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APPENDIX C

FOUNDATION OF THE UNITED IRISH LEAGUE, 1898

THE United Irish League was founded by William O'Brien in 1898, the first branch being established at Westport on February 6, and it was generally acknowledged as the lineal descendant of the old Land and National Leagues, which after a stormy period of activity had been successfully repressed. It perfected the system of the boycott, and John Redmond, its official head, said at a meeting in 1901: "If all over Ireland to-day we had as vigorousand I won't mince words-as dangerous a movement as exists in Connaught at this moment—we would make short work of the land question, and short work, as I believe, of the English government of our country." In 1902 there were more than 1,200 branches of the League in Ireland, and seventy-one "derelict" farms in Sligo, Leitrim, and Roscommon, that is to say, farms which terror of the League had prevented prospective tenants from renting and thus left idle on the hands of landlords. Moreover, in the same three counties there were thirty-two persons under constant or partial police protection, whilst the number of derelict farms in Galway in the early part of 1902 was 120, and protected farms eighty-four. The immediate aim of the League was the division of all grass-farms held by "graziers" among the peasant proprietors of small agricultural holdings, and consequently every large grazier was its natural foe. The term "grabber" had formerly signified any man who rented a farm from which another had been evicted in default of rent, but it now denoted any person who held a piece of land which some Ahab of the League coveted for his own use, and in many cases even a man whose creditor was unwilling to pay. The League supported its authority by two means the method of the boycott and illegal intimidation, and secondly the large powers given to it by the Local Government Act of 1898. This measure placed in the hands of the League all offices of emolument and authority in the county, urban, and rural district councils of the west of Ireland. Throughout the whole of Connaught and in many other parts of the country no one could become a member of these councils unless he were a certified member of the League, and the election of councillors and the appointment of officials used even to be arranged at meetings of the local branches of the League and forwarded to the Council for formal ratification. Moreover, under the Local Government Act of 1898 the League was able through the medium of the councils to plant labourers' cottages upon the lands of unpopular persons; and cases occurred in which evicted tenants were actually thrust back upon their former landlords under the cloak of these cottages. But with all this legal facility, boycotting was still the most effective instrument of unscrupulous coercion. Were a farmer the victim, tradesmen were forbidden to supply him with food or measure him for clothes; his domestic and farm servants were ordered to leave him, and blacksmiths could not shoe his horses, nor carters carry his farm produce. One carter of the name of M'Niffe, who ventured to draw sand to the police hut at Chaffpool, was subjected to such severe punishment by the League, that after a short while he submitted, writing a servile apology to his tormentors, which was promptly and publicly posted up on the walls of all the neighbouring villages. The methods employed by the League to enforce its decrees were various and always cleverly adapted to the circumstances of the victim. Among those most generally made use of were the total isolation of boycotted persons from the rest of their kind, the publication in certain newspapers of the names of offenders or non-subscribers to the League, the surreptitious delivery to shopkeepers of letters warning them not to supply

boycotted persons, and the interference with the sale at fairs and markets of the cattle and produce of offenders. The arm of the League reached even to the grave and disturbed the rites of the dead. In 1902 at Drom, in the Templemore district, a poor woman had incurred its displeasure by letting her house as barrack accommodation for the additional police that it had been found necessary to send there, and was in consequence rigidly boycotted and shunned like a pestilence by nearly every one. After a while she died, and the League authorities issued an order that no one was to follow her remains to their final resting-place, and before her own son dared to perform this last holy and terrible service he was obliged to obtain the special permission of these implacable foes. High mass was celebrated in the chapel by five priests in the presence of a congregation which consisted of the son of the deceased, and the police and the Royal Irish Constabulary had actually to dig the grave, lower the body, and cover it in, in the enforced absence of the proper functionaries.

On February 7, 1900, the work of what was supposed to be the complete reunion of the Nationalist party, which had been split into two sections by the Parnell divorce scandal, was completed. The foundations for the reunion were laid first of all at a conference of fifty Nationalist members of Parliament, at which various proposals, framed by Edward Blake, were discussed, and then at a meeting of seven members of the National party in the Mansion House, Dublin, on January 18, 1900, presided over by Mr. Harrington, where it was decided to accept the proposals agreed to by the majority. John Redmond was chosen sessional chairman of the reunited party. The same year the National Federation, which had been the organization of the majority of the Nationalists for the last nine years, was merged in the United Irish League.

