• THE ACT OF UNION
  • ITS FINANCIAL PROVISIONS
  • EFFECT ON THE CONDITION OF IRELAND
• THE LAND QUESTION
• THE FAMINE
• POLICY OF BRITISH LEGISLATION IN REGARD TO IRELAND
• THE LAND ACT OF 1870

"It is a simple and unexaggerated statement of the fact, that, in the entire history of representative Government there is no instance of corruption having been applied on so large a scale, and with such audacious effrontery." (p 177)

"The measure of Pitt centralised, but it did not unite, or rather, by uniting the Legislatures it divided the nations. . . . The Union of 1800 was not only a great crime, but was also - like most crimes - a great blunder." (pp 192-4)

Financial Provisions

"1. Each country was separately to defray the expenses arising out of the payment on the interest or sinking fund for the reduction of the principal of its own pre-Union debt.

"2.(1) For the next twenty years the ordinary expenses of the United Kingdom in peace or war should he defrayed by Great Britain and Ireland jointly according to the proportion of 15 to 2; that is, Great Britain was to defray 15/17 or 88.24 per cent, and Ireland 2/17 or 11.76 per cent of the whole expenditure.

(2) At the end of twenty years, unless Parliament had determined that the joint expenditure of the United Kingdom was to be indiscriminately defrayed by equal taxation in both countries, the respective contributions of Great Britain and Ireland were to be fixed in such proportions as would seem just and suited to the respective resources of the two countries.

"3. Irish revenues were to constitute a consolidated fund on which the payments for Ireland's pre-Union debt was to be a first charge: the remainder of the revenue was to go to meet Ireland's share of the joint expenditure.

"4. The respective contributions of Great Britain and Ireland were to be raised by such taxes in each country as Parliament might think fit to impose, but no article in Ireland was to be taxed at a heavier rate than in England.

"5. If, after Ireland had defrayed the charge for her pre-Union debt and her proportional contribution to the expenses of the United Kingdom, there remained a surplus of her revenue, such surplus could be applied in any one of the following ways - viz, (a) in remission of taxation, (b) for local purposes, (c) in making good a deficiency of Irish revenue in time of peace, (d) in building up a reserve fund not exceeding five millions to relieve the Irish contribution in time of war.

"6. All debt incurred by Parliament after the Union for the service of the United Kingdom was to be regarded as a joint debt, and the charge of it was to be borne by the two countries in the proportion of their respective contributions.

"7. If in the future the separate debts of Great Britain and Ireland should be liquidated, or if their values should be to one another in the proportion of their respective contributions to imperial expenditure, Parliament might, if it thought fit, declare that all future expenses of the United Kingdom should be defrayed indiscriminately by equal taxes imposed on the same articles in each country subject only to such exemptions and abatements in favour of Ireland as circumstances seemed to necessitate.

"These financial provisions were not favourable to Ireland, but, even commercially speaking, Ireland stood to gain little from the Union." (Miss Murray, p332 ff).

Then follow some details which it is unnecessary to quote, and she proceeds to the following general criticisms:-

"All this shows how little Irish affairs were understood in England.... None of the commercial terms of the Union gave any preference to Irish goods over foreign as the Commercial Propositions had done, and so even Irish linens were to have no security against the rivalry of foreign linens in the British markets.

"At the same time, the opening of the British markets to Irish manufactures could benefit Ireland little. Almost all the articles on the importation of which Great Britain had hitherto imposed very heavy duties could be worked up more cheaply by herself, and it was not possible for the Irish merchants to export these articles with any profit to England.... Great Britain and Ireland were too dissimilar in economic conditions to have the same commercial system, and this had been practically realised by Lord Castlereagh when he advocated the retention of the Irish protective duties on the importation of cotton goods.

"Irish manufacturers were bitterly opposed to the Union because they thought that under its arrangements of free trade between Great Britain and Ireland, Irish commerce would be ruined, and Irish industries would decline. And it is certainly true that Ireland, unlike England. was not in a position to profit through free trade, and therefore she was not in a position to profit, commercially speaking, from the Union.

"The commercial advantages conferred on Scotland by her Union with England were often cited at this time in order to prove that benefits would likewise be conferred on Ireland. But the cases were not analogous. For one thing it was many years before Scotch trade and industry began to progress even in a slight degree, and Ireland's material progress during the eighteenth century seems to have been as great as that of Scotland. But what is far more important, for nearly a century after the Union with Scotland Scotch trade and industry were fostered and encouraged by bounties and protective duties. Scotland had entered into a Union when the ideas of protection reigned supreme in England, and her infant industries received the policy of protection necessary to their firm establishment.

"But now, when Ireland was united to Great Britain, the new idea of free trade was coming to the front, and by surrendering her separate Parliament Ireland lost all chance of artificially fostering her native industries. Free trade under certain conditions cannot be an advantage. It could not be an advantage to a poor country like Ireland, in which industries were in their infancy, and which existed side by side in the closest commercial intercourse with a rich country where industries had long flourished.

"...As regards the financial arrangements there also seems no doubt that Pitt meant to do the fair thing by Ireland. But the whole Union scheme of finance was founded upon a fallacious basis; the arrangements were mistaken in themselves, and time was to prove that they were unjust in their effects.

"The standards taken by Lord Castlereagh as the basis for his comparison of the respective resources of Great Britain and Ireland could have established nothing. It was unfair to take the three years preceding 1790 as a basis for comparison, for the presence of a large military force in Ireland naturally caused a great increase in the consumption of dutiable articles in that country.

