HL Deb 12 July 1897 vol 50 cc1541-52
*THE EARL OF BELMORE

rose to move— That a humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying Her Majesty to appoint a Royal Commission to consider and report (1) to what extent the payers of ecclesiastical tithe rentcharge in Ireland (exclusive of cases where the tithe rentcharge has been purchased for cash) are reasonably entitled to a reduction in the present annual amount of such tithe rentcharge (including the amount of outstanding annuities in cases where the tithe rentcharge has been commuted), having regard (1) to the fall in the amount of the tithe rentcharge in England during recent years; (2) to the fall in the market price in Ireland of the articles on which such tithe rentcharge was originally fixed; (3) to the reductions of lay tithe rentcharge which have been made on this basis in Ireland; and (4) upon any other grounds: (2) whether, and to what extent, such ecclesiastical tithe rentcharge could be reduced or extinguished at the present time (or at some future date) without material prejudice to the security of the loans at present charged upon the Irish Church Estate. He said the subject which he was going to ask their Lordships' attention to was one which had been very often before that House in the last ten years. As long ago as the 2nd July 1888—more than nine years since—the late Lord Waterford brought that matter of Irish tithe rentcharge before their Lordships' House, and from the answer which he received from the present Lord Lieutenant, who was then the Lord Privy Seal, and had charge of the business of that House, it was no doubt hoped, and he believed the Government fully intended that the question should have been dealt with before this time. But somehow or other nothing was done except in one respect which he would mention, in the Land Act of last year, and that matter, like the Delagoa Bay Arbitration which they heard of the other night, and which was always going to be concluded immediately, still dragged on its weary way. Before he went into the merits and history of the question he should just like to say one word as regarded the form of inquiry which he asked for. In his notice he had asked for a Royal Commission. With regard to a Royal Commission, all he had to say was that he put that way of conducting the inquiry as an alternative to what had been originally suggested by his Irish Friends—namely, a Select Committee of that House or a Joint Committee. He thought the matter was so very technical that besides the difficulty of getting a Committee together at this time of the Session, it would really not be a good tribunal to inquire into the matter which was one almost entirely of figures. Of course, he knew there was a question of policy behind the figures, but what they wanted to inquire into was the figures of the matter. So long as they got a tribunal that consisted of skilled persons who were able to deal with the evidence of experts, who were familiar with the work of accountants and actuaries that would quite satisfy them, whether it be a Royal Commission or a Departmental Committee or any other tribunal the Government would appoint. With regard to the history of the Irish Tithe Question, until 1823 the tithe was always paid in kind by the occupiers of the land, whether they were tenants or whether they were landlords fanning their own land. In that year an Act was passed which provided for the voluntary commutation of the tithes, and he believed when the tithe was so voluntarily commuted, although the tenant-occupier still continued to pay tithes, he could deduct it from the landlord. That Act did not appear to have worked very well, and there were some other Acts passed in the time of George IV. and William IV. which he need not allude to, as they were Acts of machinery. In the year I838 it was decided, for reasons which would be familiar to their Lordships, that the tithe rent should be compulsorily commuted into cash payments, and that the payment in future should be made by the landlord and not by the tenants. The landlord, if he chose, had the power to add the amount to the rent, and in the case of leases on his own estate it was done, but in eases where there were no leases and where the amount was really very small, very often the landlord did not think it worth while to alter the rent. The tithe, however, would still lie subject to revision periodically. III the year 1872, three years after the Irish Church Act was passed, a Bill was brought into Parliament by Mr. Gladstone's Government, and by this Bill the power which had belonged to the payers or owners of ecclesiastical tithe rentcharges in Ireland to get revision from time to time was taken away, and tithe rentcharge was for all time fixed at the then rate, which happened to be higher than it ever had been. That Bill no doubt attracted very little attention; as far as they could learn it was not explained to Parliament. It was passed sub silencio, and he was bound to say that at that time, as there was every prospect of a rising market, nobody thought they would be injured by it and nobody objected to it. Since that time a great fall in prices had occurred, and while the owners or payers of land tithes could get a large reduction by going before a County Court Judge, the owners of ecclesiastical tithes were tied down in the high rate at which they stood in 