Changed Tory Policy Towards Ireland (1896-9)

Chapter XXXIII

Changed Tory Policy towards Ireland (1896-9)

In 1896, Gerald Balfour, the new Chief Secretary, brought in a Land Bill based on the Report of the “Morley” Committee the year before.

In a retrospect of half a century I hold this Englishman to have been the ablest, most zealous, most unselfish, most painstaking, and best equipped administrator that Ireland ever had under English rule.

Without racial, religious or territorial prejudice, he entered devotedly on his work. In brilliance he could not compare with his brother Arthur. Yet, where close acquaintance with detail was needed in understanding legal and local problems, he outshone him. Gerald Balfour’s mastery of the Land Acts and of the decisions thereunder was so exact as to astonish every lawyer. When his Bill became law the late Judge Meredith (then a leading landlords’ counsel) said to me, “You’ve stopped every earth” - meaning that we had staunched the leaks in Gladstone’s legislation of 1881, by which owners could hinder tenants from fixing fair rents.

Yet Gerald’s Bill trundled slowly through the Commons, being assailed by Dillon and the Freeman at every stage. Instead of showing recognition of the efforts of a Tory statesman (who had to face mutineers like the now Lord Carson) the “friends” of the Irish tenants threw every obstacle in his way. Its author risked unpopularity with his own Party, and Irish landlords cursed him. Whenever Carson attacked, Dillon abetted. In the Committee stage, for which only two days were promised, a week’s chatter (without any amendment being carried to improve the tenants’ case) perplexed friendly Conservatives.

Arthur Balfour, the leader of the House, in despair asked me to come to his room one night, saying, “I’m afraid we cannot give any more time to the Land Bill, and that it must be dropped. The Improvements Clause has occupied two days, and on ‘Report’ it will take at least as long.” I told him bluntly, “Set down your Bill to-morrow for Report and transpose the Improvements Clause from last to first. Its opponents cannot then repeat their used-up arguments.”

In amazement he asked, “Can the last clause of a Bill be made first, without the leave of the House?” “Certainly,” I said. “The printer will do it for you.” He smilingly confessed, “I never knew that.”

So it was done, and the Bill passed the Report and third reading stages next day.

In the House of Lords Irish peers fell on it; although the Bill was piloted by the late Lord Lansdowne and the late Duke of Devonshire. A comic vein fissured the gloom. The late Lord Cloncurry proposed the exclusion of “grazing tenants” under £100 valuation from fair rents where they held leases which excluded them from the benefit of the Land Act of 1870.

Lord Lansdowne, with exquisite courtesy and a perfect affectation of ignorance that the noble Lord had any interest in the “amendment,” answered that after consultation with the Duke of Devonshire (who sat beside him, hands in pockets, with down-drooped head), neither of them could understand the proposal, although both had some knowledge of Land Law intricacies. “Well,” replied Cloncurry, “I’ll go down to my noble friends and explain it to them.”

So he left his seat and took up a place behind the Government Bench to pour his “points” into the ears of Marquess and Duke. Both listened to him with admirable phlegm. Occasionally their eyes strayed to the squat figure of Lord Halsbury on the Woolsack, engaged in putting the ensuing clauses.

For the Lord Chancellor, ignoring the intermezzo, had galloped through Clauses far ahead of Clause V in which Cloncurry was interested. After some time Cloncurry (convinced of his triumph over the understandings of Lord Lansdowne and the Duke, climbed back to his own place, as if the clock had meanwhile stood still. Addressing the Woolsack, he announced, “I think I have now,, made myself clear to my noble friends in charge of the measure.

“Order! Order!” quoth Lord Halsbury. “The Fifth Clause on which the noble Lord moved his amendment has been carried, and we are now at Clause XXVIII!” Joshua’s miracle had not halted the House of Lords.

Cloncurry was an amiable man. If he had been properly handled there would have been no trouble on his estate. His sister, the Hon. Emily Lawless, wrote exquisite verse, which will live for ever in Irish hearts.