"Moreover, in the comparison of the respective resources of the two countries certain sources of revenue were omitted, such as stamp duties, post-office receipts, and the salt tax, all of which would have shown a smaller proportion for Ireland.

"Again, Lord Castlereagh's actual estimate of Irish exports and imports was afterwards proved to be inaccurate. He computed their annual average value as nearly eleven millions, whereas the official statistics presented to Parliament in 1834 only made out the average in this period to be eight and a quarter millions.

"But putting aside all inaccuracies and misstatements, it is impossible to believe that any approximate estimate of the comparative resources`of the two countries could have been obtained by merely comparing their respective exports and imports or their consumption of dutiable commodities. This was especially true of two countries like Great Britain and Ireland, whose economic conditions were so dissimilar, and whose populations differed in habits and customs.

"In estimating the proportion of Imperial expenditure which Ireland should bear, Lord Castlereagh had tested his conclusion by examining whether the ratio of 7 to 1 which he had established would correspond with the ratio of past expenditure, exclusive of debt charge, of Great Britain and Ireland.

"He excluded all debt charges because the pre-Union debts were to be kept distinct, but this exclusion had the effect of rendering his reasoning fallacious. In such a calculation as Lord Castlereagh was attempting debt charges should certainly have been included both in time of war and in time of peace, for war necessitates borrowing, while in of peace the debt charges incurred in time of war must be `redeemed.

"If the debt charges of the two countries had been included in the estimate of their expenditures, the average annual British expenditure during the seven years of war taken by Lord Castlereagh was £43,034,000, and that of Ireland £3,089,501, so that the expenditure of Great Britain was to that of Ireland during this period not 9 to 1, as was calculated, but 14 to 1.

"Again including debt charges in the single year of peace immediately preceding the war, taken by Lord Castlereagh, the expenditure of Great Britain was £10,251,563, and that of Ireland £1,395,950, thus giving a proportion not of 5.25 to 1, as was calculated, but of nearly 14 to 1 also.

"So by leaving out debt charges in an estimate of the peace and war expenditures of Great Britain and Ireland, the proportion of Irish to British expenditure was `falsely raised. Lord Castlereagh did not compare the total expenditure of the two countries; he compared only selected parts of their expenditures.

"At the same time a calculation of the peace expenditure of a country based on the figures of' single year was bound to be worthless, while it was unjust to Ireland to estimate her average annual war expenditure from the expenditure of a period which included not only a foreign war, but also an invasion of Ireland and an actual rebellion.

"The clause in the financial article providing that indiscriminate might be imposed when the British and Irish debts should become to one another in the ratio of their respective contributions to Imperial expenditure was, as Foster had pointed out, exceedingly curious. An increase in the indebtedness of Ireland must lead to increased taxes. How, then, would Ireland be better able bear equal taxation with Great Britain than at the time of the Union?

"But the explanation is that neither Pitt nor Castlereagh thought for a moment that in the future the ratio existing between the British and Irish debts would be raised by an enormous increase in the Irish debt, while at the same time a small increase took place in the British debt.

"What they both expected was that the British debt would decrease by the system of liquidation, while the Irish debt would at least not increase; then that the scale of British taxes would rapidly descend to the level of Irish, and consequently that indiscriminate taxation might be adopted without fear of injuring Ireland. Neither Pitt nor Castlereagh looked forward to almost fifteen years of almost continuous war.

"But the long war with France vitiated all their calculations and estimates. The miscalculations made by the framers of the Act of Union were chiefly due to their failure to see the future increase in the expenditure of the United Kingdom, and for this failure they can, of course, hardly be blamed. But we have seen that the calculations themselves were inaccurate and founded upon fallacious reasoning, so that even if a long war had not followed, it is almost certain that Ireland would still have found herself overburdened. As it was, however, the huge expenses caused by the war exaggerated and intensified to a high degree the injustice to Ireland which would in any case have existed." (Miss Murray, p335 ff)

` It thus appears that the framers of the Act of Union acted on information of an extremely limited character as to Ireland's resources, and which only happened to be incorrect by one-third, the error of course being to the disadvantage of Ireland, that some most important items for purposes of comparison were omitted, and that one clause acted in exactly the opposite manner to what we will hope was the intention of its framers, and made the increase of Ireland's debt a ground for increasing her burdens, a state of things which has gone on to the present day, and had only involved up till 1910 an amount, estimated by Lord MacDonnell at £325,000,000, as a contribution to the Imperial Exchequer over and above the cost of governing the country.

One can understand an Englishman being rather pleased with a transaction over which his country has done so well, at least until the last year or two, though even he must feel that some of the sordid details are better forgotten, but that an Irishman, whether an Ulsterman or not, should be unable to find any better subject for his enthusiasm goes to show how extraordinary are the limitations of human nature, and how the tendency on the part of savage tribes to worship stocks and stones often survives in civilised races, in the form of veneration for paper and parchment.

Effect of Union on Irish Conditions

An examination of the course of Irish history since the Union will make it quite clear that the misfortunes which Ireland has suffered during that period, and the comparatively little progress which she has made at the end of it, are almost entirely due either directly or indirectly to the system of government which was then established.

The prospect of Catholic Emancipation was held out by Pitt as a bait to win the support of Irish Catholics for the measure. In the opinion of' O'Connor Morris, the Irish Protestant historian whom I have already mentioned, Pitt was distinctly pledged to accompany the Act of Union by a full measure of Catholic Emancipation. Having secured the passing of that Act partly as a result of that promise, he deliberately threw over his pledges, sheltering himself behind the admitted hostility of the King, which he must have known about all along.

