The Irish Land Acts/Economic Ireland before the Land Acts

by William Frederick Bailey

SECTION II.

Economic Ireland before the Land Acts.

We can best understand Ireland of to-day by comparing it with Ireland of yesterday; by measuring the present by the past. We can thus judge of the social and economic problems that had to be faced and the difficulties that had to be overcome. No more suitable date for purposes of comparison can be taken than the Famine in the middle of the last century. That was the turning point in Irish economic history.

The Ireland of 1850—and I take that date as representing the state of the country at the close of the Famine period—was very different from the Ireland of to-day. In 1845 the population was nearly double what it is now. Local or county government was in the hands of a few of the better-off inhabitants, who were selected by arbitrary, as opposed to representative, methods. The Land Laws recognised no rights of ownership in the occupier beyond what his agreement with the landlord gave to him, and the economic state of the country was wretched in the extreme.^[1]

The old order of things then gave way before the combined influence of the potato failure and the introduction of Free Trade in England. The effect of these forces was immediate. An enormous emigration commenced, and pasture took the place of agriculture over a great part of the country. New conditions were thus created, and new problems had to be faced. One result of this changed order of things was that people were set thinking. The miseries and misfortunes of the country that

Former Dwelling of a Migrant at Slievemurray, on the Bagot Estate County Galway.

House erected by the Estates Commissioners on new holdings created by them
in untenanted acquired on the Pollock Estate, Glinsk, County Galway.

had been evident for generations, we may say centuries, now attracted the attention of social and economic as well as of political reformers. Men's minds were ever turned to the examination of economic and social questions. All manner of theories were preached, and doctrines propounded for the amelioration of the condition of the people. It was universally recognised that the country was not prosperous, that the economic condition of the people was miserable. Some ascribed this state of things to the inertia and ignorance of the inhabitants. Others, including the writer of Lord Devon's Digest, to the use of the potato. A third opinion rested it on the perverse character of the people; in this following Bishop Berkeley, who attributed this disposition to the Tartars and Spaniards, from whom he believed Irishmen were descended; while others again thought that the condition of the people was due to the character of the laws.

During the first half of the 19th century, however, with the exception of some sub-letting Acts, there was little legislation of any importance dealing with Irish land. Perhaps, the first really important social measure that was passed after the union between the Parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland was the Poor Law Act of 1837, which established and created the Poor Law Union System that has been so large a factor in Irish life. About the same time the Grand Jury Act of 1837 became law, which regulated the government of the Irish counties, and a few years later, the Municipal Corporations Act of 1840, which provided for the Local Government of the larger cities—the Towns Improvement Act of 1854 doing the same for the smaller towns.

But the half century between the Famine and the present day was not barren in legal enactments. It soon became evident that the policy of "let alone" could not be maintained, and after a long period of controversy, strife and agitation, several Acts were put on the statute book that well-nigh revolutionised the conditions of the people.

1. Sir Robert Kane, in his "Industrial Resources of Ireland," published in 1844, dealing with charges made against the character of the people by some superior critics, wrote:-"We were reckless, ignorant, improvident, drunken, and idle. We were idle, for we had nothing to do; we were reckless, for we had no hope; we were ignorant, for learning was denied us; we were improvident, for we had no future; we were drunken, for we sought to forget our misery.