The Sun.
London, England, 1847-12-15 00:00:00

S N 7 DECEMBER 15, 1847.

ON IRISH TENANT RIGHT

(From the Weekly Dispatch.)
Mr. Editor,—That strange political fungus, Irish
Patriotism, is developing itself just now to an extraor-
dinary degree. It is an unparalleled specimen of fell-
blown impudence. All its energies are concentrated on
getting money out of Great Britain for Ireland, with little
regard to the class from which the money is extorted, so
that it be English money; and about as little regard as to
where itgoes, provided that its destination be somewhere
or somebody in Ireland. Daniel O'Connell himself, " albeit
unused to the blushing mood," would have blushed for
the present condition of his tail and its preposterous ex
hibitions. Surely the sons of that extraordinary man,
who, whatever his failings or failures, achieved his
juvenile desire to inseribe his name on an important
page of his country's history," might cherish and
gratify a loftier ambition than that of being the
begging leaders of a beggar population, or the
bullying leaders of a turbulent population. Between
eight and nine millions sterling have been expended in
the mitigation of Irish calamity. The balance of ten
millions voted for relief remains to aid the working
of the Irish poor-law. And this is not a time, while
so many thousands of hands are unemployed
in the manufacturing districts, to call for further
taxation upon the overburdened industry of England.
Irish patriotism, if it deserves the name should feel
its present mission to be that of arousing the spirit and
energies of the country, and infusing into the people the
determination to do something for their own support.
It is sad to see a starving multitude, with untilled and
unsown fields at their back, and the broad sea before
them darkened by its shoals of fish, sitting supine, shiver-
ing in their rags and wretchedness, with open mouths
waiting for the insertion of Government rations. Some
wiser counsel might have been given at such a time,
than that suggested in the missive to " my dear Ray,"
for the " Catholic Lord Archbishops and Bishops of
Ireland," to come over bodily, and begirt the Imperial
throne " beseeching or besieging," with clamorous peti-
tions for further alms-giving; prepared, we supposed,
this august hierarchy, to expire begging on the steps of
the throne, while the lay :patriots verify their promise,
for Ireland's salvation, to " die on the floor of the House
of Commons."
Feargus O'Connor has taken possession of the place
formerly occupied by Sir R. Peel in the British House
of Commons, with the evident intention of installing
himself also in the throne formerly occupied by Daniel
O'Connell in Conciliation Hall. Hence the old regular
Irish Repealers are put upon their metal. There is com-
petition in the field. Feargus trumps the best cards in the
pack of Agitation. He outbids the grandest promises of
the out-and-outers. If John O'Connell will die for Ireland,
Feargus O'Connor will be d—d for Ireland. The effect
of this stimulus is evident in the pertinacious obstruc-
tion offered to the measure for a little mitigating assas-
sination in Tipperary. It is absurd to call this a Coer-
cion Bill. None of the characters of those unhappy mea-
sures are to be found in its proposed enactments. It is
a stringent Police Bill, for times and places (and such
only) where murders are abundant. That it should be ob-
structed in every stage, under the pretence of claiming
accompanying measures, of large immediate money
grants, and of remedial laws affecting the entire struc-
ture and relations of society, and of course requiring
time both for preparation and for operation, is simply
the demand for a longer license to crime and outrage.
There is only one measure which can, with any show
of reason, be claimed as an accompaniment; and that is,
the promised Tenant Right Bill. This might, very
wisely and usefully, have been introduced at the same
time; or, at any rate, have been clearly described as to
the extent which the Government is willing to go in
meeting the popular opinion upon this subject. Perhaps
Ministers themselves are in difficulty on this point.
Tenant right is a complicated theory, and a questionable
practice.
In England no doubt would exist. Here, tenant right
would mean the right of the tenant, dispossessed unex-
pectedly of his farm, to remuneration for outlays on its
improvement, which had not had time to repay them-
selves. In Ireland the phrase meanat kin—and it means
a great deal more besides ; and often something very
different. In crossing the Channel, words, like many
other things, seem to " suffer a sea change," though not
always " into something rich and strange." An out-
going occupier in Ireland claims a sum of money, as
tenant right, of his successor, though he had never ex-
pended a shilling on the improvement of the farm ;
though the cultivation may have been utterly and shame-
fully neglected, and though he may not have stopped
the weather holes in the thatch of his hovel, nor have
propped a fallen pig-stye. What is sold, under this de-
nomination of tenant right, more resembles the "good-
will "of a shop, than anything else in this country. It
is the goodwill of the neighbourhood; of the "farmers'
boys" who handle blunderbusses. 10/. per acre is not
unfrequently given. The amount occasionally reaches
to `.:51. As much as forty years' purchase of the rent
has been paid in some instances. In Ulster the land-
lords recognise this right. Elsewhere they connive at it.
They have an interest in doing so. All Irish tenants
are in arrear, and all Irish landlords want money. The
unpaid back rent is deducted from the tenant righ t money,
and handed over to the landlord. This is the landlord's
best chance for his arrears, and so he fingers the cash,
although the principle on which it is paid be in fact tanta-
mount to a claim of joint proprietorship in his estates.
Tenant right has been called a species of copyhold. his so
in Ulster, where it seems to have originated amongst the
Scotch settlers in the time of James I. A confiscated
estate having been given to some favourite, who had not
the least purpose of turning an English courtier into an
Irish farmer, he was expected to settle some industrious
yeomen under him—who, in their turns, conditioned for
not being turned out at pleasure. With their descend-
ants the system has worked well. But Tipperary is not
Ulster. The notion of such a right has become gene-
rally popular ; though the disposition to make a prudent
Else of it remains as peculiar as ever. All chance of im-
provement is often superseded, for the new tenant ex-
hausts his little capital its paying the tenant right, comes
moneyless into his occupation, meets his rent with diffi-
culty, irregularly, and soon not at all, toils and moils
under a growing burden, is unable to cope with his em-
barrassments, and at length takes his own tenant right
to market—gets his payment from some hungry compe-
titor, who, perhaps, borrows it for the purpose—finds
the whole of it swamped by the landlord and other cre-
ditors, and quits his abode and subsistence a beggar and
a desperado, like his predecessor, to be followed in due
time, along the same dreary path, by his successor.
Such is the history and mystery of Irish tenant right.
Whether good or evil, this is the law of the land to the
peasanty and small farmers. This is the agrarian code
enforced by the sanction of assassination. Landlords
and tenant alike, if they violate it, fall victims to their
temerity. The murderer is as impartial as the death he
deals. He is the executioner of an unwritten law. It is
quite a mistake to represent landlords as the exclusive
objects of outrage. The poorest peasant offender who
takes a potato patch without settling with the previous
occupant, is in peril quite as great as the largest " tyrant
of his fields." Distress is not the source of these out-
rages. They are least frequent in the most suffering
districts. "It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul."
Hence the sympathy of the population. There would
be no such toleration for murder committed in the pur-
suit of plunder. The " wild justice "is what the people
recognise. And not only so, but it is evidently recog-
nised also by the Catholic priesthood. The Ronaish
Church believes in tenant-right. Its clergy assert it on
the hustings to excited thousands. True, they de-
nounce the crimes ; what priesthood would not? Priest-
hoods always preach morality. When they persecute,
it is for the glory of God and the good of souls. They
imprison, hang, and burn, from the love of their neigh-
bour and for his salvation. We have been told so a thou-
sand times. But the Irish priesthood, in all that plenitude
of power which confession, penance, excommunication,
and absolution bestow, has not put down murder, or
rather it has not put down that species of murder which
is perpetrated for the enforcement of the tenant-right
law. There is no want of charity in the inference that
exhortations against crime, however fervent, are crip-
pled in their influence by adhesion to the moral autho
rity of the agrarian code. The Church does not strike
with its full force. The blow falls short. The mur-
derer remembers how good his cause is, and forgets
how bad his deed is in the estimation of the priest. His
conscience is not scared. Self-honour is not aroused.
Opinion keeps him in countenance. The secret tribunal
which he serves only (as he assumes) dooms the guilty;
courts of law inflict martyrdom.

