Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica/Absentee

ABSENTEE, a term applicable to any person who is absent from his station, employment, or country; but which has been more commonly used with regard to Irishmen who possess estates in their native country, and reside in England. This class of proprietors has been always viewed with a considerable degree of jealousy and dislike by their countrymen; they have been held up to public reprobation, as men who drained their country of its wealth, without contributing any thing either to its government or prosperity; and hence it has been frequently proposed to subject their Irish profits and properties to a separate penal tax. Dr Smith has incidentally adverted to this subject in the following terms: “Those who live in another country contribute nothing, by their consumption, towards the support of the government of that country, in which is situate the source of their revenue. If, in this latter country, there should be no land-tax, nor any considerable duty upon the transference either of moveable or immoveable property, as is the case in Ireland, such absentees may derive a great revenue from the protection of a government to the support of which they do not contribute a shilling. This inequality is likely to be greatest in a country of which the government is, in some respects, subordinate, and dependent upon that of some other. The people who possess the most extensive property in the dependent, will, in this case, generally choose to live in the governing country. Ireland is precisely in this situaation; and we cannot, therefore, wonder that the proposal of a tax upon absentees should be so very popular in that country. It might, however, be a little difficult to ascertain either what sort, or what degree of absence could subject a man to be taxed as an absentee, or at what precise time the tax should either begin or end.” (Wealth of Nations, B. v. c. 2.)

Under such views an act was passed in 1715, imposing a tax of four shillings in the pound upon the profits of employments, fees, or pensions, derived from Ireland, in all cases where the persons receiving them should not reside six months in the year within the kingdom. This tax was continued by several renewed acts till 1753, when it was allowed to drop; it having been found that the dispensing power reserved to the Crown had been so frequently exercised, as to render the tax in a great degree nugatory. (Wakefield’s Ireland, Vol. II. p. 250.) The more general measure of a tax of two shillings in the pound upon all rents and profits, to be paid by all who should not reside within the country for the above period, yearly, was brought forward, much to the satisfaction of the community at large, by the celebrated orator Mr Flood, in 1773. This proposal at first received the support of the Earl of Harcourt, then Lord Lieutenant; but, after much debate, it was lost, by a division of 122 against 102. It has been said, that the British ministry, moved by some strong private remonstrances against the tax, had sent orders to Lard Harcourt to withdraw his support, when the question was nearly advanced to a favourable decision; but we are informed by Mr Hardy, in his valuable life of Lord Charlemont, that the main cause of its failure was, the apprehension that a general land-tax would be the consequence of this partial one upon absentees. “If the powerful interest of this body had hitherto been able to secure Ireland against such a tax, the same interest, it was thought, would be sufficient, and would be exerted te introduce it; in order that the other inheritors of landed property should, as such, be made to pay a tax as well as themselves.” In 1783, the question was again brought before the Irish House of Commons by Mr Molyneux, and lost by a division of 184 against 22. (Plowden’s Ireland, Vol. II. p. 64.)

It is not now necessary to investigate at any length the policy of a measure which had received its deathblow, even before the union of the two kingdoms had rendered it altogether impracticable. But it may be observed, that Dr Smith does not seem to have taken a large view of the subject, in pointing out, as the only objections to the tax, “the difficulty of ascertaining what sort and what degree of absence should subject a man to pay it, or at what precise time it should begin or end.” The great objection lay in the odiousness and the impolicy of such a restraint upon the intercourse of two countries so closely connected in their interests, and united under the same federal head. “What,” says Mr Burke, in his admirable letter upon this subject to Sir Charles Bingham, “is taxing the resort to and residence in any place, but declaring that your connection with that place is a grievance? Is not such a tax a virtual declaration that England is a foreign country, and a renunciation of that principle of common naturalization which runs through this whole empire?—I know very well,” he further observes, “that a great proportion of the money of every subordinate country will flow towards the metropolis. This is unavoidable; other inconveniences too will result to particular parts; and why? because they are particular arts, each a member of a greater, and not an whole within itself. But these members are to consider whether these inconveniences are not fully balanced, perhaps more than balanced, by the united strength of a great and compact body.” (Works, Vol. IX.)

But although it be true that the privilege of unfettered intercourse and discretionary residence is essential to the harmonious and beneficial union of two such countries, it does not therefore follow, that Ireland has no cause to lament the constant absence of so large a proportion of her great landed proprietors. There are many circumstances connected with the peculiar habits and condition of her people, which strongly call for their occasional presence and example. She suffers from this dereliction, not so much because large sums are thereby annually drawn from her to be spent in England, as because her yet poor and rude tenantry are thereby left to the government of persons who have comparatively but little interest in their prosperity, or influence upon their improvement. The reader will find ample details in regard to the condition and management of absentee property in Mr Wakefield’s late Account of Ireland. Its amount was, in a report of a committee of the House of Commons, ordered to be printed in May 1804, estimated at two millions per annum.