The Irish National League and the 'unwritten law': rural protest and nation-building in Ireland, 1882-1890

Past & Present, Feb, 1998 by Donald Jordan

The most forceful and influential statement of the view that the land of Ireland belonged to the people who tilled it, not to an alien landlord class, was made by James Fintan Lalor, whose writings and participation in the `rising' of 1848 provided inspiration for many subsequent agrarian radicals. In acknowledging his debt to Lalor, Davitt called him the only `real Irish revolutionary mind in the `48 period'.(10) According to Lalor:

the absolute (allodial) ownership of the lands of Ireland is vested of right

in the people of Ireland -- that they, and none but they, are the first

landowners and lords paramount as well as the lawmakers of this island --

that all titles to land are invalid not conferred or confirmed by them --

and that no man has a right to hold one foot of Irish soil otherwise than

by grant of tenancy and fee from them, and under such conditions as they

may annex of suit and service, faith and fealty, etc ...

That of natural right, on the grant of God, the soil of Ireland belongs to

the people of Ireland, who have therefore a clear vested right of property

in the soil to the extent of full, comfortable, and secure subsistence

therefrom, which never could or can be parted with, pass, or perish; and

which no power on earth, nor any length of adverse possession can take

away, annul, bar, or diminish.

That the people of Ireland have for ages been deprived of their natural

right of property in their own soil, that their right has been in practical

effect utterly defeated and diverted, and that it now requires to be

asserted, enforced and established.

That the claim of the occupying tenant of the soil to a full and sufficient

subsistence out of the crops they have raised, and to a sufficiency of seed

for next year's crops, is prior and superior to every other claim

whatsoever.

Landlords, he went on:

have served us with a general writ of ejectment. Wherefore, I say, let

them get a notice to quit at once; or we shall oust possession under the

law of nature ... They form no class of the Irish people, or of any other

people. Strangers they are in this land they call theirs -- strangers here

and strangers everywhere, owning no country and owned by none;

rejecting Ireland and rejected by England; tyrants to this island, and

slaves to another; here they stand hating and hated -- their hand ever

against us, as ours against them, an outcast and ruffianly horde, alone in

the world, and alone in its history, a class by themselves.(11)

In addition to presenting incisively the widely held demotic view of the proper relationship between the tillers and the land, Lalor outlined a plan for the restitution of rights to the land that he and most people in rural Ireland believed had been unjustly robbed from them. His plan for `moral insurrection', drafted in 1847-8, bears striking similarities to that implemented by the local branches of the Irish National League. It includes refusing `obedience to usurped authority' and `resisting every attempt to exercise such usurped authority' and proposes that the people of Ireland take `quiet and peaceable possession of all the rights, and powers of government, and [proceed] to exercise them'.(12) Lalor urged the tenant farmers of Ireland to `refuse all rent and arrears of rent ... except the value of the overplus of harvest and produce remaining in their hands after having deducted and reserved a due and full provision for their own subsistence ... [and to] further, on principle, ... refuse ALL rent to the present usurping proprietors until the people, the true proprietors ... have in national congress or convention, decided what rents they are to pay, and to whom they are to pay them'.(13)