Land Acts (Ireland)

The Land Acts (officially Land Law (Ireland) Acts) were a series of measures to deal with the question of tenancy contracts and peasant proprietorship of land in Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Five such acts were introduced by the government of the United Kingdom between 1870 and 1909. Further acts were introduced by the governments of the Irish Free State after 1922 and more acts were passed for Northern Ireland.

The success of the Land Acts in reducing the concentration of land ownership is indicated by the fact that in 1870, only 3% of Irish farmers owned their own land while 97% were tenants. By 1929, this ratio had been reversed with 97.4% of farmers holding their farms in freehold. However, as Michael Davitt and other Georgists had foreseen, peasant proprietorship did not end hardship in the Irish countryside. Emigration and economic disadvantage continued while the greatest beneficiaries of land reform were the middle class of medium farmers.

The British Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone, had taken up the "Irish question" in an effort to win the general election of 1868 by uniting the Liberal Party behind this single issue. The shock of Fenian violence, especially in England, as well as the growing awareness of the potency of strong nationalist feelings in pan-European politics, was a second reason to tackle the Irish question. Gladstone desired to bring peace with fairness to Ireland, and by extension, the rest of the UK, which was then at the zenith of worldwide Imperial power. The Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act 1870 (33 & 34 Vict. c. 46) was partly the work of Chichester Fortescue, John Bright and Gladstone. The Irish situation was favourable, with agriculture improving and pressure on the land decreasing since the Great Irish Famine. The Encumbered Estates' Court (1849) and agitation by the Tenant Right League had led to the sale of estates by debt-ridden mainly absentee landlords. Gladstone's Liberal government had no explicit mandate for the Act, unlike the Irish Church Act 1869, and so could expect some opposition from the English landlord class in the House of Lords, fearful for the implications of property rights in England, many of whom were Whigs that Gladstone relied on for support in Parliament. Partly for this reason, Gladstone's approach was cautious, even conservative, for he was dedicated to maintaining the landlord class whose "social and moral influence", he said in 1863, was "absolutely essential to the welfare of the country." Furthermore, Gladstone met resistance from Whigs in his Cabinet itself, especially Robert Lowe, and the resulting compromise measure was so weak that it had little difficulty in passing both Houses of Parliament, with one significant amendment. As well as the Land Act, the Liberal government also passed the Irish Church Act 1869 and put forward the Irish University Bill that failed to pass both Houses of Parliament.

Policymakers made much use of the statistical data recently collated in Griffith's Valuation (1853–68).

To prevent eviction by rack-renting, and so avoiding paying compensation to tenants, the Bill said that rents must not be "excessive", leaving this for the courts to define. But the House of Lords in a wrecking amendment substituted "exorbitant" in its place. This enabled landlords to raise rents above what tenants could pay, and then to evict them for non-payment without giving any compensation.

However well-intentioned, the Act was at best irrelevant, at worst counter-productive. Fewer than 1,000 tenants took up the Bright Clauses, since the terms were beyond most tenants and many landlords did not wish to sell. Many substantial leasehold farmers, who had led the campaign for land reform, were excluded from the Act because their leases were longer than 31 years. Legal disputes over customary rights and "exorbitant" rents actually worsened landlord-tenant relations. Figures do not indicate any impact of the Act on the rate of eviction, which was anyway at a low level. In the late 1870s when depression struck, evictions for non-payment of rent mounted, tenants had no protection, and in reply 'outrages' and the campaign by the Land League, led by Michael Davitt, became known as the Land War. The government had to pass a Coercion Act as early as 1881 (the Protection of Persons and Property (Ireland) Act 1881) because of the increase in violence in Ireland; it lost support to the Home Rule Movement, which won nine out of 14 Irish by-elections between 1870 and 1874, mainly formerly Liberal-held seats.

Friedrich Engels, a contemporary observer, professed not to know "what the Tories could have against this Bill, which is so indulgent with the Irish landlords and finally places their interests in the tested hands of the Irish lawyers". He thought it "very amusing if the brave Gladstone thinks he has settled the Irish question by means of this new prospect of endless lawsuits". The legislation, however, "had a symbolic significance far beyond its immediate effects." The Land Act turned the tide of laissez faire legislation favouring capitalist landlordism, and in principle, if not in practice, was a defeat for the concept of the absolute right of property. For the first time in Ireland tenants now had a legal interest in their holdings.

The "Report of her Majesty's Commissioners of Enquiry into the working of the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act 1870 (33 & 34 Vict. c. 46) and the acts amending the same", under the chairmanship of the 6th Earl of Bessborough and hence commonly known as the "Bessborough Commission Report," was published in 1881 after lengthy hearings in 1880. It reported that the 1870 act gave the tenant no real protection because compensation for improvements could be claimed only on giving up the lease and because tenants saw themselves as forced to accept rent increases to avoid sacrificing what they had put into their holdings. It declared, "Freedom of contract, in the case of the majority of Irish tenants, large and small, does not really exist". By a majority of four-to-one (Arthur MacMorrough Kavanagh dissenting) the commissioners declared in favour of the "Three Fs" as demanded by the Land League: fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure.