Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

after another, to expatriate themselves; and now, forty years having elapsed, we find the chain all but severed,-the few links that remain being incapable of continuing the hold; and it only remains to be seen,— when it snaps, will they cling to the side of the land they have belonged to, or will they follow the mass of their "order," long since departed from her shores.

-

There is, then, an utter dissimilarity in the state and condition of property, in Ireland, and in Britain. A franchise which may still meet a sufficient quantity of general approval there, not to raise dissatisfaction, discontent, and heart-burnings, will no longer answer here-its time has passed by-its days are numbered.

But it is not, merely, that the feudal system has thus failed adequately to popularize itself in Ireland, so as to admit of longer continuing the attempt to engraft the franchise of the people upon its antiquated stalk; the indigenous disposition, habits of thinking, and ingrained notions of right and equity in the people of Ireland are wholly and essentially unfeudal,-unaristocratic

social.

neighbour is appealed to, and his "saying" ends it. Suppose the case, that the eldest, upon the father's death, sets out to the assizes town,-consults "Torney This, or gets the written opinion of Counsellor That-some well-deserving pillar of the law-who tells him, that his widowed mother has no right to her garden; that his brothers and his sisters have no share or right in the land; that it is all his :

"The court awards it, and the law doth give it :"

that he may turn them out by the shoulder-all-that night-and seize it-allfor his own sole use and benefit; for he is "the heir:"

"The law allows it, and the court awards it:"

Is there an Irish peasant who will go home and do it? The Englishman doesthere they "obey the law;" and go by the law; it is their own; it grew up amongst them; and they are satisfied with it. But in Ireland, the Breitheamh* law respected the equable partition of property; and although that code has been extinct for centuries-a law long unadministered by courts,-its righteous and natural principle, in the custom of dividing estates among children, lives in the hearts and prevails in the dealings and habits of the native people.

The property-laws and the property-fran chise-laws then, of England, are alike unsuited to them.

The landlord made his lease, long ago, for the lives of a father and two infant sous, to the father" and his heirs, in good set phrase of English law. The father dies.Does the eldest son usurp the whole, by right of primogeniture, because the father wrote no will? No; there is a widow, and several sons, and several daughters; the father, perhaps, on his death-bed, has given some verbal directions and advice; they are religiously attended to, because their character is paternal, and consonant to the notions and feelings of all his family. The widow remains in possession of a portion of the house, with her furniture, a little share of the stock, and a few acres of the land, sufficient to ensure to her her usual comforts for the remainder of her days. The whole family arrange their shares happily together, -the girls are portioned and provided for out of the remaining stock and money, and the future earnings and savings of the boys, who make up, or take upon themselves, "the marriage portions" agreed upon; and then make an equitable distribution of the land amongst themselves, subject to those arrangements. Perhaps a brother-in-law, if there be one, is admitted to a share; and perhaps a brother, who has put himself to a trade, accepts, instead of land, a part of the money and moveables for his " divide." But all is mutually, honestly, and ungrudgingly agreed to. If a difference arise, some just "Brehon."

There are, besides, circumstances in the present state of Ireland which render the extinction of tenure, as an adjunct to property qualification, desirable for the very sake of extending the grant of tenure. This will seem, to a British reader, paradoxical. Amongst ourselves it is plain enough; but it is nothing but the anomalous state of the relation between landlord and tenant, (so familiar to our minds,) which makes this seeming parodox appear to us almost a truism. The solution is this:-the proprietors of the soil, throughout the greater part of Ireland, are combined in a firm league-tacit, indeed, in many cases, but, in many also, express,-not to grant, to the occupying tenantry of their estates, any tenure of their lands, sufficient now to qualify them

or likely, as they suppose, to be made, by any change of the law, sufficient to qualify them hereafter. This produces an unnatural and overstrained withholding of tenure over

