dublin castle, whitehall, and the formation of irish policy, 1879-92

Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd

Dublin Castle, Whitehall, and the Formation of Irish Policy, 1879-92Author(s): Allen WarrenSource: Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 34, No. 136 (Nov., 2005), pp. 403-430Published by: Irish Historical Studies Publications LtdStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30008190 .Accessed: 15/06/2014 15:42

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Irish Historical Studies, xxxiv, no. 136 (Nov. 2005)

Dublin Castle, Whitehall, and the formation of Irish policy, 1879-92

I

I n the past historians of the Anglo-Irish union have concentrated largely on the

leading political figures. Peel, O'Connell, Gladstone, Parnell, Salisbury, Redmond, Asquith and Lloyd George and their Irish policies have all received detailed attention. For the years following the onset of the great agricultural depression, this tendency has been inevitably reinforced by the turmoil of politics following the Third Reform Act and Gladstone's attempt to introduce home rule for Ireland.1

Yet, from another perspective, the battle over home rule and the union after the late 1870s is an irrelevance in all but the long term. The union was defended, home rule was not enacted, and formal constitutional relations between Britain and Ireland remained unchanged until after the First World War. On the other hand, the social and political basis of Irish society was transformed in the decades after 1879. The land laws were changed dramatically in 1881-2 and again between 1885 and 1887, new policies for social and economic reconstruction were developed between 1882 and 1887, and specific administrative structures established, most notably the Land Commission and the Congested Districts Board.2

But again historians have largely studied these changes in relation to the major

I In a large bibliography, the following are selected: H. C. G. Matthew, Gladstone (2 vols, Oxford, 1986-95); J. L. Hammond, Gladstone and the Irish nation (London, 1938); A. B. Cooke and John Vincent, The governing passion: cabinet government and party politics in Britain, 1885-86 (Brighton, 1974); Alan O'Day, Parnell and the first home rule episode (Dublin, 1986); James Loughlin, Gladstone, home rule and the Ulster question, 1882-93 (Dublin, 1986); L. P. Curtis, jr, Coercion and conciliation in Ireland, 1880-1892: a study in Conservative Unionism (Princeton, 1963); Andrew Gailey, Ireland and the death of kindness: the experience of constructive Unionism, 1890-1905 (Cork, 1987). See also the present author's earlier writings: 'Gladstone, land and social reconstruction in Ireland, 1881-1887' in Parliamentary History, ii (1983), pp 153-73; 'Forster, the Liberals and new directions in Irish policy, 1880-1882', ibid., vi (1987), pp 95-126; 'Disraeli, the Conservatives and the government of Ireland', ibid., xviii (1999), pp 45-64, 145-68.

2 J. E. Pomfret, The struggle for the land in Ireland, 1800-1923 (Princeton, 1930); Philip Bull, Land, politics and nationalism: a study of the Irish land question (Dublin, 1996); W. E. Vaughan, Landlords and tenants in mid-Victorian Ireland (Oxford, 1994); J. S. Donnelly, jr, The land and the people of nineteenth-century Cork: the rural economy and the land question (London, 1975); Samuel Clark and J. S. Donnelly, jr (eds), Irish peasants: violence and political unrest, 1780-1914 (Manchester, 1983); Terence Dooley, The decline of the big house in Ireland: a study of Irish landed families, 1860-1960 (Dublin, 2001).

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404 Irish Historical Studies

political players - Gladstone's heroic endeavours in 1881, 1882 and again in 1886, the Carnarvon experiment of 1885, Balfour's policies of coercion and conciliation from 1887 to 1892. In nearly all accounts, including those of the present writer, the emphasis has been on the cabinet and parliament in large part. Dublin Castle, Whitehall and the politicians, civil servants, and experts inhabiting these lower spheres have been largely neglected. Kitson Clark's 'statesmen in disguise' remain hidden. By studying the actions and attitudes of these groups, a new story emerges which alters our understanding of Anglo-Irish politics during this crucial decade. By concentrating less on the battle between power-hungry political leaderships over the constitutional relations between the two countries, a more complex governing process is revealed. In this interpretation, groups of officials, experts and departmental ministers in Dublin and London struggle to understand and direct the new social and political forces within Irish society that had been unleashed by the crisis in the countryside in the late 1870s and the rise of Parnell. In trying to find a basis for future social harmony, those most involved in Ireland found themselves facing a largely Treasury-dominated mindset in London, much more concerned with issues of authority, finance and responsibility. As a result, the achievements during the 1880s of both Liberal and Conservative governments were distinctly limited, even though in policy terms most of the building blocks for social and economic reconstruction were in place by 1892. With the rejection of the second home rule bill, these policy assumptions could resume their prominence once again within an overall Unionist framework.3

By looking at policy from these perspectives, a different chronology emerges in which the periods 1879-82, 1882-5 and 1887-92 are as important as the more conventional dates of ministerial change. The first is dominated on the part of Conservative and Liberal governments alike by an attempt to understand the social and political transformations being experienced in Ireland. At its centre is the moment when Gladstone takes personal control of Irish policy in the last days of 1880, leading to his drafting, piloting and defending the subsequent land bill, first in parliament and then in the political battle with Parnell from October 1881, a process only concluded with the Kilmainham negotiations and the so-called New Departure. The second coincided with the Spencer and Carnarvon viceroyalties. This period saw a significant modification of that imposed Gladstonian settlement, during which Irish opinion gradually ground down the doctrinaire assumptions underpinning Gladstone's vision for Irish society, so that the Carnarvon experiment, itself a political accident, could be largely a fulfilment of what had already been agreed by Spencer and his colleagues. The third period, once the immediate parliamentary crisis over home rule had passed, is represented by Balfour's chief secretaryship from 1887. This now becomes less a novel experiment in constructive unionism but more a working out - to a limited degree - of the policies fashioned in the years after 1882, and which, failing any major constitutional change in Anglo-Irish relations, would remain the principles on which Irish social and economic policies would be based for the next twenty years.

3 G. S. R. Kitson Clark, '"Statesmen in disguise": reflections on the history of the neutrality of the civil service' in Hist. Jn., ii (1959), pp 19-39; Martin Daunton, Trusting Leviathan: the politics of taxation in Britain, 1799-1914 (Cambridge, 2001).



WARREN - The formation of Irish policy, 1879-92 405

By shifting attention away from London, new players come into view. First, the contributions of Forster and Spencer as the principal ministers in Dublin acquire a new significance, qualifying the distinctiveness of Balfour's later approach. In particular, the detailed policy debates within Spencer's regime in the years 1882-5 have an interest transcending their actual results.4

Second, the contribution of experts, particularly those well versed in the intricacies of the Irish land system and the social structures built upon it, becomes much more important. The disendowment of the Church of Ireland after 1869 had created the need for a new body of bureaucrats to dispose of the church's lands. Drawn from the ranks of lawyers, land agents and small landowners, it increasingly became the administrative corps used by Dublin Castle as it engaged more and more intrusively with the land system as a whole. By the late 1870s members were contributing their evidence to parliamentary inquiries like that chaired by the radical George Shaw-Lefevre in 1878 into the working of the purchase clauses of the 1870 Irish land act. In 1880 two royal commissions under the duke of Richmond and the earl of Bessborough investigated the Irish land system, taking evidence from these landed experts among other interested groups. Galdstone's second Irish land act with its establishment of the Land Commission immediately created an urgent need for a whole structure of sub-commissioners, valuators and agents to administer the act. Not surprisingly, these same experts featured prominently. Sadly, no authoritative history of the Land Commission for the period has been written, but it is clear that this group quickly became an important element within the official mind on all matters relating to Irish land.5

4 Patrick Jackson, Education Act Forster: a political biography of W. E. Forster (1818-1886) (New Jersey & London, 1997); Florence Arnold-Forster's Irish journal, ed. T. W. Moody and R. A. J. Hawkins (Oxford, 1988); The red earl: the papers of the fifth Earl Spencer, 1835-1910, ed. Peter Gordon (2 vols, Northamptonshire Record Society, xxxi, Northampton, 1981) (henceforth Spencer papers).

