The principles of the present Irish Land Code—which comprises a large number of statutes—are contained in the Acts of 1870 and 1881. The Act of 1870 recognised for the first time that the Irish tenant had a right of occupation and a property in his improvements. But the Act failed because it recognised these rights grudgingly, and left untouched the power of the landlord to fix what rent he pleased. The Land Act of 1881 for the first time safeguarded the property of the tenant, and reversed the policy of the Act of 1860 (Deasy’s Act) by removing the Irish Land system from the domain of contract, and, in a manner, bringing it back to tenure.
Differences between the English and the Irish Land Systems.
To understand the agrarian situation in Ireland it is necessary to keep in mind the fundamental difference between the English and the Irish systems, which was pointed out in the Report of the Devon Commission. In England, speaking generally, agricultural farms are let by the owners fully equipped with buildings, fences, farm roads, and other improvements necessary for the proper working of the holding. The tenant contracts to pay a rent for the farm so equipped, and, if he finds that the particular holding does not suit him, he gives it up at the end of his contract term, and goes elsewhere. Under this system, what Adam Smith termed “the higgling of the market!” is the easiest test of land value, as it is of all other commodities with regard to which competition is free. In Ireland, on the other hand, the landlord, speaking generally, owns only the soil. The equipment of each farm is the property of or has been effected by the tenant, who is practically a hereditary occupier. The houses, fences, drainage, reclamation, farm roads, and other such necessary improvements have been made by the tenant or his predecessors in title. The landlord owns the soil, and the tenant the necessary agricultural equipment. Consequently, the tenant is not free. He cannot walk out at the end of his term and leave behind him his houses, roads, fences, and drains. Besides, if he goes out, he has nowhere else to settle.
The pressure of competition is so great—as is natural in a country in the greater part of which there is no other employment or industry than that of agriculture—that, very large sums, often far in excess of the value of the land, measured by any standard of productive capacity are paid for the mere right to occupy. Again, the nature of the land, in large parts of Ireland, is such as to prevent owners from working it on the English system of equipped farms. In the poorer parts of the country the land can only be made to yield a profit to the owner by being worked by small occupying tenants, who, without any economic return, are willing to expend their labour and that of their families. Were such land to be handed back to the owners to be worked by them without the intervention of tenants no profit could be obtained, and the land would go out of cultivation, being below the margin of economic profit.