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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:44:43 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/14510-0.txt b/14510-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..44aec0e --- /dev/null +++ b/14510-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7159 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14510 *** + +[Illustration: MAP TO ILLUSTRATE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN.] + + + + +IRELAND UNDER COERCION + +THE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN + + +BY + +WILLIAM HENRY HURLBERT + + +VOL. I. + +_SECOND EDITION_. + +1888 + + +"Upon the future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire." +CARDINAL MANNING TO EARL GREY, 1868 + + + + +PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. + + +Although barely a month has elapsed since the publication of these +volumes, events of more or less general notoriety have so far confirmed +the views taken in them of the actual state and outlook of affairs in +Ireland, that I gladly comply with the request of my publisher for a +Preface to this Second Edition. + +Upon one most important point--the progressive demoralisation of the +Irish people by the methods of the so-called political combinations, +which are doing the work of the Agrarian and Anti-Social Revolution in +Ireland, some passages, from a remarkable sermon delivered in August in +the Cathedral of Waterford by the Catholic bishop of that diocese, will +be found to echo almost to the letter the statement given to me in June +by a strong Protestant Home Ruler, that "the Nationalists are stripping +Irishmen as bare of moral sense as the bushmen of South Africa." + +Speaking of what he had personally witnessed in one of the lanes of +Waterford, the Bishop says, in the report which I have seen of his +sermon, "the most barbarous tribes of Africa would justly feel ashamed +if they were guilty of what I saw, or approached to the guilt I +witnessed, on that occasion." As a faithful shepherd of his people, he +is not content with general denunciations of their misconduct, but goes +on to analyse the influences which are thus reducing a Christian people +to a level below that of the savages whom Cardinal Lavigerie is now +organising a great missionary crusade to rescue from their degradation. + +He agrees with Archbishop Croke in attributing much of this +demoralisation to the excessive and increasing use of strong drink, +striking evidences of which came under my own observation at more than +one point of my Irish journeys. But I fear Archbishop Croke would +scarcely agree with the Bishop of Waterford in his diagnosis of the +effects upon the popular character of what has now come to pass current +in many parts of Ireland as "patriotism." + +The Bishop says, "The women as well as the men were fighting, and when +we sought to bring them to order, one man threatened to take up a weapon +and drive bishop, priests, and police from the place! On the Quay, I +understand, it was one scene of riot and disorder, and what made matters +worse was that when the police went to discharge their duty for the +protection of the people, the moment they interfered the people turned +on them and maltreated them in a shocking way. I understand that some +police who were in coloured clothes were picked out for the worst +treatment--knocked down and kicked brutally. One police officer, I +learn, had his fingers broken. This is a state of things that nothing at +all would justify. It is not to be justified or excused on any principle +of reason or religion. What is still worse, sympathy was shown for those +who had obstructed and attacked the police. The only excuse I could find +that was urged for this shameful misconduct was that it was dignified +with the name of 'patriotism'! All I can say is, that if rowdyism like +this be an indication of the patriotism of the people, as far as I am +concerned, I say, better our poor country were for ever in political +slavery than attain to liberty by such means." + +This is the language of a good Catholic, of a good Irishman, and of a +faithful Bishop. Were it more often heard from the lips of the Irish +Episcopate the true friends of Ireland might look forward to her future +with more hope and confidence than many of the best and ablest of them +are now able to feel. As things actually are, not even the Papal Decree +has yet sufficed to restrain ecclesiastics, not always of the lowest +degree, from encouraging by their words and their conduct "patriotism" +of the type commemorated by the late Colonel Prentiss of Louisville, in +a story which he used to tell of a tipsy giant in butternut garments, +armed with a long rifle, who came upon him in his office on a certain +Fourth of July demanding the loan of a dollar on the ground that he felt +"so confoundedly patriotic!" + +The Colonel judiciously handed the man a dollar, and then asked, "Pray, +how do you feel when you feel confoundedly patriotic?" + +"I feel," responded the man gravely, "as if I should like to kill +somebody or steal something." + +It is "patriotism" of this sort which the Papal Decree was issued to +expel from within the pale of the Catholic Church. And it is really, in +the last analysis of the facts of the case, to the suppression of +"patriotism" of this sort that many well-intentioned, but certainly not +well-informed, "sympathisers" with what they suppose to be the cause of +Ireland, object, in my own country and in Great Britain, when they +denounce as "Coercion" the imprisonment of members of Parliament and +other rhetorical persons who go about encouraging or compelling ignorant +people to support "boycotting" and the "Plan of Campaign." + +Yet it would seem to be sufficiently obvious that "patriotism" of this +sort, once full-blown and flourishing on the soil of Ireland, must tend +to propagate itself far beyond the confines of that island, and to +diversify with its blood-red flowers and its explosive fruits the social +order of countries in which it has not yet been found necessary for the +Head of the Catholic Church to reaffirm the fundamental principles of +Law and of Liberty. + +Since these volumes were published, too, the Agrarian Revolution in +Ireland has been brought into open and defiant collision with the +Catholic Church by its leader, Mr. Davitt, the founder of the Land +League. In the face of Mr. Davitt's contemptuous and angry repudiation +of any binding force in the Papal Decree, it will be difficult even for +the Cardinal-Archbishop of Sydney to devise an understanding between the +Church and any organisation fashioned or led by him. It may be inferred +from Mr. Davitt's contemporaneous and not less angry intimation, that +the methods of the Parnellite party are inadequate to the liberation of +Ireland from the curse of landlordism, that he is prepared to go further +than Mr. George, who still clings in America to the shadowy countenance +given him by the Cardinal-Archbishop of Baltimore, and that the +Nationalisation of the Land will ere long be urged both in Ireland and +in Great Britain by organisations frankly Anti-Catholic as well as +Anti-Social. + +This is to be desired on many accounts. It will bring the clergy in +Ireland face to face with the situation, which will be a good thing +both for them and for the people; and it should result in making an end +of the pernicious influence upon the popular mind of such extraordinary +theological outgivings; for example, as the circular issued in 1881 to +the clergy and laity of Meath by the Bishop of that diocese, in which it +was laid down that "the land of every country is the common property of +the people of that country, because its real owner, the Creator who made +it, has transferred it as a voluntary gift to them." + +Language of this sort addressed to ignorant multitudes must do harm of +course whenever and by whomsoever used. It must tend to evil if +addressed by demagogues to the Congress of a Trade Union. But it must do +much more harm when uttered with the seeming sanction of the Church by a +mitred bishop to congregations already solicited to greed, cunning, and +dishonesty, by an unscrupulous and well-organised "agitation." + +Not less instructive than Mr. Davitt's outburst from the Church is his +almost furious denunciation of the Irish tenants who obeyed an instinct, +thought honourable to mankind in most ages and countries, by agreeing +together to present to their landlord, Earl Fitzwilliam, a token of +their respect and regard on the celebration of his golden wedding day. + +These tenants are denounced, not because they were paying homage to a +tyrannical or an unworthy landlord, though Mr. Davitt was so transported +beyond his ordinary and cooler self with rage at their action that he +actually stooped to something like an insinuation of disbelief in the +excellence of Lord Fitzwilliam's character. The true and avowed burden +of his diatribe was that no landlord could possibly deserve well of his +tenants. The better he is as a man, the more they ought to hate him as a +landlord. + +The ownership of land, in other words, is of itself in the eyes of Mr. +Davitt what the ownership of a slave was in the eyes of the earlier +Abolitionists--crime so monstrous as to be beyond pardon or endurance. +If this be true of Great Britain and Ireland, where no allodial tenure +exists, how much more true must it be of New York? And if true of the +man who owns a thousand acres, it must be equally true of the man who +owns an acre. There could not be a better illustration than Mr. Davitt +has given in his attack on the Fitzwilliam tenants of the precise +accuracy of what I have had occasion to say in these volumes of the +"irrepressible conflict" between his schemes and the establishment of a +peasant proprietorship in Ireland. It is more than this. It is a +distinct warning served upon the smallest tenants as well as upon the +greatest landlords in the United Kingdom that fixity of any form of +individual tenure is irreconcilable with the Agrarian agitations. + +I anticipated this demonstration, but I did not anticipate that it would +come so fully or so soon. + +I anticipated also abundant proof from my own side of the water of the +accuracy of my impressions as to the drift of the American-Irish towards +Protection and Republicanism in American politics. This, too, has come +earlier and not less fully than I had expected. Mr. Patrick Ford, the +most influential leader of the American-Irish, issued early in August a +statement of his views as to the impending Presidential election. "The +issue to-day," he says, "is the Tariff. It is the American system +_versus_ the British Colonial system. The Irish are instinctively +Protectionists." And why? Mr. Ford goes on to explain. "The fact," he +observes, "that the Lion and the Unicorn have taken the stump for +Cleveland and Thurnan is not calculated to hurt Harrison and Morton in +the estimation of the Irish, who will, I promise, give a good account of +themselves in the coming Presidential election." Hatred of England, in +other words, is an axiom in their Political Economy! + +Mr. Davitt's menacing allusion to Parnell as a landlord, and Mr. +O'Leary's scornful treatment in a letter to me of the small-fry English +Radicals,[1] when taken together, distinctly prefigure an imminent +rupture between the Parnellite party and the two wings--Agrarian and +Fenian--of the real revolutionary movement in Ireland. It is clear that +clerical agitators, high and low, must soon elect between following Mr. +George, Dr. M'Glynn, and Mr. Davitt, and obeying fully the Papal Decree. + +It is a most curious feature of the situation in Ireland that much more +discontent with the actual conditions of life in that country seems to +be felt by people who do not than by people who do live in Ireland. It +is the Irish in America and Australia, who neither sow nor reap in +Ireland, pay no taxes there, and bear no burdens, who find the alien +oppression most intolerable. This explains the extreme bitterness with +which Mr. Davitt in some recent speeches and letters denounces the +tameness of the Irish people, and rather amusingly berates the British +allies of his Parnellite associates for their failure to develop any +striking and sensational resistance to the administration of law in +Ireland. I have printed in this edition[2] an instructive account, +furnished to me by Mr. Tener, of some recent evictions on the +Clanricarde property in Galway, which shows how hard it is for the most +determined "agitators" to keep the Irish tenants up to that high concert +pitch of resistance to the law which alone would meet the wishes of the +true agrarian leaders; and how comparatively easy it is for a just and +resolute man, armed with the power of the law resolutely enforced, to +break up an illegal combination even in some of the most disturbed +regions of Ireland.[3] While this is encouraging to the friends of law +and order in Ireland, it must not be forgotten that it involves also a +certain peril for them. The more successfully the law is enforced in +Ireland, the greater perhaps is the danger that the British +constituencies, upon which, of course, the administrators of the law +depend for their authority, may lose sight and sense of the +Revolutionary forces at work there. History shows that this has more +than once happened in the past. Englishmen and Scotchmen will be better +able than I am to judge how far it is unlikely that it should happen +again in the future. + +As to one matter of great moment--the effect of Lord Ashbourne's Act--a +correspondent sends me a statement, which I reproduce here, as it gives +a very satisfactory account of the automatic financial machinery upon +which that Act must depend for success:-- + + "Out of £90,630 of instalments due last May, less than £4000 is + unpaid at the present moment, on transactions extending over three + years with all classes of tenants. The total amount which accrued, + due to the Land Commission in respect of instalments since the + passing of the Act to the 1st November 1887, was £50,910. Of this + there is only now unpaid £731, 17s. 9d. There accrued a further + amount to the 1st May 1888 of £39,720, in respect of which only + £4071, 16s. 11d. is now unpaid, making in all only £4803, 14s. 8d. + unpaid, out of a total sum of £90,630 due up to last gale day, some + of which by this time has been paid off." + +This would seem to be worth considering in connection with the objection +made to any serious extension of Lord Ashbourne's Act by Mr. Chamberlain +in his extremely clear and able preface to a programme of "Unionist +Policy for Ireland" just issued by the "National Radical Union." + +LONDON, _21st Sept_. 1888. + + + + +CONTENTS OF VOL. I. + + +CLUE MAP _Frontispiece_ +PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION v +PROLOGUE xxi-lxvii + +CHAPTER I. + London to Dublin, Jan. 20, 1888, 1 + Irish Jacobite, 1 + Proposed Mass in memory of Charles Edward, 2 + Cardinal Manning, 3 + President Cleveland's Jubilee Gift to Leo XIII, 4 + Arrival at Kingstown, 5 + Admirable Mail Service, 5 + "Davy," the newsvendor, 6 + Mr. Davitt, 7 + Coercion in America and Ireland, 8 + Montgomery Blair's maxim, 8 + Irish cars, 9 + Maple's Hotel, 9 + Father Burke of Tallaght, 10, 11 + Peculiarities of Post-offices, 12, 13 + National League Office, 13 + The Dublin National Reception, 14 + Mr. T.D. Sullivan, M.P., 14 + Dublin Castle, 15 + Mr. O'Brien, Attorney-General, 16 + The Chief-Secretary, Mr. Balfour, 17-24 + Fathers M'Fadden and M'Glynn, 18 + Come-outers of New England, 18 + Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, 19, 20 + Sir West Ridgway, 24 + Divisional Magistrates, 24 + Colonel Turner, 25 + The Castle Service, 25-29 + Visit of the Prince of Wales, 27 + Lord Chief-Justice Morris, 29-37 + An Irish Catholic on Mr. Parnell, 31-33 + Mr. Justice Murphy, 36 + Lord Ashbourne, 37, 38 + Unionist meeting, 39 + Old Middle State type of American-Irish Protestant, 39 + Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in America, 41 + Difficulties of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 43 + Dr. Jellett, 43 + Dinner at the Attorney-General's, 43-46 + Sir Bernard Burke, 46-49 + Irish Landlords at Kildare Street Club, 49-52 + The people and the procession, 53-55 + Ripon and Morley, 54, 55 + +CHAPTER II. + Dublin to Sion, Feb 3, 56 + Poor of the city, 57 + Strabane, 58-60 + Sion flax-mills, 60-62 + Dr. Webb, 63-65 + Gweedore, Feb 4, 65 + A good day's work, 65 + Strabane, 66 + Names of the people, 66 + Bad weather judges, 67 + Letterkenny, p 67, 68 + Picturesque cottages, 67 + Communicative gentleman, 68 + Donegal Highlands, 68-70 + Glen Veagh, 71 + Errigal, 72 + Dunlewy and the Clady, 72 + Gweedore, Feb 5, 73 + Lord George Hill, 74 + Gweedore 1838 to 1879, 75-81 + Gweedore 1879 to 1888, 81-91 + Father M'Fadden, 83-104 + A Galway man's opinions, 84-89 + Value of tenant-right, 83 + Condition of tenantry, 84 + Woollen stuffs, 87, 88 + Distress in Gweedore, 