The Landleaguers Part 54

The statesmen in question have now come into power by means of their philanthropy, their undoubted genius, and great gifts of eloquence.

They have almost talked the world out of its power of sober judgment.

I hold that they have so succeeded in talking to the present House of Commons. And when the House of Commons has been so talked into any wise or foolish decision, the House of Lords and the whole legislating machinery of the country is bound to follow.

But how should their compromises be effected? It does not suit the present writer to name any individual statesman. He neither wishes to a.s.sist in raising a friend to the G.o.ds, or to lend his little aid in crushing an enemy. But to the Liberal statesmen of the day, men in speaking well of whom--at a great distance--he has spent a long life, he is now bound to express himself as opposed. We all remember the manner after which the Coercion Bill of 1881 was pa.s.sed. The hoa.r.s.e shrieks with which a score of Irish members ran out of the House crying "Privilege," when their voices had been stopped by the salutary but certainly unconst.i.tutional word of the Speaker, is still ringing in our ears. Then the Government and the Irish score were at daggers-drawn with each other. To sit for thirty-six hours endeavouring to pa.s.s a clause was then held by all men to be an odious bondage. But when these clauses had thus roughly been made to be the law, the sugar-plum was to follow by which all Ireland was to be appeased. The second Bill of 1881 was pa.s.sed, which, with various additions, has given rise to Judge O'Hagan's Land Court. That, with its various sub-commissioners, is now engaged in settling at what rate land shall be let in Ireland.

That Judge O'Hagan and his fellow commissioners are well qualified to perform their task,--as well qualified, that is, by kindness, by legal knowledge and general sagacity as any men can be,--I have heard no one deny. In the performance of most difficult duties they have hitherto encountered no censure. But they have, I think, been taxed to perform duties beyond the reach of any mortal wisdom. They are expected to do that which all the world has. .h.i.therto failed in doing,--to do that against which the commonest proverbs of ancient and modern wisdom have raised their voice. There is no proverb more common than that of "_caveat emptor_." It is Judge O'Hagan's business to do for the poorer party in each bargain made between a landlord and a tenant that against which the above proverb warns him. The landlord has declared that the tenant shall not have the land unless he will pay 10 a year for it. The tenant agrees. Then comes Judge O'Hagan and tells the two contracting parties to take up their pens quickly and write down 8 as the fair rent payable for the land. And it was with the object of doing this, of reducing every 10 by some percentage, twenty per cent. or otherwise, that this commission was appointed. The Government had taken upon itself to say that the greed of Irish landlords had been too greedy, and the softness of Irish tenants too soft, and that therefore Parliament must interfere.

Parliament has interfered, and 8 is to be written down for a term of years in lieu of 10, and the land is to become the possession of the tenant instead of the landlord as long as he may pay this reduced rent. In fact all the bonds which have bound the landlord to his land are to be annihilated. So also are the bonds which bind the tenant, who will sell the property so acquired when he shall have found that that for which he pays 8 per annum shall have become worth 10 in the market.

It is useless to argue with the commissioners, or with the Government, as to the inexpediency of such an attempt to alter the laws for governing the world, which have forced themselves on the world's acceptance. Many such attempts have been made to alter these laws. The Romans said that twelve per cent. should be the interest for money. A feeling long prevailed in England that legitimate interest should not exceed five per cent. It is now acknowledged that money is worth what it will fetch; and the interests of the young, the foolish, and the reckless, who are tempted to pay too much for it, are protected only by public opinion. The usurer is hated, and the hands of the honest men are against him. That suffices to give the borrower such protection as is needed. So it is with landlords and tenants. Injury is no doubt done, and injustice is enabled to prevail here and there. But it is the lesser injury, the lesser injustice, which cannot be prevented in the long run by any attempt to escape the law of "_caveat emptor_."

It is, however, vain to talk to benevolent commissioners, or to a Government working by eloquence and guided by philanthropy, regardless of political economy. "Would you have the heart," asks the benevolent commissioner, "to evict the poor man from his small holding on which he has lived all his life, where his only sympathies lie, and send him abroad to a distant land, where his solitary tie will be that of labour?" The benevolent commissioner thus expresses with great talk and with something also of the eloquence of his employers the feeling which prevails on that side of the question.

But that which he deprecates is just what I could do; and having seen many Irishmen both in America and in Ireland, I know that the American Irishman is the happiest man of the two. He eats more; and in much eating the happiness of mankind depends greatly. He is better clothed, better sheltered, and better instructed. Though his women wail when he departs, he sends home money to fetch them. This may be for the profit of America. There are many who think that it must therefore be to the injury of England. The question now is whether the pathetic remonstrance of the tear-laden commissioner should be allowed to prevail. I say that the tenant who undertakes to pay for land that which the land will not enable him to pay had better go,--under whatever pressure.

Let us see how many details, how many improbabilities, will have to be met before the benevolence of the commissioner can be made to prevail. The reductions made on the rent average something between twenty and twenty-five per cent. Let us take them at twenty. If a tenant has to be evicted for a demand of 10, will he be able to live in comfort if he pay only 8? Shall one tenant live in comfort on a farm, the rent of which has been reduced him from 100 to 80, and another, the reduction having been from 20 to 16? In either case, if a tenant shall do well with two children, how shall he do with six or eight? A true teetotaller can certainly pay double the rent which may be extracted from a man who drinks. Shall the normal tenant earn wages beyond what he gets from the land under his own tillage? Shall the idle man be made equal to the industrious,--or can this be done, or should it be done, by any philanthropy? Statesmen sitting together in a cabinet may resolve that they will set the world right by eloquence and benevolence combined; but the practices to which the world have been brought by long experience will avail more than eloquence and benevolence. Statesmen may decree that land shall be let at a certain rate, and the decree will prevail for a time. It may prevail long enough to put out of gear the present affairs of the Irish world with which these statesmen will have tampered. But the long experience will come back, and bargains will again be made between man and man, though the intervening injuries will be heartbreaking.

But the benevolence of the Government and its commissioners will not have gone far. The Land Law of 1881 has, as I now write, been at work for twelve months, and the results. .h.i.therto accomplished have been very small. It may be doubted whether a single reluctant tenant,--a single tenant who would have been unwilling to leave his holding,--has been preserved from American exile by having his 10 or 20 or 30 of rent reduced to 8 or 16 or 24. The commissioners work slowly, having all the skill of the lawyers, on one side or the other, against them. It is piteous to see the hopelessness of three sub-commissioners in the midst of a crowd of Irish attorneys. And the law, as it exists at present, can be made to act only on holdings possessed by tenants for one year. And the skill of the lawyers is used in proving on the part of the landlords that the land is held by firm leases, and cannot, therefore, be subjected to the law; and then by proving, on behalf of the tenants, that the existing leases are illegal, and should be broken. The possession of a lease, which used to be regarded as a safeguard and permanent blessing to the tenant, is now held to be cruelly detrimental to him, as preventing the lowering of his rent, and the immediate creation for him of a tenancy for ever. It is not to be supposed that the sub-commissioners can walk over the land and straightway reduce the rents, though the lands would certainly be subject to such reduction did not the law interfere. In a majority of cases,--a majority as far as all Ireland is concerned,--a feeling of honesty does prevail between landlord and tenant, which makes them both willing to subject themselves to the new law without the interference of attorneys, and many are preparing themselves for such an arrangement. The landlord is willing to lose twenty per cent. in fear of something worse, and the tenant is willing to take it, hardly daring to hope for anything better. Such is the best condition which the law has ventured to antic.i.p.ate.