A “town parks” provision of the Bill declared that a tenant should not be forbidden to fix a “fair rent” unless the population of the town exceeded 2,000. This aroused the fiercest resentment of the Ulster peers. So the Government summoned spirits from the vasty deep to support an alternative proposal, and Bishops mustered to Westminster. I heard the rustling of their lawn sleeves as I waited at the Lords’ Bar. When the cry came for a division, “Clear the Bar,” I went out to await the result.

Before the figures were cast up, the son of the Irish Viceroy (Lord Cadogan) fell on my neck, shouting, “We’ve won! We’ve won! We’ve won!”

I did not know who he was, and had been unconscious theretofore of the advantage of co-operation between Church and State.

Still, this proof of sympathy by the Tories for Irish tenants was welcome. It showed me that had Dillon not been so bound up with the Whigs much could have been gained for Ireland.

Next night the Lords’ amendments were sent back to the Commons, and I was invited to meet the Balfours in a room behind the Speaker’s Chair. There I was asked for a dissertation on the results of the Lords’ amendments. As I discoursed, I heard remarks like these: “Jerry, I would here stand on my Tory leg.” When I made suggestions that by altered drafting new clauses could be framed to help the tenants, I heard: “Now, Jerry, stand on your Irish leg. It can be managed.”

The Lords’ amendments to the Bill were considered by the Commons on 12th August, 1896. Wednesday sittings then began at noon, and ended at 5.30 p.m. Lord Inchiquin had inserted in the Bill a clause that no reduction should be made in the rent of any tenant by reason of his mere “right of occupation.”

This was provoked by a proposal of Sexton in the Select Committee a year earlier. I suggested to the Balfours as a compromise that if the “fair rent” had been already fixed no further or additional deduction should be made in the second “15 years’ term” by reason of the “mere right of occupation.” Balfour late at night accepted this, yet Dillon next day denounced the suggestion.

Dillon’s acquaintance with the Land Acts, or the decisions thereunder, was not profound. His speech, however, lasted long enough to give time to Sir Edward Carson to arrive from the Law Courts at 1 p.m.

Carson broke forth fiercely against Balfour’s amendment. Dillon, seeing the mischief he had wrought, became sorrowful, but the debate is not recorded in the Freeman or in Hansard. Balfour had to yield to Carson’s onslaught and omit the words he proposed. To lessen the harm of Lord Inchiquin’s insertion, Lord Lansdowne, when the Bill went back to the Upper House, prevailed on Lord Inchiquin to allow his “amendment” to be struck out and permit a proviso to be substituted that in assessing a “fair rent” no reduction should be made, except such as should be specified and accounted for, in a schedule in accordance with the provisions of the Land Acts.

I felt grateful to Lord Lansdowne, the Duke of Devonshire, and the Balfours, for trying to save the tenants from Dillon’s folly, which lost them tens of thousands of pounds.

The Freeman, having suppressed the critical part of the debate (14th August, 1896), made this comment:

“A certain unquestionably valuable amendment on the question of ‘occupation right’ had been proposed by the Government. Mr. Dillon gave it a quiet and courteous acceptance. Mr. Healy, in his eagerness to attack him, made the utterly groundless charge that he objected to a valuable amendment. The landlords were thereby encouraged in their attack on the amendment, which was thereupon abandoned by the Government.”

The “unquestionably valuable amendment” was mine. At that epoch if I carried anything in the Bill to help the tenants the Freeman inserted or omitted the word “not,” so as to make it appear that I was acting adversely to their interests. In one case I corrected a slander of this sort, and the editor excused it in a footnote to my letter by saying there had been a fire on the premises that night!

Twenty years later, in the December number (1924) of Studies, a stalwart Republican critic of mine, Mr. Arthur Clery, B.L., wrote: “It was the only paper in the three kingdoms which, when an English member asked how many horses were sent to Africa during the Boer War, omitted Healy’s interjection, ‘And how many asses?’”