APPENDIX CI

THE AGRICULTURE AND

TECHNICAL INSTRUCTION

ACT, 1899

IN 1899 the Agriculture and Technical Instruction Act was passed for Ireland. The Recess Committee of 1895 had instituted an inquiry into the means by which the Government could best promote the development of agricultural and industrial resources. Commissioners were despatched to various European countries to push their researches, Michael Mulhall, the statistician, being the chief labourer in this field; but the state of the Committee's funds did not permit of an inquiry in the United States or Canada, which would have added considerably to the value of their investigations. Their report recommended the creation of a Department of Government with a Minister at its head directly responsible to the Government of the day. The central body was to be assisted by a Consultative Council representative of the interests concerned, and the Department was to be endowed out of the Imperial Treasury, and to administer State aid to agriculture and other industries in Ireland upon certain settled principles. The proposal to amalgamate agriculture and industries under one department was adopted on account of the opinion held by M. Tisserand, the Director-General of Agriculture in France. Public opinion grew rapidly in favour of the idea. Before the end of 1896, a deputation representing all the leading agricultural and industrial interests in Ireland waited on the Imperial Government in order to press the proposals upon them, and backed up by this expression of national good-will a Bill for the creation of the 1 See Horace Plunket's Ireland in the New Century, from which the information in the text is obtained.

Department was introduced by Gerald Balfour in 1897. But it had to be withdrawn on account of the pressure of the Local Government Bill of 1898, and it was not until 1899 that another Bill was introduced and carried.

The Department which was created, and which, thanks to the zeal of Horace Plunket, furnished scope for much wasted energy in Ireland, was known as the "Department of Agriculture and other Industries and Technical Instruction in Ireland and for other purposes connected therewith." It comprised various separate Departments which had existed before, namely, the Veterinary Department of the Privy Council, the office of Inspectors of Irish Fisheries, the administration of Science and Arts grants from South Kensington, the grant in aid of Technical Instruction, the Royal College of Science, the Metropolitan School of Art, the Albert Institute at Glasnevin, and the Munster Institute in Cork, the two latter being for the purpose of teaching practical agriculture. The new Department consisted of a President, a Vice-President, who was the direct ministerial head, a Secretary, and two Assistant-Secretaries. It was advised and assisted in its work by (1) A Council of Agriculture, consisting of two members appointed by each County Council (Cork being regarded as two counties), that is to say, sixtyeight members, and thirty-four members appointed by the Department, the same provincial proportions being observed, including the President and Vice-President, who were ex officio members, making a total of one hundred and four persons. The Council was appointed for three years dating from April 1, 1900, and was to be convened by the Department at least once a year. At the first triennial meeting it divided itself into four Provincial Committees, each of which elected two members to represent its province on the Agricultural Board and one member to represent it on the Board of Technical Instruction. (2) Two Boards-(a) The first concerned with Agriculture, Rural Industries, and Inland Fisheries, etc., to consist of twelve members, eight of whom were to be elected by the four provincial committees, and four by the Department. (b) The second, a Board of Technical Instruction consisting of twenty-one members and a President and Vice-President; four being elected by the Council of Agriculture, and four by the Department. Each of the County Boroughs of Dublin was to appoint three, the remaining four County Boroughs one each, the Joint Committee of Councils of large urban districts round Dublin one, the Commissioners of National Education one, and the Intermediate Board of Education one. To these Boards was to be submitted for their concurrence the expenditure of all moneys out of the Endowment Funds, which gave them considerable power. (3) A Consultative Committee, to advise on Educational questions, was to be composed of the Vice-President of the Department, one member appointed by the Commissioners of National Education, one by the Intermediate Education Board, one by the Agricultural Board, and one by the Board of Technical Instruction.

The powers of the new Department included the aiding, improving and developing of agriculture in all its branches, horticulture, forestry, home and cottage industries, sea and inland fisheries, the facilitating of the transit of produce, and the organization of a system of education in science and art, and in technology as applied to these various subjects. The provision of technical instruction suitable to the needs of the few manufacturing centres was also included. The Act empowered the Council of any county or of any urban district, or any two or more public bodies jointly, to appoint committees composed partly of members of the local bodies, and partly of coopted persons, for the purpose of carrying out such of the Department's schemes as were of local and not general importance. The Department was not to apply or approve of the application of money to schemes in respect of which aid was not given out of money provided by local authorities or from other local sources, except under special circumstances. To meet this

requirement the local authorities were given the power of raising a limited rate for the purposes of the Act.

Agricultural Banks or Credit Associations were also developed about this time. They were organized upon the Raffeisen system with the object of creating credit as a means of introducing capital into the Agricultural Industry. At the commencement of 1905 there were about one hundred of them. They had no subscribed capital, but every member was liable for the entire debts of the Association, so that men only of approved character and capacity were admitted. Each Association started on its way by borrowing a sum of money on the joint and several security of its members. A member desiring to borrow from the Association was not required to give tangible security, but had to bring two sureties. He filled up an application form which stated, among other things, what he wanted the money for. The rules provided-and this was the salient feature of the system that a loan should be made for a productive purpose only, the borrower being enabled to repay the loan out of the results of the use made of the money lent. A member, who did not apply the money to the agreed productive purpose, might be expelled from the Association. Up to 1905 this rule, however, had never to be put in force, although the Banks were invariably situated in very poor districts. The term for which the money was advanced was matter of agreement between borrower and bank, a convenient system, when a man borrowed to sow a crop, and had not to repay the loan until after the harvest. The Society borrowed at 4 per cent. or 5 per cent. and lent at 5 per cent. or 6 per cent. In some cases the Congested Districts Board or the Department of Agriculture made loans to these banks at 3 per cent., which enabled them to lend at one penny for the use of a pound for a month. The borrower generally made large profits, so that the loans became known as "the lucky money," and he was always punctual in his repayments to the Association.