5 For the contribution of 'expert' opinion see Report from the select committee on the Irish land act, 1870 ..., p. 103, H.C. 1877 (328) (henceforth Rep. on land act (1877)), xii, 111; Report from the select committee on the Irish land act, 1870 ..., H.C.1878 (249) (henceforth Rep. on land act (1878)), xv; Minutes of evidence taken before her majesty's commissioners on agriculture (henceforth Richmond Comm.) i [C 2778-1], H.C. 1881, xv; Report of her majesty's commissioners of inquiry into the working of the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act, 1870 ... (henceforth Bessborough Comm.), ii: Digest of evidence ... [C 2779-II], H.C. 1881 xix; First report from the select committee ... on land law (Ireland) ..., H.L. 1882 (249), xi; Second report from the select committee ... on land law (Ireland) ..., H.L. 1883 (279), xiii; Report of the Irish Land Commissioners ... [1881-2] [C 3413], H.C. 1882, xx; ibid. [1882-3] [C 3897], H.C. 1883, lxiv; ibid. [1883-4] [C 4231], H.C. 1884-5, lxv; ibid. [1884-5] [C 4625], H.C. 1886, xix; ibid. [1885-6] [C 4899], H.C. 1886, xix; Report of the Royal Commission on the Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1881 [C 4969, C 5015] (henceforth Cowper Comm.), H.C. 1887, xxvi. Within this vast body of material the evidence of the following is of particular interest: Mr Justice O'Hagan, Viscount Monck, E. F Litton and J. E. Vernon (the first Land Commissioners); Denis Godley (secretary to the Church Temporalities Commission and later the Land Commission); Murrough O'Brien (inspector of estates for the Church Temporalities Commission, chief agent of land sales to the Land Commission, and a Land Commissioner (1892)); Stanislaus Lynch (registrar of the Landed Estates Court, and Land Commissioner (1885)); George Fottrell (solicitor to the Land Commission); E. W. O'Brien (assistant Land Commissioner and cousin of Robert Vere O'Brien, who married Florence Arnold- Forster).




Third, pressure groups outside the ranks of the Parnellite movement, and largely ignored in the historiography, emerge as an important element in the battle for the official and political mind in Dublin: the Land Tenure Reform Association, Lord Castletown's landlords' committee and the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland are examples. One of the more interesting of these bodies for present purposes is the duke of Bedford's committee established in 1881 to encourage state-aided emigration from Ireland. Drawing on a surprisingly wide spectrum of political support, its leading activist was the Quaker reformer James Hack Tuke. One of the most widely read analysts of Irish conditions, especially those of the western seaboard, and not a man in the pocket of the ascendancy, Tuke saw the critical issues as being overpopulation, isolation and underdevelopment and the need for greater state involvement. Tuke and his friends were well placed to influence opinion within governing circles in both London and Dublin, and, while the policy recommended from 1880 until 1883 proved a dead end, the analysis upon which it was based contributed importantly to the evolution of policy in the later years of the decade. Tuke was a significant influence on Forster, Spencer and Balfour, eventually making an important contribution to the establishment of the Congested Districts Board in 1891 and travelling to Dublin monthly as a member until a few weeks before his death in 1895. Finally, there is the Treasury, not simply individual chancellors of the exchequer or their leading officials, but a pervasive departmental mindset deployed in debates involving public finance, responsibility and local devolution in relation to social and economic reconstruction. As with the other pressure groups, the influence of the Treasury is continuous, varying little from one government to the next. In many ways the Treasury moulded what was possible and certainly provided a conceptual vocabulary within which policy options were often debated.6

II

For much of the 1870s the social and economic condition of Ireland had not been a pressing political or parliamentary concern. Broadly prosperous and with low levels of eviction and disorder, the progress of Irish agriculture and the land system underpinning it were regarded as settled following the partial recognition of tenant right in 1870. While there might be criticisms of the detail and scope of the act from among Isaac Butt's parliamentary followers, they made little impact. Neither of the major party leaderships in London showed any continuing interest in the workings of the act, even though some of their own Irish followers had

6 The duke of Bedford's committee (Tuke's committee and fund) had over thirty Liberal members, both Radical and Whig, as well as moderate Tories. The executive was chaired by W. H. Smith, with Samuel Whitbread as vice-chairman, and included Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Henry Cowper, Sir Stafford Northcote, Arthur Pease, William Rathbone, Tuke and Forster (Emigration from Ireland, being the third report of the committee of 'Mr Tuke's Fund' (London, 1882)). It is also interesting to note that the executive of the land tenure reform committee, whose views had an important influence on Forster in late 1880, included 'experts' such as Monck, Mr Justice O'Hagan, E. W. O'Brien and Murrough O'Brien, as well as other Liberal land reformers such as Lord Monteagle, Lord Emly, Stephen de Vere, and the Quaker reformer interested in emigration, J. T. Pim.




doubts about its finality. This general decline in interest also included Gladstone, Liberal leader in 'retirement', whose Irish mission slackened after 1873 despite his visiting the country for the first and only time in 1877. In many respects Anglo-Irish politics returned to the pattern of the 1850s and early 1860s, in which religious, denominational and educational issues were seen as more pressing, with the years 1865-70 being regarded as an exceptionally complex political and legislative interlude. Only in late 1879, after a couple of years of generally falling agricultural prices and an immediately preceding bad harvest, did attention return to the social condition of Ireland with the prospect of famine along the western seaboard.7

The one exception to this pattern of declining political interest related to the land purchase clauses of the 1870 land act which had proved a dead letter - a surprising outcome given agrarian prosperity, the demands for more extensive land reform, and the success of the equivalent land distribution clauses of the Irish Church Act. Parliament inquired into the subject through Shaw-Lefevre's select committee in 1878, which had broad cross-party representation and was largely composed of Irish members. It reported that there was a strong case for improved purchase facilities and less obstructive legal processes. Extensive expert advice was taken from those already involved in the administration of the Irish Church Act and who would later play a crucial role in the Land Commission, including Denis Godley, Stanislaus Lynch, John E. Vernon, Murrough O'Brien and Mr Justice O'Hagan.8

Nothing came of the committee's work in the short term, and, in the face of the Irish agrarian crisis a year later, its deliberations might seem academic. What it had done, however, was to identify the need to increase the number of proprietors as an important issue for the first time since 1870. Shaw-Lefevre's work was also overshadowed by the general crisis in British agriculture which led Beaconsfield in 1879 to set up a commission under the chairmanship of the duke of Richmond which had Ireland within its terms of reference. Liberals, coming into office in April 1880 and almost totally unprepared in relation to Ireland, were distinctly nervous about the Richmond Commission and established their own under a Liberal Irish peer, the earl of Bessborough, to investigate the working of the 1870 Irish land act exclusively. Both commissions were preparing their reports in late 1880 as the government struggled to decide upon an Irish policy in the face of the Land League's agrarian agitation. Each failed to agree on its recommendations, prompting a petulant outburst from Gladstone in the case of the Bessborough Commission. The evidence gathered was comprehensive, and included expert opinion as well as comment from both landlords and tenant organisations. In this mass of at times contradictory evidence and advice, four broad and often interconnected issues largely featured - tenure, proprietorship, improvement, and poverty. Taken alongside other political, official and external advice, these

7 David Thornley, Isaac Butt and home rule (London, 1964); T. A. Jenkins, Gladstone, Whiggery and the Liberal Party, 1874-1886 (Oxford, 1988); Allen Warren, 'The Liberal Party and Ireland: years of opposition and a new beginning, 1874-1880' (unpublished paper).

8 Rep. on land act (1877), evidence from Dr Neilson Hancock, Denis Godley, Stanislaus Lynch; Rep. on land act (1878), evidence from J. E. Vernon; Murrough O'Brien; Mr Justice O'Hagan; Professor Thomas Baldwin.




were the ingredients out of which policy would be formulated over the coming decade.9

But, of course, the winter of 1879-80 demanded more immediate measures of relief. Here the response of Beaconsfield's government was critical and had a long-term significance, which has been overlooked by historians, in that it concentrated on the specific and distinctive features of the west of Ireland. That such a Conservative policy was also associated with the stridently anti-Irish rhetoric of the chief secretary, James Lowther, should not obscure its importance. In summary, the government, by concentrating on the relief of distress, recognised that the existing poor law system was unable to meet the needs of the overcrowded districts. These impoverished and overpopulated areas with their poor communications simply did not have the resources and infrastructure to meet the challenge of falling prices, poor harvests and bad weather in the late 1870s. As a result, the system was effectively suspended, with increasing sums of money being devoted to the provision of seed potatoes, improvement loans to landlords and sanitary authorities, and eventually outdoor relief for the able-bodied, the funds for which were drawn from the Irish Church Fund (the surplus available following the disendowment of the Church of Ireland under the legislation of 1869). These responses to the economic crisis did not prompt much cabinet discussion in early 1880 and were largely the result of executive action by officials in Dublin as Beaconsfield prepared to dissolve parliament. Nor did the new Liberal government find it easy to change direction immediately, Forster being forced to continue the relief policy, much to the irritation of his political masters in London. Their consciences were squared by the fact that costs of relief were paid out of the Irish Church Fund, specifically designated for use in Ireland. Even the ill-fated Compensation for Disturbance Bill, whose defeat in the House of Lords was later lamented by liberal historians, was in fact a botched attempt to combine relief and eviction policies and would have been limited to the western districts, scheduled under the relief legislation.10

As well as the advice presented to the royal commissions, British governments were also deluged with journalistic assessments of Irish needs during 1880, representing all strands of informed and political opinion. As mentioned earlier, one of the most important was provided by the Quaker philanthropist, James Hack Tuke, who had earlier won public esteem as a young man for his relief work during the Famine with W. E. Forster, the new chief secretary. Tuke was well connected politically across all sections of English and established Irish opinion, and his visits to the west of Ireland confirmed its continuing distinctiveness in his mind and the need for special policies. His Irish distress and its remedies, published in 1880, proved to be popular and influential, being reprinted eight times in as many months. Its impact is all the more surprising as its proposed remedy for poverty and overcrowding was state-aided emigration.