The opponents of the policy of trying to secure benefits (however small) for Ireland were men of leisure who could attend Parliament constantly. My brother and I had to work for our living, and were at the call of private clients, whose interests could not be always forsaken. Members then were not paid.

In 1896 Dillon superseded Justin McCarthy as Chairman of the Irish Party. This, together with Dillon’s control of the Freeman, led to a revolt amongst Nationalists who were not his admirers. They resolved to start a daily paper, for William Murphy was determined to get even with Dillon for his expulsion from the Freeman board and his defeat in South Kerry. Thanks to Murphy, the Nation was maintained for Over three years until the reunion of the Redmondites with the Irish Party was accomplished.

I wrote Maurice:

Dublin,

11th February, 1897.

“I haven’t begun to interest myself in the new paper [the Daily Nation]. I slaved so hard at the National Press that (like being in love once) I can’t get up a second enthusiasm, but all the others are earnest and determined.

The story that Dillon is to resign in Redmond’s favour I shall believe when it happens. Dillon is not where his personal affairs are affected, an ass, for he gives them all his thoughts.

Never has parliamentary action sunk so low, or life in the House been so unpleasant. Dan MacAleese, M.P., remarked to me that “Dillon and his gang weren’t fit to feed guts to bears,” and the way they throw away every chance of scoring something for Ireland would drive you crazy.

Davitt is an honest man, but doesn’t know the ropes. To Blake the House won’t listen. T.P. could give them all an outfit of brains. What the upshot of it will be I can’t guess. If the “Bubonic Plague ” reaches these shores it may settle a good deal, and surely when King David preferred pestilence to war and famine, there may have been “bounders” in Judea with whom he had to reckon. Lord save us all! I should not jest on such subjects!”

I was then speaking frequently in Britain, and the next letter I wrote my brother was short

Dublin,

4th June, 1897.

“The riot at my meeting in Glasgow was got up from London, but we completely cowed them, and they are greatly discredited. At Coatbridge we “fired” the scrumsters out without ceremony, but they were too strong for that at Glasgow.”

In 1897 the Tory Cabinet promised in the next session to establish a democratic system of Local Government in Ireland, such as had been enacted ten years before in Britain. Until then Grand Juries, consisting of 23 persons of over £50 valuation, selected by the sheriff (the latter being chosen or “pricked” by the Judges of Assize), controlled the rates and the local expenditure not dealt with by Poor Law boards.

“County cess” was borne only by the tenants, and they also paid half the poor rate. Gerald Balfour set up County Councils elected on a wide suffrage to take their place. This was a revolution and would have been rejected by the House of Lords had not the landlords been relieved from paying their half of the poor rate. Balfour provided an Imperial contribution to make up for this.

The origin of the reform sprang from the granting to Great Britain in 1897 of an Agricultural Grant, which then was refused to Ireland. Vesey Knox, K.C., member for Derry (first elected for Cavan in 1890 in the room of Biggar), protested against this injustice by motion in the Commons.

The Tory Government, however, maintained that the Irish farmers had no right to share in the agricultural grant; but The Times attacked this inconsistency, and its powerful aid heartened us, and weakened the Cabinet’s resolve to exclude Ireland from benefit.

During the debate which Knox initiated, I sought Gerald Balfour and proposed a “way out” to secure Irish farmer an “equivalent grant,” while annexing to it the abolition of Grand Juries and their replacement by popularly chosen Councils.

Lord Randolph Churchill had in 1886 promised Ireland “similarity and spontaneity” of treatment with Britain. Yet our country was excluded from English Local Government reform in 1888, and Churchill’s pledge remained unhonoured for a decade. So I suggested to Gerald Balfour a plan to reconcile the rating interests of owners and tenants.

The landlords (powerfully garrisoned at Westminster) were afraid that if County Councils were established they might be made liable for new imposts. To allay their apprehension I prevailed on him, on Mr. Arthur Balfour and Sir M. H. Beach, Chancellor of the Exchequer, after many interviews, to make the Irish agricultural grant proportionate to that for Great Britain, by freeing the landlords from paying half poor rate on their tenants’ holdings.

