STATE OF IRELAND.

HL Deb 10 March 1846 vol 84 cc837-40

LORD BROUGHAM

rose to present a petition from the Marquess of Westmeath, a Member of their Lordships' House, but petitioning in his private capacity as a holder of land in Ireland. He (Lord Brougham) was not answerable for the statements in the petition; but this he would say, that if any thing like what was said by the noble Marquess were true, he had never heard of any civilized country being in such a state as that part of Ireland in which the noble Marquess's pro- perty was situated—the county of Roscommon. The noble and learned Lord proceeded to read from the petition:— That your petitioner has been, for nearly thirty-two years, possessed of about 1,200 Irish acres of land in the parish of Kilglass, barony of Ballintobber, county of Roscommon, in Ireland. That neither his late father nor petitioner himself ever gave a lease or subdivided land for the purpose of making a freehold. That petitioner has always been desirous of introducing a good system of husbandry upon his estates, and improving the condition of his tenantry in every way; but that his tenantry, generally, in this parish, have fostered inveterate habits of dishonesty and fraud, and counteracted him to the utmost of their power during that long period in his endeavours by an enlightened system to better their condition. That such a system of combination exists that no tenant, if even reasonably disposed, dare follow petitioner's recommendations or wishes for the improvement of a barbarous system of occupation and culture. The petitioner then proceeded to describe the ruinous effect of the conacre system on his property, and went on to say:— That your petitioner's estate is all but ruined by this system; and by combination established through terror, and confirmed by fraud, among the tenants, the most gross untruths have been fabricated in Ireland, to be propagated in Great Britain, for the purpose of imposing on well-meaning simple persons, and inducing them to attribute the disturbances of Ireland to the mismanagement and extortion of landlords. That the purpose of these misrepresentations is to prejudice Parliament, and indispose it to give land- lords the relief of any justice in their case. That for the same ends, and simultaneously, a yell of agitation and sedition is propagated to screen these aggressions and encroachments upon property, and to produce general confusion throughout the country. The petitioner therefore feels himself compelled to place an undeniable catalogue of crime and villany, of which he has been the victim, on this particular estate, which will be found to be an answer to whatever exaggerated or untrue statements either dupes or knaves may deal in or advance to conceal or disguise the truth from Parliament. After further stating the evils to which he was subjected from the tenants who continued on his land against his will, the petitioner proceeded to say:— That your petitioner begs to represent to your Lordships that the same persons, or their families, are mostly, with little exception, occupiers against the will and wish of your petitioner of the same land; that a confederacy of a still more lawless and brutal kind has been just recently formed among them, evinced by an open declaration of a determination to pay no further rent to your petitioner at all, of which they now owe mostly two years, besides arrears; that the present disease in the potato crop is the pretext in some respect for this conduct; but is no reason whatever, in point of fact, as your petitioner's rents have been paid in other places of the same county; and that the occupiers who hold from your petitioner direct, ought not to be justified by the chicanery which the law permits from paying him, because there may be poverty and distress among the squatters and their families, who have notoriously, against law, reason, and the faith of contracts, been permitted to subdivide and appropriate petitioner's lands among themselves to petitioner's extreme injury. That your Lordships may have no doubt of the cruel hardships and privations which many landlords in that country are suffering under, while exposed to continual obloquy in this; and in proof that much of the stated distress in Ireland is simulated, your petitioner has but to refer to the fact that a tax has been, under the influence of undue excitement for six years past levied on the tenantry and people of that country in the Romish chapels, called the 'O'Connell tribute,' amounting, according to the official published account, to upwards of 127,869l., and for which the usual annual proclamation has been made on an early Sunday to repeat. That it is pretended this tax is a voluntary contribution; but, whether it be so or not, it is certain the tenantry could not contribute to it if the law was in the ascendant until they had honestly acquitted themselves of their just obligations. He (Lord Brougham) had often heard it observed that the Irish were the most charitable people in the world, nor would he quarrel with them for giving dole to any mendicant, great or little—poor creatures! but if they chose to spend so large a sum as 127,869l. in six years on what was called the "O'Connell Tribute," they certainly ought not to come to England and ask for relief to the amount of 500,000l. The noble and learned Lord concluded by the prayer of the petition, which was as follows:— That your petitioner prays your Lordships to provide that no occupation of any description of land in a country so exclusively agricultural as Ireland is, may be encouraged or permitted by law, without certain and immediate securities to control and enforce contracts; that laxity may not, as at present, necessarily lead to fraud, chicanery, perjury, demoralization, and disturbance; that means may be devised by the wisdom of your Lordships to have agreements promptly enforced, of which no man could justly complain; that industry and thrift may be encouraged, and over-holding by illegal combination rendered a punishable offence, as a forcible possession is now presumed to be. That, as this statement is not overcharged, but very generally a true picture of the state of the whole of the same district, your petitioner prays your Lordships to pass a law whereby persons in the occupation of land not their own may be prevented in limine from subdividing the land of other persons against the will and wish of the proprietors, and against the faith of their own contracts, instead of driving proprietors to a remedy by ejectment after the injury is done, which Irish tenants in many places now think, when used, ought to be resented by assassination. That measures may be taken to abridge and diminish the unblushing practice of perjury, now notoriously so common in the courts of quarter sessions in Ireland, by the appointing an officer to write down evidence as it is delivered, to serve towards the ends of conviction for so odious a crime, when necessary. That your Lordships will also be pleased to enact a law whereby the persons for whose interest and benefit, or for the interest and benefit of those who shall occupy land or premises which the owner or tenant is compelled by threats or terror to surrender, shall be held responsible themselves, as if parties taking forcible possession thereof.

Petition laid on the Table.