlord trying to make the price high. The estate had since been sold at a very much less price than that which they tried to induce the tenants to pay. That was the way the price of land was forced up. It had been since sold at a less price, but the strange thing was that four of the small tenants to whom allotments of land were given in the first instance and who had been induced to sign an agreement for certain allotments which were pointed out to them, and for which the annuity was fixed, now found that the land had been given to others, some of whom did not live on the estate. The reason assigned for this was that they were not persons suitable for the working of the land. He did not know why they were not suitable. One of them, Charles Brennan, was a man who had about one and a half acres of land on this estate, and for thirty years or more he had been earning the entire livelihood of himself and family on the land. It might reasonably have been expected that he was a person suitable to work four, five, or six acres more. The reason given in regard to another was that he was a tradesman. His trade was that of a nailer—;a trade out of which thirty or forty years ago a man could make a living, but which had been destroyed by machinery and cheaper methods of production. This man who was no 760 longer a tradesman had to make his living out of a small patch of land. The additional patch promised had not been given to him, and ninety-five acres of the best of the land had been acquired by the non-residential landlord by the use of public money. He would ask the Chief Secretary to make particular inquiry with regard to that estate. He had failed to get information from the Commissioners although he wrote to them on the matter, as he would have preferred to deal with it in that way instead of bringing it up in Parliament. After all, the Irish representatives were shown on every hand that the only possible chance of getting redress was to bring matters up in this House. He asked the Chief Secretary to pay particular attention to the questions of congestion and depopulation, for the two were side by side in the West of Ireland, and also to get the Congested Districts Board and the Estates Commissioners to administer the clauses of the Act dealing with these questions in a broader and more vigilant spirit than had hitherto characterised their action. In some districts large quantities of land had been acquired either by the Estates Commissioners or the Congested Districts-Board or both; in some cases it had been in their hands for a year or two years. He understood that the reason for not distributing the land was that the Commissioners or the Board were anxious to acquire a great deal more land in order to have a wide and general scheme of distribution. He would approve of that idea if he saw any indication on the part of these bodies that they would quickly acquire land. There was no indication on he part of the Government that they intended to bring forward, as he thought they must do in the end, a compulsory measure dealing with untenanted land in the congested districts. There being no such indication he thought it was indefensible for these bodies toll old up 1,000 or 2,000 acres as they were doing in some districts instead of dividing it among the small occupiers. This was a pressing matter to which he invited the right hon. Gentleman's attention. With regard to rent-fixing, great complaints were made all over the country as to the manner in which the Chief Commissioners and the Sub-Commissioners were discharging their duties. Ever since the 761 passing of the Act of 1903 they had been fixing rents on a higher standard than existed before, and that side by side with the fact that agriculture was more depressed now than in 1903. That depression continued, and the prospect was far from bright. A tenant some time ago showed him the schedule in which the rent at which his holding was fixed was set forth. Under one head Sub-Commissioner McElligot stated that it was extremely difficult to fix the rent because of the exceptionally good treatment which the tenant had given to the land. Then he proceeded to fix a very high rent, and because the land was within the boundaries of a country town he put 33⅓ per cent, additional rent upon it for "proximity," but he did not take into account the fact that because it was so closely situated to the town the sum of 10s. was levied for the local water and sanitary rate. Mr. McElligot was one of the twenty-two gentlemen in whom the Chief Secretary had recently expressed renewed confidence. He wished to impress on the Chief Secretary and those charged with the administration of the laws in Ireland the absolute necessity and urgency of dealing quickly with the questions of congestion and the redistribution of the untenanted lands in the West of Ireland in order to save the people and the Government themselves from consequences that might be serious. He said "redistribution" because this land about a couple of generations ago belonged to the predecessors of the very people who were driven from it at a time when the production of cattle seemed to pay a little better than allowing men to increase and multiply there. He wanted more than an expression of sympathy from the right hon. Gentleman. He asked for a declaration of the policy which the Government was going to pursue in this matter in the future. Unless the right hon. Gentleman was in a position not only to make a declaration of his own good will, but to tell them that the various bodies connected with he administration of the land purchase laws in Ireland were prepared quickly to administer those laws, and to carry out in a sympathetic spirit the promises which no doubt would be made, 762 there were serious times before them in Ireland in the near future.
§ * MR. T. W. RUSSELL (Tyrone, S.)said that before the House broke up for the Easter holidays he made a statement which was resented here, and which had been resented in certain quarters in Ireland. He stated then what he believed, and what thousands of the Irish people believed, that for some time past there had been a deliberate conspiracy in Ireland to raise rents with the avowed object of increasing the purchase price of land. He was not then able to give any specific evidence, but he proposed now to submit some evidence to bear out what he admitted was a very serious statement to make, especially in the House of Commons. He had with him the annual report of the Irish Land Commission up to March 31st, 1905, and he was in the same position as the hon. Member for Waterford when he complained that in regard to purchase he was unable to deal with recent facts and figures. His (Mr. Russell's) information, on the question of fair rents was fourteen months old. That was not his fault. It was the fault of the arrangements. Taking the report as it stood let them see what was taking place in the matter of rents. The total reduction in first term rents in that year was 14.8 per cent., and the reduction in the same class of rents during the preceding twenty-three years of the Land Act was 21.2. There was a difference of more than six per cent. With regard to second term rents, the total reduction for the year ending 1905 was 15.8 per cent., and during the preceding period the reduction was 20.9 per cent. During the year ending March, 1905, the Chief Commission raised rents in twenty-four counties in Ireland and reduced them in eight. For the same period the Chief Commission in first term rents increased sub-commission rents in seventeen counties and reduced rents in nine. With figures such as these it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that something had occurred to influence the Land Commission in dealing with these matters. He asked any member of the Committee, who had any knowledge of Ireland, whether there had been anything in the condition of Irish 763 agriculture to warrant that increase in rents? Was there a man in the Committee—;he did not care where he sat, but he should stipulate that he should know something of the facts of Irish agriculture—;who did not know that for months past Irish farmers had been driving home their cattle from the fairs because they were unsaleable? He knew that had occurred in his own constituency, and if these poor people could not sell their cattle how could they pay their rent. In face of the position of Irish agriculture and of the fall in the price of almost every article of produce, and especially the fall in the price of cattle, proceedings such as these were totally unjustifiable, and people had a right to conclude that there was this conspiracy in existence, the object of which was not so much to raise rents as to increase the price of land for the purpose of sale. Dealing with the question of appeal, he said the appeal in the matter of fair rents under the Act of 1903 must be held before one judicial commissioner. It was true the Lord-Lieutenant might appoint an additional judicial commissioner, but under the Act the appeal must be held before Mr. Justice Meredith or Mr. Commissioner Fitzgerald. He did not know, by the way, why the latter gentleman was called a Judge, because he had no claim to that title. These two gentlemen, however, had the right to appoint ten assessors who, according to the Act, must be men of skill and experience in agriculture; and the point he wished to bring out was that these appointments must be approved by the Lord-Lieutenant, which meant the Chief Secretary. Ten of these gentlemen had been appointed, and although a very large number of fair rent appeals were heard in the province of Ulster, out of the ten gentlemen who had been appointed as assessors to sit on fair rent appeals only one was an Ulster farmer. The rest were from other provinces, and most of them were graziers. The point he wished to urge upon the Chief Secretary was this. Did the right hon. Gentleman think that a grazier from county Louth, who knew nothing about Ulster farming, was competent to judge in such a matter? He was not seeking to cast any blame upon the present Chief Secretary, because he 764 had been in office only four months; but the time would come when the right hon. Gentleman and the Lord-Lieutenant would be responsible. He could not appeal to the Front Opposition Bench, however, and so he was bound to appeal to the right hon. Gentleman, and his point was, as he had said, Did the right hon. Gentleman think that the appointment of a grazier from Louth, or a large grass farmer from Tipperary, fulfilled the terms of the appointment laid down by the Act itself, which required that an assessor should be skilled in agriculture? This sort of people did not know anything about farming in Ulster, which was quite different from farming in Louth or Tipperary. He held that the strict terms of the language of the Act had not been complied with. There was not only the difference in the farming, but there was an important point which had told most unfavourably against these Ulster farmers—;there was a difference in the law. What did Mr. Callan, an assessor who came from county Louth, or Mr. Williams, who was a farmer under the Duke of Devonshire and an Englishman brought over a few years ago, know about the Ulster custom? He should be delighted to have Mr. Callan or Mr. Williams upstairs and to cross-examine them about it. Under the Act of 1870, which governed the whole of the land code of Ireland, the presumption was that the improvements on a holding belonged to the tenant. That was stated in plain terms, but under the Ulster custom the right of the tenant to the improvements was much clearer. The Land Commission, with the exception of one Commissioner, Mr. Commissioner Bailey, who had gone, made the tenant prove the improvements which were made by himself or his predecessor on title, and everything that the tenant could not prove went to the landlord without proof, although the Act of Parliament said the presumption was in favour of the tenant. Therefore, the Ulster men did not get their improvements, which they were entitled to, both according to law and custom. The hon. Gentleman proceeded to quote cases, especially from Monaghan, to establish his proposition. He said that in that county the figures showed that, since the Purchase Act of 1903, rents had been raised by even sums of £1 and 10s. all round. 