But in either case this is to be done as tempering the wind to the shorn lamb. The landlord is anxious if possible to save for himself and those who may come after him something of the reality of his property, and the tenant feels that, though something of the n.o.bility of property has been promised to him by the Landleaguers, he may after all make the best bargain by so far submitting himself to his shorn landlord.

But on estates where the commissioners are allowed their full swing, the whole nature of the property in the land will be altered. The present tenant, paying a tax of 8 per annum which will be subjected to no reduction and on which no abatement can be made, in lieu of a 10 rent, will be the owner. The small man will be infinitely more subject to disturbance than at present, because the tax must be paid. The landlord will feel no mercy for him, seeing that the bonds between them which demanded mercy have been abrogated. The extra 2 or 4 or 6 will not enable the tenant to live the life of ease which he will have promised himself. If his interest has been made to be worth anything,--and it will be worth something, seeing that it has been worth something, and is saleable under its present condition,--it will be sold, and the emigration will continue. There are cruel cases at present. There will be cases not less cruel under the _regime_ which the new law is expected to produce. But the new law will be felt to have been unjust as having tampered with the rights of property, and having demanded from the owners of property its sale or other terms than those of mutual contract.

But the time selected for the measure was most inappropriate. If good in itself, it was bad at the time it was pa.s.sed. Home Rule coming across to us from America had taken the guise of rebellion. I have met gentlemen who, as Home-Rulers, have simply desired to obtain for their country an increase of power in the management of their own affairs. These men have been loyal and patriotic, and it might perhaps be well to meet their views. The Channel no doubt does make a difference between Liverpool and Dublin. But the latter-day Home-Rulers, of whom I speak, brought their politics, their aspirations, and their money from New York, and boldly made use of the means which the British Const.i.tution afforded them to upset the British Const.i.tution as established in Ireland. That they should not succeed in doing this is the determination of all, at any rate on this side of the Channel. It is still, I believe, the desire of most thinking men on the Irish side. But parliamentary votes are not given only to thinking men; and consequently a body of members has appeared in the House, energetic and now well trained, who have resolved by the clamour of their voices to put an end to the British power of governing the country. These members are but a minority among those whom Ireland sends to Parliament; but they have learned what a minority can effect by unbridled audacity. England is still writhing in her attempt to invent some mode of controlling them. But long before any such mode had been adopted,--had been adopted or even planned,--the Government in 1881 brought out their plan for securing to the tenants fair rents, fixity of tenure, and freedom of sale.

As to the first, it will, of course, be admitted by all men that rents should be fair, as also should be the price at which a horse is sold. It is, however, beyond the power of Parliament to settle the terms which shall be fair. "_Caveat emptor_" is the only rule by which fair rents may be reached. By fixity of tenure is meant such a holding of the land as shall enable the tenant to obtain an adequate return for his labour and his capital, and to this is added a romantic and consequently a most unjust idea that it may be well to settle this question on behalf of the tenant by granting him such a term as shall leave no doubt. Let him have the land for ever as long as he will pay a stipulated sum, which shall be considerably less than the landlord's demand. That idea I call romantic, and therefore unjust. But, even though the beauty of the romance be held sufficient to atone for the injustice, this was not the poetical re-arrangement of all the circ.u.mstances of land tenure in Ireland. Freedom of sale is necessarily annexed to fixity of tenure. If a man is to have the possession of land in perpetuity, surely he should be allowed to sell it. Whether he be allowed or not, he will contrive to do so. Freedom of sale means, I take it, that the so-called landlord shall have no power of putting a veto on the transaction. We cannot here go into the whole question as it existed in Ulster before 1870; but the freedom of sale intended is such, I think, as I have defined it.

Whether these concessions be good or bad, this was, at any rate, no time for granting them. They seem to me to amount to wholesale confiscation. But supposing me to be wrong in that, can I be wrong in thinking that a period of declared rebellion is not a time for concessions? When the Land Bill was pa.s.sed the Landleague was in full power; boycotting had become the recognised weapon of an illegal a.s.sociation; and the Home-Rulers of the day,--the party, that is, who represented the Landleague,--were already in such possession of large portions of the country as to prevent the possibility of carrying out the laws.

