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Free Trade in Land: An Aspect of the Irish Question

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2011

W. L. Burn
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Extract

In 1811 the Solicitor-General of Ireland was prosecuting at Clonmel some members of two agrarian societies of the Ribbon type, the Caravats and the Shanavests.

What (he asked) is the first object of these savage associations, to enforce the commands of which you are nightly plundered of your arms? It is the regulation of landed property and its produce, it is the vain and idle attempt to fix a maximum for rent and to prescribe the price of labour, it is the frantic project to prevent the transfer of property and to frustrate the exertions of industry. The nature of things, still more than the operation of positive law, has decreed that property should find its own level; and it is the first principle of a commercial country, and the first consequence of national prosperity, that property should be in a state of perpetual transfer and circulation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 31 , December 1949 , pp. 61 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1949

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References

1 State Trials, xxxi. 420.

2 Irish Historical Documents 1172–1922, ed. E., Curtis and McDowell, R. B. (1943). PP. 250–1.Google Scholar

1 Spencer Walpole, The Life of Lord John Russell (1889), ii. 463.

2 For a striking warning of what was likely to happen to ‘improving’ andlords, see W. N. Senior, Journals, Conversations and Essays relating to Ireland (2nd edn., 1868), ii. 46–7. And cf, W. S. Trench, Realities of Irish Life (1870), pp. 47–8, 206–13.

1 Brit. Mus., Add. MS. 44,121 (Gladstone Papers, xxxvi), passim.

2 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., cxix. 341 (10 February 1852).

1 A special bibliography would be necessary for the full references to the Ulster Custom; but see Digest of Evidence (Devon Commission, 1847); Isaac Butt, The Irish People and the Irish Land (Dublin, 1867); A. G. Richey, Irish Land Laws (2nd edn., 1881); C. D. Field, Landholding and the Relation of Landlord and Tenant in Various Countries (Calcutta, 1885); W. E. Montgomery, The History of Land Tenure in Ireland (Cambridge, 1889); Maxwell, T. H., An Outline of the Law of Landlord and Tenant and of Land Purchase in Ireland (Dublin, 1909)Google Scholar; O'brien, G., The Economic History of Ireland from the Union to the Famine (1921).Google Scholar

1 Landlordism in Ireland With Its Difficulties: A Sketch of the Tenant-Right Question in Ulster: By One Late an Agent (Belfast, 1853), p. 18.

2 There is no complete and accurate account of the legislation and the proposals for legislation in these years, but the subject may be studied in Sir C. Gavan Duffy, The League of North and South: An Episode in Irish History 1850–1854 (1886); W. Shee, Papers, Letters and Speeches… on the Irish Land Question (1863); E. Lucas, The Life of Frederick Lucas (1886); A. C. Ewald, The Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Napier (1892); R. Barry O'Brien, The Parliamentary History of the Irish Land Question from 1820 to 1869 (1880); Moore, M. G., An Irish Gentleman: George Henry Moore (1913).Google Scholar

1 W. T. H., The Encumbered Estates of Ireland (1850); reprinted from the Daily News of August and September 1850.

2 5 and 6 Will. IV, c. 55.

3 3 and 4 Vict., c. 105.

4 See Devon Commission Digest, p. 1030; J. Pim, Observations on the Evils Resulting to Ireland from Insecurity of Title (1847), and A Letter to Sir John Romilly, M.P. (1850).

1 Earl Russell, Recollections and Suggestions 1813–1873 (1875), p. 195.

2 12 and 13 Vict., c. 77.

3 The Commissioners were Baron Richards, of the Irish Court of Exchequer; Mountifort Longfield (1802–84), who had held the Chairs of Political Economy and of Feudal and English Law in Trinity College, Dublin; and C. J. Hargreave (1820–66), Professor of Jurisprudence in University College, London, 1843–9, and a distinguished mathematician. Longfield was a man of outstanding ability, but his strongly-held personal views on the Irish land question may have unfitted him for the performance of judicial duties. See his paper on ‘The Tenure of Land in Ireland’ in Systems of Land Tenure in Various Countries, ed. J. W. Probyn (Cobden Club, 1870).

4 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., civ. 910 (26 April 1849). The Commons debates on the Bill are to be found in vols. civ. 892–920; cv. 344–61, 760–77, 1094–1118; those of the Lords in cv. 1336–67; cvi. 709–14, 1039–42, 960–2.

1 I have not been able to see R. C. MacNevin's The Practice of the Incumbered Estates Court in Ireland (1854) or his The Practice of the Landed Estates Court in Ireland (1859). The British Museum's copies of these books, which would have been invaluable to me, were destroyed by enemy action during the late war.

2 21 and 22 Vict., c. 72.

3 See, for instance, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., cxl. 184–214, 915–70; cl. 22–44, 1538–69.

4 Ireland: The Incumbered Estates Court: Should it be Continued? (Dublin, 1852), p. 62. This was a reply to Ireland: Observations on the People, the Land and the Law in 1851, with especial reference to the Policy and Practice of the Incumbered Estates Court (Dublin, 1851). There is an interesting article on the Court in the Dublin University Magazine of September 1850.

1 See Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., cviii. 815–19 (15 February 1850); cx. 100–17 (9 April 1850), 806–42 (25 April 1850); cxi. 932–43 (10 May 1850); cxiii. 910–27 (7 August 1850).

2 Healy, T. M., Letters and Letters of My Day (1928), i. 27.Google Scholar

3 Principles of Political Economy by John Stuart Mill, ed. Ashley, W. J. (1909), pp. 339Google Scholar and 338 n. Ashley used the text of the 7th edition (1871).

4 The History of the Law of Tenures of Land in England and Ireland (1870), pp. 113–16.

5 Brit. Mus., Add. MS. 44,122 (Gladstone Papers, xxxvii), Fortescue to Gladstone, 17 November 1869.

1 Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., cxcix. 343–5.

2 One notable omission in the Encumbered Estates Acts was that of any provisions facilitating purchases by tenants; and this despite some vague talk during the debates on the 1848 Act about creating a ‘middle-class proprietary’. Henley pointed out, with his usual common sense, that division of the land among small owner-occupiers was incompatible with the introduction of capital on a large scale Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., c. 595–6 [4 July 1848]). Some tenants bought their farms a short time before the 1858 Act; but this was regarded in the Commons as a gratifying surprise. In June 1851 T. McCullagh introduced an[Incumbered Estates (Leases) Bill to allow a tenant on an encumbered estate, when a sale had been ordered, to secure a lease in perpetuity on payment of a lump sum (Parliamentary Debates), 3rd ser., cxvii. 1230–9 [25 June 1851]. This is the first suggestion I have noticed of statutory facilities for and purchase. It met with overwhelming opposition.

1 E.g. in the debates on Shee's Tenants’ Improvements Compensation (Ireland) Bill, 19 June 1855 (Parliamentary Debates), 3rd ser., cxxxviii. 2230–40 (5 July 1855), and cxxxix. 464–86; on Maguire's Tenants’ Compensation (Ireland) Bill, 14 May 1858, in ibid., cxlix. 1046–97.

2 Brit. Mus., Add. MS. 44,122 (Gladstone Papers, xxxvii), Gladstone to Fortescue, 25 November 1869.