But that was probably a mere subterfuge, as the King, according to O'Connor Morris, always gave way to the will of a resolute minister. Pitt made no serious attempt to overcome his hostility either then or subsequently. As a nominal protest he resigned office for a short time. But in the words of O'Connor Morris:-

"The subsequent conduct of Pitt cannot be justified in the mature judgment of impartial history. He let his master know after a few days that he would not urge the Catholic claims again the reign; he steadily supported an anti-Catholic Ministry....when he returned to office in 1801 he completely abandoned the Catholic cause." (O'Connor Morris, p60).

For the next twenty-five years the promised gift was withheld. In other words, while the Catholics who formed half of the British Army were fighting and laying down their lives for the Empire in the Napoleonic wars, their fellow Catholics at home were denied the ordinary rights of citizenship.

The Chief Whip of the Unionist Party, if he had lived in those days, so far from being able to hold his present high office, would not even have had the Parliamentary franchise.

The history of the movement for Catholic Emancipation does not end here. The agitation was carried on with gradually increasing vigour until it was finally successful; in any case, it was bound to succeed sooner or later. So long as it seemed possible to ignore this movement, the policy of successive British Governments was to withhold this gift. When the agitation on the subject began to threaten the foundations of the State, and when the alternative to Catholic Emancipation was a civil war in which the Catholic half of the British Army would probably have mutinied and arrayed itself against the other half, what was refused to justice was surrendered to expediency.

The circumstances under which this Act was passed are typical of practically every Act passed since the Act of Union to ameliorate the condition of Ireland. Reform, as a rule, has only taken place when its delay would have rendered government impossible.

A Unionist MP writing in the Nineteenth Century admirably describes this characteristic of the Catholic Emancipation Bill:-

"What scope there would be for a philosophic pen in winding up a history of Catholic Emancipation! For it is an epitome of the policy of Ireland's governors - robbery followed by cruel persecution; then a gradual growth of public opinion, strong enough to irritate, but too weak to force the hand of the Ascendancy of the day. Then agitation, exasperation, outrage, promises of reform, failure to fulfil them, and crass ignorance and senseless brutality vying with one another in the government of the disordered country. Then increased agitation, crime, and coercion, a greater volume of public opinion, and growth of menial fear in the rulers of Ireland; and lastly after many years of insult and indifference, redress forced from authority, not through a consciousness of justice inexcusably delayed, but under the influence of menace and menace alone."

British statesmanship, or what went by that name in those days, is directly to blame for the betrayal of Catholic Ireland in that matter. The large increase which took place in the amount of Irish taxation was a direct and inevitable consequence of the Act of the Union itself, but as Irish taxation was and has been increased even beyond what was contemplated by those who framed that Act, and in defiance of its terms, the blame for this must be laid at the door of the successive British Governments which either connived at or deliberately brought about this increase.

The total amount taken from Ireland in over-taxation as estimated by a competent authority is at least £200,000,000. That the gross amount of Irish taxation was largely increased (quite apart from over taxation) immediately after, and as a result of, the passing of the Act of Union may be seen from the following quotation from Miss Murray:-

"From 1801 to 1816 the total expenditure of Ireland amounted to £148,000,000, or more than three and a half times the sum expended during the previous fifteen years." (Miss Murray p392).

As much of the expenditure which was thus unfairly saddled on Ireland by the terms of the Act of Union had to be met by loans, .."between the years 1801 and 1810, while the total British debt less than doubled itself, the Irish debt almost quadrupled, having grown from £32,215,223 to £112,634,773, as against an increase in the British debt from £489,122,057 to £737,422,469." (Miss Murray, p248).

When the Act of Union was being passed, those who framed its financial terms did not, it is to be hoped, contemplate the possibility of the war with France lasting so long, and thus costing so much, as it ultimately did. The enormous debt which Ireland was forced to contract was due to the cast-iron provision that the contribution to Imperial revenue should be two-seventeenths of the total amount it was necessary to raise. What Ireland could not raise by taxes she was forced to raise by borrowing.

The Act of Union contained a clause that when the respective debts of Great Britain and Ireland were in proportion to the amount of revenue contributed by each, the two exchequers might be amalgamated, and the taxation of the two countries assimilated, subject to such exemptions and abatements in favour of Ireland as circumstances seemed to demand.

This state of affairs came about not, as was anticipated, as a result of a great diminution of the British debt, but as a result of a relatively much greater increase of the Irish debt. By the amalgamation of the exchequers Ireland was saved from national bankruptcy, but no relief was brought to the individual Irish taxpayer. Taxation was henceforth to be indiscriminate as between Great Britain and Ireland, always subject to the exemptions and abatements mentioned above.

Under this arrangement the taxes of the two countries have been gradually equalised, and the exemptions and abatements almost entirely abolished, regardless of the relative taxable capacity of the two countries, and the suitability or otherwise of the British fiscal system to Ireland.

One of the chief motives of those who desired the passing of the Act of Union was commercial jealousy. Miss Murray says with reference to a public declaration wade in Great Britain in 1785 that ".. a real Union with Ireland under one legislature would take away every difficulty.." in the commercial relations of Great Britain and Ireland which were then under discussion:-

"This declaration is noticeable as being one of the first of the many suggestions which were soon to follow for a legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland. Its ruling motive was commercial jealousy and a wish to make the Irish people pay the same taxes as the British" (Miss Murray, p248).

