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Ireland Under the Union 1800–1900

The power of the Irish landlord

  • 3 things to know
  • A2 Unit 1

Overview

The scale of landownership, rents and tenure, the role of the agent, and the political and social influence a great estate carried.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

How concentrated was the ownership of Irish land in the nineteenth century?

Numbers

How did the secret ballot change the landlords' political position?

Key term

How did the landlord's economic power reach the ordinary tenant?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    How concentrated was the ownership of Irish land in the nineteenth century?

    Model answer

    Almost the whole country belonged to a few thousand proprietors, and a small number of very great estates covered an enormous share of it, so the landed interest was a tiny fraction of the population.

  2. 2

    How did the landlord's economic power reach the ordinary tenant?

    Model answer

    The landlord fixed the rent, granted or withheld a lease, decided whether an improving tenant would be compensated, and could evict at short notice, so the tenant's livelihood depended on his goodwill.

  3. 3

    What was a middleman?

    Model answer

    A middleman was a speculator who took a long lease of a large block of land from the proprietor and sublet it in small parcels at a profit, adding a layer of rent without adding any improvement.

  4. 4

    How did the position of the middleman change over the century?

    Model answer

    Middlemen were common before the Famine, when subdivision made subletting profitable, and largely disappeared afterwards as leases fell in and landlords dealt directly with fewer and larger tenants.

  5. 5

    What political powers did landlords hold?

    Model answer

    Landlords sat on the grand juries that governed the counties, filled the commission of the peace, acted as ex-officio poor law guardians, and until 1872 could see how their tenants voted.

  6. 6

    How did the secret ballot change the landlords' political position?

    Model answer

    The Ballot Act of 1872 made it impossible to know how a tenant had voted, and at the very next general election in 1874 fifty-nine Home Rule members were returned, which showed that the landed interest could no longer deliver Irish seats.

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