Since the 1830s British governments had generally steered clear of involvement in emigration from the United Kingdom. In the case of Ireland, such

9 Richmond Comm., i, evidence from Professor Thomas Baldwin, Murrough O'Brien, R. V. O'Brien; Bessborough Comm., i-ii, evidence from J. B. Greene, E. W. O'Brien, Murrough O'Brien, John E. Vernon, Professor Thomas Baldwin.

10 For distress policy see Warren, 'Disraeli ...'; idem, 'Forster...'.




policies were particularly unattractive to any government given the likely political and episcopal opposition, especially as there had been no shortage of voluntary emigration since the Famine. But for a brief moment in the late 1870s and early 1880s the idea gained much wider support. There were two reasons for this. First, the increased understanding of the distinctive character of the west of Ireland highlighted the difficulty of finding a solution to its problems, short of compulsory land redistribution to create viable holdings. Second, traditional clerical opposition to state-aided emigration was diluted by the actions of the Canadian government under the leadership of Sir John Macdonald. It wanted additional rural settlement in its western provinces and sought to encourage immigration through free gifts of land for settlers, along with the provision of farm buildings and stock. Archbishop Lynch of Toronto became an enthusiast, visiting Ireland in 1879 to promote a specifically Irish scheme and staying at the Viceregal Lodge. With white colonial farm settlement being increasingly seen as part of Britain's imperial destiny and as a solution to British urban overcrowding, Tuke and those interested principally in Ireland could use this favourable moment to offer state-assisted emigration as an acceptable policy for the west. At Forster's request, Tuke visited Canada to investigate the possibilities of a state-assisted scheme."

The Liberal government in London had therefore an enormous amount of evidence upon which to base its policy in late 1880. The choice made, essentially by Gladstone, was to concentrate almost exclusively on the issue of land tenure through the incorporation of the principles of the 'three Fs' into law, building, as he saw it, on the principles of the 1870 act. Seen as revolutionary by many because of its interference with the principles of free contract in relation to landed property, from other perspectives it was a narrowly based response to the crisis in the Irish countryside, aimed principally at undermining the appeal of the Land League to the tenant farmers, largely by means of rent arbitration. Tightly drafted by Gladstone personally, it had significant internal weaknesses, quickly exposed, arising from the exclusion of leaseholders and tenants in arrears. The government also wholly underestimated the scale of the demand for reduced rents, which delayed pacification through judicial arbitration and required a large bureaucracy

" On Canadian emigration see C. J. Houston and W. J. Smyth, Irish emigration and Canadian settlement: patterns, links and letters (Toronto & Belfast, 1990), p. 219; G. J. Storz, 'Archbishop Lynch and New Ireland: an unfulfilled dream for Canada's Northwest' in Cath. Hist. Rev., lxviii (1982), pp 612-24. For Tuke and his writings see Sir Edward Fry, James Hack Tuke: a memoir (London, 1899); J. H. Tuke, Irish distress and its remedies (London, 1880); idem, 'Peasant proprietors at home' in The Nineteenth Century, viii (Aug. 1880), pp 182-94; idem, 'Irish emigration', ibid., ix (Feb. 1881), pp 358-71; The Times, 18 Apr. 1881; J. H. Tuke, 'Reminiscences of William Edward Forster' in Friends' Quarterly Examiner, xxiii (1889), p. 161. On imperial migration more generally see The Times, 20 Jan., 3, 12 Aug. 1880, 13 Apr. 1881; C. S. Roundell to Spencer, 6 July 1880 (B.L., Althorp papers, Add. MS 77013 (the Althorp papers are in the process of being catalogued and are not yet fully foliated)); Lord Emly to Forster, 5 Nov. 1880 (ibid., Add. MS 44157, f. 208). Roundell had been a contemporary of Spencer's at Harrow, subsequently becoming his private secretary and a longstanding friend. His correspondence with Spencer is an important source for Spencer's thinking. Emly was a member of the Limerick clique of Irish Liberals, with whom Forster established close contact whilst in Ireland: see Florence Arnold-Forster 's journal, ed. Moody & Hawkins, pp ix-xxi.




in the form of the Land Commission. More relevant for our purposes was the decision not to take any action on the other areas highlighted since 1879 in relation to proprietorship, economic development and relief of distress. Some modification was made to the 1870 purchase clauses, but only at the margin and without the intention of creating significant numbers of peasant purchasers. There was also some slight encouragement to voluntary private emigration organisations, but none to public bodies, and almost nothing was included to avoid the risk of recurrent distress or to assist economic improvement. In addition, the Tories' relief policy of early 1880 was abandoned with the better harvest of that year, and the regular workhouse test was reimposed.12

It is surprising that the narrowness of Gladstone's policy did not give rise to more comment, either at the time or later. Two reasons for this may be suggested. First, the Conservative opposition to the land bill was particularly ineffective, partly as a consequence of Beaconsfield's death in April 1881, and partly because Tory interest in Ireland was poorly organised. English Conservative opposition also remained muted, with county members fearful that outright hostility might encourage similar tenant activism in their own agricultural districts. Sir Stafford Northcote concentrated his attack on a demand for landlord compensation, and, among leading Conservatives, only W. H. Smith made any strategic criticism of the government's approach. Despite the rhetoric surrounding the bill and the known anxieties of the Whig section of the Liberal Party, the second reading passed by an overwhelming majority and no serious attack was mounted by Salisbury in the Lords. Second, the political attack launched by Parnell in the autumn of 1881 in 'testing the act' and issuing the 'no rent' manifesto tended to obscure the more detailed limitations of the legislation. Because of this, the Liberal government resisted all amendments to the act in the early months of 1882, with the exception of those concerning the tenants in arrears. Instead the government tried to find political rather than legislative responses to the criticisms of the act, an approach that eventually led to the Kilmainham negotiations and the New Departure.'3

Nevertheless, by early 1882 criticism of the Gladstone settlement was mounting. In London Parnellites and Tories demanded increased numbers of peasant proprietors, and the Conservative leaders highlighted this issue in Liverpool in early April. In support, W. H. Smith was preparing to introduce a debate on the issue on the day the Kilmainham prisoners were released at the beginning of May. In the Lords, Salisbury established a select committee in the face of stiff ministerial opposition to gather evidence about the act's workings, which provided a ready vehicle for detailed criticism and comment from the Land Commission and its officials. From a different angle, J. H. Tuke and his

2 See Warren, 'Gladstone ...'; The Gladstone diaries, ed. M. R. D. Foot and H. C. G. Matthew (14 vols, Oxford, 1968-94 (henceforth Gladstone diaries)), ix-x.

13 For Smith and Northcote see Hansard 3, cclx, 1571 (2 May 1882); cclxi, 897 (19 May 1882). For an analysis of the Conservative division on the second reading see Annual Reg., 1881, pp 92-9; The Times, 21 May 1881. For Salisbury see Hansard 3, clxiv, 254 (1 Aug. 1881). For Smith's Irish interests more generally see Sir Herbert Maxwell, The life and times of the Right Honourable William Henry Smith, M.P. (2 vols, London, 1893), i, 190; ii, 57; Viscount Chilston, W. H. Smith (London, 1965), p. 142. For the stance of the Liberal cabinet see Warren, 'Forster...'.




associates, now working through a committee under the duke of Bedford, were highlighting the condition of the west of Ireland and pressing for more action to relieve congestion. There were legal challenges also. Finally, and most surprisingly, the Treasury, fearful of some future profligacy in a post-Gladstonian world, briefly became interested in putting social reconstruction on an established footing before that benign financial influence was removed. Nevertheless, despite all these difficulties, once it appeared possible that Parnell might settle for relatively little in order to get out of jail, the Liberal government was able to stick closely to the terms of the 1881 settlement, only resolving to deal with the question of antecedent tenant arrears by gift rather than loan. The appearance of a new beginning could be presented by the simultaneous decision to change the executive in Dublin through the appointments of Spencer and Lord Frederick Cavendish.14

III

Spencer arrived in Ireland in May 1882 with Gladstone's land policy intact. But it had remained narrowly tenurial, and criticism continued in the years that followed. The response of the Spencer regime was to try to secure modest modifications - in 1882-3 in relation to poverty and overcrowding, the condition of labourers, and the fishing industry in the west; in 1884 through improved land purchase; and in 1885 again through land purchase, education and measures relating to labourers. In short, all of the elements that were subsequently to make up Unionist policy towards Ireland from 1887 onwards were explored in the work of the Spencer rdgime.'5

14 For Salisbury's and Northcote's speeches see The Times, 13 Apr. 1882. For Salisbury on Lansdowne's motion to establish a select committee see Hansard 3, cclxvi, 1510 (24 Feb. 1882). For critical comment on the land act from the Land Commission and its officials see First rep. from select cttee on land law ..., evidence from Denis Godley, Murrough O'Brien, George Fottrell, E. F. Litton, Mr Justice O'Hagan, J. E. Vernon, Stanislaus Lynch. For emigration see J. H. Tuke, 'Emigration from Ireland...' in Contemporary Review, xli (Apr. 1882), pp 694-714; Forster to Gladstone, 10 Apr. 1882 (B.L., Add. MS 44160, f. 92). For legal difficulties arising from the case of Adams v. Dunseath see The Times, 1 Mar. 1882. For Treasury comment see R. E. Welby (assistant financial secretary), 29 Oct. 1881 (B.L., Add. MS 44627, f. 81). For overall background see Warren, 'Forster...'.