765 He had it not in his heart to blame the Chief Secretary. He was comparatively new to the work, and had been dealing with the English people in the past. He told them there was an appeal. But to whom? Then they were told it was a judicial proceeding. What were the facts? A man got a reduction of rent, say in 1902, and paid the reduced rent up to 1906. Then—;four years afterwards—;the appeal was heard, the rent was raised, and the difference between the two rents had to be made up at the next galeday. The only intimation the suitor got was a halfpenny postcard announcing that the rent had been raised. Was that a judicial proceeding? In one of the Divisions of Monaghan a large number of rents had been raised, but in the other Division rents fixed by the same Sub-Commissioners were left alone. Those that were altered were raised by the automatic proceeding of putting on a £1 here and 10s. there. He heard the evidence in 1894 before the Morley Committee and he had not the slightest hesitation in saying that there was not, a bit of judicial procedure about it. It was simply rule of thumb. They did not want to raise every rent, and so they put on £1 here and 10s. there. What did the appeal system cost? He knew the hon. Member for East Mayo was in a position to deal roughly with him on that point. In 1894 the appeal system would have been wrecked in the Morley Committee but for his vot[...]. He made confession publicly of the fact. He felt then that it was a very serious matter, when they were dealing with a man's property, not to have an appeal. As the result of all this work and expense to landlord and tenant, during the whole existence of the Land Act rents had been raised 2 per cent. Was the game worth the candle? Two per cent. was neither here nor there for the landlord, and it was not much to the tenant, in comparison with the irritation, worry, and trouble which it caused. The tenants were brought ten or fifteen miles from their homes to the appeal court, and the difference in rent was consumed over and over again. The expenses to the landlord also ran away with any gain he might make. He knew the Chief Secretary had it not in his power to alter this system by a stroke of the pen; but 766 surely there ought to be some way of ending a system which produced not more than 2 per cent, of increase, at enormous cost to the landlord and worry and annoyance to the tenant. There were 12,000 appeals now pending, and no real impression had been made on them. The landlords appealed in almost every case, and he asked the Chief Secretary to take into his serious consideration the whole question of appeal. Coming to the question of purchase, the Land Act had been in operation two and a half years. Perhaps before he dealt with that he ought to call attention to the condition of the Front Opposition Bench. The late Government was responsible for this Act and the conduct of it, and neither the right hon. Member for South Dublin nor the right hon. Member for Dover was in his place.
§ MR. BRYCEsaid he was very sorry to say that the right hon. Member for South Dublin was unable to be present through ill health.
§ * MR. T. W. RUSSELLsaid there was no doubt good reason for the absence of both right hon. Gentlemen, but it was extremely awkward to have to speak of them in their absence. The Land Purchase Act had been in operation two and a half years. Land to the value of £40,000,000 sterling had been sold and the agreements signed. That was in a sense satisfactory, but in one sense it was most unsatisfactory. How far had they got? How much money had been distributed? What was the inducement to give up inspection? It was a great thing to give up inspection and possibly by-and-bye it would be found to have been a great error. They gave up inspection and consented to the zone system for one reason and one reason alone. The right hon. Member for Dover said that all such cases would be rapidly dealt with. It was for that reason they gave up inspection and accepted the zone system. The result had been that while the Government had secured a high price for the land under the zones, the people had not had the rapid dealing promised, and the British taxpayer had lost the security which existed in the inspection. Now what blocked the way? Some people spoke of 767 the want of money, but this contention was now out of court. They could not get rid of the money they had got. They had been under a delusion for some time; the scheme was not blocked for want of money at all. First of all there was the fresh start; one did not get into harness all at once. Then there was the inevitable muddle which followed a fresh start. Then there was the want of staff and office accommodation. They knew perfectly well that the department had to fight for sanitary provision and sanitary offices, and there were times when, if a sanitary officer had been sent in, he would have cleared out the whole place. That was the fault of the Treasury. Then there was the want of staff, inspectors, and clerks—;that was the Treasury again. Did hon. Members think that the Treasury went into court for the purposes of promoting the working of the Act? Not a bit of it. They went in for the purpose of obstructing it and to prevent the untenanted land from being divided among the people. He cheerfully admitted that they had not now to fight the right hon. Member for Trinity College. He was out of it; nor had they to fight the members of the late Government. But all that was not sufficient to account for the delay and the block that was caused. There was no difficulty in the actual work of the Estates Commissioners. Their work was far forward. They had got or were getting settled by degrees all the legal difficulties that were bound to arise under a complicated Act. But they had got them settled, and it was when the case left them that the real trouble and the real delay began. It was the old old story. Everyone who knew anything about Ireland knew that when an Act was passed tie moment it crossed over to Ireland a body of men would begin to obstruct it. This great Act was passed for a great and noble purpose, but was it being worked in the spirit in which it was passed? The Estates Commissioners had done everything in their power, but their efforts had been blocked at every stage. The real difficulty arose the moment a case left the Estates Commissioners and got into the Department of Title. There was something like a dozen examiners of title. They were gentlemen belonging 768 to the Bar, and they were appointed at sums varying between £600 and £800 a year. Of course these officials were in no hurry; why should they be? They were not permanent officers, and the sooner their work was done the sooner they would go back to the Bar. That was where the real trouble began. They were now bringing into the new department all the old machinery of the Landed Estates Court; but it was in the Department of Title that the real difficulty arose, and unless something was done there it would be impossible for the Act to work. When a case was ready and had passed through the hands of the Estates Commissioners, and had even got through the hands of the Examiners of Title, what happened? Under the Act itself Mr. Justice Meredith must distribute the money, that having to be done by the Judicial Commissioner. The neck of the bottle was blocked because no case could be settled until Mr. Justice Meredith had passed it, and he could not get through the work. Personally he should welcome the transfer of Mr. Commissioner Fitzgerald to this work, because he could do no harm there, or, at any rate, he could not do as much harm as he was now doing. There was no reason why there should not be an additional Commissioner for facilitating the last stage of these proceedings. The block was not due to want of money: they had not spent the money they had got. It was contemplated when the Act was passed that £5,000,000 a year would be spent; but in the three years which had elapsed all they had had was £12,000,000, and they had not been able to get rid of all that. Surely there was some possibility of the Government's asserting itself over these officials. If they were once given to understand that the Government meant business, and that they would not be kept on unless they got through their work, then the work would be done. He wished to know if the Chief Secretary intended to look into the matter with a view to getting rid of those things that were blocking the way. The Land Purchase Act was the one thing that gave hope to Ireland, and he hoped the officials would not be allowed to thwart the work. He now wished to ask for some information about a gentleman who was appointed in 1888 or 1889 to the office of Assistant 769 Land Commissioner at a salary of £800 a year. Early in the 90's he was appointed to a sub-department for reporting on the prices at fairs, and his salary raised to £1,000. Upon one occasion he asked one of the Sub-Commissioners whether they appreciated this Department and he said they never looked at the prices. In 1897 when the Agricultural Department was formed, this gentleman was transferred. It appeared, however, that Sir Horace Plunkett, who was at the head of the Department, had no use for this official, and if Sir Horace had no use for a man then he was hopeless. Consequently, he was transferred to the Congested Districts Board, and even they had no use for him, and he was sent back to the Agricultural Department. He wanted to know where this man was now. He had been through the whole of the Irish Estimates to find his salary, but had failed to discover it. He was told that the Department gave a grant to the Agricultural Organisation Society of £2,000, and the last he had heard of his old friend was that he had a salary of £1,000 to superintend the expenditure of this £2,000. If the Government wanted retrenchment, here was an opportunity. What he wanted to know was where was this man placed? [An HON. MEMBER: Who is he?] The name was "Porter." Was he still a Sub-Commissioner? There were fifty-seven Assistant Commissioners chargeable on these Votes, and he wanted to know if his old friend was still doing this work. The hon. and learned Member for Waterford and he had both made their views pretty clear before the adjournment for the Easter holidays upon the question of recent appointments. He had never made any secret of the fact that he had appealed to the Chief Secretary to deal with the matter. He had told the right hon. Gentleman that he considered it a great national question, that these rents were intolerable rents, and that to appoint twenty-seven temporary officers of this kind was not a proper thing to do. It was a curious coincidence that most of the permanent men had been put upon the Land Purchase Department, and that the temporary men, who were open to influence, had been put on the Rent Fixing Department. These men ought not to be 770 let loose on Ireland. The Government were bound to appoint the best twenty-seven men they could find in the country for this work. They should have carefully examined the credentials of candidates for the appointments, taken into consideration who recommended them for office, and, in fact, found out all about them. He did not say that the whole of these men should be removed. He and his friends had been denounced in Irish Tory circles for what they had done in this matter. He was, however, prepared to stand by it. He would tell the Chief Secretary at once that he might as well have been hung for a sheep as for a lamb. The Unionist Members had given him just as much trouble for the refusal to reappoint five as they would have done for refusing to reappoint fifteen. There was one principle dear to the Unionist Party, but there was another almost equally dear. It was that everything with a salary attached to it must not get out of the Unionist Party. The longer the Chief Secretary remained in his office the clearer he would realise that truth. But all the Liberal Governments that he had known to be in office were never in power. The Castle and the Tories always managed things for them, and they would endeavour to do it now. One of the Ulster Members put a Question the other day about a twopenny-halfpenny appointment of a builder in Belfast, and they were up in arms about that going out of their ranks. He hoped the Government would realise that there was no use in trying to satisfy those gentlemen unless they gave them everything. Let the Government give them what they liked, however, but let them not hand over the land question to them. Did those gentlemen honestly approve of appointing to fix rents some of the men of the kind that were now at work. At any rate the constituencies did not approve of it. They had been worrying his life out in regard to those appointments.