88, + Do. in Connemara, 88 + Mr Burke, 90 + Plan of Campaign, 93 + Emigration, 94, 95 + Settlement with Captain Hill, 94 + Landlord and tenant, 96-98 + Land Nationalisation, 98 + Father M'Fadden's plan, 98 + Gweedore, Feb 6, 104 + On the Bunbeg road, 104-110 + Falcarragh, 111-123 + Ballyconnell House, 112-123 + Townland and Rundale, 118 + Use and abuse of tea, 119 + Lord Leitrim, 121 + A "Queen of France," 121 + The Rosses, 123 + +CHAPTER III. + Dungloe, Feb. 7, 124 + From Gweedore, 124 + Irish "jaunting car," 125 + "It will fatten four, feed five, and starve six," 125 + Natural wealth of the country, 125 + Isle of Arran and Anticosti, p 12 + The Gombeen man, 126-130 + Dungloe, 126-131 + Burtonport, 129 + Lough Meela, 128 + Attractions of the Donegal coast, 128 + Compared with Isles of Shoals and Appledore, 129 + Wonderful granite formations, 129 + Material for a new industry, 129 + Father Walker, 131 + Migratory labourers, 133 + Granite quarries, 133 + Stipends of the Roman Catholic clergy, 134-137 + Herring Fisheries, 137 + Arranmore, 137 + Dungloe woollen work, 138 + Baron's Court, Feb 8, 139 + Dungloe to Letterkenny, 139-141 + Doocharry Red Granite, 140 + Fair at Letterkenny, 142 + Feb 9, 143 + On Clare and Kerry, 143 + A Priest's opinion on Moonlighters, 143 + The Lixnaw murder, 143 + Baron's Court, 144 + James I.'s three castles, 145 + Ulster Settlement, 146 + Descendants of the old Celtic stock, 146 + The park at Baron's Court, 146 + A nonogenarian O'Kane, 148 + Irish "Covenanters," 150 + Shenandoah Valley people, 151 + The murderers of Munterlony, 151 + A relic of 1689, 152 + Woollen industry, 152-155 + Londonderry Orange symposium, 156 + February 11, 157 + Sergeant Mahony on Father M'Fadden, 157-163 + +CHAPTER IV. + Abbeyleix, Feb. 12, 164 + Newtown-Stewart, 164 + An absentee landlord, 164 + "The hill of the seven murders," 165 + Newry, Dublin, Maple's Hotel, Maryborough, 165 + "Hurrah for Gilhooly," 166 + Abbeyleix town, chapel, and church, 168 + Embroidery and lace work, 169 + Wood-carving, 170 + General Grant, 171 + Kilkenny, 172 + Kilkenny Castle, 173 + Muniment-room, 174 + Table and Expense Books, 176 + Dublin once the most noted wine-mart of Britain, 177, 178 + Cathedral of St. Canice, 178 + The Waterford cloak, 179 + The College, 180 + Irish and Scotch whisky, 180 + Duke of Ormonde's grants, 181 + The Plan of Campaign, 182-186 + Ulster tenant-right, 186, 187 + +CHAPTER V. + Dublin, Feb. 14, 188 + The Irish National Gallery, 188-191 + Feb. 15, 192 + London: Mr. Davitt, 192 + Irish Woollen Company, 193 + Mr. Davitt and Mr. Blunt, 193 + Mr. Davitt's character and position, 192-199 + +CHAPTER VI. + Ennis, Feb. 18, 200 + Return to Ireland, 200 + Irish Nationalists, 200, 201 + Home Rule and Protection, 202 + Luggacurren and Mr. O'Brien, 204 + Dublin to Limerick and Ennis, 204, 205 + Colonel Turner, 205 + Architecture of Ennis Courthouse--Resemblance + to White House, Washington, 206 + Number of public-houses in Ennis, and in Ireland, 207, 208 + Innkeepers of Milltown Malbay, 208,209 + Father White (see Note E), 209 + Sir Francis Head, 210, 211 + Different opinions in Ennis, 212, 213 + State of trade in Ennis, 213, 214 + Edenvale, Heronry, 215 _seq._ + Feb. 19, 215 + The men of Ennis at Edenvale, 216 + Killone Abbey, 218-221 + Stephen J. Meany, 220 + "Holy Well" of St. John, 221 + Superstition as to rabbits, 222 + Religious practices under Penal Laws, 222 + Experiences under National League, 223, 224 + Case of George Pilkington, 224-226 + Trees at Edenvale, 227 + Moonlighters, a reproduction of Whiteboys, 227, 228 + Difficulty in getting men to work, 228 + A testimonial to Mr. Austen Mackay, 229-232 + Effect of testimonials, 232 + Feb. 20, 232 + The case of Mrs. Connell at Milltown Malbay, 232 _seq._ + Estate accounts and prices, 240 + A rent-warner, 245 + Mr. Redmond, M.P., 245 + Father White's Sermon, 246 + A photograph, 246 + +APPENDIX. + + NOTES-- + + A. Mr. Gladstone and the American War (Prologue xxix), 249 + B. Mr. Parnell and the Dynamiters (Prologue xxxiii), 251 + C. The American "Suspects" of 1881 (Prologue xlvii), 255 + D. The Parnellites and the English Parties (Prologue l.), 262 + E. The "Boycott" at Miltown-Malbay (p. 209) 264 + + + + +PROLOGUE. + + +I. + +This book is a record of things seen, and of conversations had, during a +series of visits to Ireland between January and June 1888. + +These visits were made in quest of light, not so much upon the +proceedings and the purposes of the Irish "Nationalists,"--with which, +on both sides of the Atlantic, I have been tolerably familiar for many +years past--as upon the social and economical results in Ireland of the +processes of political vivisection to which that country has been so +long subjected. + +As these results primarily concern Great Britain and British subjects, +and as a well-founded and reasonable jealousy exists in Great Britain of +American intromission in the affairs of Ireland, it is proper for me to +say at the outset, that the condition of Ireland interests me not +because I believe, with Cardinal Manning, that upon the future of +Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire, but because I know that +America is largely responsible for the actual condition of Ireland, and +because the future condition of Ireland, and of the British Empire, +must gravely influence the future of my own country. + +In common with the vast majority of my countrymen, who come with me of +what may now not improperly be called the old American stock--by which I +mean the three millions of English-speaking dwellers in the New World, +who righteously resented, and successfully resisted, a hundred years +ago, the attempt--not of the Crown under