The native Irish judge, usually written

the whole country. The consequences are ruinous-it needs no argumentation to show, that men-deprived of all permanent interest in the soil they occupy-tenants at the mere will of their lords, liable to be ejected yearly, under the summary process which follows upon a well-penned "notice," given in the usual pertinent terms, "to quit, at the end of the year of your tenantcy, which shall expire next after the end of half-a-year from the time of your being served with this notice"-it is plain that men so circumstanced, cannot be expected to improve their farms with much advantage either to themselves or to the community they live in. A country may struggle on where such cases occur; but where the amount of property thus circumstanced is daily and steadily encreasing and is likely, before long, to comprise the nine-tenths of our land, owned in perpetuity by proprietors miscalled "conservative"-the effect must be the utter discouragement of tillage-the conversion of Ireland back again into a land of pasture merely-and the total overthrow and undoing, probably within the second quarter of the nineteenth century, of all that was effected with much care, pains, and labour of the Irish legislature during the latter half of the eighteenth century, and of all that followed upon the peculiar events which fostered our agricultural advancement in the first quarter of the present.

But let the temptation thus held out, by the state of the franchise-law, to the withholding of long terms, be once removed, and every thing of the kind will speedily find its natural level; length of title will be conferred, as the joint and mutual interests if both parties require it, irrespectively of political views, or the quackery of partizanship; and then, by the encrease of substantial tenures throughout the country, the independence of the voters will follow no less steadily and generally, than the numbers of the voters are now diminishing and dwindling, daily, towards complete extinction.

been but few and trifling. So seem, to those who look to, and know, and feel for their wrongs, (seeing that they are ground to the earth)-so seem their uprisings against their private oppressors. It is remarkable, that, under the most hopeless sufferings, they are no suicides as the English are. We say it in no pharisaical spirit, and merely to record a curious and important fact. The crime is unknown among them. Why? Because they will endure to the last. While there is life, they hope. Again, it is no less remarkable, that, when the ray of certain hope once beams upon them, the effect is electric. It needs but that they should understand the means-perceive that their cause is right and just-and see clearly that the accomplishment is within their own power-and then, it is not in a district, here or there, that the effect is to be found-it flies through the whole land, animates, energizes, and possesses all.

If we go back far, in tracing instances of this national characteristic, we are not therefore to be sneered at by those who, (as Lord Plunket forcibly expressed it,) look upon history as no better than an old almanack. We invent nothing:

bilem aut risum fortasse quibusdam Moverat, ut mendax aretalogus; but, even though certain atrabilarious gentlemen may scoff, we think it no whit the less important to note the evidence carrying us back to the remotest period within our ken; for the farther back it is, that proof is found of the existence of a decided character in a people, the more reason we have for believing that modern exhibitions of the same character are, not bubbles of casual ebullition merely, but the result of fixed, settled, and deep-seated causes.

Upon the introduction of Christianity into Ireland, when the holy Patrick appeared, the people flocked to him-the sacrifices to Baal were abolished-the idols were destroyed-and, in an incredibly short space of time, the religion of the blessed Jesus was established throughout the country; in the north, in the south, in the east, and in the

Beyond the reasons, of special force and application, which we have thus far adduced, there are still wider-more momentous, and more urgent considerations to be at-west. tended to. They arise from the essential character of the Irish people, attested by history.

There is no people more patient, more enduring. They will bear, in private calamity and public misfortune, to an extent unparalleled. Their rebellions, under the English and British, compared with their provocations to rebellion from misgovernment, have

Among the ancient Irish, none were degraded in slavery-the Breitheamh law allowed it not. In England, at the same time, slavery was common, and the merchants brought their English slaves to Ireland, and sold them. The bad neighbourhood of bad men subjected Ireland to conquest. The affliction of the cruel Norman invasion was sore upon the land; the

people were afraid with great amazement, and said," It is a scourge sent by God to punish us for our sins." So, they held a council at Armagh, and came to the opinion that the misfortunes of the country were owing to their wickedness, in buying slaves of the English merchants. And, instantly. everywhere, all the English held in bondage were restored to liberty. The people acted nobly, gloriously, and with a holy fear. Alas! they knew not the full extent of the social law of our nature, and the penalties which follow its infringement; they saw not, that a nation is interested and bound to advance the cause of social order in other communities-just as the individual is with his neighbour-and that it is as dangerous to be indifferent to a system of buccaneering in the one case, as to habits of slave-holding, thieving, or robbery in the other.