Thus the abolition of Grand Juries came about.

To illustrate the effect on owners, the case of Trinity College, Dublin, may be cited. Its estates were derived from the confiscation of the monasteries, and by this plan secured relief to the extent of £1,000 a year from poor rate theretofore paid on its tenants’ holdings. Other landlords got proportionate exemptions, but the tenants in no wise lost, thanks to the Imperial subvention.

The “agricultural grant” was now shared between landlord and tenant, and so County Councils came into being. With the disappearance of the Grand Juries, the last bulwark of landlordism went down under a manna-fall of bank-notes.

The problem of machinery to enact the reform of Grand Juries was a thorny one. The House of Commons could not be got to devote time to apply to Ireland the hundreds of clauses contained in the English Local Government Act of i888. They would have been debated ad nauseam by “hostiles” in both camps, and by dilatory drivel the Bill would have been slain.

I, therefore, made the suggestion that the Lord-Lieutenant should be enabled by Order in Council to declare any clause of the English Act of 1888 applicable to Ireland, and also to empower him by like order to mould the Grand Jury Acts to modern needs.

No one could object to a transfer of beneficent legislation from England to Ireland by a time-saving device, and the ministerial draftsman declared the idea a godsend.

Gerald Balfour was so earnest for Irish tenants that when I persuaded Beach, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to surrender to the Dublin Corporation and its townships the levy on pawnbrokers (£100 Irish, exacted for police purposes in the Metropolitan area) he urged that the sum must be pooled into the Agricultural Grant.

“No,” I answered, as we walked through the Lobby, “and if you try to annex urban money, I shall go back and tell Beach to keep it for the police.”

Then he gave way, and about £4,000 a year was gleaned for Dublin ratepayers from these old Crown duties.

The transfer of the pawnbrokers’ levy met with the hostility of John Mallon, the great detective. He alarmed the pawnbrokers by telling them there could no longer exist the confidence which prevailed between them and Dublin Castle if the police were deprived of such a nest-egg.

When I arrived in Dublin after what I conceived to be a triumph, a delegate from the pawnbrokers met me at the North Wall and begged me to give back my “winners” to the Treasury, as otherwise both his class and the police would suffer.

I understood Mallon’s fears, but stuck to the concession which Beach made. A tradition of the relations between the Dublin pawnbrokers and the police was that, in 1866, when Habeas Corpus was suspended (by an Act which went through both Houses at Westminster in 24 hours), no pawnbrokers’ assistants were arrested, although chin-deep in the Fenian conspiracy. They were useful to the police as thief-catchers, and Mallon thought it needful to retain that allegiance.

A vote of thanks to me for securing the tax to aid the Dublin Corporation was proposed in that body, but was objected to by a Councillor employed on the Freeman, named Nannetti, unsuccessfully.

After the Local Government Act of 1898 passed, a Liberal Whip (since a peer) told me that the Home Rule position had been undermined. Tories, equally extreme, alleged that the landlords had bartered their political power for cash. No doubt the landlords’ loss of influence in rural Ireland contributed to their acceptance in 1903 of Wyndham’s Land Purchase Act.

I had backed the Tories and taken my own line, despite Dillon’s preference for the Liberals. Napoleon said, “One bad general is better than two good generals.” I may have been a bad general,

Changed Tory Po/ici’ towards Ireland (1896-9) 435 for in May, 1926, a Free State Minister for Local Government, wotting naught of our travail in 1897-8, declared that County Councils represented the “Magna Charta of jobbery.”

I wrote my brother:

Dublin,

21st April, 1899.

“What a tragedy Harold Frederic’s death was! Is his wife trying to get “Katie” committed for manslaughter? His executor, Stokes, used to come to the Lobby, and is a Catholic. He tells me that it was Brandon Thomas, the actor, who started the inquest declaring he “owed it as a duty to humanity.” I sent the woman £50, and they have brought in Mathew as counsel.