§ MR. LONSDALENot from my constituency.
§ * MR. T. W. RUSSELLOh, yes, from yours. He urged that any body who knew those men was aware that they were mere 771 creatures, and the Commiteee would find the rents were very different during 1906 from what they were during 1905. But both the fair rent department and the question of purchase ought to receive the immediate attention of the Chief Secretary himself, who ought to let the officials know that they would not in the future be allowed to obstruct the Purchase Act as they had been obstructing it in the past. The Treasury, at all events, he was glad to think, was not going to oppose the Estates Commissioners dealing with the evicted tenants as they did before.
§ * MR. WYNDHAM (Dover)said he had not intended to intervene in this debate, but as the period had been alluded to during which he was Chief Secretary, perhaps he might, on that account, be allowed to say a few words. All he desired was to make his position clear. He wished to dissociate himself from the latter part of the speech of the hon. Member for South Tyrone. He thought a great mistake had been made by those hon. Members who had attacked the gentlemen who were discharging the difficult duty of fixing rents in Ireland. It was true that technically their appointments were temporary, and that dated from the time of Mr. Gladstone's first Land Act. At that time it was supposed that, after certain rents had been fixed and a standard arrived at, rents would be fixed by agreement, and that, therefore, permanent appointments would not be necessary. Since that time the Treasury had always been looking forward to a millennium in which Irish landlords and tenants would be able to agree about rents without going to law. In 1903, when they were debating the Land Purchase Act, not only the Treasury, but many persons from Ireland, believed that if that Act was a success the necessity for fixing rents on a large scale would disappear. If the presence of those gentlemen in a temporary capacity was a peril to the Land Purchase Act, then was the time to have said so, and not now, and since they had been discharging almost judicial functions, he deprecated most earnestly the practice of trying to bring pressure to bear upon them by debating their decisions night after night in Parliament. As Mr. Porter had 772 been alluded to, he thought it only right to say that he had always found him to be a zealous and competent official under the Congested Districts Board. He thought it was only right that he should state what he knew in regard to the services which Mr. Porter had rendered.
§ * MR. T. W. RUSSELLWhere is he now?
§ * MR. WYNDHAMsaid the hon. Member would see that it was not his duty to answer that Question. When he had the opportunity of judging of Mr. Porter's work he found it good. The hon. Member for South Tyrone had stated that the last stage of land purchase, namely, the distribution of money, was the stage which ultimately set the pace of land purchase in Ireland, and with that contention he agreed. He wished, however, to correct one misapprehension. When he introduced the Land Bill he said that they did not expect to proceed at a greater pace than £5,000,000 worth of purchase in any one of the first three years. At that time he was anxious to give full assurance to the Treasury to get the best terms, and he arrived at that estimate of the maximum pace at which it would proceed during the first three years largely because he knew that it would be very difficult to expedite the distribution of the purchase-money. If his memory served him right, he believed that they never sold more than £2,000,000—;he doubted whether it was more than £1,500,000—;under the provisions of the Land Act, in any one year.
§ MR. FLAVINAt seventeen years purchase.
§ * MR. WYNDHAMThat is not relevant.
§ MR. FLAVINBut it is most important to us.
§ * MR. WYNDHAMsaid he cordially agreed with the proposition that the distribution of the purchase-money in the preliminary stages would ultimately set the pace of land purchase, and if in these days of surpluses—;which were not 773 enjoyed during the time he was Chief Secretary—;help was to be given to Ireland, it could not be given in a better quarter than by strengthening and expanding the Department which had to deal with the distribution of the purchase-money, rather than that part of the machine which dealt with the fixing of rent. If the hopes of land purchase were to be fulfilled, it was obvious that the fixing of rent must become a decreasing and not an increasing operation. If they desired land purchase to go on more rapidly they would have to strengthen the machinery of land purchase throughout from top to bottom. They knew the attitude of the Treasury upon this question. It was certain that the Treasury were not going to raise millions when Consols were at 90, in order that the money might lie for two or three years in the Irish Land Courts. That was an operation which no sane financier would indulge in. If land purchase was to go on at a rapid pace, and if the Treasury saw its way, under happier conditions than had recently prevailed, to assist the operation of land purchase, then the way to assist it was by strengthening the machinery which dealt with the ultimate distribution of the purchase-money. The hon. Member for Waterford had asked for the production of certain instructions to the Estates Commissioners. He was afraid that the hon. and learned Gentleman's wish could not be gratified, for he issued no instructions.
§ MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid that he admitted the right hon. Gentleman had not technically issued instructions. But the Estates Commissioners admitted in their Report that letters were written to them containing in effect instructions how they should proceed. When the production of these documents was asked for it was refused, on the ground that the documents were private. It was commonly reported that those instructions hampered the action of the Commissioners just as much as the regulations of the right hon. Member for South Dublin.
§ * MR. WYNDHAMsaid that he issued no instructions; but, though he did not know the grounds for the rumour 774 to which the hon. and learned Member referred, he could guess them. In the first place, it was the duty of the Estates Commissioners to issue directions to their Sub-Commissioners, and the drafts of those directions were brought before him. For their final form he took full responsibility.
§ MR. JOHN REDMONDsaid that the interim Report of the Commissioners in 1904 stated—;
All proceedings under this section have been regulated by the Acts, provisional rules, and the instructions received from time to time from his Excellency the Lord-Lieutenant.It was also stated that doubtful cases had been—;Gradually settled by judical decisions, by instructions received, or by experience.
§ * MR. WYNDHAMasked the hon. and learned Member to allow him to proceed. He had only dealt with the first of the two grounds which might have given rise to the rumour. The instructions to the Sub-Commissioners certainly embodied his views not only of what the Act laid down, but of what was the outcome of the debate on the Act—;that where an agreement entered into between landlord and tenant was outside the zone it was the duty of the Land Commission to protect the State by inquiring as carefully as ever hitherto had been the case into the security of the holding, or to see that other parties interested did not suffer because the landlord had made an improvident bargain. That was his view when the Bill was debated, and he believed it was the meaning of the Act. That view, he said quite openly, was in the instructions of the Estates Commissioners to the Sub-Commissioners. As to bargains within the zone, he had always held that there was no necessity to look into the security or to protect other interests. The only other ground for the assertion that he had issued instructions to the Commissioners was that he wrote them a letter towards the end of 1904 stating that where property had come into the market owing to intimidation or illegitimate practices, cognisance must be taken of the fact. It had been stated that 775 his communications to the Estates Commissioners prevented progress from being made in dealing with congestion and the reinstatement of evicted tenants. There was no foundation for such a suggestion. He had always been most eager to deal with congestion, and, where possible, not to prevent an estate's being sold because at some time tenants had been evicted. It had been said that he issued instructions contrary to the spirit of the Act. He wished to contradict that.
§ MR. JOHN REDMONDWill the right hon. Gentleman consent to the publication of the documents he has mentioned?
§ * MR.WYNDHAMsaid that the hon. and learned Member might have the letter; but there were no other documents—;only the verbal communications between any Minister responsible to the House and the officials who worked under him. Those communications must be of a private character, but there was not a word in them that he should not be glad to repeat to the Committee nor a word which departed in one jot or tittle from those matters which were in agreement when the Bill was being debated in the House.
§ MR. PAUL (Northampton)said he hoped it would not be thought presumptuous if an English Member who had never been officially connected with Ireland like the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover, were to intrude in this Irish debate. After all this was the Parliament of tie United, Kingdom—;more or less united according to the policy pursued by the Government of the day. The money which they were voting was British money as well as Irish; unless it was spent for the benefit of the Irish people, in accordance with the opinions of their representatives, it might as well be thrown into the sea. The Acts of Parliament whose administration they were now discussing were both Land Acts and Purchase Acts. It was with the Purchase Acts which, with the leave of the Committee, he proposed to deal. England, Ireland, and Scotland, with all their differences of race, climate, and religion, found a common denominator in Committee of Supply. He was a convert to this purchasing legislation. 776 If he had been in the House when the Purchase Act of 1897 was passed he feared he should have opposed it. He regarded it as a gigantic and very dangerous experiment in British credit. He remembered observing that the discussion upon it was almost entirely confined to Mr. Gerald Balfour, who was then Chief Secretary, and the Gentlemen from Ireland, and he could not help asking himself whether the only person who was not represented in the House of Commons was the British taxpayer. But he freely and frankly admitted that he should have been wrong. Mr. Gladstone once described the Irish tenant as the best rentpayer in the world, and Mr. Gladstone's remark had been justified by the experience of all the Land Acts which had been passed during the last twenty years. The Irish tenant, when he was fairly rented, or when his rent had been fixed by a tribunal in which he had confidence and which was fully acquainted with the facts of the case, would pay to the uttermost farthing. When he was rented upon his own improvements, when the fruits of his labours were diverted from himself and his family to the pockets of his landlord, he would rise in rebellion, as the English tenant would rebel in a like case. While he quite shared the regret expressed by the hon. and learned Member for Waterford that they had not fuller information before them, he was fully enabled, from listening to his speech, to appreciate the nature of the grievance under which hon. Gentlemen from Ireland laboured. They complained that for a long series of years Assistant Commissioners had been appointed of one political complexion, who sympathised with the interest of the landlord rather than that of the tenant. The right hon. Gentleman opposite was much shocked by the criticisms passed upon these functionaries. But he would remind him that it was not only by Nationalist Members that these criticisms had been passed upon the Sub-Commissioners. The late Mr. James Lowther with his racy humour called them the sub-confiscators, and the late Lord Salisbury described them as applying to the land which they had to value the umbrella test. Irish debates were never dull, but some Irish 777 debates were more interesting than others, and he thought the debate which was in progress was more interesting than one with which they were indulged a few evenings ago, when the question was whether there should be for the county of Cork one clerk of the peace or two clerks, and whether if there was one clerk he should have a salary or a salary and a half. Although this Parliament was new and this, its first session, was not very old, it had already been borne in upon his mind that if any appointment in Ireland was not given to anyone who was in the first place a Protestant and in the second place a Unionist, the foundations of Irish society, at least in the North, were rocked and shaken to their very basis. [A NATIONALIST MEMBER: And the Empire too.] That was quite correct; as his hon. friend said, the foundations of the Empire were also represented to have been shaken. He would recommend his right hon. friend the Chief Secretary to keep them rocking. It was a perfectly harmless convulsion. There would be no Belfast riots over the appointment of Land Commissioners, and it would be positively indecent to select the last ditch in which to make a stand in the absence of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for North Armagh. Unless his right hon. friend proceeded, as he was sure he would, in a spirit of union and harmony with those hon. Gentlemen who could speak and could alone speak for the people of Ireland, the success of these Acts, introduced by Conservatives and passed by Conservative Parliaments, would be absolutely, frustrated and all hope of their favourable result annulled. A great deal, as they all knew, depended upon the spirit in which an Act was administered, and that was more particularly the case in regard to an Act which could not be construed by strict rules or definite legal principles, but which must be interpreted with due regard to the circumstances of the case and to the circumstances of the tenant and the neighbourhood in which he lived. He believed that the electors of this country who had this Irish question brought fully before them the other day, while they were convinced that it would not be possible in this Parliament to pass 778 anything like the legislation for Ireland which Mr. Gladstone introduced in 1880 and in 1893, were yet most strongly of opinion that Ireland should be governed as Lord Dudley, when Lord-Lieutenant, said—;in accordance with Irish ideas. Speaking for his own constituents, and, he believed, for those of most of his hon. friends around him, he would say that the more thoroughly the Government acted, not merely in union with the opinions of hon. Members from Ireland sitting below the gangway, but by associating them so far as was possible under the present system with the administration of their own country, the better the people of England and Scotland would be pleased. They knew very well that when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dover resigned, and when he ought to have been followed into retirement by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London whose policy was precisely the same as that of the late Chief Secretary, there came a change over the spirit of Irish administration, and that all attempt to conciliate the Irish people in the administration of these Acts and in other ways was given up. For reasons which he did not presume to criticise, it seemed impossible that an Irish Member should become Chief Secretary for Ireland, but the more responsibility it was possible to throw upon these Gentlemen who understood the wants and wishes of and were responsible to the Irish people the better it would be for Great Britain, because the better would Ireland be governed. He thought the hon. Member for Waterford, if he would forgive his saying so, was a little inclined to be hard upon the Chief Secretary. His right hon. friend was in a very difficult position. He had to deal not merely with hon. Gentlemen from Ireland in Parliament, but with Dublin Castle which was not what, its name would imply, a frowning feudal fortress, but a congested district of impervious officialdom, not unlike the War Office in London. It would be necessary for his right hon. friend to assert the legitimate authority which belonged to him, to teach the officers of the Crown in Dublin that they were the servants of the public, that if they were not directly answerable to this House he was 779 answerable for them and that he would not approve of any acts on their part which he was not prepared himself to justify from his place in Parliament. He was quite sure that if in the administration of these Purchase Acts his right hon. friend went upon the principles laid down by the hon. Member for Waterford and accepted by the whole of the Party which he so ably led, he would receive the steady, the hearty, the united and the loyal support of the Liberal Party in the House and in the country by whom his appointment was received with such hearty applause.
§ * MR. GINNELL (Westmeath, N.)said he rose to support this Motion and to submit to the Committee his reasons for doing so. In the first place he would enter a protest against the shortness of the time assigned for this debate. The subject of the Irish Land Commission was of such magnitude that it naturally divided itself into two distinct portions, namely, rent fixing and sale, and a separate day should have been allotted to each. The fact that sufficient time was not allowed for the purpose of discussing both those subjects separately must be his excuse for trespassing upon the indulgence of the Committee at greater length than he would otherwise have done. Farms in Ireland had descended for generations from father to son, and having been neglected utterly by those who occupied the position of owners, a certain class of equitable ownership inevitably grew up in Ireland, in favour of those who did all the improvements on the farms and who had reclaimed in many cases a portion of them and in some cases the whole. This equitable ownership was recognised in Ulster in favour of the tenants, but in the other three Provinces it was, as a whole, ignored, and the landlords appropriated the tenants' property, while they increased the rent in proportion to the extent to which the tenants improved their holdings. At length, after untold hardships and indescribable misery, this state of things culminated in a semi-revolution and the tenant right was tardily recognised by the Land Act of 1881. That Act was a big step towards the settlement of the land question. It was the first recognition of the 780 tenant's property in his holding, of the landlord's rapacity, of the unreality of contract between them, and of the necessity for a special tribunal to restrain one section of the community from robbing the other. That, at the time, was called a measure of confiscation, and the author of it, Mr. Gladstone, was roundly abused as a revolutionary. That Act enabled every tenant to whom it applied to sell his tenant right or occupation interest, and in the event of his being disturbed in his position he obtained compensation for the tenant right apart from and in addition to the compensation for improvements to which he might be entitled. The tenant right and the improvements, being alike the tenant's own property, the landlord was not entitled to have rent fixed in respect of either, or to have the price fixed in respect of either in the event of his selling to the tenant. In short, the joint ownership, which had always existed from the point of view of moral justice, was at last recognised by statute, and the landlord and the tenant became part owners. No sooner had the denunciations of that Act and its author blown over, than the very persons who had uttered them directed their attention to monopolising, in the interest of their class, all the offices by means of which the Act was to be worked, and the landlords who occupied the position of convicted criminals so asserted themselves that, with the help of Mr. Gladstone's colleagues, they succeeded in getting into their hands the greater portion of the working of this great measure. The Act was intended as a charter of justice to the tenants of Ireland, but the administration of it was put into the hands largely of the people who had made that charter necessary. Wholesale injustice had long been committed unheeded by the British Parliament until it had provoked desperation and outrage. It was only then that Parliament recognised the extent of the injustice by establishing these special tribunals to settle the matter, and in true English fashion in dealing with Ireland spoiled its own gift by putting the administration of the charter into the hands of the interested parties. When the Tories came into office they were not troubled with any scruples, but simply 781 put in supporters of the landlord faction. The law a[...]d the facts were so clear that no one could fail to appreciate them, but the Commissioners and sub-Commissioners succeeded at the outset in confusing the law and the facts, and that confusion had been purposely continued during the twenty-five years in which this rent fixing had been in operation. During the whole of that time the Commissioners had shirked their plain duty of laying down the principle under which they and the sub-Commissioners were to act in such a way that there was to-day radical disagreement among them on fundamental points. What some of the Commission regarded and what he agreed was regarded as Mr. Justice Meredith's perversion of the law upon this point was bad on all counts. It was that any form of competition which had the effect of unduly inflating the letting value of a holding beyond what would otherwise be its fair letting value was not to be taken into consideration as a ground for increasing fair rents. That was a characteristic example of Irish interpretation of a law. It meant that there was no tenant or occupation interest, and the thing which the Land Act of 1881 enabled the tenant to sell did not now exist. Mr. Justice Meredith had not the courage to use those words, but he intended that his words should be so construed, and knew that they were being so construed. Of that he had the best possible proof. The Chief Secretary, in answer to a Question put to him, had said that it had been decided that no reduction could be made on account of the tenants' occupation interest beyond his interest in his improvements on his holding. That meant, in other words, that the first section of the Land Act of 1881 had been repealed by Mr. Justice Meredith. That was a provision of law at present in force in Ireland, owing, in the first place, to the poverty and inability of the tenants to remedy it, and, in the second place, to the well - founded want of confidence in the Courts. Though the Land Act of 1881 incidently mentioned the words "future tenants," there was nothing in that Act which suggested in any way the creation of a new class, but the Commissioners immediately set about creating and increasing a permanent class of 782 people under the name of future tenants. The Unionist Government embodied in the Act of 1887 a section rendering the intervention of the sheriff unnecessary, and making it possible to evict in Ireland after notice by a letter addressed through the Post Office. After a letter had been posted and a few other trifling formalities complied with, the tenant was destroyed and transformed into that hopeless outlaw, the future tenant. He might be dragged by a policeman like a thief from the house he had built and the home he had created. The Act of 1896 directed the Court to ascertain and record the gross fair rent from which the improvements, which were to be similarly ascertained, were to be deducted. That was in accordance with the Act of 1881. But in most cases there was not even a pretence made to comply with the law. What was called the Pink Schedule and all the farms and rules as they now stood were, in his opinion, planned with the deliberate purpose of taking out of the tenants' pockets money they had honestly earned and transferring it to the pockets of the landlord, and they had successfully effected this from 1881 to the present time. In most cases there was not even a pretence made to comply with the law in making up the schedule. There was nothing in the record to show that any account had been taken of the price of produce and of labour and of the increase of local burdens and the various burdens which the tenants had to bear in a country without manufactures. There was no data to show whether proper deductions were made or not, and there was no authority for saying that proper deductions had been made except the unsupported assertions of the Commissioners. No tenant was offered any means of ascertaining what the grounds were on which a high rent was fixed. The pink schedule was not available to the unfortunate tenant; he was simply told on a contemptuous half - penny postcard the amount of the fine imposed upon him. Even when a Court Valuer had ascertained and reported improvements made by a tenant, there was no guarantee that justice would be done. No deductions could be allowed for improvements unless a formal schedule of them was made out. In one case which he had inquired into, the tenant 783 had made extensive improvements in draining his farm, and those drains were shown to the Court Valuer when he inspected the land, but because the tenant had not lodged in Court a formal schedule of them, no allowance could be made in respect of them. The Court made the man pay for that improvement for no better reason than that he had not complied with a technical requirement not of the law, but the Court itself. That was a great injustice, and he had no hesitation in branding it as an outrage on justice. Having shown the improvements to the Court Valuer on the ground this man was entitled to believe that he had done all the law required him to do and that he was entitled to full credit for those improvements. He warned the Committee to guard themselves against the suggestion that there was anything exceptional in this case. If there was, an independent examination of the files would be welcomed by the Land Commissioners as the best means of refuting the charge and vindicating themselves. But when he asked for such an examination, instead of availing themselves of it, the Land Commissioners sheltered themselves behind the suggestion that this request was unprecedented. Was not the tribunal itself unprecedented? This special tribunal had only been in operation five years when the Government found it necessary to order a revision of the whole of the rents that it had been fixing in the first term. This tribunal had systematically pursued a course diametrically opposed to that laid down by the law under which it acted. It purposely rendered it imposible for anybody to investigate its proceedings, and when challenged it shirked all inquiry. At the hearing in the Courts the Chief Commissioner and Sub-Commissioners harried through the cases so rapidly that it was absolutely impossible to have due regard to their respective merits. Some of these rent-fixing ourts dealt with as many as 200 cases in a week of five days of five hours each day. That was an average of seven and a half minutes to each case. It was manifestly impossible to take and consider the evidence from both sides in such a short time. In a certain case, owing to these methods, the tenant's statement 784 was not complete until after the decision was given. That did not matter much, but when the tenant found an exorbitant rent fixed upon him for fifteen years he naturally murmured, and mentioned, among other things, that a large portion of his farm was covered with water during several months in the year. The Judicial Commissioner who was fixing the rent, and whose decision they were asked in this Committee to respect, had no better answer to give than to tell the tenant to go and drink the broth. That flippant and heartless remark was a specimen of what they were desired to regard with awe as judicial decisions. The gentleman who made it was one of those recently re-appointed by the Chief Secretary For himself he had just as little confidence in the new appointments made by the Chief Secretary as he had in the older appointments. The right hon. Gentleman had strangely selected them from among the admirers of his predecessor and opponent. The baneful effects of the Land Conference were not confined to ruinous prices for land. It was an integral part of the Conference to destroy the rent-fixing courts in order to force the tenants to purchase on the landlord's terms. The Land Commission, vicious always, had surpassed itself since that unfortunate conference invented the system of purchase regardless of value. That invention gave the landlords such a chance of fancy prices as they had never hoped for, and so excited their innate cupidity that Commissioners and Sub-Commissioners were influenced in advance to promote the game. The courts had been thus degraded mainly with the object of forcing tenants to buy at exorbitant prices, and incidentally to degrade the courts utterly in the eyes of the people in the promotion of that main object. The name of justice had been so misused and polluted as to amount to a moral menace. From that time, though the cost of labour and the burden of local rates had increased, though seasons had been bad, product short, and prices low, the Commissioners and Sub-Commissioners had, according to official returns, given on an average only half the reductions they had been accustomed to give in previous years. In some 785 instances, to his knowledge, landlords themselves, bad as they were, had on the advice of their own valuers given higher reductions. For all the hardships of which the Nationalist Members complained, both Chief and Sub-Commissioners were to blame, but more particularly the Chief Commissioners, for they formed the rules of practice which their subordinates had to obey. They were the greatest scourge upon the people to whom they dispensed their perversion of the law. Yet that was the tribunal to which the Chief Secretary directed people as a Court of Appeal and fountain of justice. Before they could get those Courts respected they must make them respectable. A courageous exercise of existing powers would accomplish all that was necessary. He sincerely hoped the Chief Secretary was inspired by a nobler ambition than to become another item in the long list of British failures in Ireland. If the right hon. Gentleman were equal to the needs and the opportunity now presented to him he would insist upon an immediate revision of the forms, rules, practices and interpretation of the Land Commission in order to bring them into accord with the letter and spirit of the statutes, and side by side with that he would also insist upon an immediate revision within the current term of all existing judicial rents, such as was ordered by Section 29 of the Act of 1887. All this was easy for the Chief Secretary to do, and he would do it if the frost of Dublin Castle had not already frozen up the fountain of justice and liberalism at his heart. So much for the Land Commission proper as a rent fixing machine.