The long oppression of the nation, which followed, worked no suppression of the national character. It awoke, with the regeneration of the country; and 1782 beheld created, as by a miracle, the powerful and peaceful armament of the Irish volunteers. It was universal as it was rapid, and the independence of Ireland was achieved.

passing before our own eyes, when hundreds of thousands, heretofore the victims of an odious system of revenue, (which, for the sake of filthy lucre, inundated the country with maddening alcohol,) have rushed to meet the man, so justly stiled "the Great Apostle of Temperance," and pledged themselves against the use of all intoxicating liquors ?

To these and other instances we might advert, and they show more than we have called them up to tell; they prove that, in the present hour, Ireland has become essentially the country of the movement; and they portend, that, in it, an attempt to retard, to frustrate, or to damage the grant of social right and franchise—which the people see is justly to be conceded to them, has come within their reach, and upon which they have set their hearts,-must be in the highest degree perilous.

No HALF MEASURE CAN NOW GIVE SATISFACTION.

No cramping by imposing qualifications of "tenure," be that tenure long or short, can remedy the evil, or restrain the impulse of the national will.

The idea thrown out, of still maintaining some certain measure of value "over and above rent and charges," and using the poor law valuation as the test of such value, would be no less unsatisfactory; it would be absurd, even though it should be no more than a reduced franchise of forty shillings.

Again, at the institution of the Catholic rent, it was a demonstration, that, from the smallest individual means, amongst united millions, there could be created an element of vast power, by a mode of action perfectly The poor-law act had no sooner been legal, and requiring only complete combina- passed, than it might easily have been pretion. The national organization was formed dicted that a low scale of valuation of proat once. It had not subsisted long, when perty would be adopted generally under it: the thought occurred, that the law which a valuation not only far below the amount prevented Catholics from sitting in parlia- which a farmer, by hired labourers, using ment did not prohibit the people from re- ordinary industry in the usual course of the turning them to the bar of the House of husbandry of his ground, would be able to Commons, and all Ireland was ready to have clear out of it, one year with another; but acted upon the thought, and to have sent far below the estimate, in matter of opinion, none else thither-the Clare election came; which might be made by a man acquainted and the experiment, though tried but in that with the rent actually paid, as to the one instance, was so complete and so suc-probable rent, over and above the actual cessful, against the bitterest opposition and most tremendous obstacles, that that effort alone, in the return of Daniel O'Connell to the Imperial Parliament, achieved the bloodless victory of emancipation.

Shall we say nothing of "passive resistance," which with such rapidity first extinguished the odious vestry cess, and then a portion of the tithe; and would have destroyed the whole, had not a change in the law shifted the legal burden to the landlords, and thereby taken away the means of continuing the organized resistance from the occupiers? Shall we say nothing of the things that are

1

rent, which a solvent tenant might be found, or could afford with justice to himself, to pay for it; in other words, far below either the "beneficial interest," as it is called, or the "solvent tenant" probable rent, as sworn to under the act of 1829, 10 Geo. IV. c. 8.

