The Irish Land Acts/Relation of Landlord and Tenant up to 1860
SECTION V.
Relation of Landlord and Tenant in Ireland prior to 1860.
The relation of landlord and tenant in Ireland, down to the year 1860, was based on tenure, not on contract. The old feudal tenures imported from England were modified and altered during the last two or three centuries by the existing Irish customs. The result was that a period of much doubt and confusion arose, and an extraordinary collection of enactments dealing with land was placed on the Irish Statute Book. In the reign of George III. upwards of sixty of these Acts were passed for Ireland, while six sufficed for England. The following reigns were equally productive in agrarian legislation, and the condition of the occupiers became more and more unsettled, and unsatisfactory, and " wild doctrines," to quote the words of the eminent authors of a standard work on Irish Land Tenure, published in 1851, were agitated, including " extravagant demands for fixity of tenure and compulsory valuation of rents."
The relation of landlord and tenant, based on tenure that prevailed down to the year 1860, gave no security of occupation to the tenant, and did not protect his improvements; but the cost of ejectment and the legal difficulties of proof that accompanied it, exercised a powerful restraining influence in preventing capricious eviction.
Nevertheless, complaints against Irish rents are not confined to recent years or to the last century. A continuous stream of emigration of Protestant dissenters from Ulster went on during the early part of the 18th century, and the Irish Government of the day was much concerned at losing so many of their most loyal citizens. In 1729 the Lord Lieutenant forwarded a report on the subject to the King, which states:—"One great reason given by the people themselves for leaving the Kingdom is the poverty to which that part of the country is reduced, occasioned in a great measure, they say, by raising of rents in many places above the real value of land, or what can be paid out of the produce of them, if any tolerable subsistence be allowed to the farmers using their utmost industry." Complaint was also made of the uncertain tenures, the short leases, and "the usual method of late when lands are out of lease," which was "to invite and encourage all persons to make proposals, and set them to the highest bidder without regard to the tenants in possession."
Position of Tenants under the Common Law as regards Eviction—in the case of Leaseholds.
During the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries, while many Irish tenants held under leases or written contracts, the great majority were tenants from year to year. Under the Common Law, both in England and Ireland, the right of the landlord to recover possession of the land in the case of a lease or written contract depended on the covenants and conditions in the contract, and no ejectment could take place unless for a " condition broken."
In the case of Yearly Tenancies.
In the case of tenancies not created by writing—tenancies from year to year—there was no power of eviction for non-payment of rent under the Common Law. The tenant of such a tenancy could only be ejected by a notice to quit, which notice must expire with the termination of the year of his tenancy. This system caused much difficulty to the landlord, as the onus lay on him of proving the commencement of the tenancy, and frequently, even where the tenant had failed to pay the rent, eighteen months passed before possession could be obtained.
The Common Law of England and the tribunals that administered it discouraged the forfeiture of tenants' interests, and the landlord was held strictly to the technical proofs required by law.
The Irish Ejectment Code—how it pressed against the Tenant.
In Ireland a different course was followed. According to an eminent Irish lawyer, the object of the Irish "Ejectment Code," which originated in the reign of Queen Anne, was to expedite and facilitate the eviction of the tenant. It got rid of every formality by which the old Common Law delayed and obstructed the forefeiture of the tenant's estate. Statute after Statute was passed for his purpose. The whole principle of the Common Law was reversed. Chief Justice Pennefather judicially declared that it was a code of law made solely for the benefit of the landlord, and against the interest of the tenant, and that it was upon this principle that judges must administer and interpret it.
Facilities given for evicting Leaseholders.
Down to the year 1816, the landlord who sought to evict a tenant holding under lease was obliged to proceed in one of the Superior Courts of law, a practice which caused much expense and delay When the European peace came in 1815, after the Battle of Waterloo, the fall in agricultural prices rendered it difficult if not impossible, for tenants to pay the high rents which had been fixed while war prices ruled. An Act was immediately passed (56 George III., c. 88) which enabled an ejectment to be obtained in the County Courts at a small cost, and without delay. In this respect, Ireland was forty years ahead of England, as a similar jurisdiction was not given to the English County Courts until 1856.
Facilities given for evicting Yearly Tenants.
The Irish Ejectment Code applied only to tenants holding under leases or written contracts. As the country advanced, landlords gradually ceased to give leases, and the great majority of small tenants held from year to year. To meet this state of things the Civil Bill Court Act of 1851 extended the ejectment for non-payment of rent to tenancies from year to year. Under the English statutes no similar power was given, and the English landlord was obliged, in the case of non-payment of rent, first to serve the tenant with a Notice to Quit, and then to proceed to evict him by the slow and costly process of an action in the Superior Courts.