which the Colonies held their +lands, but of the British Parliament in which they were +unrepresented--to take their property without their consent, and apply +it to purposes not passed upon by them, I have always felt that the +claim of the Irish people to a proper control of matters exclusively +Irish was essentially just and reasonable. The measure of that proper +control is now, as it always has been, a question not for Americans, but +for the people of Great Britain and of Ireland. If Lord Edward +Fitzgerald and his associates had succeeded in expelling British +authority from Ireland, and in founding an Irish Republic, we should +probably have recognised that Republic. Yet an American minister at the +Court of St. James's saw no impropriety in advising our Government to +refuse a refuge in the United States to the defeated Irish exiles of +'98. + +It is undoubtedly the opinion of every Irish American who possesses any +real influence with the people of his own race in my country, that the +rights and liberties of Ireland can only be effectually secured by a +complete political separation from Great Britain. Nor can the right of +Irish American citizens, holding this opinion, to express their sympathy +with Irishmen striving in Ireland to bring about such a result, and with +Englishmen or Scotchmen contributing to it in Great Britain, be +questioned, any more than the right of Polish citizens of the French +Republic to express their sympathy with Poles labouring in Poland for +the restoration of Polish nationality. It is perhaps even less open to +question than the right of Americans not of Irish race, and of Frenchmen +not of Polish race, to express such sympathies; and certainly less open +to question than the right of Englishmen or Americans to express their +sympathy with Cubans bent on sundering the last link which binds Cuba to +Spain, or with Greeks bent on overthrowing the authority of the Sultan +in Crete. + +But for all American citizens of whatever race, the expression of such +sympathies ceases to be legitimate when it assumes the shape of action +transcending the limits set by local or by international law. It is of +the essence of American constitutionalism that one community shall not +lay hands upon the domestic affairs of another; and it is an undeniable +fact that the sympathy of the great body of the American people with +Irish efforts for self-government has been diminished, not increased, +since 1848, by the gradual transfer of the head-quarters and machinery +of those efforts from Ireland to the United States. The recent refusal +of the Mayor of New York, Mr. Hewitt, to allow what is called the "Irish +National flag" to be raised over the City Hall of New York is vastly +more significant of the true drift of American feeling on this subject +than any number of sympathetic resolutions adopted at party conventions +or in State legislatures by party managers, bent on harpooning Irish +voters. If Ireland had really made herself a "nation," with or without +the consent of Great Britain, a refusal to hoist the Irish flag on the +occasion of an Irish holiday would be not only churlish but foolish. But +thousands of Americans, who might view with equanimity the disruption of +the British Empire and the establishment of an Irish republic, regard, +not only with disapprobation, but with resentment, the growing +disposition of Irish agitators in and out of the British Parliament to +thrash out on American soil their schemes for bringing about these +results with the help of Irishmen who have assumed the duties by +acquiring the rights of American citizenship. It is not in accordance +with the American doctrine of "Home Rule" that "Home Rule" of any sort +for Ireland should be organised in New York or in Chicago by +expatriated Irishmen. + +No man had a keener or more accurate sense of this than the most +eloquent and illustrious Irishman whose voice was ever heard in America. + +In the autumn of 1871 Father Burke of Tallaght and San Clemente, with +whom I had formed at Rome in early manhood a friendship which ended only +with his life, came to America as the commissioned Visitor of the +Dominican Order. His mission there will live for ever in the Catholic +annals of the New World. But of one episode of that mission no man +living perhaps knows so much as I, and I make no excuse for this +allusion to it here, as it illustrates perfectly the limits between the +lawful and the unlawful in the agitation of Irish questions upon +American soil. + +While Father Burke was in New York Mr. Froude came there, having been +invited to deliver before a Protestant Literary Association a series of +lectures upon the history of Ireland. My personal relations with Mr. +Froude, I should say here, and my esteem for his rare abilities, go back +to the days of the _Nemesis of Faith_, and I did not affect to disguise +from him the regret with which I learned his errand to the New World. +That his lectures would be brilliant, impressive, and interesting, was +quite certain; but it was equally certain, I thought, that they would +do a world of mischief, by stirring up ancient issues of strife between +the Protestant and the Catholic populations of the United States. + +That they would be answered angrily, indiscreetly, and in a fashion to +aggravate prejudices which ought to be appeased on both sides of the +questions involved, was much more than probable. All this accordingly I +urged upon Father Burke, begging him to find or make time in the midst +of his engrossing duties for a systematic course of lectures in reply. +What other men would surely say in heat and with virulence would be said +by him, I knew, temperately, loftily, and