1872. He wished to read to their Lordships a statement by a gentleman who was a much greater authority as regarded the equity of the case than he was. He meant Mr. Murrough O'Brien. Mr. O'Brien, who was one of the Land Commissioners in Ireland, was not looked upon as a landlord's friend; but at the same time there was no doubt there was no living man who better understood this Irish Tithe Rentcharge Question than did Mr. O'Brien, because in the early days of the Irish Church Act he was one of the officers of the Church Commissioners' Court, whose duty it particularly was to value in the case of Irish Church land, and he had a thorough practical knowledge of the whole question of the finances of the Irish Church. What he was going to read was a statement by Mr. O'Brien in the form of an extract from a supplementary memorandum handed in by him to the Financial Relations Commission of 1895, relative to the Irish Church Estate. Mr. O'Brien said in that paper:— The principal part of the property consisted of tithe rentcharge amounting to £410,000 a year, and perpetuity and other rents amounting to £131,000. Tithe rentcharges, though a first charge on the land, were difficult to identify, costly to collect, and not easily saleable in the open market. As a rule, they were not worth more than 17 years' purchase. Perpetuity rents were not worth more than 21 years' purchase (see O'Conor Don's Report to Bessborough Commissioners, page 42), and as the Church rents were variable with corn prices they are not worth as much as ordinary fee-farm rents. The Church Act, however, fixed the price of tithe rentcharge at 22½ and that of perpetuity rents at 25 years' purchase, thus adding (£410,000 x 5.5 and £31,000 x 4) £2,779,000 to the then market value of these securities. The value of the Church Fund was thus artificially swollen, to the detriment of the owners of property subject to these charges. By the Church Amendment Act 1872, s. 6 (3) the right of varying the rentcharge was taken away. But for this Act the rentcharge of £410,000 would now only he worth £287,000, and its capital value at 17 years' purchase would be £4,879,000 instead of £9,225,000. In fact, by the Church Acts, a capital sum of £4,870,000 was imposed on the payers of tithe rentcharge and perpetuity rents in excess of the present market value of these securities. On the fund thus swollen were placed charges that had hitherto been paid out of the Imperial revenue, and subsequently other charges which must have been paid, if at all, from the same source. £372,331 was paid out of the Church Fund in lieu of the Maynooth grant hitherto paid out of the Imperial revenue, and £773,767 for the Regium Donum, which had been a charge on the Imperial revenue since the time of Charles the Second. The whole Church Fund has since been practically allocated for purposes which would otherwise have had to be met by grants from the Imperial revenue to meet temporary emergencies, such as famine and exceptional distress, or political emergencies affecting the peace of the United Kingdom; or to provide for the educational wants of Ireland, a primary want which, having regard to the history of education in Ireland and to her large contribution to the Imperial revenue, should have been paid from that source. Mr. O'Brien thus showed that one class of British taxpayers alone had to meet in an indirect form the heavy charges which should have been paid out of the Imperial revenue. He wished to draw the attention of their Lordships to the fall in the value and prices of wheat, barley, and oats upon some of which the valuation of tithe was based in some parishes and upon others in other parishes. Not to trouble the House with the full figures, he gave the results. The table he held in his hand disclosed the following facts:—The average price of wheat for the year 1896 was 49.9 per cent. below its average price in the year 1872; its average price for seven years ended 1896 was 45.2 per cent. below its average price for seven years ended 1872; the average price of oats for the year 1896 was 27.4 per cent. below its average price in the year 1872; its average price for seven years ended 1896 was 22.3 per cent. below its average price for seven years ended 1872; the average price of barley for the year 1896 was 37.0 per cent. below its average price in the year 1872; its average price for seven years ended 1896 was 29.2 per cent. below its average price for seven years ended 1872. As indicated in his Motion, there were three heads into which he divided tithe, and in the first part of his Motion he asked for inquiry, To what extent the payers of ecclesiastical tithe rentcharge in Ireland (exclusive of cases where the tithe rentcharge has been purchased for cash) are reasonably entitled to a reduction in the present annual amount of such tithe rentcharge (including the amount of outstanding annuities in cases where the tithe rentcharge has been committed, having regard (1) to the fall in the amount of the tithe rentcharge in England during recent years; (2) to the fall in the market price in Ireland of the articles on which such tithe rentcharge was originally fixed; (3) to the reductions of lay tithe rentcharge which have been made on this basis in Ireland; and (4) upon any other grounds. This notice showed that in dealing with tithe rent-charge it was necessary to divide it under three