At this moment the Government brought forward its romantic theory as to the manipulation of land, and, before that theory was at work, commenced its benevolent intentions by locking up all those who were supposed to be guilty of an intention to carry out the Government project further than the Government would carry it out itself. It is held, as a rule, in politics that coercion and concession cannot be applied together. Ireland was in mutiny under the guidance of a mutinous party in the House of Commons, and at that moment a commission was put in operation, under which it was the intention of the Government to transfer the soil of the country at a reduced price to the very men among whom the mutineers are to be found. How do the tidings of such a commission operate upon the ears of Irishmen at large? He is told that under the fear of the Landleague his rent is to be reduced to an extent which is left to his imagination; and then, that he is to be freed altogether from the incubus of a landlord! He is, in fact, made to understand that his cherished Landleague has become all-powerful. And yet he hears that odious men, whom he recognises only as tyrants, are filling the jails through the country with all his dearest friends. Demanding concessions, and the continued increase of them, and having learned the way to seize upon them when they are not given, he will not stand coercion. Abated rent soon becomes no rent. When it is left to the payer of the rent to decide on which system he will act, it is probable that the no-rent theory will prevail.

So it was in 1882. Tenants were hara.s.sed by needy landlords, and when they were served with forms of ejectment the landlords were simply murdered, either in their own persons or in that of their servants.

Men finding their power, and beginning to learn how much might be exacted from a yielding Government, hardly knew how to moderate their aspirations. When they found that the expected results did not come at once, they resorted to revenge. Why should these tyrants keep them out from the good things which their American friends had promised them, and which were so close within their grasp? And their anger turned not only against their landlords, but against those who might seem in any way to be fighting on the landlords' side. Did a neighbour occupy a field from which a Landleaguing tenant had been evicted, let the tails of that neighbour's cattle be cut off, or the legs broken of his beasts of burden, or his sheep have their throats cut. Or if the injured one have some scruples of conscience, let the oppressor simply be boycotted, and put out of all intercourse with his brother men. Let no well-intentioned Landleaguing neighbour buy from him a ton of hay, or sell to him a loaf of bread.

But as a last resource, if all others fail, let the sinner be murdered. We all know, alas! in how many cases the sentence has been p.r.o.nounced and the judgment given, and the punishment executed.

Such have been the results of the Land Law pa.s.sed in 1881. And under the curse so engendered the country is now labouring. It cannot be denied that the promoters of the Land Laws are weak, and that the disciples of the Landleague are strong. In order that the truth of this may be seen and made apparent, the present story is told.

CHAPTER XLII.

LORD CASTLEWELL'S FAREWELL.

Poor Mr. O'Mahony had enemies on every side. There had come up lately a state of things which must be very common in political life. The hatreds which sound so real when you read the mere words, which look so true when you see their scornful att.i.tudes, on which for the time you are inclined to pin your faith so implicitly, amount to nothing.

The Right Honourable A. has to do business with the Honourable B., and can best carry it on by loud expressions and strong arguments such as will be palatable to readers of newspapers; but they do not hate each other as the readers of the papers hate them, and are ready enough to come to terms, if coming to terms is required. Each of them respects the other, though each of them is very careful to hide his respect. We can fancy that the Right Honourable A. and the Honourable B. in their moments of confidential intercourse laugh in their joint sleeves at the antipathies of the public. In the present instance it was alleged that the Right Honourable A. and the Honourable B. had come to some truce together, and had ceased for a while to hit each other hard knocks. Such a truce was supposed to be a feather in the cap of the Honourable B., as he was leader of a poor party of no more than twenty; and the Right Honourable A. had in this matter the whole House at his back. But for the nonce each had come off his high horse, and for the moment there was peace between them.