wisely. Three strenuous +objections he made. One was that his work as a Catholic missionary +demanded all his thought and all his time; another that he was not +historically equipped to deal with so formidable an antagonist; and a +third that America ought not to be a battle-ground of Irish contentions. +It was upon the last that he dwelt most tenaciously; nor did he give way +until he had satisfied himself, after consulting with the highest +authorities of his Church, and with two or three of the coolest and most +judicious Irish citizens of New York, that I was right in believing that +his appearance in the arena as the champion of Ireland, would lift an +inevitable controversy high above the atmosphere of unworthy passion, +and put it beyond the reach of political mischief-makers. + +How nobly he did his work when he had become convinced that he ought to +do it, is now matter of history. But it is a hundredfold more needful +now than it was in 1871 and 1872, that the spirit in which he did it +should be known and published abroad. In the interval between the +delivery of two of his replies to Mr. Froude, Mr. Froude went to Boston. +A letter from Boston informed me that upon Mr. Froude's arrival there, +all the Irish servants of the friend with whom he was to stay had +suddenly left the house, refusing to their employer the right to invite +under his roof a guest not agreeable to them. I handed this letter, +without a word, to Father Burke a few hours before he was to speak in +the Academy of Music. He read it with a kind of humorous wrath; and when +the evening came, he prefaced his lecture with a few strong and stirring +words, in which he castigated with equal sense and severity the +misconduct of his country-people, anticipating thus by many a year the +spirit in which the supreme authority of his Church has just now dealt +with the social plague of "boycotting," whereof the strike of the +servant girls at Boston sixteen years ago was a precursory symptom. + +Father Burke understood that American citizenship imposes duties where +it confers rights. Nobody expects the European emigrant who abjures his +foreign allegiance to divest himself of his native sympathies or +antipathies. But American law, and the conditions of American liberty, +require him to divest himself of the notion that he retains any right +actively to interfere in the domestic affairs of the country of his +birth. For public and political purposes, the Irishman who becomes an +American ceases to be an Irishman. When Mr. Gladstone's Government in +1881 seized and locked up indefinitely, on "suspicion" of what they +might be about to do, American citizens of Irish birth, these "suspects" +clamoured, and had a right to clamour, for the intervention of the +American Government to protect them against being dealt with as if they +were Irishmen and British subjects. But by the abjuration of British +allegiance which gave them this right to clamour for American +protection, they had voluntarily made themselves absolute foreigners to +Ireland, with no more legal or moral right to interfere in the affairs +of that country than so many Chinamen or Peruvians. + +Having said this, I ought, in justice to my fellow-citizens of Irish +birth, to say that these elementary truths have too often been obscured +for them by the conduct of public bodies in America, and of American +public men. + +No American public man of reputation, holding an executive office in the +Federal Government, has ever thrust himself, it is true, so inexcusably +into the domestic affairs of Great Britain and Ireland as did Mr. +Gladstone into the domestic affairs of the United States when, speaking +at Newcastle in the very crisis of our great civil war, he gave all the +weight of his position as a Cabinet Minister to the assertion that Mr. +Jefferson Davis had created not only an army and a navy, but a nation, +and thereby compelled the Prime Minister of Great Britain to break the +effect of this declaration by insisting that another Cabinet Minister, +Sir George Cornewall Lewis, should instantly make a speech countering +it, and covering the neutrality of the British Government.[4] + +Nor has either House of the Congress of the United States ever been +guilty of the impertinence of adopting resolutions of sympathy with the +Home Rule, or any other movement affecting directly the domestic affairs +of the British Empire, though, within my own knowledge, very strong +pressure has been more than once put upon the Foreign Affairs Committees +of both Houses to bring this about. + +But such resolutions have been repeatedly adopted by State Legislatures, +and individual members, both of the Federal Senate and of the Federal +Lower House, have discredited themselves, and brought such discredit as +they could upon the Congress, by effusions of the same sort. The bad +citizenship of Irish-American citizens, however, is not the less bad +citizenship because they may have been led into it by the recklessness +of State Legislatures--which have no responsibility for our foreign +relations--or the sycophancy of public men. If it were proved to +demonstration that Home Rule would be the salvation of Ireland, no +American citizen would have any more right to take an active part in +furthering it than to take an active part in dethroning the Czar of all +the Russias. The lesson which Washington administered to Citizen Genet, +when that meddlesome minister of the French Republic undertook to "boom" +the rights of men by issuing letters of marque at Charleston, has +governed the foreign relations of the United States ever since, and it +is as binding upon every private citizen as upon every public