Page. O'Sullivan Beare's Farewell. By Rev. P. DINNEEN, S.J. Our Primary Schools and their Inspectors. By A. 310 236 Religious Songs of Connacht. By D. HYDE, LL.D. 59 and 119 200 215 The Basis for Old Age Pensions in Ireland. By W. R. MACDERMOTT, M.B. 371 The Birthplace of Oliver Goldsmith. By R. J. KELLY 24 333 By Mrs. BARTLE TEELING The Fallow Deer of the Phoenix Park. By W. V. HARRELL The Future of the Irish Nation. By D. P. MORAN 285 73 345 That Financial Grievance. By JOHN SWEETMAN 81 ... Tragic Tale of Stamer O'Grady and Captain Smith at Ballinatrae. By GEORGE NEWCOMEN 30 West of Ireland Distress Fund, 1898. By CHAS. STEPHENSON 193 AVING spent a considerable time in Ireland studying the agricultural HAV question, as it presents itself in that country, I have been asked to lay before the readers of the NEW IRELAND REVIEW the results of my inquiries; and I have been further requested to compare the agricultural situation of Ireland with that of Belgium, and in this way to contribute, if possible, to the solution of those questions which so many earnest men in Ireland are now endeavouring to solve. There are many features of the economic condition of Ireland which are novel, as well as instructive, to a student of economics from another country. What, perhaps, strikes him most forcibly is the almost complete absence of manufacturing industry. In almost every other country of Europe the tendency is towards a larger and larger development of manufacture. Economic writers and thinkers are constantly urging their countrymen in this direction. In Ireland agriculture seems to form almost the only resource of the people-the only means on which they rely for subsistence. In every European nation complaint is made-and made justly-of the difficulties with which agriculture has to contend at the present time; all feel acutely what is called the "Agricultural Crisis." At such a time the condition of things in a purely agricultural country like Ireland is specially trying. The economic evils of the moment must affect such a country more keenly and more painfully than they affect other nations, and the interest of students of agricultural economics will naturally be strongly drawn to its condition. Most of those who have been led to study the Irish economic question, from a distance or on the spot, have felt impelled to play the part of friendly advisers to VOL. X.-No. I Ireland, and to prescribe what they regard as the true remedy for her hardships. I feel a certain diffidence in following their example. But I have come to take a more than scientific interest in the subject, and this circumstance will, I trust, be my excuse, if excuse is needed. Ireland is, generally speaking, a country of large properties and small agricultural holdings. This description does not apply with absolute accuracy to every county. In Belgium the idea is general that very small holdings are the rule all over Ireland. This I have found to be true of certain districts which I visited; but in many others I found the average Irish farm much larger in extent than our Belgian farms. It is not necessary to insist upon the fact that land ownership in Ireland presents features which the visitor from another country must regard as wholly abnormal. A comparatively small number of owners of great estates, separated, in most cases, from the cultivators by race and religion, and spending the income derived from the land in another country, is a state of things with which, on the Continent, we are, happily, not familiar. Recent land legislation has done something, and will do more, to modify the evils of such a situation. The tribunal appointed by the State to determine a fair rent is, again, an institution wholly foreign to Belgian notions, and, I believe, to those of most Continental countries. In Belgium, rents are determined strictly by the conditions of the land market. A great deal of our people find it hard to conceive how a State tribunal could fairly and satisfactorily take the place of the open competition of the market in determining the letting value of a farm. I was a little surprised to find that the process of fixing rents, as carried out by the Land Commission, or rather by its Sub-Commissioners, does not give general satisfaction to the parties interested. The landowners complain that they are deprived of the benefits which competition in the open market secures for everyone who has anything to dispose of; the farmers, on the other hand, are not satisfied that the Sub-Commissioners are not free from landlord sympathies; and neither party quite understands on what definite fixed principles the productive capacity of the land is tested, and its rent capacity valued. These complaints are perfectly intelligible. They are directed, not against the land legislation, but against the manner in which it is applied in practice. I do not know whether we shall ever have in Belgium a State institution for fixing fair rents. If we have, we shall, I feel confident, organise it better than has been done in Ireland. We should probably appoint a Land Commission for each canton or district, and the Commission would probably be composed of the local Petty Sessions magistrate (juge de paix) as president, two elected representatives of the landlords, and two elected representatives of the farmers. The testing of the quality of the land would be carried out by two Commissioners, one appointed on behalf of the farmers, the other on behalf of the landlords; and each party would have the further right to carry out valuation tests for themselves. This arrangement would secure a valuation by practical men intimately acquainted with the locality and its resources, and