Why such a man should have subjected himself to the treatment of “Christian Scientists,” seeing he was never a Christian, or why a woman should have suggested such a course, is a mystery greater than any novel unravelled…

I have finished writing Why Ireland is Not Free, and will send you a copy. I compiled it because there should be some permanent record of the events which have produced the present state of affairs.

Bishop O’Dwyer’s treatment by Dublin Castle over the Roxborough School embitters him, and he thinks we should have pushed the University question last session in preference to the Local Government Bill.”

Dr. O’Dwyer, then almost a Tory, became 17 years later an avowed Sinn Feiner. The reversal by the Conservative House of Commons of the Roxborough Schools resolution, which I had carried under the Liberals, sorely vexed him. Lecky, member for Trinity College, Dublin, repealed this resolution, telling the House my original success was due to the fact that I was a master of “two o’clock in the morning tactics.”

After the 1916 insurrection the help given by Dr. O’Dwyer to the Sinn Feiners was a vital element in their movement. Lecky’s victory was responsible for much.

I wrote my father:

“I am taking silk to-morrow after fifteen years as a junior. The Lord Chancellor [a Tory] sent for me on Wednesday, and although I had not responded to several indirect proposals, I saw no reason for declining, as five of the new Q.C.’s would be much my junior if I remained at the “outer Bar.”

Lord Ashbourne made the proffer in very courteous and complimentary terms, but there are over a dozen others to be admitted, and it places me under no obligation. Indeed, the Chancellor pointed out that silk was only a recognition of professional status. Neither directly nor indirectly did I ask for it.”

At this period frequent hints from the Redmondites reached us, tending towards reunion. Arthur O’Connor, M.P.- ever friendly towards myself - became a go-between, I wrote Maurice:

House of Commons,

1st August, 1899.

“I had two interviews with Redmond, one here and one in Dublin. He is anxious for a settlement, because he sees he will otherwise be wiped out. The “Bounders,” knowing this, are not anxious for unity.”

I had to conceal from the Dillon Party my friendly relations with Redmond and pretend to be hostile to the projects of reunion. I, therefore, treated them in a grudging spirit, while at the same time I was caucusing with Redmond and his friends. I wrote my brother:

House of Commons,

2nd August, 1899.

“I am trying to arrange a compromise with the Lords on the Dublin Corporation Bill. Lord Morley, the Chairman, would be willing to hang up the Bill until next year, and send it to a new Select Committee, but the result would be to impose very onerous terms on Dublin.”

Gerald Balfour, for his pains, now was set upon by his Party, and soon was thrown to the wolves by the Prime Minister (his uncle, Lord Salisbury).

The landlords wished to “eat their cake and have it.” Pocketing the cash under the Act of 1898, they bemoaned their loss of power. A campaign set in against Gerald Balfour, who withstood the shock of a landlords’ deputation to Devonshire House, where the late Duke of Devonshire listened with his back to the fire to a crescendo of assaults.

The clamorous aristocrats baying for Balfour’s blood aroused the Duke, but, more level-headed than they, he confined himself to an epithet.

Later, a religious pretext was found to displace Gerald, and the Ulster Tories concentrated on it. Otherwise an earlier settlement of the Irish question would have been effected.

Lord Salisbury had declared that what Ireland needed was “20 years of resolute government.” In 1900, on a sectarian issue, he recalled his nephew, despite his giant work. Gerald Balfour encountered the dislike of the Ascendancy Party for trying to benefit their class while also helping the Irish farmers. No Minister ever fell, or was withdrawn from Ireland, on an occasion so flimsy.

To try to make clear why he was sent home, one must delve back to 1885. In that year the Irish Party defeated Gladstone and brought in a Tory Government. Lord Randolph Churchill then promoted an Educational Endowment Act to provide that the income from estates confiscated in Cromwellian times and dedicated to Education should not go exclusively to Protestants. The chief endowment came from the wills of Erasmus Smith, who oscillated in belief under the political changes which shook the creeds of sectaries between the execution of Charles I and the Restoration of Charles II (1649 to 1660).