He would now ask permission to say a few words on the Land Commission in its relation to purchase. In that respect the Act of 1903 was the most one-sided measure ever passed, and the greatest instrument of extortion ever devised. If it were important to the tenant that he should not be obliged to pay either rent or price for what was already his own property, when the buying was done with public money, and the public were responsible in case of default, it was of public importance that no money should be advanced for what would in business be regarded as a bogus sale. 786 By bogus sales he meant all those now being carried out in obedience to the decision in the King-Harman case, in which the landlords were being paid out of public funds the price of a thing that never belonged to them, with a bonus of 12 per cent, added. Such a swindling system as that was so utterly indefensible that they were not without hope that the Chief Secretary would insist on having the decision overturned. The great achievement of the Land Conference embodied in the Land Act of 1903, was to abolish inspection for value, that protection of the tenant and of the State, to remove that obstacle to landlord rapacity and to allow the landlord a free hand at extortion. Henceforth the price of a farm was not to depend upon its value, but upon the skill of the landlord and the simplicity and embarrassment of the tenant. Under former Purchase Acts when holdings were inspected for value, advances were refused in 7,838 cases, generally on the ground that the prices which the tenants had agreed to pay were more than the holdings were worth. A large number of estates had been sold under the Act of 1903 at prices five years purchase more than the prices under the previous Acts, and therefore five years in excess of their true value. Advances to the full amount of those prices had, according to the latest information, been made in all except 693 cases. The inflation of prices beyond value was the greatest and most obvious effect of the zone system, but it was not the only effect. That system, in the hands of skilful landlords and agents playing upon tenants who had been deprived of their last shilling, and, consequently, of their courage, amounted to a real and deadly compulsion to accept any terms the landlord pleased to lay down. In the vast marjority of cases the tenants had nothing to say to the terms but sign them. The only choice left to them was immediate destruction by eviction or a slower destruction by purchase, and the easier but the worse course was generally taken. The tenants, by signing these agreements, enabled the landlords to get the money from the State. It was only one tenant in 1,000 who had the moral courage to face immediate ruin by refusing to sign the landlord's terms. Such a tenant, while sacrificing 787 himself, did a distinct service to the State. He regretted to have to add that the Estates Commissioners so far from recognising that service showed very scant favour to such a man. He enjoyed the distinction of having in his constituency a landlord who had sold a slum estate comprising a swamp farm appropriately occupied by a lunatic tenant. The landlord got the; lunatic to purchase the swamp at more than twice its value. On the strength of that agreement it seemed that the landlord had obtained the cash amount of that monstrous price with the handsome bonus of 12 per cent, added, and he had left the Estates Commissioners to sue the lunatic for the annuities. It was needless to ask what any decent man would think of such a landlord. He thought this was the time and place to ask what were they to think of the supervision exercised by the Commissioners over their inspectors in the presence of such a transaction? Did any Member of Parliament who voted for the Act of 1903 realise that it would be used as a trap for lunatics? That landlord was a specimen of the class to which the British Parliament in a fit of one-sided generosity had voted four or five bonuses. The first bonus was a free grant in cash of 12 per cent, added to the purchase money. This was called in the discussions on the Bill a financial bridge to enable landlords and tenants to meet, and be equally beneficial to both. Had this been used honestly for that purpose they would for the sake of peace have abstained from criticism, but no precaution whatever was taken in the Act against a dishonest use of the bonus, and the more avaricious a landlord was the greater was his reward. True to their nature the landlords had used and were using it to the extreme of dishonesty. So far from letting the bonus be of any use to the tenants the landlords had taken it all to themselves and had increased its amount by increasing the price. This bonus was worth somewhat more than three years purchase and it amounted to £12,000,000. The second bonus was given to the landlords by way of relief from the costs of sales. Under this head they were relieved from the payment of stamp duties, which would 788 otherwise cost them 2½ per cent, on the amount of purchase money; expenses of publication and of notices; expenses of preparation of surveys, of notices on public departments, and of searches in the registry of deeds, titles and judgments and negotiation fees in cases of sales to the Commissioners. Those savings were worth one year's purchase, or about £4,000,000. The third bonus was received by landlords of mortgaged estates, which constituted the vast majority of Irish estates. On receiving money from the State at 2¾ per cent., they could clear off the mortgages which were now costing them 4½ or 5 per cent., and thus effect the savings, amounting in many cases to two years purchase. The fourth bonus was the legislative miracle by which the Act enabled the landlord without any disturbance of his household gods to sell his house and demesne and afterwards enjoy in comfort the house and demesne and the price of them, the sham sale having been to himself. This was a fine specimen, surely, of Unionist finance. It would be observed that all these bonuses flowed straight in the same direction. Parliament was dealing with two sections of the community and it ought to have been impartial. If favours were to be shown at all it should have been to the poorer of the two sections. Did the Act give any bonus to the tenants?
* THE CHAIRMANThe hon. Member appears to be spending a great deal of time in criticising the Act. He must adhere to the administration of the Act, and he is not entitled to discuss any errors of legislation.
§ * MR. GINNELL (continuing)said that the bonus did not give any benefit to the tenants; in fact it only increased their difficulties. The Act gave them nothing but zones by means of which the landlords could hold them as in a vice absolutely at their mercy, and make the Act where it suited them compulsory. One could not help admiring the accuracy with which one landlord had described the situation, for when his poor tenants murmured against the price he demanded he told them they were only biting granite. The bonus of 12 per cent, which was to have formed a financial 789 bridge enabling landlords, without loss, to sell more cheaply than under the previous Acts had only increased their cupidity. The Chief Secretary had admitted in a carefully prepared reply that the average price under the Act of 1903, exclusive of bonus, instead of being less than under previous Acts, was five years purchase more. In other words the cash which the landlord received, including the bridge bonus, was eight years purchase more under the new Act than under the old. If they added the other bonuses which he had just mentioned they would find that in many cases the landlord was able to get, under this extraordinary Act, up to twelve years purchase more than the holding was worth. He would give the Committee an illustration. A landlord who sold under the Act of 1896 a farm rented at £100 for seventeen and three-quarter years purchase, which was rather over the average under that Act, would receive £1,775, out of which he would pay all the costs of the sale; he could, under the Act of 1903, sell a farm of the same value for twenty-two years purchase, receive £2,200, with a bonus of £264 added, or a total in cash of £2,464, free from all costs of sale. This was a cash gain to him of £698 in excess of what an inspecting department would certify that farm to be worth. To that sum had to be added the relief from cost of sale and other advantages. That was what the Land Conference had done for the individual landlord in respect of a single farm. He would now consider the question from a tenant's point of view. Supposing a tenant, paying a rent of £100, bought his farm under the Act of 1896 at seventeen and three-quarters years purchase. That tenant would in the term of forty-two and a half years make a total payment in principal and interest of £3,017 10s. A tenant buying the same farm under the Act of 1903 at the same number of years purchase would in the term of 68½ years make a total payment of £3,951 15s. 3d. That was to say, that the same farm at the same number of years purchase would cost the purchaser £934 5s. 3d. more under the new Act than under the old. As against that increase he had nothing but the longer time for repayment. That was the true and 790 entire value of the farm according to the scheme. But value having been abolished as a measure of price, the landlord now could and did charge more than the true value. According to the latest returns the average price without the bonus was twenty-two years purchase. At this rate the tenant rented at £100 must make a total payment of £4,897 15s. being an increase of £1,880 5s. over his total payments under the Act of 1896. That was what the Land Conference had cost the individual tenant. The result was bonuses for the landlords and zones for the tenants. Who would deny that class legislation had in this Act its most brilliant example?
