CLANRICARDE ESTATES (EXPROPRIATION). (Hansard, 28 November 1906)

§ MR. DUFFY (Galway, S.)
, in asking leave to introduce a Bill to provide for the expropriation of the Marquess of Clanricarde from his Irish estates, said his action was impelled by two motives. As a resident in the locality he saw it was absolutely impossible to maintain and preserve the faintest appearance of law and order in the wide stretch of country extending from the Shannon to the sea—a distance of forty Irish miles— so long as Lord Clanricarde was allowed to exercise his free and unfettered will in the extraordinary manner they were unfortunately acquainted with. Moreover, the state of unrest and disaffection, constantly bordering on rebellion and civil war, which everlastingly permeated, not alone the entire Clanricarde estate, but the country adjoining, made it evident that something must be done at once if the law of the land was to run its course, and if the unfortunate people who were obliged to live under the sway of such an unfathomable mystic were to be saved the necessity of entering upon a terrible struggle with a view to saving themselves from the cruel and unjust attacks of this man. He would not weary the House with tedious repetition of the horrors this man had caused, but he would briefly tell the circumstances upon which he based his proposal that the State should compulsorily acquire possession of the property of this nobleman, and, having fully redeemed his interest, allow him to betake himself to some more congenial corner of the world where his extraordinary talents and unnatural activities might be more fully appreciated. The late Prime Minister, in discussing the Town Tenants Bill, said— Here you are now. Lord Clanricarde is your classic type of Irish landlord; why don't you bring in a Bill specially dealing with his case. In accepting the challenge he felt certain that he could rely on the right hon. Gentleman's support and influence in carrying this Peace Preservation Bill into law. In the House and out of it he had never met a man who defended generally the character of Lord Clanricarde. In Ireland he was hated by 90 his own class, for he had brought more trouble and misfortune upon them than all the agrarian movements of the past thirty years. By his tenants and the country generally he was hated and abominated, yet tolerated, and wholly against his will he had ever been the pioneer and promoter of strenuous agrarian agitation leading up to useful remedial legislation. To the Government of the day, Tory and Liberal alike, he had always proved himself to be a bugbear and a standing menace to the peace, good order, and government of the country. Since his father's death in 1873 he had been a cruel and constant scourge over some 56,000 acres of land, including the town of Loughrea and other towns which were absolutely cursed by his ownership. During that long period of years his career had been distinguished by misery, wretchedness, and bloodshed. Of all the landlords of Ireland he had been the most callous and heartless. One of his agents, the ill-fated Mr. Joyce, protested against the cruel and abominable things he was made to do, and in a subsequent trial which he was obliged to enter into in order to clear his name from the foul stigma which his employer sought to affix to it, he showed up the infamies of which he was sought to be made the tool. This noble landlord had never visited his property since his advent to the title except on one occasion when he paid a flying visit to bury his father. He subsequently visited Ireland when he appeared in Dublin to defend the libel action instituted by his agent Mr. Joyce. He would pass over Lord Clanricards's exceptionally brutal treatment of Loughrea and district; the princely mansion begun by his father but unfinished; the town hall of Loughrea closed in the faces of the people except when let for hire; the town commissioners established by his father, with a grant of £75 a year, now left in poverty through his withdrawing the grant made for its sustenance; and the brewery established by his father which he had closed down. He came to the circumstances connected with the evictions on the property. Between 1879 and 1882, 239 families were turned adrift and were now wandering about. Those evictions were so harsh and cruel that the Chief Baron of Ireland, who presided at the Joyce trial, declared that 91 they were cruel and abominable, and in scathing terms denounced the action of Lord Clanricarde in expelling his tenants from their humble homes, while the jury marked their sense of the cruel wrong done to the people by awarding exemplary damages. The nefarious eviction of Mr. Martin Ward was still fresh in the minds of everyone. Even Lord Clanricarde himself, bad as he was, had never, been guilty of conduct more monstrous and inexcusable. Mr. Ward, who was a prosperous trader in Loughrea, became secretary of the political organisation in the district. This exercise of his legal right infuriated the agent, who wrote the now famous letter which was without precedent even in the annals of Irish landlordism. The trader had since been deprived of his valuable property, and was now a ruined man, living in a cold out-of-the-way corner of the town in the hope that his fellow-countrymen would ere long provide him with a place of business to commence life anew. The last reason he would give as justifying the intervention of the House was the unfortunate and lamentable state of things which existed all over the property. At the present moment Lord Clanricarde threatened to destroy the homes of a large number of his tenants by similar rapacity and injustice to that inflicted on Mr. Ward. At a time when nearly every landlord in Galway was endeavouring to do his duty by the people and put into operation the provisions of the Land Act, the most noble the Marquess of Clanricarde was issuing processes and ejectments and preparing the way hard and fast for a new eviction campaign.

§ * MR. SPEAKER
reminded the hon. Member that he had exhausted the ten-minutes which was the time permitted for such a Motion.

§ MR. DUFFY
said he would read the names of the hon. Members on the back of the Bill and appeal to the House to come to the assistance of a body of people in the West of Ireland who had done no wrong, and who, if given the opportunity of acting their part in future, would prove as sound, honest, and faithful as any to be found in any part of the world.

§ * MR. SPEAKER
When leave has been given to bring in the Bill I will ask 92 the hon. Member to read the names of the hon. Members on the back of it.

§ THE PRIME MINISTER AND FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN,) Stirling Burghs
I shall simply interpose with a very few words on this question. The first thing I wish to do is to compliment the hon. Member on the temperate, earnest, and effective way in which he has presented his case. There is a strong humorous element in this matter no doubt, but there is a serious element also. I do not suppose that the most extreme advocate of the rights of property that this House contains can justify for a moment the attitude which this nobleman and landed proprietor has thought fit to assume for many years in the district where his property lies. The relations between him and his tenants, and indeed the whole community, have been such as greatly contribute to disturbing the public peace, and exasperating and envenoming the minds of parties in Ireland. Therefore I say it is a most serious thing, and I am not surprised that the hon. Member should have brought in a Bill which, he thinks is the proper way to deal with this matter. Whether there is another side of that question or not, I think that hon. Members, in that part of the House, if they could manage to obliterate the Clanricarde case, would lose one of their strongest arguments and their greatest sources of strength in any agitation for a change in the law that they might enter upon. But just at this time, when we are entering, as we think, under the Bill of the right hon. Member for Dover, passed a few years ago, upon, a new era—a new agrarian era—in Ireland, it is distressing beyond measure that a great landlord like this should use and abuse his powers in the described by the hon. Member. But the hon. Member has introduced a Bill on the 28th November, and of course, at this time of year it can go no further. If it did go further it would have to be examined by the proper officials of the House, and, being a very peculiar 93 Bill, directed against the property and interest of a single individual, it would have to undergo a great number of forms which are not necessary in the case of ordinary Public Bills. Therefore there is no chance of its going any further, and, I think, if the House allows the hon. Member to introduce his Bill we shall at least see how such a thing is proposed to be done; at the same time, we shall know that it will go no further and that we do not wish it to go further. On the other hand, those who entertain a strong opinion of the evil which has been done for many years in this unfortunate district in Ireland will have done something, at all events, to express their strong opinion. I think it is a matter for the House to say for itself; but I can only say that I am not surprised at the action taken, and I think the hon. Gentleman has done justice to the subject by the earnestness of his language and the moderation of the statement he has made.