The British commercial interests that desired an Act of Union and the increase of Irish taxation obtained both; nor were they disappointed in their further hope that this would lead to the decay and gradual extinction of the Irish industries whose competition they most feared. Not only was capital which is so necessary for the growth and expansion of industry drained from the country by the exorbitant amount of Irish taxation, and the heavy loans which were necessary to meet it during the French war, but a fiscal system maintained entirely in the interests of Great Britain helped to complete the ruin of many of the Irish industries which had flourished under the fostering care of a native Parliament.

Free trade, except for certain 10% ad valorem duties of a mutually protective character, which were finally abolished in 1824, was established between Great Britain and Ireland by the Act of Union. The result was that every Irish industry except the brewing, distilling, and linen industries dwindled and decayed, until most of them became practically extinct during the first fifty years of the Union.

It is customary to point to the linen industry as one which has grown and flourished under the present regime; but it must not be forgotten that that industry also made considerable progress under a free Irish Parliament. Moreover, at the time of the Act of Union the cotton industry rivalled it in importance; fifty years later the former had ceased to exist. The linen trade prospered under the new fiscal system, because it had no cross-Channel rivals to fear, and had been firmly established at the time of its adoption.

After 1800 the woollen industry gradually decayed, and until quite recently was almost extinct. About forty years of the blessings of the Union were enough to complete the ruin of the Irish silk industry. The glass industry met with a similar fate after a period of about the same duration.

The influence of taxation on industry is very great. Capital is necessary in order that the industries of a country should develop and be in a position to adapt themselves to changing markets and new methods of production. Credit is just as important as capital, and in fact is only another name for capital. The first half of the nineteenth century was a period of industrial expansion and changing methods of production. The factory system was coming in, and new machinery involving considerable initial outlay was being adopted.

Great Britain was a country where industries had long flourished and where much capital had been amassed. She was able to adapt herself to the new circumstances, and thus her industrial prosperity went on increasing. Many of the industries which had flourished under the free Irish Parliament were of recent origin. They had had less time to amass capital, and consequently were less able financially to adapt themselves to new requirements.

Nevertheless all might have gone well if a fiscal system suitable to them had been retained, and if the government of the country had been such as to enable capital to be amassed and credit maintained.

Not only was the fiscal system of the United Kingdom progressively modified in the interests of Great Britain and against those of Ireland, but the financial system established by the Act of Union, and which lasted for the next seventeen years, was of such a kind that Ireland was compelled, as already explained, to raise by taxation and borrowing such an enormous amount as her share of the total expenditure as to be threatened with national bankruptcy.

The drain on the resources of a poor and ill-governed country was enormous, and the consequence was that the credit of Ireland became so exhausted that in 1815, according to Miss Murray, "...it was thought impossible to obtain in Ireland even £1,000,000 by way of public loan."

The capital which ought to have been retained in the country in order to further industrial enterprise was diverted to other purposes, which, however productive of warlike glory, were entirely non-productive in the industrial sense, and were in fact economically disastrous to the people of Ireland. To expect infant industries to grow and flourish under such conditions was to expect the impossible.

The industries of a country can be seriously handicapped by exorbitant taxation. An unsuitable fiscal system, quite apart from the amount of taxation, may be even more disastrous. The Irish manufacturers seem to have been able to control to some extent their own markets as a result of the 10% ad valorem duties which were established by the Act of Union, and which were actually retained until 1824. During this period the woollen, glass and cotton industries were maintained, though they show a tendency to decline as compared with the previous period. After 1824 this tendency is more pronounced, and by the year 1850 these industries were practically extinct.

The system of complete free trade as between Ireland and Great Britain which was adopted in 1824 left these Irish industries completely at the mercy of their British rivals. The cotton in use in Ireland had, as already mentioned, experienced what it might expect if its Manchester rivals were placed in a position to crush it. It was temporarily saved by the adoption of a prohibitive duty by the Irish Parliament, and the maintenance of a protective duty under the Union for the first twenty-four years must have helped to enable it to exist. When this was removed, the contest became too unequal, and it gradually succumbed.

It is unnecessary go to into details with regard to the other industries which disappeared; a few extracts from Miss Murray's book will show that in general their disappearance may be attributed to the unsuitable fiscal system which the Act of Union imposed on them. They are as follows:-

"Free trade, which has resulted in developing to such a great extent the manufactures of Britain, has done much to decrease the industrial life of Ireland." (Miss Murray, p344)

"The industrial history of Ireland during the nineteenth century shows how impossible it was for Irish manufacturers to compete with British once the two countries were commercially united, and all custom duties on articles going from one country to the other gradually abolished. It also shows the advisability of a country possessed of little industrial development fostering and protecting its infant manufactures until they are firmly established in order to prevent them being crushed out of existence by the competition of other countries. But Union with Great Britain necessitated the application of the new free trade principles to Ireland just at the time when Irish industries should have met with encouragement and protection." (ibid p35l)

The Land Question

In Ireland at this time there was no such option; the tenant had to take land on what was nominally a contract system, but the practical working of which was such that if he was to live at all in his own country he must pay, not the rent he could afford or the rent the land was worth; but the rent his landlord chose to ask.

In the absence of industrial life, the competition for farms was very great, and rents were high accordingly. In England the landlord let farms, in Ireland he let land only. In England the "equipment" which was necessary in order that the tenant should farm his land at a profit was provided by the landlord. In Ireland the tenant was compelled to provide this "equipment"`himself.

In many cases the tenant by the improvements he effected acquired, what was morally a joint ownership of the land. Yet in the eye of the law the landlord's title was absolute, and he could, and often did, confiscate the tenant's improvements, either by raising his rent or by evicting him and taking possession of the improved farm himself. Only in Ulster was the tenant's position to some extent improved by the existence of what was called the "Ulster Custom." Under it the tenant was enabled to sell to the incoming tenant the interest he had acquired in the land as a result of his own industry, and the landlord usually allowed the sale.