Lord Randolph passed a Bill which enacted that a Commission should decide how the income of such foundations should be spent, in order to remove the bar which devoted it exclusively to Protestants. His commissioners included Lord Justice Fitzgibbon, who was his close friend, and, although a leader of Freemasonry, was favourably disposed towards Catholics.

Fitzgibbon in 1868 voted (before the Ballot Act) for a candidate favouring the disestablishment of the Protestant Church, but in the case of the Erasmus Smith trust held that, as the founder’s intentions were Protestant, his three schools must remain Protestant, although, when their needs had been supplied, any surplus income from the estate might be spent on technical or agricultural institutions from which the children of Catholics could benefit. A scheme prepared by Professor Dougherty, a Presbyterian clergyman (afterwards Under-Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant), which had the support of the majority of the Commissioners, had been published, but the Act required that the two Judicial Commissioners must concur in approving it; and unfortunately the second Judicial Commissioner, Judge William O’Brien, a fervent Catholic, would not consult or discuss the matter with Fitzgibbon. Though fiercely pro-British, O’Brien delivered a powerful and learned judgment on the grievances of Catholics, and maintained that Parliament was bent on repealing every remnant of the Penal Laws. His eloquence was unavailing; and had it been applied in private to his judicial colleague it would have been more effective. By reason of the disagreement between the Judges, the Act became a nullity so far as the main endowment to be dealt with was concerned. Fitzgibbon confided to me (when we served together on the Trinity College Estates Commission) that if O’Brien had sought a compromise he would have awarded a generous share of the rentals to Catholic uses. A learned and determined priest, Father David Humphries, P.P. “made up” the history of the case in pamphlet form; and I, therefore, brought in a Bill to enable the issue on which the Judges disagreed to be re-tried. It seemed a question merely of procedure. Lord Randolph’s Act of 1885, which remitted the destination of the endowments to judicial determination, was passed without objection by any Conservative.

I could not have foreseen that to give a further “airing” to a legal controversy would provoke an explosion. Gerald Balfour at first opposed my Bill, but one night, very late, he consented reluctantly to withdraw his “block” to the second reading.

Thenceforth enemies buzzed round him, and sectarian passion blazed forth. He became a “traitor to Protestantism,” though his opponents cared as little for the destination of Erasmus Smith’s rents as for the evangelization of the Cannibal Islands.

Most of them hailed from the North, and were the kernel of the party which, in 1920, deserted the Southern Protestants, contrary to the declaration of Colonel Saunderson, M.P., in the debates on Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill of 1886, that they would never be forsaken by the Orange leaders.

To appease Belfast animosities, Gerald Balfour was then transplanted to the British Board of Trade in 1900, where he received less than half the salary he enjoyed as Chief Secretary for Ireland and was constantly pin-pricked from his own side with criticisms. Afterwards this devoted man lost his seat in Leeds. Such treatment of an unselfish and learned statesman by a Tory Government became indented on my mind. Cardinal Logue declared that the British Cabinet was responsive only to “the tap of the Orange drum,” and this was a mild deliverance.

A vacancy in the Provostship of Trinity College next came, and the Ulster M.P.’s conveyed to Arthur Balfour that unless Professor Traill, of Antrim, was appointed (instead of the cultured Mahaffy) they would vote against Chinese labour in African mines. A popular refrain was then sung in London, “Ching, Chang, Chinaman,” and Liberals made it a catch-cry. Northern M P ‘s chorused it to the Tory Whips and so carried Traill, an uncouth man, as Provost of T.C.D.

George Wyndham told me that to restore relations between Arthur Balfour and Mahaffy he invited both to Clouds for a fortnight, but there Mahaffy refused to speak to the Prime Minister. Mahaffy knew nothing of parliamentary steersmanship, and smarted at his disappointment until Traill’s death opened the Provostship to him.

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