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

Past & Present, Feb, 1998 by Donald Jordan

As was the case with establishing rent levels, prohibitions against land-grabbing were more than just attempts at defending a `moral justice' by denouncing grabbers as `base and vile' and imposing debilitating sanctions and penalties upon them. It was also an attempt to discourage eviction by making the evicted land untenantable, further driving down rents and weakening the position of landlords.

A similar motive to drive down rents and cripple landlords lay behind the League's antagonism to the free sale of interest in the holding by the outgoing tenant. This hostility is particularly ironic given that `free sale' was one of the `3 Fs' that had been at the heart of tenant demands since the 1850s and was built into the land act of 1881. Oliver MacDonagh has explained what he called the `Irish context' behind the claim for the right of free sale:

Free sale, undoubtedly implied a degree of co-possession between the

lessor and the lessee ... The tenant did presume that he had a certain

property in the property, but he saw this property as essentially hereditary

and usufructuary. In part, his claim was grounded in his sense of the

family chain linking the past and future generations. He believed it to be

but "natural" that he should transmit -- or at least be enabled to transmit

-- his holding to his heirs in the same fashion as the proprietor would pass

down his demesne to his successors. The tenant also saw himself as mingling

his labour with the earth which was temporarily in his charge, and thereby

establishing a saleable interest by his very tenure. If therefore he were

removed or wished to leave, he felt that his investment of time

and effort should be rewarded.(32)

In the post-1881 world, the local leaders of the National League saw matters differently. They were not interested in co-possession but ownership, and saw free sale as a means of encouraging landlords to evict by allowing them to recoup arrears and relet the land at a higher rate. One of the objects of including the right to free sale in the land act of 1881 was to provide the landlord with an opportunity of recovering arrears when the land changed hands. This practice had been common in Ulster, where free sale was most widely practised before 1881. W. Steuart Trench wrote that in 1843 on the marquis of Bath's estate in Co. Monaghan, for which he was the agent, it was common practice for `a regular schedule of [the outgoing tenant's] debts' to be drawn up, including arrears on rents. Then `the purchase money ... lodged in the office by the tenant selected to succeed to the farm, was distributed to the creditors in the presence of the insolvent, in proportion to their severally proved claims, at as many shillings in the pound as the purchase-money would afford to give. The landlord's rent, being the first charge upon the land, was always paid in full'.(33) Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the League attempted to prevent, or at least regulate, free sale as a way of further weakening the landlord. This was attested to by a number of landlords and agents in their testimonies before the Cowper Commission, one of whom told the commissioners that opposition to free sale was an `important part of the policy of "bringing the landlords to their knees'".(34)