The Land-War In Ireland (1870) | Page 6

the demand that something must be done, but

so managed that nothing should be done to weaken the power of the
eight thousand proprietors over the mass of the nation dependent on the
land for their existence. Hence has arisen a great amount of jealousy,
distrust, and irritability in the landlord class towards the tenantry and
their advocates.
The Irish race, to adopt Thierry's language, are full of 'malignant envy'
towards the lords of the soil; not because they are rich, but because they
have the people so completely in their power, so entirely at their mercy
for all that man holds most dear. The tenants feel bitterly when they
think that they have no legal right to live on their native land. They
have read the history of our dreadful civil wars, famines, and
confiscations. They know that by the old law of Ireland, and by custom
from times far beyond the reach of authentic history, the clans and
tribes of the Celtic people occupied certain districts with which their
names are still associated, and that the land was inalienably theirs. Rent
or tribute they paid, indeed, to their princes, and if they failed the chiefs
came with armed followers and helped themselves, driving away cows,
sheep, and horses sufficient to meet their demand, or more if they were
unscrupulous, which was 'distress' with a vengeance. But the eviction
of the people even for non-payment of rent, and putting other people in
their place, were things never heard of among the Irish under their own
rulers. The chief had his own mensal lands, as well as his tribute, and
these he might forfeit. But as the clansmen could not control his acts,
they could never see the justice of being punished for his misdeeds by
the confiscation of their lands, and driven from the homes of their
ancestors often made doubly sacred by religious associations.
History, moreover, teaches them that, as a matter of fact, the
government in the reign of James I.--and James himself in repeated
proclamations--assured the people who occupied the lands of O'Neill
and O'Donnell at the time of their flight that they would be protected in
all their rights if they remained quiet and loyal, which they did. Yet
they were nearly all removed to make way for the English and Scotch
settlers.
Thus, historical investigators have been digging around the foundations

of Irish landlordism. They declare that those foundations were
cemented with blood, and they point to the many wounds still open
from which that blood issued so profusely. The facts of the conquest
and confiscation were hinted at by the Devon Commissioners as
accounting for the peculiar difficulties of the Irish land question, and
writers on it timidly allude to 'the historic past' as originating influences
still powerful in alienating landlords and tenants, and fostering mutual
distrust between them. But the time for evasion and timidity has passed.
We must now honestly and courageously face the stern realities of this
case. Among these realities is a firm conviction in the minds of many
landlords that they are in no sense trustees for the community, but that
they have an absolute power over their estates--that they can, if they
like, strip the land clean of its human clothing, and clothe it with sheep
or cattle instead, or lay it bare and desolate, let it lapse into a wilderness,
or sow it with salt. That is in reality the terrific power secured to them
by the present land code, to be executed through the Queen's writ and
by the Queen's troops--a power which could not stand a day if England
did not sustain it by overwhelming military force.
Another of the realities of the question is the no less inveterate
conviction in the tenants' mind that the absolute power of the landlord
was originally a usurpation effected by the sword. Right or wrong, they
believe that the confiscations were the palpable violation of the natural
rights of the people whom Providence placed in this country. With
bitter emphasis they assert that no set of men has any divine right to
root a nation out of its own land. Painful as this state of feeling is, there
is no use in denying that it exists. Here, then, is the deep radical
difference that is to be removed. Here are the two conflicting forces
which are to be reconciled. This is the real Irish land question. All other
points are minor and of easy adjustment. The people say, and, I believe,
sincerely, that they are willing to pay a fair rent, according to a public
valuation--not a rent imposed arbitrarily by one of the interested parties,
which might be raised so as to ruin the occupier. The feelings of these
two parties often clash so violently, there is such