* THE CHAIRMANOrder, order! The hon. Member is still criticising the Act, and that is not in order. He is only entitled to criticise the administration of the Act by the Land Commission. The hon. Member is a new Member, and I have for that reason given him a good deal of latitude. He must, however, deal only with the administration of the Land Commission and not with mistakes in the legislation of the past, or indeed with what he thinks is wanted in the legislation of the future.
§ * MR. GINNELLsubmitted, with great respect, that he was leading up to that point in order to show the effect of the zones. He proposed to show that the evils of the zone system could be remedied without legislation.
§ * MR. GINNELLsaid that in 1903 the then Chief Secretary gave to Parliament his opinion that all the saleable land in Ireland could be bought for £100,000,000, and he got Parliament to vote that sum and a further £12,000,000 as a bonus to enable vendors and purchasers to meet easily without losing sight of the true value as settled by the scale of prices when inspection was practised. If they were charitably to assume that he expected the landlords to sell at a somewhat lower number of years purchase than previously, on the bridge theory, and that he cared at all 791 for the solvency of Ireland, how scandalised he must be now to find his pets extracting such prices that £150,000,000 would be required to buy the amount of land he had in his mind. Of the £112,000,000 the landlords would receive in cash as the true value of the land about £73,000,000. They would receive in cash in excess of that value by virtue of the zones, £22,000,000, and in cash also the so-called bonus of £12,000,000. They would receive in relief from the costs of sale and relief from mortgages at least £5,000,000. In other words, for property worth £73,000,000 they would receive £112,000,000, being £39,000,000 in excess of the value. He was, of course, aware that this was not the way in which the bonus was calculated, that it was calculated on the entire price, and that the higher the price the landlord charged the greater was his reward at the public expense. But the method of calculation was not very material when the net result was as he had stated. That was what the Act of 1903 did for one section of the community. Let them see what it did for the other section. It so arranged the matter that for this property worth £73,000,000, which the tenants could have purchased on inspection under previous Acts for £124,524,982 in the term of forty-two and a half years, they must now pay £202,118,386 in the term of sixty-eight and a half years, being £77,593,404 in excess of what they would have been obliged to pay had inspection been retained. This £77,000,000 was what the land conference had cost the Irish people. It was the result of the lamb lying down even for a brief period with the wolf. What a fine inducement for conferences on other subjects! When the Act which produced these results was passing through Parliament the right hon. Gentleman who was now Prime Minister used these wise and honest words, but, alas, used them in vain—;
I am not willing to put a load on the tenant's back under which he must entirely break down and involve us all in disaster in order that the landlord should get, not a fair price, but an inflated security. If there are to be sacrifices in this matter, and there must be, these sacrifices must be mutual. Whilst it is right under existing circumstances that these gentlemen (the landlords) should receive just, and even generous treatment, they have no right to escape laden with the spoils of war, 792 no right to burden the tenant and leave a legacy of future trouble for the State.The landlords were now going away laden with the money which the Treasury was advancing without regard to value. He asked hon. Members to look to it that they did not persist in sowing the trouble for the State which the Prime Minister apprehended. Was all the flagrant extortion now being practised nothing to those who passed by the way? Was the Chief Secretary content to play the role of the unconcerned spectator while the country he had undertaken to govern was being juggled and cheated? Would he apply nothing more effective than civil commonplaces to the class who were making the people bite granite? While on the one hand certain provisions of the Act were being used dishonestly, and while on the other the provisions of the same Act for the acquisition and distribution of untenanted land, which was so much needed, remained almost a dead letter, the Chief Secretary appeared to think that the Irish representatives should be satisfied when he threw up his hands in sympathetic despair and said he could do nothing. What sort of answer was that in the mouth of a Liberal statesman with a huge and, he believed, generous majority at his back? Why did people, uninvited, undertake to govern a country if, with the power in their hands, they would not remedy great and admitted evils? Immediate compulsory sale at a fair price and the payment to landlords of 75 per cent, of their gross incomes on second term rents, or their equivalent, pending inspection of the holdings, would, he believed, be the quickest and fairest solution of the problem. If the Government proposed such a measure he felt sure that the House would pass it. But, pending legislation, much more could be done by administration than the Chief Secretary had yet realised. Though the Estates Commissioners were under the control of Dublin Castle they deserved credit for having early this year exposed to public contempt the illegal instructions to which the Castle had subjected them. That was a courageous act and a distinct public service. But the Commissioners had to wait for two years and a change of Government before they mustered courage to do it. Had they done it three 793 months earlier, while the Unionists were in power, it would have cost them their positions. He did not say that to detract from any merit due, but in view of the Castle's capacity for mischief it was wholesome for the Commissioners to know that the Irish Members could measure them accurately and would not shrink from doing so. It might have been better to have left the Commissioners free to administer the Act in accordance with its terms and spirit, unhampered by any regulations. If regulations there must be, the new were preferable to the old. But the instructions issued under them to the inspectors were not in all respects satisfactory. What steps did the Commissioners take to ascertain whether the proposed purchasers submitted to them were bona fide tenants? Was any record kept of purchasers who had in recent years been graziers on eleven months tenure of the lands they had been enabled to purchase? What measures were taken to counteract the designs of graziers upon untenanted lands and to reserve those lands for the beneficial distribution which was so large an element in getting the Act passed? Where there was reason to believe that the proposed purchaser was insolvent, or stripped of means for working a farm, was inquiry made as to whether that condition was due to excessive rent, and whether the purchase price was calculated on that rent? Were prices being revised with the view of lowering the value of farm produce by the importation of cattle and products? Were some inspectors taking one course and others an opposite course on any or on all of those points? A very considerable amount of good could be effected by uniformity of principle and of practice throughout the administration. No such uniformity had hitherto existed even outside the zones where there was unquestionably a free hand. No one would undertake the moral defence of what had been done within the zones. The zone trick by which inspection was evaded was in practice, in the circumstances of Ireland, such a gross piece of systematic dishonesty as would not be tolerated for a day in any self-ruled country. Could that trick be exploded without legislation? He believed it could. In the beginning some of the Commissioners thought they 794 had jurisdiction to check the price with the value in all cases. They probably thought so still, notwithstanding Judge Meredith's decision to the contrary. He suggested that a serious effort would be made to have that decision reversed. But he believed that it could in any case be nullified and prices brought back to the standard of value by a Treasury minute forbidding the Estates Commissioners to advance in any case a price in excess of the value of the interest which the landlord had to sell. Who would have a right to complain of an order so just? No one except a dishonest landlord.
§ MR. FETHERSTONHAUGH (Fermanagh, N.)thought he would find himself on this occasion in substantial agreement with a good deal of what had been said by the hon. Member for Waterford and other Members. He was unable to express himself in agreement with the hon. Member for North Westmeath however, because he was not able to recognise either his facts or his statement and interpretation of the law. If the Chief Secretary failed to understand the facts of the hon. Member, perhaps the Attorney-General who had written a book on the Land Act would be able to come to his assistance.
§ MR. JOHN O'CONNOR (Kildare, N.)You are not a model of clearness yourself.
§ MR. FETHERSTONHAUGHsaid that in reference to land purchase which had been spoken of both by the hon. Member for Waterford and by the hon. Member for South Tyrone, he thought anyone who had the interests of Ireland at heart would be most anxious to see a settlement of the land war effected with all possible speed. They would all be glad to see the evicted tenants question satisfactorily settled. They would be glad to see successfully dealt with the problem of the grazing lands of the west and the provision of better houses for the congested districts, and he hoped it would have the result of staying the drain of emigration from that part of the country. Whether that result would or would not follow, he would not venture to prophesy, but at any rate 795 the experiment was well worth the trial. It was only his anxiety to say or do something to accelerate the operations of the Land Purchase Commissioners that he ventured upon the Motion on the adjournment for the holidays to bring forward several suggestions which had been repeated in the present debate. On that occasion he alluded to the fact that the operations of land purchase were very much retarded by the difficulties arising from the distribution of the purchase money, and he desired to suggest that it was impossible for the Land Commissioners to distribute the purchase money at a rate which would keep pace with the sales going on. He then suggested that it would be the truest economy to give him assistance to dispose of the congestion of business that had arisen in the Estates Commissioners' Office. Everything that was done to expedite land purchase would be a saving on the side of the rent fixing and other Departments of the Irish Land Commission; although it had been very profitable from the lawyers' point of view for the last 20 years, he did not hesitate to say, putting aside personal interests, that there was not a man who would not be delighted to see the rent fixing tribunal come to an end. He mentioned a case in which he was counsel, which came up as far back as 1898, and had not been finally disposed of yet. Indeed it might be several months before the tenant knew what his ultimate judicial rent was to be. There were hundreds of similar cases. There were only one or two small matters in which he felt compelled to dissent from the views of previous speakers. The case of Mr. Porter seemed to excite the hon. Member for South Tyrone very much. Perhaps he did not vote for his hon. friend at the last election. Let him be given time and he might on the next occasion, and then perhaps they would not hear so much about it.