would, I am persuaded, be accepted as equitable by both landlord and tenant. All this does not mean that I advocate the introduction of the Irish system into Belgium. At present we have a certain number of reformers in Belgium who are calling for the fixing of fair rents "as it is done in Ireland." Unfortunately, those who make this demand have, as a rule, but a limited acquaintance with the state of things in Ireland, and are unable to realise how widely the Irish economic situation differs from ours in Belgium. We need not, however, discuss the question further here. These speculations can have little interest for Irish farmers. It will, perhaps, be more interesting to them to learn the fact that the great majority of our Belgian farmers are mere tenant occupiers, and that leases for a longer period than three, six, or nine years are almost unknown amongst I found the notion generally prevailing in Ireland that, if the cultivation of the land is carried out in Belgium with the utmost care, and if it is difficult to find on a Belgian farm a square foot of soil which is not productive to its highest capacity, this is due chiefly to the fact that our farmers are owners of the soil they till. The notion is wholly at variance with the reality. Most of our farmers, especially in the richer and more prosperous parts of Belgium, are, as I have said, mere tenant occupiers, with leases of only a few years. Their rents are determined strictly by the state of the land market; the State authority meddles in no way with the bargain between landlord and tenant. According to the returns of 1880, we had in Belgium 293,525 peasant proprietors, and 616,872 tenant occupiers. In the richer districts of Belgium, 70, 80, and as many as 90 per cent. of the cultivators of the soil are tenant occupiers. Let me add that, in general, rents in Belgium are very much higher than rents in Ireland. I am The legislation which has, so far, been framed to give effect to the programme of the three F's can hardly be regarded as making effectively for a solution of the Irish Land Question. The case stands differently with the measures which provide for the advance of money to the tenants who wish to purchase their holdings. Peasant proprietary is the ideal of most of the thinking economists whom I met in Ireland. inclined to share their view. I must acknowledge that in Ireland the greater number of large landowners take little interest in the farms which are let to their tenants, beyond what is necessary to secure the rent. In this respect the tenant would lose very little by becoming his own master, and being left to manage wholly for himself. Furthermore, the freedom of bequest which is enjoyed in Ireland would hinder the piling up of indebtedness which is a usual consequence of peasant ownership in countries where the law provides for the equal division of a father's property among his children, and where, if one son wishes to retain the farm, he has either to give his brothers and sisters charges on it, or buy them out with money raised on mortgage. I am, of course, speaking of countries where the law of equal division has not resulted, as in France, in the deplorable practice of limiting to one or two the children of a family. Ownership of the land by those who cultivate it—that is the object for which so many reformers are striving in Ireland. But will this, if attained, solve of itself the agricultural difficulty, and relieve Ireland from the effects of the crisis through which Agriculture is passing? I cannot see any grounds for holding such a view. Let us suppose this point gained, it will still be necessary for the Irish farmer, if he wishes to make his industry pay, to cultivate his land and carry on his farm industries by the better methods which his competitors are employing. He must adopt all the improvements which science has made in agriculture; he must avail himself of the benefits which combination and co-operation can confer, and, lastly, he must receive from Government the aids to his industry, which it is the recognised duty of Government to bestow. It has been contended that the Irish are not really good agriculturists, that they permit themselves to be outdistanced by their English and Scotch neighbours. There is no doubt much exaggeration in the reproach when made thus. But admitting whatever truth it may contain, we can assign many causes for the backwardness of the Irish farmer, and his falling behind other nations in the path of agricultural progress. Before the Land Act of 1870 he had no guarantee that the increased value which his labour conferred upon the soil would belong to himself; in fact he sometimes found his labour and his zeal for improvement rewarded by an increase of rent. Now that the law has changed this state of things and that a large number of tenants have also become owners of their holdings, we may hope that a general improvement will take place in the methods of cultivation. To secure this result, the most assured-perhaps, as things stand now in the agricultural world, the indispensable-means is co-operation among agriculturists supplemented by a well considered system of State aid. Let me cite the case of Belgium as proof of the efficacy of the means here suggested. Seven years ago co-operation was hardly known amongst us in Belgium. At the present moment it is, so to speak, an established institution, and the benefits it confers are no longer called in question by any one. We have in Belgium many federations of agricultural societies, but the most important of these is The Belgian Farmers' League. In reference to this organisation a few details will not be without interest to Irish readers : |