But Mr. O'Mahony would have no peace. He understood nothing of compromises. He really believed that the Right Honourable gentleman was the fiend which the others had only called him. To him it was a compact with the very devil. Now the leader of his party, knowing better what he was about, and understanding somewhat of the manner in which politics are at present carried on, felt himself embarra.s.sed by the honesty of such a follower as Mr. O'Mahony. Mr. O'Mahony, when he was asked whether he wished to lead or was willing to serve, declared that he would neither lead nor serve. What he wanted was the "good of Ireland." And he was sure that that was not to be obtained by friendship with Her Majesty's Government. This was in itself very well, but he was soon informed that it was not as a free-lance that he had been elected member for Cavan. "That is between me and my const.i.tuency," said Mr. O'Mahony, standing up with his head thrown back, and his right hand on his heart. But the const.i.tuency soon gave him to understand that he was not the man they had taken him to be.

He, too, had begun to find that to spend his daughter's money in acting patriotism in the House of Commons was not a fine _role_ in life. He earned nothing and he did nothing. Unless he could bind himself hand and foot to his party he had not even a spark of delegated power. He was not allowed to speak when he desired, and was called upon to sit upon those weary benches hour after hour, and night after night, only pretending to effect those things which he and his brother members knew could not be done. He was not allowed to be wrathful with true indignation, not for a moment; but he was expected to be there from question time through the long watches of the night--taking, indeed, his turn for rest and food--always ready with some mock indignation by which his very soul was fretted; and no one paid him the slightest respect, though he was, indeed, by no means the least respectable of his party. He would have done true work had it been given him to do. But at the present moment his own party did not believe in him. There was no need at present for independent wrathful eloquence. There seldom is need in the House of Commons for independent eloquence. The few men who have acquired for themselves at last the power of expressing it, not to empty benches, not amidst coughings and hootings, and loud conversation, have had to make their way to that point either by long efficient service or by great gifts of pachydermatousness. Mr. O'Mahony had never served anyone for an hour, and was as thin-skinned as a young girl; and, though his daughter had handed him all her money, so that he might draw upon it as he pleased, he told himself, and told her also, that his doing so was mean. "You're welcome to every dollar, father, only it doesn't seem to make you happy."

"I should be happy to starve for the country, if starving would do anything."

"I don't see that one ever does any good by starving as long as there is bread to eat. This isn't a romantic sort of thing, this payment of rents; but we ought to try and find out what a man really owes."

"No man owes a cent to any landlord on behalf of rent."

"But how is a man to get the land?" she said. "Over in our country a rough pioneering fellow goes and buys it, and then he sells it, and of course the man who buys it hasn't to pay rent. But I cannot see how any fellow here can have a right to the land for nothing." Then Mr. O'Mahony reminded his daughter that she was ill and should not exert herself.

It was now far advanced in May, and Mr. O'Mahony had resolved to make one crushing eloquent speech in the House of Commons and then to retire to the United States. But he had already learned that even this could not be effected without the overcoming of many difficulties. In himself, in his eloquence, in the supply of words, he trusted altogether; but there was the opportunity to be bought, and the Speaker's eye to be found,--he regarded this Speaker's eye as the most false of all luminaries,--and the empty benches to be encountered, and then drowsy reporters to be stirred up; and then on the next morning,--if any next morning should come for such a report,--there would not be a t.i.the of what he had spoken to be read by any man, and, in truth, very little of what he could speak would be worthy of reading. His words would be honest and indignant and fine-sounding, but the hearer would be sure to say, "What a fool is that Mr. O'Mahony!" At any rate, he understood so much of all this that he was determined to accept the Chiltern Hundreds and flee away as soon as his speech should be made.

It was far advanced in May, and poor Rachel was still very ill.

She was so ill that all hope had abandoned her either as to her profession or as to either of her lovers. But there was some spirit in her still, as when she would discuss with her father her future projects. "Let me go back," she said, "and sing little songs for children in that milder climate. The climate is mild down in the South, and there I may, perhaps, find some fragment of my voice."

