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Thus we see, that the number of servants and vagrants requiring relief, amounted to within three hundred of the numbers of the agricultural labourers, and that the number of those connected with the possession of land, and who had sought relief on account of termination of leases, non-payment of rent, expulsion because they were tenants-at-will, or temporary distress, amounted to the incredibly small number of seventy-nine.
An effort to remedy this evil was made in 1832, when the occupiers, if rented or rated at the small amount named, became voters. This gave the power to the holding, not to the man, and the landlord could by simple eviction deprive the man of his vote; hence the tenants-at-will were driven to the hustings like sheep they could not, and dare not, refuse to vote as the landlord ordered.
The owner of the estate gives the house, farm-buildings, and seed-grain to tenants-at-will, with whom he divides the costs of cultivation and the crops. This division is superintended by an agent or bailiff, whose business it is to take the share belonging to the owner; a costly system, complicated by the market changes of values, which alter the character of the shares constantly.
This was the famous "Chandos clause," proposed by Lord Chandos, son of the Duke of Buckingham, whereby the county suffrage was extended to all tenants-at-will of £50 rental and upwards. A very large proportion of tenant farmers thus became county voters, and for the most part followed the politics of their landlords.
If his tenants were tenants-at-will, with the utmost vigilance, squatters would most likely have been admitted on his land, and have been living under the same roof with the holder of the farm, long before he was able to discover it; and when he did, his only resource would have been to serve notice to quit, and eject.
Admitting that in theory they were the tenants-at-will of the state, they contended that time and undisturbed enjoyment had ripened their holding into a species of ownership, and that it would be unjust to eject them for the purpose of redistributing the domain. The association of this claim with the Patrician tenancies, permanently influenced the sense of "possession."
All the fanciful and antiquated franchises which had prevailed in the older boroughs were swept away to make room for a levelling £10 household suffrage, the privileges of freemen being alone preserved. The rights of 40s. freeholders were retained in counties, but they found themselves associated with a large body of copyholders, leaseholders, and tenants-at-will paying £50 in rent.
Ireland Fifty Years Ago So much to clear the ground in regard to the Home Rule controversy. I shall now ask the reader to glance for a moment at the condition of Ireland fifty years ago. At that time almost the whole agricultural population were in the position of tenants-at-will, with no security either against increased rents or arbitrary eviction.
Mr Guinness, the extensive agent, holding employments in twenty-seven counties, and himself a proprietor in Tipperary, confirms the fact of leases being generally granted in that county; and contrasts the state of the inhabitants with that of Wexford, one of the most improved districts in Ireland, where the land is much worse in quality, the rents much higher, and the tenantry peaceable and independent, and almost universally tenants-at-will.
The effect of this measure was most unfortunate; it encouraged the letting of lands to tenants-at-will or tenants from year to year, who could not, under existing laws, obtain the franchise or power to vote they were not FREEMEN, they were little better than serfs. They were tillers of the soil, rent-payers who could be removed at the will of another.
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