15 The following analysis of policy formation under Earl Spencer is based on a detailed chronological reconstruction of the correspondence flowing on a daily basis between politicians and officials in London and Dublin and uses largely the Gladstone and Althorp manuscripts in the British Library. During the autumn of each of the years 1882-4 discussions took place between ministers on the general political and parliamentary situation and possible Irish legislation to be introduced. Decisions in principle were usually made in the weeks leading up to the opening of the parliamentary session. A period of legislative evolution then followed, with Irish bills normally being introduced late in the session. The progress and final fate of such legislation is then followed through both Houses of Parliament. There are no specific policy files for Irish business in this period, hence the need for the reconstruction of the process through the correspondence. So as not to burden the reader with excessive detail, reference is made here only to the principal correspondence and files which provide the foundation of the analysis.




It is important to look at these efforts in a little detail to understand the principles on which they were based, as well as their impact. It was, paradoxically, through emigration that Spencer first reacquainted himself with the conditions in the west. Despite his earlier experience as viceroy and as a trustee since 1869 (along with Lord Bessborough) of the Irish estates of the fourth Viscount Clifden during his minority, Spencer had shown little interest in Ireland since 1874. On taking office, he was immediately lobbied by Tuke on behalf of the Bedford committee. Already in touch with Forster before his resignation, Tuke secured a long interview with Spencer in Dublin on 22 May.'6 Archbishop Lynch of Toronto also returned to Dublin in May to promote the Canadian emigration scheme through a use of the emigration clause in the 1881 land act. Spencer agreed to visit the west once the immediate law-and-order crisis had passed and in a letter of 14 July described the subject of emigration to Trevelyan as one of 'vast importance'.17 Two days later the cabinet decided to include an emigration clause in the committee stage of the arrears bill despite Gladstone's vigorous opposition.'" Public bodies, such as boards of guardians, were now to be able to borrow from the Treasury for emigration purposes on agreed terms. Up to 1 million over five years was made available, specifically on condition that not more than 5 was provided per emigrant and that approved schemes were confined to those unions scheduled in 1879 relief legislation (Donegal, Clare, Cork (West Riding), Kerry, Galway, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon and Sligo).19

It was no coincidence that the clause's operation was restricted in this way given the experience of distress in 1879-80. The following two winters had been less difficult in relation to the relief of distress, and at first Spencer thought 1882-3 would be the same. But his tour in September convinced him of the need to tackle the problem of overcrowding. Carefully managed emigration was to be the key. By November 1882, however, Spencer had become worried that considerable distress was likely in the coming winter, with the inevitable crisis over relief. But the new under-secretary, Robert Hamilton, with his Treasury background, and the vice-president of the Local Government Board, Henry Robinson, were both adamant that the exceptional Conservative policies of 1879 should not be repeated and that the normal workhouse test should be applied. Robinson in particular argued that special measures encouraged demoralisation and jobbery, delaying a long-term solution to the problem of overcrowding. He was prepared to accept special public works for constructing light railways or fishery piers, but not a policy of largely indiscriminate improvement loans to

16 For the work of Tuke's committee see Emigration from Ireland ...; Spencer to Trevelyan, 22 May 1882 (B.L., Add. MS 77508); First rep. from select cttee on land law ..., Godley's evidence. For ministerial discussion see Forster to Gladstone, 10 Apr., 15 June 1882 (B.L., Add. MS 44160, ff 92, 182); Spencer to Trevelyan, 22 May 1882 (ibid., Add. MS 76944).

17 Spencer to Trevelyan, 14 July 1882 (B.L., Add. MS 76944); J. H. Tuke to Courtenay Boyle, 2 June 1882 (ibid., Add. MS 77026).

18 Gladstone diaries, x, 300; Trevelyan to Spencer, 17 July 1882 (B.L., Add. MS 76947); Gladstone to Spencer, 19 July 1882 (ibid., Add. MS 76855).

19 For the Commons debate see in particular Hansard 3, cclxxi, 1671 (6 July 1882); cclxxii, 152, 1226 (11 July 1882).




landlords or local authorities. Spencer endorsed their advice, as did Gladstone and the cabinet on 1 December.2

This decision had three important consequences, each helping to imprint the unique character of the scheduled districts on the official mind. First, by sticking to existing relief policies when there was a possibility that direct relief might have to be given, the government knew that certain poor law unions might become bankrupt. Second, it made the government acutely aware that ways had to be found of preventing this from becoming a regular occurrence. For Spencer, in particular, it confirmed the need for a large emigration scheme. Third, it focused attention on the social and economic infrastructure of those districts and how economic development might be encouraged. Each issue was a subject of extensive government discussion in the weeks preceding and during the 1883 parliamentary session.21

Some of the poorest unions did go bankrupt - Templemore, Killala and Swinford for example - adding to the pressures on the government for action, which now included the Catholic bishops in Connacht, who were calling for more generous tenant loans as the way to relieve the distress. Three possible solutions within the existing poor law structure were discussed: first, to extend the area to be rated for relief to neighbouring unions (thereby increasing the risk of bankrupting them as well); second, to impose some national rate for the relief of the distressed districts; third, to seek Treasury help. Spencer and Hamilton rejected the first outright and were sceptical about the second, and they faced stiff Treasury resistance to any central government help, an opposition strengthened by the direct intervention of Gladstone on 1 January. An extended correspondence followed, and after three months it was eventually agreed that the Irish Church Fund (which Spencer thought should be reserved for a large emigration scheme) should be raided and that some additional support should be provided by the Treasury. Not of vital importance in itself, the debate showed how closely connected were the issues of relief, reconstruction and public finance.22

Spencer still continued to place great hopes on a large scheme of Canadian emigration as a more permanent solution. He remained in touch with Tuke, who

20 For Spencer's tour of the west see Spencer to Granville, 17 Sept. 1882 (Spencer papers, i, no. 279); Spencer to Gladstone, 20 Sept. 1882 (B.L., Add. MS 44309, f. 152). For development of relief policy see Spencer to Trevelyan, 10, 17, 19 Nov. 1882, Trevelyan to Spencer, 16, 20 Nov. 1882 (ibid., Add. MS 76950-51); cabinet memo, 20 Nov. 1882 (ibid., Add. MS 44627, f. 114); Gladstone diaries, x, 372-3. For government circular regarding administration of poor relief see The Times, 14 Dec. 1882. For Spencer's more general anxieties on Irish affairs see Spencer to Hartington, 10 Dec. 1882 (Spencer papers, i, no. 294).

21 For the unpopularity of the decision on poor relief see The Times, 22 Dec. 1882; memo [9 Jan 1883] of meeting between Spencer and bishops from Connacht (B.L., Add. MS 77315). For Spencer's general assessment see Spencer to Hartington, 13 Jan. 1883 (Spencer papers, i, no. 302).