But even in Ulster the only sanction of this custom was public opinion, and if the landlord chose to evict the tenant or confiscate his improvements by raising the rent, he had a perfect legal right to do so. In fact the law went out of its way to put a premium on dishonesty and cruelty on the part of a landlord, and to penalise any member of the class who displayed what are usually regarded as the characteristically Christian virtues.

A number of subsidiary causes tended to aggravate the inherent evils of the Irish land system. Tillage was encouraged by the high price of corn in the English market, and this high price was due to the Corn Laws which were maintained up till 1845. By tillage a farmer can live on a smaller farm than would be required if he only went in for grazing. As a result of the Relief Act of 1793 the forty shilling franchise had been extended to Catholics, and landlords were tempted to multiply the number of "forty shilling freeholders, as they were called, in order to gain political influence. No limit was placed to the progressive sub-division of holdings.

In consequence of all this, in the words of O'Connor Morris, "..the land was split up over immense and ever growing areas, into little patches, often of the minutest extent, the abodes of dense, teeming and poor multitudes."

At the same time a process of consolidation of farms was going on. It was thought that the existence of larger farms would tend to promote more scientific methods of a agriculture. The landlords became afraid that if they allowed the continued existence of very small farmers in too large numbers their rents would become insecure. The country thus became what many parts of the three southern provinces are today, a country of very small farms side by side with very large farms.

Unfortunately the consolidation of farms was often combined with the eviction of the occupiers of small farms in order to make up the larger ones, and the "clearance system", as this was called, became a term of odious import.

The forty shilling freeholders had been the backbone of the movement for Catholic Emancipation. One of the clauses of that Act abolished the forty shilling freehold franchise. The result provides an illustration of the inadvisability of acting entirely on preconceived theories without a knowledge of the concrete facts to which they are being applied, and their probable ultimate consequences in the circumstances of the case.

A great deal might be said against the policy of creating forty shilling freeholders, but their abolition gave a further impetus to the process of consolidating farms by the eviction of smallholders, which was already going on. The landlord had no further interest in retaining tenants of this class.

By the time of the Famine this tenure had entirely disappeared. Those who had formerly been forty shilling freeholders, if they had not been evicted, had sunk into the position of mere tenants-at-will. British statesmanship, or rather want of statesmanship, is directly responsible for the result.

The condition of Irish agriculture thus went from bad to worse during this period. A Commission known as the Devon Commission was appointed, and reported in 1845. The report throws a lurid light on the condition of Irish farmers and agricultural labourers. It stated:-

"That the agricultural labourer of Ireland continues to stiffer the greatest privations and hardship; that he continues to depend upon casual and precarious employment for subsistence; that he is still badly fed, badly clothed, and badly paid for his labour. . . . When we consider this state of things, and the large proportion of the population which comes under the designation of agricultural labourers, we have to repeat that the patient endurance which they exhibit is deserving of high recommendation, and entitles them to the best attention of Government and of Parliament.

"Up to this time any improvement that may have taken place is attributable almost entirely to the habits of temperance in which they have so generally persevered, and not, we grieve to say, to any increased demand for their labour." (Report of Devon Commission, quoted by Miss Murray, p366).

In many parts of the country his only food was the potato, his only drink water. The very small farmer was little better off. His chief, and practically his only, food was the potato, while the sale of the family pig went towards the rent. As Miss Murray says, "...the condition of the whole class of farmers was deteriorating, and they were continually in the hands of the local moneylenders."

Ulster was rather better off, but even here the state of the agricultural population was not at all satisfactory, in which connection I quote once more from Miss Murray:-

"Even in Ulster, which was by far the most prosperous of the four provinces, on account of a better system of land tenure and the employment given by the linen manufacture, comfort was only comparative.... Throughout the rural districts of Ulster the people were suffering from the withdrawal of the linen manufacture to the towns."

Miss Murray goes on to explain how in general the poverty of the country districts was added to by the growth of the factory system and the concentration of the industry in the towns:-

"At the beginning of the century an agricultural family could earn a considerable addition to its income by spinning woollen or linen yarn, and even making the yarn into cloth. Now the decline of the woollen industry, and the revolution in the manufacture of linen, had hit these small spinners and weavers severely. Flax ceased to be grown except for home use, and men who had supported themselves partly by weaving were forced to depend entirely on their wages as agricultural labourers." (Vide Miss Murray, Ch XVI, passim)

This was the state of the country in the year preceding the famine; the Devon Commission was a Commission of landlords, yet they reported that the condition of agricultural Ireland was about as bad as it could be, and that legislative reform was necessary. It was left for the famine of the two following years to provide its terrible solution for the problem of the destitution of the very small farmer and the agricultural labourer; the recommendations of the Devon Commission for the improvement of Irish land tenure were prejudiced by the English point of view of its members.

They practically ignored the moral title which the Irish tenant had already obtained by improvements effected, and considered that complete justice would be done if he obtained compensation under strict conditions for improvements effected in the future.

The whole attitude of successive British Governments to the Irish land question for many years later followed on the lines of this report. Its object was gradually to substitute the English system of land tenure for the system which had grown up in Ireland, regardless of the amount of wrong and loss inflicted on the Irish tenants in the process.

I shall reserve for the present the discussion of the various Land Bills which were introduced later on to improve the position of the tenants, merely remarking by the way that although the Irish land system was rotten to the core, seventy years elapsed from the passing of the Act of Union, and twenty-five from the report of this Commission before any serious attempt was made to grapple with the problem.