§ MR. JOHN O'CONNORrose to a point of order. Was the hon. and learned Gentleman in order in attributing such a motive to the hon. Member for South Tyrone?
* The CHAIRMANsaid he did not think the hon. Member was really aspersing the motives of the hon. Member for South Tyrone. He thought it was said more by way of a joke than anything else.
§ MR. FETHERSTONHAUGHsaid that if the remark was taken at all seriously he would at once withdraw it. It was intended as something in the nature of a joke. Did the hon. Member for South Tyrone by his reflections on the sub-Commissioners mean to suggest that if he was offered a position which might shortly become vacant with a satisfactory salary he would not take it? He ventured to think that if any sane man was offered a post with a satisfactory salary he would be willing to take it. He objected to the criticisms made by the hon. Members for Water-ford and South Tyrone upon the sub-Commissioners. He himself did not hold a brief for either landlord or tenant, but he regretted that persons who had to discharge judicial functions should be discussed in this Committee in the manner in which they had been discussed, and that they should have it borne in upon their minds that their continuance in office was dependent upon the popular opinion of the Committee. Persons who discharged judicial duties ought, according to our constitution, to discharge them independently. He quite recognised the difficulty pointed out by the right hon. Member for Dover in appointing people to permanent office when they might not after a time be required. He did not quite see how the difficulty could have been got over, but he did say that when once men were appointed and proved satisfactory in the discharge of their duties they should be kept on—;if he might use the phrase—;permanently in a temporary office, that was that they should have security of tenure as long as their services were wanted. It was said that these sub-Commissioners were a lot of military officers and land agents and members of other unsuitable professions. The last return showed that they numbered ninety-six, of whom only six were landowners or simple owners of land and nothing else; six were neither landlords nor tenants; thirty-four were combined in the ownership and in the tenancy of land. That meant that in many 797 instances they held one piece of land in fee simple and were tenants of other large pieces of land adjoining. Out of the ninety-six there were fifty who were tenant farmers; only three had ever been in the Army and twenty were described, in addition to farming, either as landlord or tenant, as being estate agents, auctioneers, and such like. He thought it was an unfortunate thing that it should be stated in this Committee that these men who discharged very difficult and delicate functions were dependent upon the opinion of the majority of Members. He knew nothing about rents or whether they were high or low, but he deprecated the fact that these gentlemen should be threatened with dismissal if rents were higher this year than they were last. They called it conspiracy, but who were the conspirators? Two Judges, one a Judge of the High Court and the other Mr. Commissioner Fitzgerald, who was regarded and paid as a Judge. Was it suggested that they had entered into a conspiracy to raise rents since the passing of the Act? He had heard skilled valuers say, under cross-examination, that the fall of prices was very sharp from 1878 to 1890. From that time on there was not such a fall of prices and the prices of many things on which rents were fixed, sheep, pigs, store cattle, etc., had not declined since 1890. He was not discussing whether rents should or should not be reduced, but he was suggesting that undoubtedly valuers of great eminence held that although first term rents fixed between 1880 and 1890 required very considerable reduction to make them fair rents when they came up for revision, when they came to rents fixed after 1890 they did not find at all the same need for subsequent revision as the earlier cases required. That might very possibly account for the figures which the hon. Member for South Tyrone had quoted showing that the average reduction during the past ten or twelve years was greater than the average reduction in 1905. Rents fixed in 1905 would be first term rents or they would be second term rents that had been fixed later than 1890. He had frequently heard it said that where a tenant since 1881 had not gone into Court down to 798 the year 1905 that he must have considered his rent, on the whole, pretty fair, and that it was only because when times had changed he thought he would get a small reduction he went into Court in 1905, and then he would not expect to get so big a reduction as a man who felt the pinch earlier in 1881 and went into Court then. That was enough, he thought, to acquit the Commissioners of the gross charge of conspiracy that had been made against them by the hon. Member for South Tyrone. He often heard the Commissioners abused by both sides, and it had always struck him that it might be said, in justice to these gentlemen, that, in the matter of fixing rents, if they pleased neither party, the chances were that the rent they fixed was pretty fair. He could not think that the sub-Commissioners had ever been neglectful of the interests of the tenants. Considering that the landlords of Ireland did not return a single Member and that the tenants returned the whole 105, he should think that it was very unlikely that the sub-Commissioners would act in the interests of a class who, however powerful they might have been in the past, certainly since 1885 had been totally deprived of political power. It was a most lamentable thing that the conduct of a Judge should be discussed in the Committee in this way, and that it should be plainly held out to him that his salary and his continuance in office was to be dependent on the decisions he gave. It tended to arouse a want of confidence. It was suggested that the rents were raised with the object of affecting the purchase price. Surely if the tenant was aware that his rent had been fixed too high he would not give that same number of years purchase as he otherwise would. He did not think the landlords or the tenants were so ignorant of their rights that they would rush into a bargain that would be destructive to either. They had been brought together in a wonderful manner since the Act of 1903. The Return published with regard to this matter showed that up to February, 1906, land sales amounting to nearly £33,000,000 had been agreed to. When people blamed a landlord or a tenant for holding back, did they imagine that in the three years 799 after the passing of that Act in 1903 nearly one-third of the land of Ireland would be dealt with? He did not say that these agreements had come in too fast. He would have been glad to have seen more of them, but he thought they had come in as quickly as they could. The fault he had to find with the Act was, first, that the money was not forthcoming, and, secondly, that the staff of Commissioners was not sufficient to deal with the money they had got. Not having the money held back many a sale. Many a man, if he thought he could get the money in time, would be glad to sell his estate. But the staff was not sufficient to deal with the matter, and that was why he had suggested the appointment of more Commissioners and examining clerks. He had made that suggestion with some practical knowledge of the workings of the office. He had also suggested the appointment of an additional Judge to assist Mr. Justice Meredith. He had never heard that the Commissioners were idle and did not do their work, and he had come across numbers of solicitors and others who had to do business with the office. He had simply made that suggestion because he thought it would accelerate the work. Surely they were all agreed, whatever might be the ultimate destiny of their country, whether it took the shape of the aspirations of hon. Gentlemen below the gangway or the shape that he and those who sat with him desired, that the remedy for the chronic evil from which poor old Ireland suffered could only be found in the solution of the land question. That should not be a Party question between them. All Members representing Ireland should associate themselves with that good work.
§ MR. MEAGHER (Kilkenny, N.)said that in dealing with this matter he did not wish to go over the ground which had been traversed by his hon. friends, and therefore as a tenant farmer he would confine himself to a few pertinent facts that had come under his own particular observation. He had heard a good deal as to the appointment and re-appointment of the temporary Sub-Commissioners, but as things were he did not see that the farmers of Ireland would be any worse 800 off if those Sub-Commissioners were swept away root and branch. In his opinion some means should be devised whereby second-term rents should be fixed on a different basis from the casual and ineffectual method adopted at the present time. He failed to see the necessity for a revaluation of the land after fifteen years occupation. The Commissioners when they came first valued the land as they found it and took into consideration the improvements which the landlord or tenant had made upon it, as the case might be. At the end of sixteen years, when the tenant had made his improvements upon the land and spent his money for them, a second Commissioner came out who had no knowledge of the state of the land fifteen years previously, and valued the land again. In the case of one holding the land of which he saw at the time of its first valuation the tenant farmer thought he was to have credit for all his improvements. He spent £275 in draining and improving the land, and fifteen years afterwards a Sub-Commissioner walked the land and what did he do? After the expenditure of £275 upon the land the tenant got 10s. reduction. When the second term rent was fixed the landlord appealed and the old rent was restored.
And it being a quarter-past Eight of the clock, and there being Private Business set down by direction of the Chairman of Ways and Means under Standing Order No. 8, further Proceeding was postponed without Question put.
§ The House resumed.