Would they like to return to the old customs? Evidently not. They wish that to be an impossibility. Then, if landlords and tenants no longer have, and never can have again, in strict law, any connection between them except that which, in all business, links the buyer and seller, what do these recriminations against the landlords, that now form the foundation of Irish literature, mean? The sole duty of a buyer is to be honest about the quality of the merchandise he offers for sale. Can a Kerry farmer pretend that where he leases seventy-five acres of peaty meadow, he expects to reap a harvest of pineapples? The truth is, that he knows the land quite as well as the landlord, perhaps even better. If he pays too much for it he can only blame himself and the competition of the other farmers. But it is absurd to reproach the landlord because prices are exaggerated.
If one considers the question from a strictly legal point of view, one cannot then even discuss the Irish tenants’ complaints, for they have no foundation.
But the relations of men with each other cannot be only based upon strictly legal rights. There is a sentiment of a higher order, which some call charity and others humanity, and which must also be taken into account. Therefore, a really honourable man would never take advantage of the circumstances that had placed another at his mercy in order to force him to accept a ruinous bargain. Have the majority of Irish landlords profited by the competition to raise their rents unreasonably, as they are so often reproached with doing?
It is naturally impossible to answer this question in a general way. When we reflect on the enormous and regular increase in the price of meat which has characterised the last fifteen or twenty years, and which, until a quite recent date, was apparently unlimited, we must maintain, like the Irish landlords still do, that the rents have not been excessively high. It must be remembered that Irish leases are much longer than our own. They usually include three lives; that is to say, that the landlord renounces the right to raise the rent until the death of the would-be tenant’s grandson. It was therefore quite natural that, remembering the rise in prices, by which he had not profited, the landlord should exact a rent which might in some cases be exaggerated, in consideration of current prices, but which would have seemed reasonable had the rise continued. The misfortune is that prices have fallen, and therefore a reduction of rent is absolutely necessary.