servant of +the Republic. + +I must ask my readers, therefore, to bear it constantly in mind that all +my observations and comments have been made from an American, not from a +British or an Irish point of view. How or by whom Ireland shall be +governed concerns me only in so far as the government of Ireland may +affect the character and the tendencies of the Irish people, and +thereby, through the close, intimate, and increasing connection between +the Irish people and the people of the United States, may tend to affect +the future of my country. This being my point of view, it will be +apparent, I think, that I have at least laboured under no temptation to +see things otherwise than as they were, or to state things otherwise +than as I saw them. + +With Arthur Young, who more clearly than any other man of his time saw +the end from the beginning of the fatuous and featherheaded French +Revolution of 1789, I have always been inclined to think "the +application of theory to methods of government a surprising imbecility +in the human mind:" and it will be found that in this book I have done +little more than set down, as fully and clearly as I could, what I +actually saw and heard in Ireland. My method has been as simple as my +object. During each day as occasion served, and always at night, I made +stenographic notes of whatever had attracted my attention or engaged my +interest. As I had no case to make for or against any political party or +any theory of government in Ireland, I took things great and small, and +people high and low, as they came, putting myself in contact by +preference, wherever I could, with those classes of the Irish people of +whom we see least in America, and concerning myself, as to my notes, +only that they should be made under the vivid immediate impress of +whatever they were to record. These notes I have subsequently written +out in the spirit in which I made them, in all cases taking what pains +I could to verify statements of facts, and in many cases, where it +seemed desirable or necessary, submitting the proofs of the pages as +finally printed to the persons whom, after myself, they most concerned. + +I have been more annoyed by the delay than by the trouble thus entailed +upon me; but I shall be satisfied if those who may take the pains to +read the book shall as nearly as possible see what I saw, and hear what +I heard. + +I have no wish to impress my own conclusions upon others who may be +better able than I am accurately to interpret the facts from which these +conclusions have been drawn. Such as they are, I have put them into a +few pages at the end of the book. + +It will be found that I have touched only incidentally upon the subject +of Home Rule for Ireland. Until it shall be ascertained what "Home Rule +for Ireland" means, that subject seems to me to lie quite outside the +domain of my inquiries. "Home Rule for Ireland" is not now a plan--nor +so much as a proposition. It is merely a polemical phrase, of little +importance to persons really interested in the condition of Ireland, +however invaluable it may be to the makers of party platforms in my own +country, or to Parliamentary candidates on this side of the Atlantic. It +may mean anything or nothing, from Mr. Chamberlain's imperialist scheme +of four Provincial Councils--which recalls the outlines of a system +once established with success in New Zealand--to that absolute and +complete separation in all particulars of the government of Ireland from +the government of Great Britain, which has unquestionably been the aim +of every active Irish organisation in the United States for the last +twenty years, and which the accredited leader of the "Home Rule" party +in the British Parliament, Mr. Parnell, is understood in America to have +pledged himself that he will do anything to further and nothing to +impede. On this point, what I took to be conclusive documentary evidence +was submitted to me in New York several years ago by Mr. Sheridan, at a +time when the fever-heat of British indignation excited by those murders +in the Phoenix Park, for which I believe it is now admitted by the best +informed authorities that Mr. Sheridan had no responsibility, was +driving Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates into disavowals of +the extreme men of their connection, which, but for Mr. Sheridan's +coolness and consciousness of his well-assured domination over them, +might have led to extremely inconvenient consequences to all +concerned.[5] But whatever "Home Rule" may or may not mean, I went to +Ireland, not to find some achromatic meaning for a prismatic phrase, +which is flashed at you fifty times in England or America where you +encounter it once in Ireland, but to learn what I could of the social +and economical condition of the Irish people as affected by the +revolutionary forces which are now at work in that country. + +I have watched the development of these forces too long and too closely +to be under any illusion as to the real importance relatively with them +of the so-called "Parliamentary" action of the Irish Nationalists. + + +II. + +The visits to Ireland, of which this book is a record, were made on my +return from a sojourn in Rome during the celebration of the Jubilee of +His Holiness Leo XIII. What I then and there learned convinced me that +the Vatican was on the eve of grappling in Ireland with issues +substantially identical with those which were forced, in my own country, +two years ago, upon a most courageous and gifted member of the American +Catholic hierarchy, the Archbishop of New York, by the open adhesion of +an eminent Irish American ecclesiastic, the Rev. Dr. M'Glynn, to the +social