22 Jan. 1848 Eviction of Tenantry a Chief Cause of Social Evil
Some of the Ulster landlords seemed resolved to test the truth of the prophecy contained in the report of Lord Devon's commission, that should they imitate their brethren elsewhere in their mode of dealing with their tenantry, "they will soon", in the North, have another Tipperary." On all hands it has been confessed that the northern have, hitherto, differed from the southern counties mainly in two things; there were comparatively few evictions and there were still fewer praedial crimes - The ill-disposed had more rarely pretexts for violence, and the well-disposed had more seldom any silent misgivings as to the intentions of the lords of the soil. The hard toiling man lay down and slept in peace, for his farm was cropped and its lease was safe and he felt as secure of a renewal when it expired, or compensation for "going out", as he did of reaping the corn he had sown, or pulling the flax he had planted. And if an idler were out o'nights and found companions like himself, more bent on adventurous mischief than persevering industry, their furtive step was generally directed, as that of thieves is wont to be, to the solitary house, or the unguarded “ byre,” for the sake of pelf and plunder. Even of such offences there were not a greater number than might found in thickly peopled English counties; and of sympathy with the authors of them, there was naturally none. Above all, the taking of human life for any cause was comparatively rare. The deadly hate, the ferocious threat, the noon-day assault, the neutral or favouring presence of others, and the ill-suppressed sympathy in the fate, rather of the culprit than his victim - from all these poisonous elements Ulster was happily free; and the main cause of such a difference was too palpable to be doubted or disguised. A single extract from the statistic annals of the two regions will put the matter clearly. We select for comparison two districts, each of which contains upwards of a million and a half of cultivated acres and as nearly as possible, the same number of inhabitants. In the one, consisting of four northern counties, we find 171,314 holdings; in the other, consisting of three southern counties, we find only 114,898. But instead of a greater number of defendants in the ejectment in the former in twelve months, calculated on an average of 5 successive years, we find it strikingly less; and when we cast our eyes at the average number of "homicides with felonious intent", the proportion differs in a still more instructive ratio. Northern Counties population 1,080,510 Donegal tenants 45,898; ejected 713; murders 3 Down tenants 69,515; ejected 819; murders 3 Londonderry tenants 24,350; ejected 619; murders 1½ Monaghan tenants 31,551; ejected 417; murders 1½ totals = tenants 171,314; ejected 2,648; murders 9 Southern Counties population 1,003,585 Clare tenants 28,259; ejected 1,504; murders 10; Limerick tenants 30,750; ejected 1,143; murders 8; Tipperary tenants 55,888; ejected 2,384; murders 20; totals = tenants 114,897; ejected 5,031; murders 38; No words of ours could give additional force to the conviction which these eloguent figures are calculated to produce on every unprejudiced mind. As far as the question of sanguinary outrages is concerned, they tend to show that these cannot be ascribed to the prevalence of small holdings, or to greater density of population. But they serve to point out truly that the origin of crime is to be traced to social and moral causes - to the discordant and anomalous working of the relations between class and class, and to the existence of mutual distrust and enmity. Hitherto the northern counties have been comparatively free from this fearful bane. 'Why' they were so, it would take long to tell. Sympathy of creed between the owners and occupiers of the soil had no doubt considerable influence in mitigating the disposition to oppress and the morbid suspicion of oppression - itself an almost equal evil. But other influences, far more potential, worked together for the tenant's good, the great good of making him feel secure of his possession. From the days of the plantation of Ulster in the 17th century, property has been much more divided there, than in many other parts of the country. There were then created, it is true, vast estates, several of which still remain, but it was part of the policy of that measure to foster the creation of derivative interests, with freehold tenure, under the great proprietors. A resident middle class was thereby in some degree created and although it has in recent times become the fashion to denounce all who fall under the name of middlemen, it is certain that no modification of society is less adapted for the promotion of social and political progress or peace, than one which is reduced to the two extremes of absentee lords in fee of vast domains and occupying tenants without permanent tenure. In Ulster the landlord class has for many generations been more varied in degree and more numerous as a whole. A tenant who could not get on well under one proprietor, had a fair chance of obtaining a farm from another. It was long customary for the lesser proprietary, who themselves held by "leases of lives renewable for ever", to grant the actual tillers of the ground an equivalent tenure. When the lives in their own leases dropped, it was frequently found that those in the tenants were the same; and the renewals of both are in general contemporaneous. As for "tenant right", of which we have lately heard so much, that was a touch more modern expedient, arising out of circumstances of comparatively recent date. Its meaning and importance have been not a little misstated and mistaken. But the power to sell the goodwill of a farm, to whatever extent it may exist, proves the habitual recognition, on the part of the landlords, of the equitable if not the legal claim of the tenantry to be suffered, if he wished to retain possession. The crusade against population and the theory of consolidation of farms were, as yet, unknown and when industry had accumulated capital in trade, or the linen manufacture and invested its earnings in the purchase of land, the number of landlords was only further augmented, but the standing policy of their order was not changed. "Live and let thrive” was the common law of Ulster. Far different has too long been the unhappy condition of the south and west. No part of the tenantry there had even the bonds of sectarian sympathy to unite them with the lords of the soil. Estates in general were less broken up; there were at one time many middlemen, but these persons usually held by profitable, but expirable leases; their object was to make the most of their time, and undoubtedly, their exactions from their sub-tenants were as great as might have been expected. To a considerable extent, however, these have been swept away. The 'whole' of the rent paid by the occupiers now goes to the landlord, often an absentee and he in return, is at utter war with them. When the middleman's lease dropped, he refused to renew their tenure, or offered them such short leases as would deprive them of the elective franchise and stifle within them any design of making permanent improvements by draining, building, planting, or otherwise. Hence distrust and crime. Yet with the bitter fruits of this ruioous warfare before their eyes, the landlords of Ulster appear inclined to imitate the example of their Munster brethren. At the quarter sessions of a single district in the county Donegal the other day, no fewer than 319 decrees in ejectment were obtained; and from various other quarters the same tidings of disquiet came. Verily we may fear that in hitherto peaceful and improving Ulster, there yet may be another Tipperary. transcribed by Teena from the Weekly Vindicator -- www.cotyrone.com http://lists.cotyrone.com/mailman/listinfo/ulsterancestry https://www.facebook.com/groups/CoTyroneIrelandGenealogy/
_______________________________________________ UlsterAncestry@cotyrone.com UlsterAncestry Mailing List Searchable Archives: https://www.mail-archive.com/ulsterancestry@cotyrone.com/ http://lists.cotyrone.com/mailman/listinfo/ulsterancestry Website: https://cotyrone.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CoTyroneIrelandGenealogy/