heads, and the first of these was the uncoil-minted tithe. A. House of Commons Paper gave the last information published by the Irish Land Commission, and showed that, on 1st April 1896, it was of the annual value of £167,014. The tithe annuities, that was to say, tithe commuted into a fixed sum, and then, by a paper process, turned into terminable annuities, being 2s. 6d. in the pound higher than the original tithe, and running over 52 years, amounted to the annual value of £165,868, so that the difference between those two heads was about £1,200. Those together amounted to £332,882, and if they deducted that sum from the original £410,000 a year which the tithe was in 1869, they would find that the tithe rentcharge and tithe rentcharge annuities which had been redeemed for cash were of the annual value of £77,118. That was therefore the annual amount which had been sold for cash or redeemed tinder the Land Purchase Acts. If they multiplied that £332,882 by 2½ the number of years' purchase at which tithe, etc., is redeemable (except in cases of sales in the Land Purchase Court, when it is only 20 years' purchase for uncommitted tithe), they got the amount of £7,489,845, or, say, 7½ millions, as the present capital value of the tithe rent-charge, including the terminable annuities. If Parliament would do all that they wanted, the sum concerned would be under 7½ millions, and, after all, that was not a very fearful sum for Parliament to deal with in doing justice to the unfortunate owners and tithe payers of Ireland. Passing on from that, he would tell their Lordships, first, practically what they did not ask, and then what they did ask. They did not propose to open the question with regard to the sum of £77,118 which had been redeemed for cash, but were willing to let byegones be byegones; for although they had had in selling to tenants or redeeming a great deal of loss, yet they recognised as a matter of public convenience that they could not attempt to reopen that matter. But, with regard to the amount of £165,868 (the terminable tithe rentcharge annuities) the Treasury said that they regarded that as a closed account, and at the time of the Arrears Act, which was the first time that he discovered they so regarded it, they refused to make any allowance to those landlords who had converted their tithes into annuities, while they did make a reduction to those who had not, on account of what they would lose by the Arrears Act. This transaction of commutation was not for the benefit of the landowners, but was for the convenience of the Government Department, and to make more secure the great loans which had been advanced from the funds to commute the life interest of the clergy of the Irish Church, a sum amounting to no less than nine millions sterling. That was only a paper transaction, and no cash passed, and he claimed, as did Lord Waterford nine years ago, that that should be dealt with in the same manner as the tithe. He thought it was unfair to the owner of one estate that he should be dealt with in one way while upon another estate, as was pointed out by his noble Friend (Lord Lansdowne) the other night on Lord Inchiquin's Motion, he was dealt with in another way. As regards the uncommuted tithe of £167,000 a year, they asked, first that the Act of 1872 should be repealed; but in repealing that Act it was necessary to point out that there were certain improvements in the machinery required if equal justice was to be done to all. It appeared that in the machinery for varying tithe rentcharge, and which still applied to lay tithe-owners, there were many curious features, and there were pitfalls which were very difficult to understand. One of the conditions was that the parish out of which the tithe arose must be all situated in one county, and if the parish was situated in two counties, which in the part of the country where he lived was a very common thing indeed, then the payers of the tithe rentcharge were prevented from going into Court at all. Then it was provided that no less than three payers of tithe rentcharge in one particular parish must join in application, and in giving notice to get the tithe rentcharge varied. If there were only two in the parish, they could not move, or if one of the three made a mistake in the serving of his notices the other two were upset, and it was very difficult, and sometimes almost impossible, to get anything done. That was a mere matter of machinery, upon which he would not dwell, but which lie would commend to the notice of his noble and learned Friend (Lord Ashbourne). In regard to the, second head of his notice, whether, and to what extent, such ecclesiastical tithe rentcharge could be reduced or extinguished at the present time (or at some future date) without material prejudice to the security of the loans at present charged upon the Irish Church Estate, he was quite aware there was matter of policy underlying it which was quite outside the limits of this inquiry and into which he did not propose to go, but he desired to give a few figures in reference to the finance of the matter. He believed originally there was charged on the Irish Church Fund, not merely on the tithe rentcharge but on all the funds, a sum of nine millions to commute the life interest of the clergy of the Irish Church. That was a sinking fund loan, and he understood that in 4½ years (i.e., by December 1901), that loan would entirely be repaid, and that in consequence a very large sum of money, amounting to £328,000 a year, would be set free. According to the statement set out in the Land Commission Report, 1896, the charge on the fund of about £328,000 a year, payable to the National Debt Commissioners, would terminate in 1901. This amount being set free, would, of course, greatly increase the security of many other loans raised for other purposes. He had read from Mr. O'Brien's statement that some of those loans were made to purchasers which in the ordinary course would have been charged to Imperial revenue; but he was quite ready to admit that the great loan of nine millions for the Irish clergy stood on quite a different footing. It was to buy up the life interests of the clergy, and such payments, had the Church Act not passed, they would have been entitled to receive in perpetuity. He could not say for a moment that it was not quite fair that this loan should have been charged to the fund; but he did say that when that loan had been repaid, he felt that it would no longer be fair that one limited class of the taxpayers in Ireland should have to meet all the other charges which, but for the accidental existence of that fund, would have been charged on the Imperial revenue. He admitted that it was quite true that, whether the landlord paid tithe or the tenant, it came out of the land. Academically, he did not wish to dispute that proposition; but if the tithe had not been put upon the landlord in 1838, and the farmers had had to pay it now, he did not suppose it would be disputed that there would have been such an agitation for relief as it would have been impossible to resist. ["Hear, hear!"] Having gone over the merits of the case, he would tell their Lordships why he now brought the matter forward. He had told his friends in the Landlords' Convention in Ireland that he had done all that he possibly could for them in getting the concession in the Act of 1896 but he was pressed to bring this matter forward again, and there was one reason why he could not refuse—because, if the Local Government Bill which had been promised for next year was brought in, he supposed they would find that every fund of that sort would be swept into its net in some way or another and he wished that the just claims should be established before the balance of the Irish Church Fund was appropriated for other matters. In conclusion, he had only once more to refer to Lord Waterford's Debate on the question in 1888. In that year Lord Waterford brought the matter before the House, and made a very powerful speech. He was supported by the late Lord Fitzgerald (who was then one of the Lords of Appeal) and by the late Lord Milltown, who hail been one of the Commissioners of Earl Cowper's Commission, and Lord Cadogan (now Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, but who was then Lord Privy Seal and had charge of the Irish business in that House), on behalf of the Government, made the following, reply. He said:— The remarks of the noble Marquess with regard to the present position of the Irish landlords met, be was sure, with the sympathy of nearly all the Members of their Lordships' House. It was impossible to deny that the noble Marquess had brought forward a very serious and substantial grievance. The noble and learned Lord opposite (Lord Fitzgerald) had stated that the claim which the noble Marquess had made was one which was strictly in accordance with justice, and he (Earl Cadogan) believed that in saying that he did not go one whit beyond the actual state of the case. The Government recognised the difficulties under which the Irish landlords laboured in regard to rentcharge, and it was t heir anxious wish to afford a remedy for a state of things which nobody could deny required immediate attention and consideration. It was, unfortunately, impossible to do this without legislation, and—to repeat a remark which it was his duty to make before during the present Session—it was also impossible to entertain the hope that legislation initiated at this period of the year would have any prospect of passing through both Houses of Parliament this Session. That being the case, he did not think it would be consistent, either with his duty or with the convenience of the House, that he should follow his noble Friend through the statements be had made and the arguments he had adduced, which would be more properly dealt with when the Measure was brought before their Lordships' House, which it would be the duty of Her Majesty's Government to introduce. When he stated that this subject was under the anxious consideration of the Government, with a view to taking such steps in the direction sketched by the noble Marquess as might be feasible, lie could assure his noble Friend that he was stating that which was actually the fact. It was the sincere desire of Her Majesty's Government, with as little delay as possible, to formulate their proposals, and lay them upon the Table of the House. He (Lord Belmore) did not ask for legislation this Session—he knew that was impossible—but he asked that the Government should in sonic effective form appoint sonic skilled persons to inquire into the facts of the case with a view to legislation next year, and with that object he moved the Motion of which he had given notice. [Cheer.]