The State of Ireland in 1845 may be briefly summarised as follows:- Many industries had disappeared; industrial life was less widely distributed than hitherto. The price of agricultural produce was kept unnaturally high by the Corn Laws, which also helped to encourage tillage and keep up rents. At the same time a process of consolidation of farms was going on, often involving great hardships in the way of evictions.

The Famine

"The loss in money was estimated at sixteen millions sterling; his may afford some idea of what the results were in a country already impoverished, and always very poor. Even in the best and most prosperous districts, society was disorganised in a short time; there was a general calling in of debts and demands; the landed gentry received but a fraction of rent; hundreds of farmers of the better class became bankrupt; thousands of peasants fled from their homes in despair.

"In less fortunate counties the consequences were, of course, more grave; but in districts which had suffered the year before, and in all those which were more or less backward, the condition of affairs became soon appalling.

"Famine advancing slowly from the coast-line, from Donegal southwards to Kerry and Cork, and gradually making its way inland, threw its dark shadow over a third part of Ireland; starving multitudes were lifted up from the land and tossed to and fro to seek the means of prolonging life; and thousands sank into unknown graves." (O'Connor Morris, p152)

Some of the methods used by the Government in coping with this calamity were typical of British statesmanship at its worst. In 1845 Peel set on foot a system of unproductive works, half the cost of which was to be borne by local bodies. In the next year the famine was much worse, and Lord John Russell, the new Prime Minister, on the plea that the local bodies had been wasteful, passed a "Labour Rate Act" which imposed the whole cost of unproductive works on the local bodies which voted them. However, the state of affairs was so bad that the local bodies voted such works wholesale regardless of the cost. The result was that many of the local bodies became bankrupt.

After the famine was over a law known as the "Rate in Aid Act" was passed, which compelled the solvent Irish Unions to make good the financial loss of those which had become insolvent through the operation of the former Act. On this law O'Connor Morris passes the following comment:-

"If the principle of this scheme was legitimate it ought not to have been confined to Ireland, it should have been extended to England as well.... This measure was simply grotesque injustice; no serious excuse was ever made for it." (O'Connor Morris, p189)

In other words, in spite of the imperial equality with Great Britain which the Union is supposed to have brought about, and which is now so touchingly referred to as "our cherished birthright", the predominant partner applied the principle "bear ye one another's burdens" to Ireland only, so that from the point of view of burden bearing in this case the Act of Union might as well never have been passed.

The English Government tried another remedy which, although temporarily a relief, had ultimate consequences which were disastrous and ought to have been foreseen. They extended outdoor relief to Ireland, but imposed a stringent test of poverty of an arbitrary and artificial character. No one holding more than a quarter of an acre of land was eligible for relief. In the words of Lord Dunraven ("Legacy of Past Years", pp224 ff):- "Instead of tiding them over an emergency, finding them in seed, and endeavouring to help the people to help themselves, the British Parliament deliberately turned every starving family out of their holding, and forced them, for a morsel to put in their mouths, to abandon the only means they had of subsistence in the future."

As O'Connor Morris puts it:-

"Peasants were compelled in thousands to give up their little holdings, in order to qualify for relief; emigration, already large, set in on an enormous scale, and became ere long that exodus of the Irish people which has so powerfully affected the state of the country. The petty occupiers of the soil, in fact, were dispossessed by the State in multitudes; for one victim at the hands of landlords there were probably fifty through the operation of the law." (ibid p155)

The State did not even rob for its own benefit, but for that of the landlord, and in its imbecility went out of its way to extend the principle that to him that hath shall be given. It is impossible to conceive any Government of Irishmen, however undemocratic, being guilty of such combined stupidity and cruelty.

All this time Ireland was producing large quantities of corn, which were being exported to England from the starving country. Not only did the Government take no steps to prevent this export, but actually it facilitated it. A French writer, M Paul Dubois, "Contemporary Ireland" p70ff, says:-

"During the most critical period of the famine, in 1846 and I847, Ireland exported corn; barley, oats, and cattle in far greater quantities than would have sufficed to feed the people. It was not want of foodstuffs that caused the famine. But the produce of the land was used up in paying the landlord's rent. There was famine in the midst of plenty. It was an artificial famine, for, as Mitchel declared, 'the exact complement of a comfortable family dinner in England is a Coroner's inquest in Ireland -- verdict, starvation'"

Thousands perished by starvation; hundreds of thousands fled from the doomed land and made their way to other parts of the world, particularly the United States.

"The Irish exodus, as it was rightly called, was almost everywhere a scene of many woes. In many places families of peasants of the better classes toiled painfully in troops along the roads, fleeing, with their household stuff, as before an invading army. Crowds of the victims of harsh ejection, or of the more pitiless measures of the State, could be seen huddled in spots where there was a chance of shelter, on their way from their ruined homes to the nearest seaport.... The sufferings of these multitudes in the long voyage across the Atlantic, were simply appalling... The emigrants were abandoned to the tender mercies of merchants not subject to control by the State; as the demands of misery far exceeded the means of support the consequences may be easily guessed at. The emigrants were crowded into the worst kind of vessels, without sufficient supplies of even the coarsest food, without regard to health, comfort, or even common decency, and thousands perished in the terrible transit.... The Government might have controlled the greed of merchants; they might have insisted on regulations being made to secure life and health for their crowds of emigrants;.... Nothing perhaps contributed so much to the fierce resentment which burned in the hearts of thousands of Irishmen as the apparent neglect of the State in this matter; it left the bitterest memories, which still survive." (O'Connor Morris, pp167-168)

The immediate result of the Irish famine was the repeal of the Corn Laws. The ultimate results of this measure were not felt in Ireland until the seventies, when the competition of the wheat-growing districts of the New World began to tell.