But he who was becoming so despondent both for himself and for his country, still had hopes as to his daughter. Her engagement with Lord Castlewell was not even yet broken. Lord Castlewell had gone out of town at a most unusual period,--at a time when the theatres always knew him, and had been away on the exact day which had been fixed for their marriage. Rachel had done all that lay in herself to disturb the marriage, but Lord Castlewell had held to it, urged by feelings which he had found it difficult to a.n.a.lyse. Rachel had in her sickness determined to have done with him altogether, but latterly she had had no communication with him. She had spoken of him to her father as though he were a being simply to be forgotten. "He has gone away, and, as far as he is concerned, there is an end of me.

It could not have finished better." But her mind still referred to Frank Jones, and from him she had received hardly a word of love.

Further words of love she could not send him. During her illness many letters, or little notes rather, had been written to Castle Morony on her behalf by her father, and to these there had come replies. Frank was so anxious to hear of her well-doing. Frank had not cared so much for her voice as for her general health. Frank was so sorry to hear of her weakness. It had all been read to her, but as it had been read she had only shaken her head; and her father had not carried the dream on any further. To his thinking she was still engaged to the lord, and it would be better for her that she should marry the lord.

The lord no doubt was a fool, and filled the most foolish place in the world,--that of a silly faineant earl. But he would do no harm to his daughter, and the girl would learn to like the kind of life which would be hers. At present she was very, very ill, but still there was hope for recovery.

By the treasury of the theatre she had been treated munificently. Her engagement had been almost up to the day fixed for her marriage, and the money which would have become due to her under it had been paid in full. She had sent back the latter payments, but they had been returned to her with the affectionate respects of the managers. Since she had put her foot upon these boards she had found herself to be popular with all around her. That, she had told herself, had been due to the lord who was to become her husband. But Rachel had become, and was likely to become, the means of earning money for them, and they were grateful. To tell the truth, Lord Castlewell had had nothing to do with it.

But gradually there came upon them the conviction that her voice was gone, and then the payment of the money ceased. She, and the doctor, and her father, had discussed it together, and they had agreed to settle that it must be so.

"Yes," said the girl, smiling, "it is bitter. All my hopes! And such hopes! It is as though I were dead, and yet were left alive. If it had been small-pox, or anything in that way, I could have borne it.

But this thing, this terrible misfortune!"

Then she laughed, and then burst out sobbing with loud tears, and hid her face.

"You will be married, and still be happy," said the doctor.

"Married! Rubbish! So much you know about it. Am I ever to get strong in my limbs again, so as to be able to cross the water and go back to my own country?"

Here the doctor a.s.sured her that she would be able to go back to her own country, if it were needed.

"Father," she said, as soon as the doctor had left her, "let there be an end to all this about Lord Castlewell. I will not marry him."

"But, my dear!"

"I will not marry him. There are two reasons why I should not. I do not love him, and he does not love me. There are two other reasons. I do not want to marry him, and he does not want to marry me."

"But he says he does."

"That is his goodness. He is very good. I do not know why a man should be so good who has had so bad a bringing up. Think of me,--how good I ought to be, as compared with him. I haven't done anything naughty in all my life worse than tear my frock, or scold poor Frank; and yet I find it harder to give him up, merely because of the grandeur, than he does to marry me, the poor singing girl, who can never sing again. No! My good looks are gone, such as they were. I can feel it, even with my fingers. You had better take me back to the States at once."

"Good-bye, Rachel," said the lord, coming into her room the day but one after this. Her father was not with her, as she had elected to be alone when she would bid her adieu to her intended husband.

"This is very good of you to come to me."

"Of course I came."

"Because you were good. You need not have come unless you had wished it. I had so spoken to you as to justify you in staying away. My voice is gone, and I can only squeak at you in this broken treble."