THE EARL OF MAYO

said that he should like to emphasise that portion of the reply of the Earl of Cadogan in which he said:— it was the sincere desire of Her Majesty's Government, with as little delay as possible, to formulate their proposals and lay them on the Table of the House. That was in 1888. Since then there had been a. change of Government, and now their Friends were again on the Front, Bench. But they had heard nothing of this tithe rentcharge. It had been put before their Lordships' House before, but they had got very little sympathy on the I subject. He hoped that after what Lord Belmore had said the matter would be really taken into serious consideration by the noble Lords who were now at the head of affairs. They were put off and put off, he supposed because they were Irish landlords. But there would be a time coming, he thought, when they could not stand being put off very much longer. Their cup was filled almost to overflowing, and he hoped that the noble Lords now in command of one of the strongest coalition Governments they had ever seen would listen, at all events with some sympathy and interest, to a small body of loyal gentlemen and noblemen who live in Ireland. ["Hear, hear!"]

THE EARL OF DENBIGH

said he could safely say that, on the general question of the tithe rentcharge raised by the noble Earl, the Government regarded the grievances of the Irish land-owners with very considerable sympathy, and they hoped it might not be found impossible to carry out legislation which would afford relief, even if the entire proposals of the landowners could not be wholly met. The whole question was under the careful consideration of the Government, who were in full possession of the facts, and therefore they did not admit the necessity for a Royal Commission to inquire any further. The noble Earl who raised this matter spoke of the concession made last year by the clause in the Land Act. He would remind their Lordships that by that clause, in the case of land sold to tenants under the. Land Purchase Acts, the Land Commission had been given, the power to order repayment of the outstanding animal instalments at a sum calculated on the basis of the annual payments being for a term of 45 years instead of 52 years; and the Chief Secretary, in his speech on the introduction of the Bill, stated that the Government recognised the principle to be one of general application, and therefore he thought the noble Earl and his Friends could safely look for sonic relief in this direction. Further concessions might also be possible in the direction of reducing the number of years' purchase on which the redemption price of tithe was now calculated and of putting it at a less amount than 22½ years' purchase. There might possibly, too, be a reconsideration of the interest now charged. With regard to the other matter raised by the noble Earl, and his demand that the Act of 1872 should be repealed, he would remind the House that that Act stereotyped the amount of tithe rentcharge, and any repeal of it would involve a great disturbance of the whole arrangements made during recent years for the employment of the Church Fund, and which arrangements were based on the assumption that the amount of the charge was permanently fixed; and it would be extremely undesirable to re-open now and alter the fund from a fixed to a, variable sum. He would only remind the noble Earl, in conclusion, that in dealing with any of these subjects legislation would be necessary, and he hoped that in spite of the attitude of the noble Earl (the Earl of Mayo), the landowners of Ireland would still have a little more patience—[laughter]—and would be comforted by the reflection that the Government hoped to be able to do something for their relief. ["Hear, hear!"]

*THE EARL OF ERNE

said they had been told that, this matter would receive the anxious consideration of the Government. They had been told that before. ["Hear, hear!" and laughter.] They had received not very much consolation from the result, but he thought he detected in, the speech of his noble Friend on the Front Bench one or two small indications that the Government intended to do something, at all events, in this matter, though that something did not go so far as they could wish. In this view, and to give the Government the opportunity of making a further announcement on this point, making begged to move the adjournment of the Debate. ["Hear, hear!"]

Motion agreed to; Debate adjourned to Friday next.