"The principal advantage the cottier derives from his form of tenure is the great facility with which, when circumstances arefavourable to him, he changes altogether his condition in society.In serf, métayer, or ryot countries extensive changes musttake place in the whole framework of society before the peasants become capitalists and independent farmers.The serf hasmany stages to go through before he arrives at this point, and we have seen how hard it is to advance one step.The métayertoo must become the owner of the stock on his farm, and be able to undertake to pay a money-rent.Both changes take placeslowly and with difficulty, especially the last, the substitution of money-rents, which supposes a considerable previousimprovement in the internal commerce of the nation, and is ordinarily the result, not the commencement of improvement inthe condition of the cultivators.But the cottier is already the owner of his own stock; he exists in a society in which thepower of paying money-rents is already established.If he thrives in his occupation, there is nothing to prevent his enlarginghis holding, increasing his stock, and becoming a capitalist, and a farmer in the proper sense of the word.It is pleasing tohear the resident Irish landlords, who have taken some pains and made some sacrifices to improve the character andcondition of their tenantry, bearing their testimony to this fact, and stating the rapidity with which some of the cottiers have,under their auspices, acquired stock and become small farmers.Most of the countries occupied by Métayers, Serfs, andRyots, will probably contain a similar race of tenantry for some ages.If the events of the last half century are favourable toIreland, her Cottiers are likely to disappear, and to be merged into a very different race of cultivators.This facility for glidingout of their actual condition to a higher and a better, is an advantage, and a very great advantage, of the cottier over theother systems of peasant rents, and atones for some of its gloomier features."This auspicious anticipation.has been wonderfully verified since Mr Jones wrote.Circumstances in the recent history ofIreland, most disastrous in their first aspect, have done much to break up the system of cottier tenure and to introduce abetter kind of cultivation.The Famine and the Exodus, the Poor Law and the Encumbered Estate Act, have produced awonderful change in the condition of Ireland.I will read from a valuable article in the Edinburgh Review, for 1857, anaccount of the manner in which the cottier system was affected by these events.
The Poor Law had been introduced into Ireland in 1840: but had not been brought face to face with the needs of the peopletill the famine in 1847.In that year it was modified so as to shake the cottier system.
Ed.Rev.p.110: "The Poor Law of 1847 provided for the problem of emancipating the soil from the cottier system.TheActs of 1838 and 1844 had probably had this object in view; for they had charged the Irish landlords with the entirepoor-rate in respect of the smaller class of holdings; and this naturally tended to the consolidation of farms.But the Act of1847 went much further; it refused relief altogether to occupiers of more than a quarter of a statute acre; and thus, by basingthe right of public charity upon giving up the larger portion of their land, it forced off the Irish cottiers in masses from thesoil, and left it free for a new race of agriculturists.The poorest of the cottiers abandoned their buildings for theworkhouses, from which, however, the large majority of them have since emerged, while those among them who had stillany residue of property, commenced that strange and unparalleled emigration, which has sent Irish energies to a hopefulfield, and has opened the land of Ireland for a better system.The law which did this was stern, but it was not unjust, and noone can deny the good it has accomplished.
The Encumbered Estates Act operated in the same direction.
Ed.Rev.p.116: "A law which `freed the land of Ireland from all checks on alienation, which broke down the equity modeof transfer, with its jealous impediments to puisne creditors, its fearful delays, its ruinous expense, and its cumbrous andunsatisfactory procedure, and which, besides, offered every security to purchasers, would necessarily, under anycircumstances whatever, have brought a great many estates to the market.But passing at a time when the equity courts werecrowded with embarrassed estates, when the ruin occasioned by the famine, and the poor-rates, and the panic resulting fromthe repeal of the corn-laws, and the lowness of prices, had made all creditors on real property in Ireland extremely anxiousto realize their securities, it operated to an extent well nigh inconceivable.In a period of less than eight years, the IrishEncumbered Estates Commission has dealt with landed property representing a net rental of upwards of ?,450,000 sterling,and covering an area of more than four million one hundred thousand acres.A Court of Justice, sitting in a remote corner ofDublin, has peaceably changed the ownership of a larger mass of land that probably passed under Cromwell's confiscations.