This state of affairs was aggravated by one or two bad harvests, and the suffering which ensued in Ireland was the immediate cause of the agrarian agitation which for the first time won from the British Government the Magna Charta of the tenant's liberties, popularly known as the "Three F's": Fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure....

This will be referred to in greater detail later. For the present I shall content myself with remarking that the net result of the two successive fiscal systems which were applied to Ireland since the Union was, first, the destruction of many Irish industries; secondly, an unnatural encouragement of tillage for the first forty-five years, with disastrous results to the Irish land system, and finally a sudden and unlooked for depression of Irish agriculture owing to the adoption of free trade, from the effects of which Irish agriculture has only recently recovered.

British Legislative Policy

British statesmanship had thus another chance to distinguish itself; it took the chance, and in 1850 passed a law called the Encumbered Estates Act which was one of the most glaring examples of the inability of the Parliament at Westminster to legislate for the economic necessities of Ireland.

Its general principle was plausible enough; it was thought that if the landlords whose estates were very much encumbered could be supplanted by a class of solvent landlords, the results would be beneficial to Irish agriculture and to the country as a whole.

Its application was in the best and most approved "rule of thumb" style which has nearly always characterised the attempts of Great Britain to legislate for Ireland. All these estates were thrown on the market at once, with the result that they were sold in many cases for much less than their real value. Again quoting from O'Connor Morris:-

"Lands at rentals of hundreds of thousands were brought into a half-closed market.....Estates valued a few years before at more than twenty years' purchase, sold for half or even a third of that sum; many honourable families of the landed gentry which, but for the law, would have been saved, disappeared from their ancestral homes;....... Confiscation, however, did not stop at what was above; it made its evil effects felt in what was below. In the case of most of these estates, as throughout Ireland, the occupying tenants had improved their farms, and had acquired concurrent rights in them; these rights, sometimes amounting to a joint ownership, were ruthlessly destroyed by the provision of the Act which gave purchasers a perfect title exempt from such claims....

"Nine-tenths, certainly, of the estates that were sold fell into the hands of needy Irishmen of the mercantile or the shopkeeping class, without the associations peculiar to landed gentry; and their conduct was natural to such a class. Many of these purchasers bought cheap to sell again in time, and became jobbers in land of the worst type; but the immense majority bought to retain their possessions, and proved themselves to be the true successors of the previously almost extinct middleman, the historical oppressor of the Irish peasant.

"The means by which these speculators made their bargains were characteristic and deserve notice. They usually borrowed half the purchase money, and instantly raised their tenants rents in order to meet the accruing interest; and as the tenants had no rights under the law, they were compelled to submit to what was a wrong in almost every instance.....

"The Encumbered Estates Act, and all that has flowed from it, ought to be a warning to British statesmen not rashly to meddle with the Irish land, a subject they have meddled with, nevertheless, from the days of the Elizabeth to the present hour, usually with the result of making bad worse." (O'Connor Morris pp172-173).

No further comment is necessary.

In 1853, when Ireland was still prostrate as a result of the famine, Mr Gladstone, who has now the reputation of having been a friend of Ireland, was sufficiently English and unstatesmanlike to think that the proper time had come to assimilate further the finances of Ireland and Great Britain. He extended the Income Tax to Ireland, and between 1853 and 1860 he and his successors more than trebled her spirit duties.

"The taxation of Ireland, still a very poor country, was increased by a sum of nearly three millions and, compared to that of Great Britain, was largely raised." (O'Connor Morris p191).

Mr. Gladstone was cynical enough to represent that he gave Ireland a set off for the Income Tax by releasing her from a questionable debt of £4,000,000 which had been contracted in connection with Famine Relief, and which really ought to have been an Imperial charge.

Up to 1898 the amount paid by Ireland for this boon was £23,000,000; so it is more than doubtful if, had she been a free agent, the arrangement would have been accepted, but under the Union she had no choice in the matter. In this way the British Government drove a coach and four through the financial provisions of the Act of Union, and the chief exemptions and abatements which she was guaranteed under that Act were thus abolished.

This state of chronic over-taxation has continued ever since.

In I895-6 the Financial Relations Commission reported that whereas the taxable capacity of Ireland was only 1/21 of that of Great Britain, her revenue was actually 1/13.

As before mentioned, it has been estimated by a competent authority that the amount contributed by Ireland in over taxation, that is to say in taxation in direct violation of the terms of the Act of Union, since the passing of that Act is at a moderate estimate £200,000,000. The Financial Relations Commission agreed that, financially speaking, Ireland has gained nothing from the Union, and may have lost much.

"The population of Ireland was larger at the Union than in 1896, agriculture was more profitable, for the repeal of the Corn Laws had not yet impoverished the Irish agriculturalist, the Irish foreign trade was larger, there were more manufactures in the country, and therefore the income of Ireland could not have been less at the Union than it was ninety years later. But under an Irish Parliament, in a year of peace, taxation was a little over £1,000,000; in a year of war and rebellion it only reached £2,300,000. In the war times after the Union Irish taxation rose to £4,500,000 per annum, and in 1896, after a long period of almost continuous peace, it stood, at nearly £7,000,000." (Miss Murray, summarising report of Financial Relations Commission, p399).

Quite apart from over-taxation, the fiscal system of the United Kingdom has been progressively modified in the interests of Great Britain. and without regard to those of Ireland.

