The Reasons Given In One Case
Were, A Ground-Rent, A Heavy Mortgage, An Annuity, And Legacies.
The
question whether one set of tenants was able to meet all these burdens,
not laid on by themselves mind, and live, never was taken into
consideration for a moment.
When I arrived in Ireland, I met with an English gentleman who took a
lively interest in the purpose for which I crossed the sea, namely, to
see what I could see for myself and to hear what I could hear for myself
on the Land Question. He volunteered a piece of advice. "There are two
different parties connected with the Land Question, the landlords and
the tenants. They are widely separated, you cannot pass from one to the
other and receive confidence from both. If you wait upon the landlords
you will get their side of the story; but, then, the tenants will
distrust you and shut their thoughts up from you. If you go among the
tenants you will not find much favor with the landlords. You must choose
which side you will investigate."
Considering this advice good, I determined to go among the people and
from that standpoint to write my opinions of what I saw and heard. I
made up my mind to tell all I could gather of the opinions and
grievances of the poor, knowing that the great are able to defend
themselves if wrongfully accused, and can lay the land question, as they
see it, before the world's readers.
I hear many take the part of the landlords in this manner: "You are
sorry for the tenants, who certainly have some cause of complaint; can
you not spare some sympathy for the landlords who bought these lands at
a high figure, often borrowing the money to buy them and are getting no
return for the money invested?"
Land hunger is a disease that does not attack the tenants alone. The
poor man hungers for land to have the means of living; the rich man
hungers for land because it confers rank, power and position. As soon as
men have realized fortunes in trade they hasten to invest in land. That
is the door by which they hope to enter into the privileged classes. Men
accustomed to "cut things fine," in a mercantile way, are not likely to
except a land purchase from the list of things which are to pay cent.
per cent. The tenant has created a certain amount of prosperity, the new
landlord looks at the present letting value of the land and raises the
rent. This proceeding extinguishes or rather appropriates the Tenant
Right. The landlord thinks he is doing no wrong, for, is he not actually
charging less than Lord So-and-so, or Sir Somebody or other? which is
perhaps very true. All this time the tenant knows he has been robbed of
the result of years, perhaps of generations of hard and continuous
labor. It is impossible to make such a landlord and such a tenant see
eye to eye.
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