22 For the reaction to bankrupt unions, and disputes with the Treasury about funding if existing procedures failed, see Gladstone to Leonard Courtney, 1 Jan. 1883 (B.L., Add. MS 44546, f. 65); Gladstone to Childers, 8 Mar. 1883 (ibid., f. 85); Spencer to Childers, 9 Mar. 1883 (ibid., Add. MS 76914); Childers to Spencer, 13 Mar. 1883 (ibid.); Hansard 3, cclxxviii, 1257 (26 Apr. 1883).




had visited Canada to examine the possibilities for rural settlement. But the initiative for a much larger scheme came from George Stephen, president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, representing a consortium of the Railway Company, the Hudson's Bay Company and a group of other property interests. Possibly prompted by Tuke, he sought a ten-year interest-free Treasury loan of 1 million to provide the capital for the resettlement of some 50,000 inhabitants in family units from the scheduled districts to the Canadian western provinces. Supported by the Canadian government's offer of free land and stock, the value of the consortium's own land alongside the railway would increase through settlement, with the result that after ten years the consortium would be able to sell its own land at a profit and thereby repay the imperial loan. It was presented as an imaginative use of the more liberal emigration provisions of the arrears act, which would only cost the Treasury the lost interest on the loan. Spencer was enthusiastic after meeting Stephen in London in early March 1883, and particularly after he had made a second tour of the west in April. It promised a significant reduction in overcrowding over a sustained period; it was based on agrarian family resettlement, which would lessen clerical opposition; and it seemed to be acceptable to the Treasury. After extended discussion Childers, the chancellor of the exchequer, prepared a scheme which was accepted by the cabinet on 5 May, with Gladstone again opposing the principle of public aid. Although supporting the idea, the Treasury remained nevertheless insistent that the ultimate financial responsibility had to remain with the Canadian government. The Canadian government, however, jibbed at this, pointing out that it was already making a major contribution to the proposed scheme. Gradually all the parties began to grow cool in their enthusiasm, and by midsummer the idea had been quietly abandoned.23

The failure of the Stephen proposals did not stop more modest emigration work under the terms of the arrears act, particularly that of selected public bodies, the Tuke committee and other private schemes such as that of Vere Foster, which helped female servants to emigrate to North America. Significant numbers of emigrants were assisted, and Spencer was keen to extend the 1882 provisions. Nevertheless, state-encouraged emigration was never going to be uncontroversial with Irish political and clerical opinion, and the government needed to introduce more directly constructive measures as the 1883 parliamentary session progressed, particularly as it had already decided not to introduce local government reform or to amend the land act. In particular, Irish Liberal members, coming under political pressure as Parnell's Irish National League extended its constituency power, urged the government to act. In late 1882 Spencer and Trevelyan had given preliminary consideration to measures to improve the condition of agricultural labourers and to support the fishing industry. After

23 See above, n. 11; also The Times, 23 Mar. 1881; Tuke to Courtenay Boyle, 14 Aug. 1882 (B.L., Add. MS 77513); notes relating to emigration 5, 6, 7 Mar. 1883 (ibid., Add. MS 77057); Spencer to Childers, 8 Mar. 1883 (ibid., Add. MS 76914); Childers to Spencer, 13 Mar. 1883 (ibid.); Spencer to Trevelyan, 29 Apr. 1883 (ibid., Add. MS 76494); Spencer's memo on emigration, 4 May 1883 (ibid., Add. MS 44629, f. 34); Gladstone diaries, x, 441; The diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th earl of Derby between 1878 and 1893: a selection, ed. John Vincent (Oxford, 2003 (henceforth Derby diaries)), p. 441; Carlingford to Spencer, 3 June 1883 (Spencer papers, i, no. 319). For a final verdict on the scheme and its failure see The Times, 4 Aug. 1883.




meeting the Irish Liberals in late April, they decided to support the construction of light railways and steam tramways as a relatively cheap means of improving communications in the west as well as providing work to relieve distress and under-employment.24 Gladstone and the Treasury did not oppose the idea outright, on the assumption that a properly drafted loan or guarantee scheme could be put together in order to encourage local enterprise and investment in these remote areas. In a long memorandum Robert Hamilton explicitly linked successful emigration and the construction of steam tramways as the twin elements in the government's approach to the congested districts. Whether or not the Stephen plan got off the ground, he was of the opinion that the emigration provisions of the arrears act should be renewed on a more generous basis, and that Irish investors should be encouraged to put their capital into authorised light railway schemes. Of the various ways of securing this, Hamilton favoured providing a Treasury-guaranteed minimum return on capital invested, rather than more generous loans, in order to give a vote of confidence to what would be essentially local initiatives.25 Spencer, worried that Gladstone would drag his feet on any scheme involving public funds, wrote to Hartington: I am sure that it is essential to relax the stern laws of financial virtue in such cases in Ireland. It is not far-fetched to say that parts of the country are so helpless and miserable with so little power of self-development that they should be treated much as we would treat India.26

2 For early omission of Irish measures for the following session see Carlingford to Spencer, 6 Nov. 1882 (B.L., Add. MS 76910); Spencer to Trevelyan, 10 Nov. 1882 (ibid., Add. MS 76950, f. 265). In early 1883 there were extended discussions prompted by Gladstone's personal desire to introduce Irish local government, with the cabinet deciding against on 6 February (Derby diaries, p. 505). Similarly, in face of Irish members' pressure to amend the land act, the cabinet also decided against, a decision announced by Gladstone on 14 Mar. 1883: see Hansard 3, cclxxvii, 476. For Irish Liberal members see Trevelyan to Spencer, 17 Apr. 1883 (B.L., Add. MS 76594, f. 432).

25 Spencer to Gladstone, 20 May 1883 (B.L., Add. MS 44310, f. 93). 26 Spencer to Hartington 4 June 1883 (Devonshire MSS, Chatsworth House, Derbyshire,

340/1361). For the 1883 legislative programme see Carlingford to Spencer, 6 Nov. 1882 (B.L., Add. MS 76910). For Gladstone on the need for Irish local government see Gladstone to Trevelyan, 5 Dec. 1882 (ibid., Add. MS 44546, f. 43); Trevelyan to Gladstone, 23 Dec. 1882 (ibid., Add. MS 44335, f. 80). For Spencer's reactions see Spencer to Hartington, 10 Dec. 1882, 13 Jan. 1883 (Spencer papers, i, nos 294, 302); Spencer to Hartington, 29 Dec. 1882 (Devonshire MS 340/1301); Hartington to Spencer, 25 Dec. 1882 (B.L., Add. MS 76898); Spencer to Harcourt, 15 Jan. 1883 (ibid., Add. MS 76930); Spencer to Granville, 28 Jan. 1883 (Spencer papers, i, no. 304); Spencer to Gladstone, 3 Feb. 1883 (ibid., no. 305). For the cabinet finally deciding against the scheme see Derby diaries, p. 505. For minor measures see Trevelyan to Spencer, 12 Feb. 1883 (B.L., Add. MS 76952); Spencer to Trevelyan, 16 Feb. 1883 (ibid.); Hansard 3, cclxxvi, 1063 (27 Feb. 1883). For the decision not to accept any amendment to the land act see Gladstone diaries, x, 415; Gladstone to Spencer 12 Mar. 1883 (Spencer papers, i, no. 311); Hansard 3, cclxxvii, 476 (14 Mar. 1883). For the meeting of Irish members with Trevelyan about the condition of the west and the need to construct light railways see Trevelyan to Spencer, 13, 17, 18 Apr., 3 May 1883, Spencer to Trevelyan, 16 Apr. 1883 (B.L., Add. MSS 76494-5). For long and important letters by Spencer on the condition of the west, including memo from Hamilton and Gladstone's reply, see Spencer to Gladstone, 20, 25 May 1883 (ibid., Add. MS 44310, ff 93, 102); Gladstone to Spencer, 21 May 1883 (ibid., Add. MS 44546, f. 116).




Progress was slow, and it was not until 23 June that the cabinet finally approved a tramways scheme with a guaranteed rate of return for a three-year experimental period. Gladstone, with memories of 1866, said he was in favour of owning the railways but not running them, and that he thought guarantee schemes dangerous.27 But given the lateness of the parliamentary session and the pressure from all Irish members, it was agreed to proceed, and also that renewed emigration provisions should be included within the bill. In a cabinet memorandum of 24 July Spencer and Hamilton showed how successful the 1882 emigration clauses had been, with some 18,500 individuals assisted. In Hamilton's opinion, the general desire to emigrate would continue, but not among the poorest sections of the population without state aid. As a result, another 200,000 was added from the Irish Church Fund to support emigration (so as once again to square Gladstone's conscience that he was using local funds).28 In the event, the bill ran into opposition from nationalist members, who were promoting the idea of internal migration, as well as condemnation by the Catholic bishops, fearful that most emigrants would end up in the cities of the eastern American seaboard. Both Parnell and the government had to compromise given the lateness of the session, with the result that a notional 50,000 was allocated to assist any approved internal settlement scheme. As finally passed, the Tramways and Public Companies (Ireland) Act gave powers to grand juries to guarantee approved tramway schemes, with Treasury loans which would give a return of 2.5 per cent over the repayment period. The emigration clauses provided 200,000 in total on a basis of 8 per head, with some 50,000 reserved for internal migration.29

Finally, the government decided to accept with modifications two other pieces of Irish legislation affecting the west, each introduced with cross-party support by the Irish members. The first made more generous loans available to help the fishing industry through the construction of piers and harbours. State aid to the fishing industry was later to be criticised robustly by the Allport Commission in 1888, but in the context of the parliamentary situation in July 1883 the bill was regarded largely opportunistically. The second measure again came from the Irish members directly and focused on the condition of agricultural labourers' dwellings. Trevelyan, realising that it would secure general cross-party support, urged acceptance in order to make it uncontroversial. The subsequent Labourers (Ireland) Act gave sanitary authorities permissive powers to purchase land compulsorily for the construction of cottages and gardens of not less than half a statute acre and to borrow the necessary funds under the terms of the Public Loans (Ireland) Act of 1879. The first eighteen months of Spencer's viceroyalty,

27 For cabinet discussion see Gladstone diaries, x, 464; Derby diaries, p. 559. For cabinet decision on light railways see Hansard 3, cclxxx, 1074 (20 June 1883). These modest improvement measures prompted long letters from Hamilton to Spencer (7, 10 July 1883) on the relationship of public finance, social improvement and local government (B.L., Add. MS 77057). For Gladstone on the need to pass these measures see Gladstone diaries, xi, 6, 8.

