Part 2 (1/2)
Mr. Edgeworth was, at first, benumbed by grief, and unable to take an interest in his former pursuits; but in the society of his wife's family he gradually recovered cheerfulness, and began to consider his wife's dying advice to marry her sister.
He remarks: 'Nothing is more erroneous than the common belief, that a man who has lived in the greatest happiness with one wife will be the most averse to take another. On the contrary, the loss of happiness, which he feels when he loses her, necessarily urges him to endeavour to be again placed in a situation which has const.i.tuted his former felicity.
'I felt that Honora had judged wisely, and from a thorough knowledge of my character, when she had advised me to marry again.'
After these observations it is not surprising to hear that Edgeworth became engaged to Elizabeth Sneyd in the autumn of 1780. They were staying for the marriage at Brereton Hall in Ches.h.i.+re, and their banns were published in the parish church; but on the very morning appointed for the marriage, the clergyman received a letter which roused so many scruples in his mind as to make Edgeworth think it cruel to press him to perform the ceremony. The Rector of St. Andrew's, Holborn, was less scrupulous, and they were married there on Christmas Day 1780.
The following summer Mr. and Mrs. Edgeworth rented Davenport Hall in Ches.h.i.+re, where they lived a quiet retired life, spending a good deal of their time with their friends Sir Charles and Lady Holte at Brereton. Edgeworth amused himself by making a clock for the steeple at Brereton, and a chronometer of a singular construction, which, he says,'I intended to present to the King ... to add to His Majesty's collection of uncommon clocks and watches which I had seen at St. James's.'
The autobiography from which I have been quoting was begun by Edgeworth when he was about sixty-three, and it breaks off abruptly at the date of 1781. The illness which interrupted his task did not, however, prove fatal, for he lived nearly ten years afterwards.
His daughter Maria takes up the narrative, and in her introduction she says, 'In continuing these Memoirs, I shall endeavour to follow the example that my father has set me of simplicity and of truth.'
The following memorandum was found in Edgeworth's handwriting: 'In the year 1782 I returned to Ireland, with a firm determination to dedicate the remainder of my life to the improvement of my estate, and to the education of my children; and farther, with the sincere hope of contributing to the amelioration of the inhabitants of the country from which I drew my subsistence.'
When in the spring of 1768 Edgeworth visited Ireland with his friend Mr. Day, the latter was surprised and disgusted by the state of Dublin and of the country in general. He found 'the streets of Dublin were wretchedly paved, and more dirty than can be easily imagined.' Edgeworth adds: 'As we pa.s.sed through the country, the hovels in which the poor were lodged, which were then far more wretched than they are at present, or than they have been for the last twenty years, the black tracts of bog, and the unusual smell of the turf fuel, were to him never-ceasing topics of reproach and lamentation. Mr. Day's deep-seated prejudice in favour of savage life was somewhat shaken by this view of want and misery, which philosophers of a certain cla.s.s in London and Paris chose at that time to dignify by the name of simplicity. The modes of living in the houses of the gentry were much the same in Ireland as in England. This surprised my friend. He observed, that if there was any difference, it was that people of similar fortune did not restrain themselves equally in both countries to the same prudent economy; but that every gentleman in Ireland, of two or three thousand pounds a year, lived in a certain degree of luxury and show that would be thought presumptuous in persons of the same fortune in England.
'On our journey to my father's house, I had occasion to vote at a contested election in one of the counties through which we pa.s.sed. Here a scene of noise, riot, confusion, and drunkenness was exhibited, not superior indeed in depravity and folly, but of a character or manner so different from what my friend had even seen in his own country, that he fell into a profound melancholy.'
It was to remedy this wretched state of things in Ireland that Edgeworth resolved in 1782 to devote his energies.
It is curious to read his account of the relations between landlord and tenant in Ireland at this date. He soon learned that firmness was required in his dealings with his tenants as well as kindness.
'He omitted a variety of old feudal remains of fines and penalties; but there was one clause, which he continued in every lease with a penalty attached to it, called an alienation fine--a fine of so much an acre upon the tenant's reletting any part of the devised land.'
He wisely resolved to receive his rents himself, and to avoid the intervention of any agent or driver ('a person who drives and impounds cattle for rent or arrears'). 'In every case where the tenant had improved the land, or even where he had been industrious, though unsuccessful, his claim to preference over every new proposer, his tenanfs right, as it is called, was admitted. But the mere plea of ”I have lived under your Honour, or your Honour's father or grandfather” or ”I have been on your Honour's estate so many years” he disregarded. Farms, originally sufficient for the comfortable maintenance of a man, his wife, and family, had in many cases been subdivided from generation to generation, the father giving a bit of the land to each son to settle him. It was an absolute impossibility that the land should ever be improved if let in these miserable lots. Nor was it necessary that each son should hold land, or advantageous that each should live on his ”little potato garden” without further exertion of mind or body.
'There was a continual struggle between landlord and tenant upon the question of long and short leases. . . . The offer of immediate high rent, or of fines to be paid down directly, tempted the landlord's extravagance, or supplied his present necessities, at the expense of his future interests. . . . Many have let for ninety-nine years; and others, according to a form common in 'Ireland, for three lives, renewable for ever, paying a small fine on the insertion of a new life at the failure of each. These leases, in course of years, have been found extremely disadvantageous to the landlord, the property having risen so much in value that the original rent was absurdly disproportioned.