In the first place, all the usual causes of depreciation in making a valuation, to be used for the purposes of taxation, would operate. Upon such occasions, no man in ordinary life makes high estimates. This is the case even where relative value is not the question. For instance, amongst notaries public, it is a well-known and established usage,

[ocr errors]

when they are valuing property for the purposes of stamp duty (such as upon probates, intestacies, and the like,) never to certify to the full probable price. But when several items are to be stated at their comparative value, new causes of depreciation operate. The moment any one happens to be entered at a moderate estimate, every body else cries out, "Oh! I am rated too high! look at this, and compare us. Nobody is inclined to the unkind course of asking "why don't you raise it on neighbour Luckydog?" Mr. Goodfellow will prefer saying, our friend here is all right-fairly dealt with; had you valued my house as his, you should have had no complaints-strike £20 off me, and then all will be quite proportional." The valuator thinks to himself," so far as the cess to be imposed in consequence of this valuation is concerned, it is really all one, whether all these tenements are stated at their utmost value, or whether one-half, one-third, one-fourth, or any other proportion is knocked off all generally;" for where all the values are proportionately encreased or diminished, the ultimate result as to the proportions of the cess is the same. He is, therefore, very easy with the parties in reducing and lowering his valuations; and he finds that by so doing he makes himself extremely popular and agreeable. Every body imagines that he has been handsomely treated; no one can say that an exorbitant amount has been fixed upon his property; and the valuator is satisfied that the cess will be fairly applotted.

In the case of the Irish poor-law, there was a reason why these considerations ought not to have had so much weight with valuators as in the case of any former assessment. This lay in the clause which directs that the landlords and rent-receivers shall contribute to the tax; they being made liable to the occupiers, who alone are directly taxed, in a deduction of half the poundage-rate to be taken from each pound of their rents. From that it follows, that if the occupants, generally, be valued low, a high poundage-rate must be imposed, in order to produce the amount required for the general purposes; whilst if the occupants be valued higher, a less poundage-rate will suffice. The difference will be scarcely perceptible to the owners of small isolated properties; but to the proprietors of rich estates, and enormous tracts of country, so common in Ireland, the result will soon be found to be serious enough. There have been, however, other causes which have contributed to make this state of facts hitherto almost wholly unobserved. In the first place, the actual working of the taxa

tion has not at all become understood; and the landlords, as a class, are so blinded with political fury and bigotry, and hatred of the people, that they have not yet even stood still to consider their own position. They know from the municipal bill and many other infallible symptoms, that rate and franchise are gradually becoming-must and will become-correlative; Lord Stanley and the bigots of England have raised in them the hope of substantially disfranchising the Irish tenantry; and they have thought, that by applying the rate as the test of value above rent, upon a franchise (such as the present,) they would succeed in the utter annihilation of tenant's political rights, which they view as nothing but nuisances. Hence, in place of attending to their direct interests in the matter, and endeavouring to keep the standard of valuation up to its maximum, they have every where encouraged the valuators rather to depreciate the interests of the occupiers.

If a landlord look at his case, simply, as between him and his tenant of twenty acres, Tim Murphy, who pays him twenty pounds a-year; he "It is all one to my purse says, whether Tim is valued at thirty pounds or at thirteen; for the poundage is six-pence, and whichever way it be, he, Tim, will deduct from me just the same twenty three-pences; five shillings out of my rent. If he be valued at thirty pounds, there is a freehold in every sense of the word; whereas if it be only thirteen, off goes Tim's name from the register of voters some fine morning; at all events, after we get Stanley's bill." He has not reflected, that if all the Tims in the parish had been rated at the full value, the poundage required would have been three-pence only; and this deduction would have been no more than two shillings and six pence; or twenty three-halfpences; and so with all the Tims in the parish.

To this it must be added, that the poorlaw act has given very specific hints to the valuators, that existing valuations are to be looked to by them, and more or less followed. Now, what were these?

"Minister's money" in cities and towns :this until a late period governed all taxation, and still governs much. It was struck at ONE-SIXTH of the computed annual value at the time of valuation; that is, sometime between the reign of Charles II. and yesterday.