Were the Government to announce some measure
tending to reconcile this unwritten with the written law,
they would give their " Crime and Outrage" Bill a
moral force of which it is at present destitute. It is
vain to try the old warfare of the physical against the
mental. The " Tipperary boys" have to be disarmed,
not only of their pistols but their prejudices. You
cannot bayonet an opinion, or knock down a notion with
a policeman's bludgeon. The Parliamentary law is
confronted by the local law. Until they be made as
nearly as possible to harmonise, there will be no per-
manent cessation of outrage. Disarming will not do.
Murder has many weapons beside the musket. Stones
will beat out the brains. Every hedge is an armoury,
and every ruined hovel. Popular sympathy cannot be
produced by Act of Parliament; nor put down by Act
of Parliament. To settle the country, the question
must be settled. Make ono rule of right for all classes,
concocted from what is just in the claims of all classes.
Let the moral blow and the physical blow fall at the
same time, and paralyze not only the murderer's arm
but his thought. Isolate crime from any semblance of
justice. Strip its excuses, till it stand in the naked de-
formity of guilt. Consecrate the right between land-
lord and tenant, or between tenant and tenant, by the
soundness of acknowledged law. Draw the lino with
the carefullest regard to fairness, and that will begin to
appear, even to the peasant mind, " a murder, which he
thought a sacrifice." This is the best chance for stop-
ping bloodeled; and even for gaining, for the law, the
alhigiance of Tipperary.
Difficulties will, no doubt, attend the adjustment of
such a question. Tho minimum of tenant right will
not be enough for one class, and it maximum will be too
much for another class. Could the existing tenants be
compensated by portions of their land in freehold, per-
haps the wisest course might be at once to pronounce
the recognition of its claim, and its abolition. Its ope-
ration is by no means favourable to agricultural im•
provement. Rarely can it be any real benefit to the
peasantry. Its affinities are more with a feudal state