28 Spencer cabinet memo, 24 July 1883 (B.L., Add. MS 44629, f. 56); Gladstone diaries, x, 8; xi, 13; Derby diaries, p. 574.

29 For episcopal and parliamentary difficulties and amendments to the bill see The Times, 7 July 1883; Hansard 3, cclxxxii, 1965 (7 Aug. 1883); cclxxxiii, 550 (14 Aug. 1883); Gladstone diaries, xi, 14.




therefore, had seen some modest attempts to tackle the distinctive social and economic character of the west. Both Dublin and London were distinctly cautious about funding, wishing to use the church surplus if at all possible. It remained to be seen if these initiatives would bring real benefits.30

IV

The following parliamentary year saw a shift of emphasis, with London and Dublin debating whether the 1881-2 land settlement, including the arrears, was to remain final. Until late 1883 the government sternly resisted any proposed modification. Thereafter discussions principally centred on the question of land purchase and peasant proprietorship, leading to the introduction of a government bill in May 1884. Widely criticised, and with none of the interested parties satisfied with its provisions, it was abandoned with some relief in early July as the crisis over the Third Reform Bill deepened. Not surprisingly, the 1884 land purchase bill has largely disappeared from the historical record, but it remains important because it provided the basis of the government measure planned for 1885 by the Spencer administration, and which, after the fall of the government, became the Ashbourne Act. By looking at these policy debates in some detail, we can understand more clearly the changing mindset of London and Dublin in relation to Irish land, including the growing realisation that the 1881 act was not a final settlement, and that moving away from an overwhelmingly tenurial system would raise much wider questions about the social balance of the Irish countryside and the relationship between central and local finance, responsibility and representative devolution.

The debate over land from late 1883 involved all those policy groups mentioned earlier: the Dublin executive, including the increasingly powerful under-secretary, Robert Hamilton; the Land Commissioners and other experts; Irish political pressure groups representing landlords and moderate nationalists and Irish Liberals, often in association with radical land reformers in Britain; and finally the Treasury in London, with its concerns about the security of loan repayments and the risks of default. To complicate matters further, there was also a Parnellite intervention through Mrs O'Shea directly to Gladstone, much to the irritation of Irish Liberal members, who saw their position being further undermined. While there was little agreement about solutions, there was near unanimity on how the land question had developed since 1881. Comment focused on three areas: that the modest adjustments to the 1870 Bright land purchase clauses had had no impact; that there was a continuing need to diversify the land system; and that the most immediate and unanticipated effect of the 1881 act had been to freeze the land market, partly because tenants were mainly seeking reduced rents, and partly because the new system of 'dual ownership' meant in reality that the only potential purchasers were the tenants themselves.

Much of this had been anticipated by officials and experts before the Kilmainham negotiations nearly two years earlier, informing the discussions that Lord Frederick Cavendish had had with the Irish executive in March 1882

30 For the debate on fisheries see Hansard 3, cclxxx, 1047 (20 June 1883).




as chief secretary to the Treasury. It had been smothered by the Kilmainham negotiations and the events of 6 May, with the result that the government had been able to maintain the integrity of its land policy largely unaltered. Gladstone in particular had only been prepared to consider further land purchase if linked to reformed local government so as to provide an elected guarantee structure for the repayment of any Treasury funds. For his part, Spencer opposed the introduction of reformed local government in the winter of 1882-3 until the law-and-order situation had improved. As a result, the government had found it easy to refuse any amendment to the land act in early 1883 in response to a wide-ranging bill from the Irish members, a position repeated on 12 June in reply to a specific land purchase motion by Lord George Hamilton. Hamilton's initiative was the first sign of a renewed Conservative interest in the proprietorship question since W. H. Smith's intended motion fifteen months before.31

It is therefore surprising that Whitehall and Dublin Castle should have devoted so much effort during the first half of 1884 to the land purchase issue, leading to the production of a thirty-four-page cabinet memorandum on 30 March and the reluctant introduction of a complex land purchase bill six weeks later.32

It was a densely woven debate. In London two normally opposing groups were in broad agreement: the Treasury and the Irish members. The Treasury was a surprisingly active participant, but in the figure of the new chancellor,

31 For Gladstone's rejection of the Irish members' land act amendment bill, and Lord George Hamilton's land purchase motion, see Hansard 3, cclxxvii, 476 (14 Mar. 1883); cclxxx, 446 (12 June 1883).

32 Spencer's cabinet memo, 1 Apr. 1884 (B.L., Add. MS 77321). The evolution of the memorandum was an extremely complex process, starting on 10 November with the cabinet meeting to discuss the Irish legislative programme. No purchase measure was then anticipated (Gladstone diaries, xi, 36). Pressure for action came from a range of sources: Irish landlords through the committee formed under Lord Castletown; Irish Liberal members led by T. A. Dickson; the Parnellite members; and leading Conservatives such as W. H. Smith. Childers travelled to Dublin to meet both the landlords and the Land Commission in early January 1884, his visit initiating the extensive correspondence that later formed the core of Spencer's cabinet memo of I April. The timetable was dominated by the need to decide a response to the Irish members' land act amendment bill introduced on 5 March, which the cabinet had decided to reject earlier that day, including as it did both purchase provisions and the admission of leaseholders. Continued pressure from all sides led on 16 March to the decision to revisit the purchase question through the publication of much of the previous correspondence along with a commentary, which formed the basis of Spencer's cabinet memo of 1 April. For the cabinet discussion on 5 March 1884 see Derby diaries, p. 642. For the decision to produce the cabinet memo see Childers to Spencer, 16 Mar. 1884 (B.L., Add. MS 76916). On Parnellite links see Gladstone to W. H. O'Shea, 1 Mar. 1884 (ibid., Add. MS 77321); O'Shea to Gladstone, 3 Mar. 1884 (ibid., Add. MS 44269, f. 61); O'Shea to Gladstone, 6 Mar. 1884 (N.L.I., O'Shea papers, MS 5752, f. 156). For Irish Liberal anger see Trevelyan to Spencer, 28, 30 Mar. 1884 (B.L., Add. MS 76962). Spencer's cabinet memo of 1 April was discussed in cabinet on 28 April, immediately before the introduction of a purchase resolution by Castletown in the Lords and a purchase bill from the Irish Liberals in the Commons: see Gladstone diaries, xi, 139; Derby diaries, p. 657; Dodson cabinet notes, 28 Apr. 1884 (Bodl., dep. Monk Bretton, 62).




Hugh Childers, it found a man for whom extended peasant proprietorship was rather a fad. He had promoted it in late 1880 in association with local devolution in the general debate about land reform, and now linked it to the creation of a land credit bank in Ireland, which would provide the resources. But Treasury support also included an unexpected voice, that of its permanent London officials, who indicated that they would support a properly drafted scheme in order to avoid something worse. As mentioned earlier, Treasury officials had been worried since late 1881 that, once Gladstone's personal influence over public finances had been removed, profligacy would rule, particularly if it coincided with a new Conservative government. In their view, Ireland was in especial danger, its governing system being riddled with jobbery and inefficiency, and one in which landlords would quickly capture any funded scheme in their own interest. As for the parliamentary classes in London, there was a growing agreement that something more needed to be done. Parnellites had always demanded a variety of measures, something most recently expressed in the land amendment bill in 1883, but now they were joined by moderate Home Rulers and Irish Liberals, each group becoming increasingly anxious about their own political future with the prospect of the enfranchisement of the rural labourer and as the National League extended its influence. English Radicals had also always been interested in agrarian land reform, particularly if the influence of the landed classes would be undermined by larger numbers of small proprietors. Shaw-Lefevre remained the most influential and well informed. The formation in late 1883 of an Irish Committee made up of Radical and Irish members was another sign that the issue was likely to feature on the parliamentary agenda in 1884.

