Page:On Irish absenteeism (Hancock).pdf/5

5 trade in land, personal superintendence is as necessary as it is in any other trade.

We hear no complaints of absentee mill-owners, or absentee shopkeepers. Indeed, in the case of mills, legislation is asked for in the shape of ten hours' bills, to prevent the mills from working too much. We may therefore safely predict, that when land becomes a perfectly marketable commodity, and the mercantile spirit is substituted for the feudal spirit in its management, we shall hear no longer of proprietors neglecting their duties. The purchasers of land will be like the mill-owners, and instead of complaints of the land being unproductive, and the labourers unemployed, we shall have ten hours bills for agricultural labourers to protect them from being overworked by the capitalist land-owners. Thus we see that the most extensive kind of absenteeism in Ireland is caused by the legal facilities to the creation of incumbrances, and the legal impediments to the sale of land; or, in other words, arises from the want of free trade in land. Under the operation of the Incumbered Estates Act, and of other legislation of a similiar [sic] policy, this kind of absenteeism will entirely disappear.

Having traced the causes of the first kind of absenteeism, I proceed now to examine the cause of the absenteeism of those who, possessed of great wealth, reside out of the country for the pursuit of pleasure, vanity, or ostentation; those, in short, who may be called wealthy absentees. This kind is not so extensive in Ireland as the one we have been considering. It includes, however, a considerable number of persons, and a very large amount of property. The principal cause from which it springs is the prevalence of the custom of primogeniture. This leads to the accumulation of an unnaturally large amount of landed property in individual hands; and where Irish and English estates belong to the same family, prevents their being disunited. The size of the estate, by the mere operation of physical distance, necessarily isolates the proprietor, when resident, from the society of any of his equals; and his fortune, artificially enlarged by primogeniture, places him at a social distance from all who reside upon his estate. Thus the natural taste for the society of equals, and the natural desire of vieing [sic] with his equals in rank, in the display of his wealth, lead the wealthy proprietor to spend the greater portion of his time in the metropolis, in some foreign capital, or at some fashionable watering place.

The remedy for this kind of absenteeism is quite different from the preceding. Laws respecting incumbrances have no effect on those who are not in debt. Facilities of sale are of no use to those who want to retain for enjoyment, and not to sell. The remedy for absenteeism arising from primogeniture is, to move the encouragements to primogeniture held out by the laws for the succession to land. In short, to assiilate [sic] the succession of real to that of personal property, leaving the cases of hereditary titles to be provided for by special settlements.