  What is the nature of a country-life that it should breed such a vampire,—such a monster of iniquity,—such a “squanderer of national wealth” as the landlord whom your Free-trading friends hold up to public execration? The old classical idea “procul a negotiis” would indicate that it had a contrary influence. How is it then that it produces the unmitigated miscreant whom Bright delights to denounce,—whom Gladstone loves to pursue with ruinous enactments,—and whom Parnell, with his murderous crew, takes pleasure in “boycotting,” maiming, and assassinating? The external appearance of this monster gives no clue to his character. From personal acquaintance with men of this class in England I should have said, that, on the average, they were I am unable to speak from personal experience respecting the same classes in Ireland; but all novels and tales of Irish life, which should reflect, with some degree of truth, the general aspect of things, agree in describing scenes, probably founded on facts, from which one would imagine that, before the present agitation and enactments, there appeared to exist much kindly feeling and sympathy between the peasantry and the “Masther,” who, with all his faults, is represented as a generous, rollicking, devil-may-care sort of fellow, Mr. A. M. Sullivan seems also to have been mistaken when he says:— “The conduct of the Irish landlords throughout the famine period has been variously described, and has, I believe, been generally condemned. I consider the censure visited on them too sweeping. I hold it to be in some respects cruelly unjust.... It is impossible to contest authentic cases of brutal heartlessness here and there; but granting all that has to be entered on the dark debtor side, the overwhelming balance is the other way. The bulk of the resident Irish landlords manfully did their best in that dread hour. If they did too little compared with what the landlord class in England would have done in a similar case, it was because little was in their power.... They were heritors of estates heavily overweighted with the debts of a bygone generation.... To these landowners the failure of one year’s rental receipts meant mortgage, foreclosure, and hopeless ruin. Yet cases might be named by the score in which men scorned to avert, by pressure on their suffering tenancy, the fate they saw impending over them. They went down with the ship. “No adequate tribute has ever been paid to the memory of those Irish landlords, and they were men of every party and creed, who perished martyrs to duty, in that awful time.” It is wonderful how, at such an awful time, the Irish landlord should have continued to mask his true character. Still I am rather puzzled. I quite admit that the Irish landlord is wrong in rack-renting his tenant to the extent of grinding out of him one-third of the amount that is cheerfully paid by tenants in protectionist countries. I admit that he should not have tried in a Free Trade country to have extorted more than one-tenth of the rent paid by protectionist tenants. Nay, I will go further. I don’t think that a tenant in Free Trade Ireland would farm to a profit even if he had the land rent-free. I admit also that it was selfish of the landlord to allow the question of his own pauperism to weigh in the question of rent. Still, after making due allowance for all these faults, I cannot quite understand how his guilt is sufficiently proven Perhaps an analysis of his villainy may help me to understand the heinousness of his crime; let us apply, therefore, to the political economist for the character of the rent, the instrument with which he commits his crime—what does he say? “Rent does not affect the price of agricultural produce.” “Whoever does pay rent gets back its full value in extra advantage, and the rent which he pays does not place him in a worse position than, but only in the same position as, his fellow-producer who pays no rent, but whose instrument is one of inferior efficiency.” “Rent is reached by bargaining between the landlord and tenant; bargaining founded on the practical elements existing in the business. Profit must satisfy the tenant, or he will not take the farm; and on the other hand, if he claim an unduly low rent, he will find a rival competitor stepping into the farm house.... The position of an in-coming tenant is that of a man who is buying a business for sale (for whether he purchases the farm outright in order to cultivate it, or hires it, makes no difference in the nature of the transaction). He is buying a specific business in a given locality, as any man might do in a manufacturing town, and his motive is profit. This consideration governs the whole of the negotiation between the landowner and himself ... upon the terms of an annual payment of the means of profit which he seeks to acquire.” Yes! This appears to me to be just and business-like; the tenant hires the land for the profit he expects to get out of it, and his rent is a simple debt. Proceed:— “To refuse to pay debt violently is to steal, and to permit stealing is not only to dissolve, but to demoralize, society.”[70] “When a portion of wealth passes out of the hands of him who has acquired it, without his consent, and without compensation, to him who has not created it ... plunder is perpetrated.”[71] “Law is common force organized to prevent injustice.”[71] “If the law itself performs the action it ought to repress, plunder is still perpetrated under aggravated circumstances.”[71] “To place the position itself of a landlord in an invidious light, as a man who exacts from the labours of others that for which he has neither toiled nor spun, is a most unwarrantable process of argumentation.” “It would be impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this:—the conversion of law into an instrument of plunder.” Yes, yes! All this appears to me to be just and sensible! but pardon me, I am a little obtuse. I cannot yet see that the landlord’s guilt is proven. Let us recapitulate:— Rent does not raise the price of corn! The tenant gets value for his rent! He enters into a business contract for profit! The rent is a simple debt. To refuse it, is to steal! To assist legally at this refusal, is to be an accomplice in the theft! In this case Government is the accomplice, and the Government is a plunderer under aggravated circumstances! Moreover, it not only plunders, but demoralizes society. Mr. Gladstone represents Government. Messrs. Bright, Parnell, Davitt and Co. assist in this legalized and illegal plunder; thus demoralizing the society. The property of the landlord passes to another without his consent and without compensation! Messrs. Gladstone and Co. use that which Professor Bonamy Price terms a most “unwarrantable process of argumentation.” Stop! Stop!! for goodness’ sake!!! My brain is getting confused; in my innocence, had I not been gravely assured FOOTNOTES:How true in the case of Free Trade! |
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