APPENDIX CII

LAND ACT, 1903

IN 1894 a Tenant Bill was introduced by Lord Rosebery's Government for the purpose of reinstating those tenants who, in spite of all the recent Land legislation with its reduced rents and fixity of tenure, had been unable or unwilling to pay their rents and been consequently evicted. To provide for this scheme a quarter of a million was to be appropriated from the funds of the Irish Church, and three men were to be nominated by the Government, who, unfettered by any right of appeal, were to have the power of reinstating in his holding any Irish tenant or his representative who might have been evicted since the year 1879. The only restriction placed upon the will of this triumvirate was, that before reinstatement, the consent of the tenant in actual occupation had to be obtained, but this provision was nugatory, as in

1 In 1894 the Morley Committee (a Select Committee of the House of Commons) had reported

"Your Committee can come to no other conclusion than that the general practice of the sub-commission courts has been, and is, to deny to the tenant that share in the value of his improvements to which the Court of Appeal declared him to be entitled, and to leave out of account that interest of the tenant to which the statute expressly directed the Courts to have regard."

many parts of Ireland no man's life would be worth a cent who ventured to refuse it. The Bill was eventually defeated in the House of Lords.

In 1896 a Land Act was introduced by Gerald Balfour and passed by the Salisbury Government. The two sections of Parnell's old party, which had split asunder after the disappearance of its leader, had fought over his body at the polls and thus destroyed concerted action: whilst the Roman Catholic Clergy, in continuance of their former policy, had thrown their whole strength into the scale of the faction that rejected the Parnellite tradition, and thus secured the return of seventy Irish members of the National Federation to St. Stephen's, as against a dozen who remained true to their old chief's memory. By the Act of 1896, which was framed chiefly in the interest of the Presbyterian farmers of Ulster, the procedure for fixing "fair" rents was improved, and those leases were protected which created "fixity" under the new tenure and might possibly have been annulled. In pursuance of the doctrine that old arrears of rent should no longer be permitted to hang over the heads of tenants, rent was made irrecoverable on eviction, if due for upwards of two years. Lands hitherto excluded under the Acts of 1881 and 1887 from the benefits of the "Three F's," namely, demesnes, town parks, and residential and pastoral holdings, were now made subject to "fair" rents and all the consequences of that system. There were also various provisions in regard to tenants' improvements, which had been exempted from rent under the Act of 1881. For the purpose of securing such exemption to tenants, their definition underwent a complete alteration. The land commission was to estimate the fair rent on the assumption that all the improvements on the holding were the landlord's property, and then to calculate the value of the improvements belonging to the tenant and to deduct the letting value due to the latter from the fair rent of the holding as it stood. The restrictions on the period within which claims for improvements might be made were to a great extent removed, and the power of "contracting out" of such claims was still further abridged. In fact, the entire law as to the "exemption of tenants" improvements from rent was placed on an altogether fresh foundation, nugatory for the purpose of allaying agrarian discontent and entailing the ultimate aggravation of the whole disorder.

The same Act contained another principle never applied before and erroneously called "Land Purchase." This was by far the most important feature of the Bill, as it asserted a radically new doctrine in regard to land tenure. The clause in question enabled the landlord's guarantee to be dispensed with, and provided that the tenants should virtually have a right of pre-emption in the case of estates of irremediably embarrassed landlords being offered for sale in the Courts. The principle of "Compulsory Purchase" was thus in reality introduced, and under the euphemistic name of "Land Purchase" recognized by the law. A system of decadal reductions in the repayment of loans advanced by the State for the purchase of land was also provided for, the time of repayment being extended from forty-nine

1 Lecky, in his Democracy and Liberty, says of this Bill

"The tenant might have been evicted for dishonesty, for violence, for criminal conspiracy, for hopeless and long-continued bankruptcy. He might be living in America. The owner of the soil might delay the eviction for years after the law had empowered him to carry it out, and he might have at last taken the land into his own possession, and have been, during many years, farming it himself. He had no right of refusing his consent, and his only alternative was to take back the former tenant or to sell to him the farm at whatever price a revolutionary and despotic tribunal might determine.

"The explanation of the measure was very plain. It was specially intended for the benefit of the Plan of campaign' tenants, who had placed money which was actually in their possession, and which was due to their landlords for benefits already received, in the hands of 'trustees,' for the express purpose of defrauding their creditors."

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