The repeal of the Corn Laws was a great boon to the manufacturing interests of these countries, but as those of Ireland were only a small fraction of the whole population, its evil effects far outweighed the benefits it conferred. In 1853 Mr Gladstone extended the Income Tax to Ireland.

"The additional yield from the Income Tax in Ireland enabled Gladstone to carry out further reforms in the way of reducing taxes on necessaries and the materials for manufacture, reforms which, like the previous ones of Peel, were calculated to benefit the inhabitants of a manufacturing country but could have little effect on the people of agricultural Ireland." (ibid p385).

Thus once more the material interests of Great Britain were fostered without any corresponding advantage accruing to those of Ireland.

I believe it is possible to trace nearly all the problems which have agitated public life in Ireland in recent times to the passing of the Act of Union. I have already shown how the industrial life of Ireland was to a large extent destroyed thereby. The capital which might have been employed in industrial enterprise, and which was necessary to enable Irish manufacturers to adapt themselves to the introduction of new methods, was drained away in ever-increasing taxation. The Irish corn trade was kept in a condition of unnatural prosperity by the system of Protection which prevailed up to 1845, and then by a sudden change of fiscal policy a period of depression was brought about.

The Irish people had been made more and more dependent on the land, and as a result of legislation in the interests of England, it became more and more impossible for the land of Ireland to support the Irish population. The Irish question is henceforth a land question, and the land question owes its paramount importance to the effect of the Act of Union in making the land the sole means of sustenance of the majority of the Irish people.

The system of land tenure in Ireland was, as already pointed out, far from ideal. After the repeal of the Corn Laws, the rack-rents which could formerly be obtained owing to the keen competition for land and the high prices of agricultural produce, could now be enforced only by the threat of confiscation and eviction, which the state of the law enabled the landlord to carry out if he wished.

Up till now the Act of Union itself was the chief agent in bringing about the evils which ensued. But after this the British statesmanship which connived at, and indeed actively assisted, the Irish landlord in his exactions, is chiefly to blame for the maintenance of the Irish land system with its evil associations. And it was mainly due to the system under which Ireland was now governed, and to the non-existence of a strong and independent Irish party in the House of Commons in those days, that the evil results of the Irish land laws, though they called to heaven for redress, should have been treated as if they simply did not exist.

The Devon Commission found the state of Irish agriculture profoundly unsatisfactory. Years elapsed before any legislation was passed to amend that state of things, and though it must be confessed that Deasy's Act of 1860 was on the lines of the Devon Commission recommendations, it, like the report of that Commission itself, was completely wrong in the cure it sought to apply to the evils that admittedly existed. It endeavoured to substitute the English system of contract for the equitable system of custom which tended to prevail in Ireland.

It refused to allow compensation to the tenant for improvements unless made with the landlord's consent. In future no improvements were safe unless made under the terms of a contract express or implied. The Act effected no useful purpose, and its principal result was to simplify and cheapen the process of eviction.

Since the date of this Act real attempts have been made with some degree of success to redress the most glaring anomalies of the Irish land system; in addition, the Church of Ireland has been disestablished and disendowed in 1869. The verdict of history is that these reforms were just and necessary, yet it is unfortunately true that had it not been for the fear lest if these concessions were not granted, a worse thing would happen, they would have been sought in vain.

This is mainly due to the fact that Westminster is so far away mentally if not physically, and most of the English members of Parliament move in such a different atmosphere, and are so much occupied with the interests of a totally different class from those of the great majority of Irishmen, whatever their religion, that nothing short of an earthquake will secure their attention, or persuade them that all is not well with Ireland, or might be if the Irish only tried to imitate the British a little more energetically.

The Disestablishment of the Irish Church was admittedly a legislative outcome of the Fenian agitation which convulsed the country from 1864 to 1867. In the forty years which followed Catholic Emancipation twenty-three Bills in favour of the tenants were thrown out by the British Parliament.

The 1870 Land Act

"Five-sixths probably of the occupiers of the soil in Ireland had sunk into the class of mere tenants-at-will; even the Tenant Right of Ulster had, in some instances, been nibbled away by a certain class of landlords; and at the same time the joint ownership, often morally a fact, but legally ignored in the courts of justice, had gradually been more and more developed. Harsh evictions, also, had become more frequent; and these had been attended with their ordinary results- not a few frightful cases of agrarian crime." (O'Connor Morris p210).

The Land Act of 1870 gave legal sanction for the first time to the principle of Tenant Right. The tenant was to receive compensation for disturbance, and compensation for improvements, realisable when he was quitting his farm. The Act, was, however, vitiated to a large extent by a further attempt to modify the Irish land system on the lines of the English. It enabled the tenant to contract himself out of its benefits. They might generally be exchanged for a lease of thirty-one years. In thousands of cases tenants accepted these leases, thereby abandoning their rights under the Act, and often this was done under undue pressure.

Mr Gladstone in introducing this Bill spoke with scorn and derision of the principle of the "three Fs":- fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure. He considered that his Bill was a final settlement of the Irish land question, and that when it became law the last would be heard of the agitation for the "three Fs".

Mr Gladstone showed himself in this respect to be not the broadminded and sympathetic statesman which he is traditionally represented to have been, but a mere self-satisfied English legislator attempting to solve in an offhand manner a question whose many bearings he did not fully appreciate. The faults and shortcomings of this measure were such that within eleven years it had to be supplemented by a Bill in which the "three Fs" were enshrined, and by the irony of fate, it fell to Mr Gladstone to introduce that measure.

Notes and References

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1998