"Grand jury cess :"-this was founded upon ancient customary valuations, the origin of which can not be ascertained; and although frequently most capricious, and

much legislated against, they have still very generally withstood the attacks upon them. They are often under A TENTH of the present value, upon any principle of estimation. "Tithe compositions :"-these valuations were made at different periods, from 1823; but under no system, and in such a manner, that every influence, regular and irregular, has operated upon them, so as to have rendered them utterly unfit for adoption in any

instance.

"The ordnance survey" valuation was got up with more method; but the statutes which authorised it, contained express provisions that all lands should be valued with reference to certain average prices of produce, and all houses with a deduction of ONE-THIRD from the rent that could be got for them if let by the year.

With these, and other like documents before them, the poor-law valuators would have been bold men indeed, had they considered | themselves at liberty to value wholly regardless of them. But they have done no such thing.

The queer frame of the poor-law valuationclause and its schedule, likewise, has contributed to promote depreciation. It would be a strong measure to affirm, that the hand (head? quere) which framed it, understood its meaning. It has plainly bothered their Highnesses, the Poor-law Commissioners; for although they have "published and caused to be published" rule upon rule, order upon order, essays, tracts, reports, and circulars, they have no where furnished their valuators with the smallest clue to show how the eight compound columns, which, we are told, intervene between the "net annual value" and the " gross annual value," are to be understood; in what manner the contents of them are to be inquired into; or what use is to be made of them.

[ocr errors]

annual letting value, but even far under the rents paid for the tenements, even where reserved under leases made many years ago. The valuators take the lowest possible standard, and, even where uncontrolled by previous valuations, will admit nothing which a scrupulously prudent, and even reluctant tenant would not at once undertake to pay, reserving to himself full remuneration for his time labour, and capital. Accordingly, the valuation, generally, is BELOW THE RENTAL.

66

That being the fact, we may say-as to value tested by the poor law, over and above rent,"-cadit quæstio; such a qualification would be a denial of franchise to the whole occupying tenantry; and no one but a ninny or a knave will venture to propose it.

Let the qualification, then, of the occupying tenant to vote depend upon nothing but the one simple test,-THE VALUATION OF HIS PROPERTY

IN THE RATE FOR THE

RELIEF OF THE POOR. This is what the people want-this is what they require. They demand this, and nothing but this ; and let all other schemes be set aside and abandoned.

Let any provisions for the correction, improvement, or extension of the poor law valuation be made, which the experience of now three years may point out to be expedient and proper. Let all notoriety be given for its inspection, amendment, and reformation upon every rate; but then, let it be final, as well for the liability of the occupier in respect of taxation, as for his privilege in respect of representation; and let all registration chicanery be prohibited.

With regard to those who do not occupy, the law may well remain as it is under the Reform Act, with this modification, that the claimant at the revision shall simply have to show, that in the district where his property is situate, he is charged or chargeAccordingly, Paddy, going about to value, able to pay rate for the relief of the poor, candidly acknowledges-in a whisper to in respect of a profit rent of the required himself—that “it is all buz," and the less he amount. This would exclude and nullify says about the matter the better. Here is to fictitious qualifications. All voters, whether be the "gross" value, and there the "net" occupants or rent-receivers, would then devalue, and, between, the eight columns. pend upon this one general test; and no one Well, the best way is to make the greatest could complain, that men, thus contributpossible quantity of deductions and allowing to actual taxation, were any thing but ances; all kinds and sorts." The eight ugly columns are to be filled up, and he does it with whatever figures come first into his head he tots all up, and that makes the gross; but if you press him, he will tell you no lie; he neither knows how he did it, nor why.

The fact is now notorious, that the valua tions have been made not only far below the

voters, bonâ fide, entitled to their franchise.

We intimated to our readers at starting, that we should throw our eyes around among our neighbours, to know how matters of this description have been getting on amongst them, and to see at what point of comparative civilisation we have arrived by our noted Reform Bill, about which so much noise has been made. The few in

« ZurückWeiter »