'The longest term my father ever gave,' says his daughter Maria, 'was thirty-one years, with one or sometimes two lives. He usually gave one life, reserving to himself the option of adding another --the son, perhaps, of the tenant--if he saw that the tenant deserved it by his conduct. This sort of power to encourage and reward in the hands of a landlord is advantageous in Ireland. It acts as a motive for exertion; it keeps up the connection and dependence which there ought to be between the different ranks, without creating any servile habits, or leaving the improving tenant insecure as to the fair reward of his industry.
'Edgeworth's plan was to take not that which, abstractedly viewed, is the best possible course, but that which is the best the circ.u.mstances will altogether allow.
'When the oppressive duty-work in Ireland was no longer claimed, and no longer inserted in Irish leases, there arose a difficulty to gentlemen in getting labourers at certain times of the year, when all are anxious to work for themselves; for instance, at the seasons for cutting turf, setting potatoes, and getting home the harvest.
'To provide against this difficulty, landlords adopted a system of taking duty-work, in fact, in a new form. They had cottiers (cottagers), day-labourers established in cottages, on their estate, usually near their own residence. Many of these cabins were the poorest habitations that can be imagined; and these were given rent free, that is, the rent was to be worked out on whatever days, or on whatever occasions, it was called for. The grazing for the cow, the patch of land for flax, and the ridge or ridges of potato land were also to be paid for in days' labour in the same manner. The uncertainty of this tenure at will, that is, at the pleasure of the landlord, with the rent in labour and time, variable also at his pleasure or convenience, became rather more injurious to the tenant than the former fixed mode of sacrificing so many days' duty-work, even at the most hazardous seasons of the year.
'My father wished to have entirely avoided this cottager system; but he was obliged to adopt a middle course. To his labourers he gave comfortable cottages at a low rent, to be held at will from year to year; but he paid them wages exactly the same as what they could obtain elsewhere. Thus they were partly free and partly bound. They worked as free labourers; but they were obliged to work, that they might pay their rent. And their houses being better, and other advantages greater, than they could obtain elsewhere, they had a motive for industry and punctuality; thus their services and their attachment were properly secured. . . . My father's indulgence as to the time he allowed his tenantry for the payment of their rent was unusually great. He left always a year's rent in their hands: this was half a year more time than almost any other gentleman in our part of the country allowed. . . . He was always very exact in requiring that the rents should not, in their payments, pa.s.s beyond the half-yearly days--the 25th of March and 29th of September. In this point they knew his strictness so well that they seldom ventured to go into arrear, and never did so with impunity. . . .
They would have cheated, loved, and despised a more easy landlord, and his property would have gone to ruin, without either permanently bettering their interests or their morals. He, therefore, took especial care that they should be convinced of his strictness in punis.h.i.+ng as well as of his desire to reward.
'Where the offender was tenant, and the punisher landlord, it rarely happened, even if the law reached the delinquent, that public opinion sided with public justice. In Ireland it has been, time immemorial, common with tenants, who have had advantageous bargains, and who have no hopes of getting their leases renewed, to waste the ground as much as possible; to break it up towards the end of the term; or to overhold, that is, to keep possession of the land, refusing to deliver it up.
'A tenant, who held a farm of considerable value, when his lease was out, besought my father to permit him to remain on the farm for another year, pleading that he had no other place to which he could, at that season, it being winter, remove his large family. The permission was granted; but at the end of the year, taking advantage of this favour, he refused to give up the land. Proceedings at law were immediately commenced against him; and it was in this case that the first trial in Ireland was brought, on an act for recovering double rent from a tenant for holding forcible possession after notice to quit.
'This vexatious and unjust practice of tenants against landlords had been too common, and had too long been favoured by the party spirit of juries; who, being chiefly composed of tenants, had made it a common cause, and a principle, if it could in any way be avoided, never to give a verdict, as they said, against themselves.
But in this case the indulgent character of the landlord, combined with the ability and eloquence of' his advocate, succeeded in moving the jury--a verdict was obtained for the landlord. The double rent was paid; and the fraudulent tenant was obliged to quit the country unpitied. Real good was done by this example.'
Edgeworth objected strongly to a practice common among the gentry, 'to protect their tenants when they got into any difficulties by disobeying the laws. Smuggling and illicit distilling seemed to be privileged cases, where, the justice and expediency of the spirit of the law being doubtful, escaping from the letter of it appeared but a trial of ingenuity or luck. In cases that admitted of less doubt, in the frequent breach of the peace from quarrels at fairs, rescuing of cattle drivers for rent, or in other more serious outrages, tenants still looked to their landlord for protection; and hoped, even to the last, that his Honour's or his Lords.h.i.+p's interest would get the fine taken off, the term of imprisonment shortened, or the condemned criminal s.n.a.t.c.hed from execution. He [Edgeworth] never would, on any occasion, or for the persons he was known to like best, interfere to protect, as it is called, that is, to screen, or to obtain pardon for any one of his tenants or dependants, if they had really infringed the laws, or had deserved punishment. . . . He set an example of being scrupulous to the most exact degree as a grand juror, both as to the money required for roads or for any public works, and as to the manner in which it was laid out.
'To his character as a good landlord was soon added that he was a real gentleman. This phrase, p.r.o.nounced with well-known emphasis, comprises a great deal in the opinion of the lower Irish. They seem to have an instinct for the real gentleman, whom they distinguish, if not at first sight, infallibly at first hearing, from every pretender to the character. They observe that the real gentleman bears himself most kindly, is always the most civil in speech, and ever seems the most tender of the poor. . . .
'They soon began to rely upon his justice as a magistrate. This is a point where, their interest being nearly concerned, they are wonderfully quick and clearsighted; they soon discovered that Mr.