CHAPTER II.

OF RENT, AND OTHER PAYMENTS.

IN tracing the present state of the relation of landlord and tenant in Ireland, we must admit, however reluctantly, that too high rent, or in other words, too large a share of the produce of the soil, is exacted (but too generally) of the occupiers of land in that country: and there can be no doubt of this being one of the most fruitful causes of discontent. Every writer on Ireland speaks of "exorbitant rents," viz., Spenser, Dean Swift, Archbishop Boulter, Rt. Hon. J. Fitzgibbon, Gordon, Newenham, Dr. Woodward, Curwen, Parliamentary Report of, and evidence before, Committees, 1825, 1830, 1832, &c. Wakefield, the latest, says, "It is an undoubted fact, that as landlords they exact more from their tenants, than the same class of men in any other country," (see Sadler's Ireland, p. 49) and the close inspection of any particulars of sale of land will show the fact.

I say we must admit, because the fact is

notorious, that rents in Ireland are vastly beyond any proportion of produce exacted in England, and because we shall prove them so in the course of our discussion.

This cannot be attributed altogether, nor even for the most part, to want of humanity, or to rapacity, in the lords of the soil. As a body, they, generally speaking, are like other educated men in every part of the world, endowed with feelings of moderation and propriety; but, besides the exceptions to this rule, there are many circumstances which take the practical case out of their hands; but though innocent of it in their own persons, they are indirectly the cause of much oppression by various persons, and in various ways.

Many if not most lords of the soil have had the greater part of their possessions alienated from them by leases of long duration, and their lands are now occupied by tenants under tenants removed several times from the head landlord. This state of things has occurred, not from any general improvidence in the former possessors of the soil, but from a desire, prudent and judicious at the time, to bring an accession of capital and of energy into a backward country. Those who thus embarked, felt and acted similarly, and although in some instances the park of a tenant for ever overlooks the mansion of the lord of the soil, yet that lord has his reward in the result of the assistance his ancestors obtained, the conversion of a wil

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CLASSIFICATION OF LANDLORDS.

derness into a cultivated domain. At the present day, however, each of these removes of freehold ownership is a fresh source of extortion, until the occupying tenant has the land on terms which leave him little more profit than a bare labourer's compensation for working it: still it must be confessed that when any of these leases short of eternity happen to fall in to the lord of the soil, he gives the occupying tenant a holding at a somewhat lower rent than he has heretofore paid to the middleman. This is so far good, but this tenant being almost a pauper, and unable to stock or improve the land, but little change takes place, beyond the transfer of what was a profit rent to the middleman to the pockets of the lord of the soil, and thus the evil is perpetuated. Still, whoever should accuse the lords of the soil of Ireland of extorting from their tenants, would be guilty of a great injustice.

There are of course several grades of landlords, or, more properly, letters of land, in that country. I am disposed to think that these may be classed in a three-fold manner, viz. :—

1st. The principal landowners in three grades:(a.) Those who let their lands on moderate rents,

and yet spend a very large portion of their Irish income in the country.

(b.) Those who leave all to their agents, and

expect them to "send money, not arrears or expenses."

CLASSIFICATION OF LANDLORDS.

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(c.) Those who get all they can without committing any great acts of oppression.

2d. The next class consist of those who let their lands at high rates, but do not press hard on their tenants, and help them out each in his own way. 3d. Rapacious landlords, whether landowners, head-renters, or middlemen.

The first class of landlords, those who let their lands to the occupying tenant on what are considered moderate terms, and yet spend a large portion of their Irish revenues in what are called improvements upon their property in that country, form a large proportion of the lords of the soil. Some of the largest estates and rentals in the island are thus circumstanced, and of some of these it has been said, in that "honourable mention" which such landlords so justly enjoy, as a matter of notoriety, that scarcely one-fourth of the gross rental has found its way into the pockets of the landowner, the rest having been spent in what are called by the general term, improvements, a word which comprehends the grander works of building churches, meeting-houses, bridges, courthouses, hotels, castles, streets, breweries, piers, docks, wharfs, &c. &c., also the construction of roads, canals, and the planting of woods, &c. Amongst these landlords may be reckoned the London Companies, besides most of the principal noblemen who possess extensive properties in Ireland. Yet it is remarkable that the tenantry

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CLASSIFICATION OF LANDLORDS.

on these estates do not exhibit much superiority in condition over those of the other classes of landlords, a circumstance which I am inclined to attribute to two causes, viz. :

1st. To the sums expended, although vast, being chiefly confined to those great works which, when completed, leave the general population as unemployed as ever, and although they create a certain degree of activity for a time, the stagnation is greater than ever afterwards, and the more so since supernumerary workmen are brought to the spot, and continue there; whereas, had the same cost been incurred in promoting the cultivation of the land, still more labour would have been absorbed, and that not temporarily, but continuously and permanently.

2d. Because, although the rents payable to the head landlords of this class are generally moderate, they often become augmented to a ruinous degree, especially in the north, by a custom prevalent there, of the tenants selling what is called the "tenant right" or goodwill, to another tenant, the purchaser paying so much money that the produce of the ground scarcely leaves him potatoe diet ever after, and no means whatever of improving the land. But even where this custom does not prevail, the total abandonment of the tenantry to their own unassisted efforts at cultivation, building, and all the very arduous task of establishing a farm sufficiently, accounts for their want of superiority in