In Dublin there were also converging streams of opinion. The first was that of the Irish landlords. For most, the crisis of 1879-82 had found them individually confused and without a representative voice. Irish ascendancy opposition to the land bill had been ineffective; and a year later, in the debate over the arrears, Waterford and his Irish friends had merely earned Salisbury's withering contempt for their refusal to force a constitutional crisis over the bill. Much more critical was the near universal reduction of rents by 20 per cent or more in the land court, and the realisation that landlords wishing to sell could do so only to their existing tenants at highly discounted prices. Now led by Lord Castletown, they pressed the government to take action to unfreeze the land market by easing the ability of tenants to purchase their holdings. The second stream was represented by the Land Commission itself, which continued to emphasise that the existing purchase clauses were inoperative, that action was needed to free the land market, and that a more diverse system of landownership should be part of a more comprehensive social pacification. This last point was made forcibly by Liberal landed opinion in Ireland. It had been expressed earlier by the Land Tenure Reform Association in 1880 in evidence presented to the Bessborough Commission and to Forster, but was most articulately expressed in 1884 by Lord Monteagle, who saw that the demand for home rule would become unanswerable unless landlords entered into a different pattern of social relations with their tenants. The result was a proliferation of proposed land purchase schemes in 1884 involving the establishing of Irish land banks, the creation of land debentures with guaranteed returns for Irish investors, and the provision of government loan facilities on terms which would be attractive




either to farmers generally or to specific categories depending on the social object desired.33

In the face of such demands, the Dublin administration, and Robert Hamilton in particular, remained determinedly sceptical, concentrating on questions of practicality, cost and default in relation to almost all the schemes proposed, each of which seemed to raise the fundamental issue of precisely what the government was trying to achieve by its land reforms more generally. These defensive reactions centred upon three main questions. The first related to whether the whole or only part of the purchase price should be advanced to the tenant. Under the existing purchase clauses, it had been assumed that part-payment by the tenant was a prerequisite, both in order to have some security for the loan and because the aim was solely to encourage the more substantial tenants to become owners and thereby provide (it was assumed) a more loyal and politically conservative ballast to landed society. In 1881 Gladstone had only been prepared to accept modification of the 1870 clauses on this basis, and only then with much huffing and puffing. The question of the whole purchase price in turn stimulated a debate about what should be the right numerical mix between landlords, tenants both large and small, and the labouring or cottier classes - a general debate, but one with particular relevance in the west.

The second question concerned the annuity to be paid by the purchasing tenant, and in particular whether it should be above or below the existing adjudicated rent after arbitration. This, of course, depended on three other variables: the cost of the sale in terms of the numbers of years' purchase to be paid for the holding; the rate of interest to be charged; and the number of years over which repayment was to be made. This raised other difficult questions in relation to the level of the annuity. If the annual sum to be paid by the tenant, taking the three variables together, turned out to be lower than the existing judicial rent, did this constitute a direct bribe to the tenant to purchase, thereby undermining the whole purpose of the 1881 act which had been intended to stabilise the landlord-tenant relationship on a new 'fair' basis? On the other hand, if the annuity were higher, would there be any demand to purchase with the land market remaining frozen and political discontent continuing? Between these two rocks was a third which concerned the possible effects of the freeing of the land market through government action, whereby land values would rise as a result of the increased demand to buy and sell. If the financial lubricant in these circumstances was to be Treasury funding alone, would such a situation result in the landlord and tenant conspiring together to agree a price largely at the expense of the imperial Treasury?

33 For Childers's earlier interest in 1880 see his 'Scheme for dealing with Irish land', 20 Dec. 1880 (B.L., Add. MS 44625, f. 30); Childers to Gladstone 26 Feb. 1884 (ibid., Add. MS 44131, f. 37). For Castletown's committee see The Times, 5 Feb., 6 Mar. 1884. For Irish Liberals see Spencer to Childers, 31 Jan. 1884 (B.L., Add. MS 76915); The Times, 7 Feb. 1884; T. A. Dickson to Spencer, 9 Feb. 1884 (Spencer papers, i, no. 341); Hansard 3, cclxxxvi, 570 (5 Mar. 1884). For cabinet discussions on Irish finance, 26 Jan. 1884, see Derby diaries, p. 630; Dodson cabinet notes, 26 Jan. 1884 (Bodl., dep. Monk Bretton, 62); also Carlingford to Spencer, 4 Mar. 1884 (B.L., Add. MS 76910), in which he regrets the decision to continue to exclude leaseholders from the benefits of the land act. For the Irish committee of M.PRs see T. W. Heyck, The dimensions of British radicalism: the case of Ireland, 1874-95 (Urbana, Ill., Chicago & London, 1974), pp 95-6.




This last point highlighted the third concern of those in Dublin Castle about the role of the government in the various schemes. Some were minimalists, believing that the government's responsibility was simply to establish a land bank within which investors' funds might be used to facilitate safe and responsible purchase (essentially a state-regulated building society). In part, the idea of a land bank was seen as rectifying weaknesses in the Irish financial and banking system, whereby small investors (essentially the tenant farmers) were seen as not having access to a local self-help banking system, with the result that their savings were not reinvested in Ireland but went out of the country. Hamilton was extremely doubtful about the financial viability of any land bank proposal, arguing that it would not attract sufficient funds without some state-guaranteed return. These doubts about land banks pointed to an alternative approach, the creation of a system of land debentures which would be secured by the government with a guaranteed rate of return. Again Hamilton doubted whether any such land stock would be more attractive to investors than other government stock without a level of guaranteed return that would make the scheme too expensive - unless the land purchase price itself was so low as to be unattractive to all but the most embarrassed landlord. There was also the subsidiary question of whether it was in the broader Irish interest to deflect such surplus funds away from alternative and possibly more profitable investments through a scheme that could be represented as simply bolstering an inefficient land system.

This itself led to a third method of state involvement, which urged that the government should simply make funds available on agreed terms to suitable purchasing tenants, and that it should provide the necessary administrative and financial structure either through the Land Commission or some new government body. The problem here was how default was to be handled and who should act as the ultimate financial guarantor. It certainly should not be the Treasury - on that all sides were agreed - but what alternative was there, if the market could not provide an appropriate financial discipline? Hamilton, as a Treasury civil servant by background and previous experience, took a dim view of Irish ways as he found them in 1882. In particular, he thought the Irish landlord class craven and lacking moral backbone, the Irish government profligate and irresponsible, and the Treasury habitually too generous in the face of past Irish demands. Moreover, he believed that Ireland had been encouraged in these irresponsible ways by having no adequate system of representative local government to act as a communal break on financial slackness or ill-considered schemes. Until that position changed, he argued, the government in London should refuse added demands upon imperial funds for schemes it would never consider in any other part of the United Kingdom. In these vigorous opinions Hamilton was largely joined by Spencer, and in the cabinet memorandum which eventually emerged after three months' discussion they recommended not attempting the purchase question until Irish local government had been fully reformed along representative lines. Only then would there be a sufficiently robust administrative and financial structure to act as financial guarantor for any funds loaned to Ireland for peasant purchase or any other socially constructive purpose.34

34 For Hamilton's and Spencer's reactions see Spencer's cabinet memo, 1 Apr. 1884 (B.L., Add. MS 77321); Hamilton to Spencer, 13, 18 Jan., 26 Feb. 1884, Hamilton to Trevelyan, 5, 8 Mar. 1884, Spencer to Gladstone, 28 Feb. 1884 (Spencer papers, i, no. 342).




In the light of such strongly expressed opposition, why did the Liberal cabinet nevertheless proceed with a land purchase measure in May 1884? Essentially the bill was an attempt to head off the political and parliamentary pressures coming from Dublin and London. It was seen as an interim response pending the introduction of popularly elected Irish local government. Two sets of terms were sanctioned: one involving the advance of three-quarters of the purchase price on slightly more generous financial terms than previously, the other allowing the advance of the whole purchase price where the application had been sanctioned by yet another newly established local body - a 'county land board' - composed of representatives of owners and occupiers.35 The bill quickly ran into parliamentary trouble, being seen for what it was, a botched compromise. The county land board was criticised as unworkable, based as it was on the landlords and tenants working together, something already increasingly problematic in the case of local poor law unions. As usual, Gladstone showed his dislike of anything but the most limited schemes of peasant proprietorship, and Childers was unhappy that his own pet scheme had not been adopted. It was therefore with some relief that the government abandoned the bill in the general sacrifice of the legislative innocents in July, following the rejection of the franchise bill by the House of Lords. A huge amount of effort had been devoted to a subject with no result, and the whole process seemed to be a vindication of the Dublin administration's determination not to tangle with the purchase question until they had resolved the question of Irish local government.36

V

But the political and administrative pressures in London and Dublin for land purchase did not go away and continued to provide the context within which Spencer and his advisers had to consider future Irish policy, once the reform and redistribution crisis had been resolved. In the historiography, this debate has tended to centre on Chamberlain's 'central board' scheme and the political consequences of its rejection by the cabinet on 9 May 1885. But taking the longer perspective, the views of Dublin Castle are at least as interesting. At first Spencer and his colleagues concentrated on the issues of renewed coercion, local

35 For cabinet discussion of Spencer's cabinet memo see Gladstone diaries, xi, 139; Dodson cabinet notes, 28 Apr. 1884 (Bodl., dep. Monk Bretton, 62); Derby diaries, p. 657. For Trevelyan on the Irish Liberal members' bill see Hansard 3, cclxxxvii, 1009 (30 Apr. 1884).

36 For continuing cabinet difficulties see Kimberley to Spencer, 1 May 1884 (B.L., Add. MS 76912); Spencer to Kimberley, 4 May 1884 (ibid.); Spencer to Trevelyan, 7, 11, 12 May 1884 (ibid., Add. MS 76963); Trevelyan to Spencer, 9, 12 May 1884 (ibid.); J. E. Vernon to Spencer, 8 May 1884 (ibid., Add. MS 77321); cabinet committee notes, 8 May 1884 (Derby diaries, p. 661); Childers to Gladstone, 12 May 1884 (B.L., Add. MS 44131, f. 78); Spencer to Childers, 12 May 1884 (ibid., f. 116); Spencer to Gladstone, 12 May 1884 (Spencer papers, i, no. 352); Gladstone to Spencer, 13 May 1884 (ibid., no. 353); Carlingford to Gladstone, 14 May 1884 (B.L., Add. MS 44123, f. 211); Gladstone diaries, xi, 148; Dodson cabinet notes, 17 May 1884 (Bodl., dep. Monk Bretton, 62); Derby diaries, p. 663. For the introduction of the bill see Hansard 3, cclxxxviii, 1510 (27 May 1884). For flaws in the scheme see Childers's note, 7 July 1884 (B.L., Add. MS 76916). For the bill's abandonment see Hansard 3, ccxc, 692 (10 July 1884).




government and the possible abolition of the viceroyalty by the creation of a secretaryship of state. But as the government's political difficulties over the Sudan increased in the spring of 1885 the policy ground shifted. With the Prevention of Crime Act due to expire in June, law and order was bound to be divisive in the run-up to the election. On the conciliatory side also Spencer had to change tack once it became clear that there was insufficient time for anything other than an announcement of future intentions in relation to Irish local government. Consequently, he returned to the policy options of the previous two years: constructive legislation for the west of Ireland, land purchase, and some modest reforms of the educational system.37

Taking the west of Ireland first, while it was too early to review the results of the tramways and fishing legislation, it was thought the labourers legislation could be extended and improved in what would probably be a tight parliamentary timetable. In particular, the definition of agricultural labourer could be extended to include women, the legislation could be broadened to cover repairs as well as building costs, and sanitary authorities could be given powers to condemn properties, while at the same time the act's administration could be simplified in other ways. What was not discussed was further financial support for emigration or internal migration under the 1883 act. In fact state-aided emigration's moment had passed. The failure to bring the Stephen proposals to fruition, and the controversy over the treatment of the emigrants on arrival in the U.S.A., had forced the Tuke committee to suspend its operations as a whole. In Canada the federal government had largely lost interest in large-scale family settlement from Ireland, while Archbishop Lynch, doubtless influenced by the Irish hierarchy, no longer sought support for such schemes. The migration provisions of the 1883 legislation had remained a dead letter, and no politician was for the moment going to revisit the question.3"

More promising was the purchase question. The earlier pressures remained: Irish members in London, particularly nervous Irish Liberals led by T. A. Dickson, were continuing to press for action, while Castletown's landlords' committee in Ireland still wanted amended terms given the continuing freeze in the land market and the failure of the 1881 purchase provisions. But there were two significant new developments. In 1884 the Dublin administration's caution had been strengthened because there was no agreement on any particular scheme pending the introduction of locally representative guarantees. By 1885 this position had changed. Now a new guarantee scheme was securing widespread support, whereby the vendor would lodge a portion of his receipts from the sale with the Land Commission (or some other body) until the tenant had paid off a sufficient portion of the loan. As a result, the Land Commission was now united, as it had not been in the previous

37 For Spencer's overview of the Irish situation see Spencer to Henry Fowler, 21 Sept. 1884 (B.L., Add. MS 77546); Spencer to E. G. Jenkinson, 23 Sept. 1884 (Spencer papers, i, no. 362); Spencer's undated memo on legislative achievements during his viceroyalty and his hopes for educational reform (Devonshire MS 340/1588). For Hamilton's views see his memo on state interference with industrial enterprise, 1 Dec. 1884 (P.R.O., 30/6/127, f 8). For the legislative programme see Spencer to Gladstone, 26 Jan. 1885 (Spencer papers, i, no. 386); Spencer to Gladstone, 28 Mar. 1885 (B.L., Add. MS 44312, f. 36); Gladstone to Spencer, 29 Jan., 30 Mar. 1885 (Gladstone diaries, xi, 285, 315); Spencer cabinet memo, 25 Mar. 1885 (B.L., Add. MS 44312, f. 38).

3 For the suspension of Tuke's committee's operations see Emigration from Ireland...




year, in supporting the advance of the whole purchase price with interest and repayment terms below the adjudicated rents. Second, the idea of an experimental cash-limited scheme emerged for the first time, which would enable the government to establish or possibly control the ultimate balance between landlords, tenants and proprietors in the Irish countryside. On this basis, Spencer and his Dublin colleagues, including Hamilton, now accepted land purchase as a policy and no longer made it dependent on the prior creation of a representative local government in Ireland. In the event, the land purchase question became swept into the maelstrom of cabinet politics that followed the rejection of the 'central board' scheme, and there was some later argument about whether a draft bill had ever been prepared. What was clear was that there was now agreement in Dublin on what a purchase bill should be, and it is hardly surprising that this was the proposal adopted almost without alteration by the incoming Conservative government as the Ashbourne Act.39

The government also decided to make a modest gesture towards Irish educational reform, something it had largely avoided throughout the second Gladstone administration by a reform of Irish educational endowments through the setting up of a commission on the lines of the earlier Endowed Schools Act in Britain. Having already improved the grants for teacher training the previous year, Campbell-Bannerman introduced a national education bill in March, extending compulsory education to Ireland, taking powers for the siting of schools and improving the salaries and conditions of teachers, legislation that failed to reach the statute book owing to the fall of the government. Finally, it agreed to establish a select committee into Irish industries."

On finally coming into office in late June 1885, Salisbury and his ministers had just six weeks during which Carnarvon and the Conservative minority administration had to make their mark in Irish legislative terms. Not surprisingly, they adopted the conciliatory measures already in the pipeline, along with the opportunistic decision that there was no choice but to let the existing coercion

39 For Childers's continuing enthusiasm for land purchase see Childers to Spencer, 25 Dec. 1884 (B.L., Add. MS 76916); Spencer to Childers, 4 Jan. 1885 (ibid.). For the emergence of the idea of vendor's guarantee and Spencer's and Campbell-Bannerman's conversion see E. E Litton to Spencer, 27 Jan. 1885 (B.L., Add. MS 77322), E. W. O'Brien to Hamilton, 5 Mar. 1885 (ibid.); Spencer to Childers, 6 Apr. 1885 (ibid., Add. MS 76916). For Hamilton's continuing doubts see Hamilton to Spencer, 26 Apr. 1885 (ibid., Add. MS 77060); Gladstone diaries, xi, 330; Lord Carlingford's journal: reflections of a cabinet minister, 1885, ed. A. B. Cooke and J. R. Vincent (Oxford, 1981), p. 95. For Irish Liberals'demands see their memo, 20 Mar. 1885 (B.L., Add. MS 44312, f. 44). For landlords' demands see Castletown to Spencer, 26 Feb., 14 Mar. 1885 (B.L. Add. MSS 77552-3). It is interesting to note that a draft purchase bill printed on 24 April 1885 included the advance of the whole purchase price, a repayment period of 47 years, and a sum of 20 million to be made available. The later Ashbourne Act extended the repayment period to 49 years, but only set aside 5 million (B.L., Add. MS 77323.) A memorandum by the parliamentary draftsman, Henry Thring, 3 July 1885, outlined that land purchase along these lines now minimised the political and financial risks (B.L., Add. MS 44642, f. 72).

4 For educational endowments, later reintroduced by Salisbury's government see Hansard 3, ccxcvi, 207 (23 Mar. 1884); ccc, 1855 (11 Apr. 1884). For national education see ibid., ccxcvi, 518 (24 Mar. 1884). For the select committee on Irish manufactures see Report from the select committee on industries (Ireland) ..., H.C. 1884-5 (288), xi.




legislation expire. The Carnarvon experiment in legislative terms - land purchase, labourers and educational endowments - was simply the Spencer programme relaunched. Politically, of course, it was more than a few pieces of minor or experimental legislation with the Ashbourne Act as its centrepiece. But the point is that it and the measures being adopted in relation to the west of Ireland had been fashioned out of the experience of the previous five years and the period of Spencer's r6gime in particular. As it turned out, they were to be built upon during the latter half of the decade within a Unionist framework, but they could equally well have been developed within other political and policy frameworks.4'

The months following the fall of the second Gladstone administration have been famously presented as the year of the 'governing passion'. Not surprisingly, they have received much study and i

dublin castle, whitehall, and the formation of irish policy, 1879-92

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