revolution of which Mr. Henry George is the best-equipped and +most indefatigable apostle. Entertaining this conviction (which events +have since shown to have been well-founded), I was anxious to survey on +the spot the conditions under which the conflict so vigorously +encountered by the Archbishop in New York must be waged by the Vatican +in Ireland. + +To suppose that the Vatican, in dealing with this conflict, either in +Ireland or in America, is troubling itself about the balancing of +political acrobats, British or American, upon the tight-rope of "Home +Rule," is as absurd as it would have been to suppose that in 1885 the +Vatican concerned itself with the subterranean intrigues which there is +reason to believe the Irish Nationalists then sought to carry on with +the wire-pullers of the two great British political parties. To get a +correct perspective of the observations which I came from Rome this year +to make in Ireland, my readers, as I have already said, must allow me to +take them across the Atlantic, and must put aside as accessory and +incidental the forensic and polemic phenomena of Irish politics, with +which they are perhaps only too familiar. + +It is as easy to go too far back as it is not to go back far enough in +the study of such a revolutionary movement as that of which Ireland is +just now the arena. + +Many and sore are the historical grievances of the Irish people. That +they are historical and not actual grievances would seem to be admitted +by so sympathetic and minutely well-informed a writer as Dr. Sigerson, +when he gives it as his opinion, that after the passage of the Land Act +of 1870, "the concession in principle of the demands of the cultivators +as tenants" had "abolished the class war waged between landlords and +their tenantry." + +The class war between the tenantry and their landlords, therefore, which +is now undoubtedly waging in Ireland cannot be attributed to the +historical grievances of the Irish people. The tradition and the memory +of these historical grievances may indeed be used by designing or +hysterical traders in agitation to inflame the present war. But the war +itself is not the old war, nor can it be explained by recurring to the +causes of the old war. It has the characteristics no longer of a +defensive war, nor yet of a war of revenge absolutely, but of an +aggressive war, and of a war of conquest. In his able work on "The Land +Tenure and the Land Classes of Ireland," Dr. Sigerson, writing in 1871, +looked forward to the peaceful co-existence in Ireland of two systems of +land-holding, "whereby the country might enjoy the advantage of what is +good in the 'landlord,' or single middleman system, and in the peasant +proprietary or direct system." + +What we now see in Ireland, after nearly twenty years of legislation, +steadily tending to the triumph of equal rights, is an agitation +threatening not only the "co-existence" of these two systems, but the +very existence of each of these systems. + +To get at the origin and the meaning of this agitation we must be +content, I believe, to go no further back than ten years, and to look +for them, not in Ireland, but in America, not to Mr. Parnell and Mr. +Gladstone primarily, but to Mr. Davitt and Mr. Henry George. + + +III. + +In a very remarkable letter written to Earl Grey in 1868, after the +Clerkenwell explosions had brought the disestablishment of the Irish +Protestant Church into Mr. Gladstone's scheme of "practical politics," +the Archbishop of Westminster, not then a Cardinal, called the attention +of Englishmen to the fact, not yet I fear adequately apprehended by +them, that "the assimilating power of America upon the Irish people, if +seven days slower than that of England in reaching Ireland, is sevenfold +more penetrating and powerful upon the whole population." By this the +Archbishop meant, what was unquestionably true, that even in 1868, only +twenty years after the great Irish exodus to America began, the social +and political ideas of America were exerting a seven-fold stronger +influence upon the character and the tendencies of the Irish people than +the social and political ideas of England. Thanks to the development of +the cables and the telegraph since 1868, and to the enormous progress +of America since that time in wealth and population, this "assimilating +power" reaches Ireland much more rapidly, and exerts upon the Irish +people a very much more drastic influence than in 1868. This +establishes, of course, a return current westward, which is as necessary +to he watched, and is as much neglected by American as the original +eastward current is by British public men. + +In this letter of 1868 to Earl Grey, the Archbishop of Westminster +desiring, as an Englishman, to counteract, if possible, this influence +which was drawing Ireland away from the British monarchy, and towards +the American Republic, maintained that by two things the "heart of +Ireland" might be won, and her affections enlisted with her interests in +the support of the unity, solidity, and prosperity of the British +Empire. One of these two things was "perfect religious equality between +the Catholics and the Protestants of Ireland." The other was that the +Imperial Legislature should by statute make it impossible for any +landlord in Ireland to commit three wrongs,--"first, the wrong of +abusing his rights by arbitrary eviction; secondly, by exacting an +exorbitant rent; thirdly, by appropriating to his own use the +improvements effected by the industry of his tenants." + +Perfect religious equality has since been established between the +Catholics and the Protestants of Ireland. The three wrongs which the +Archbishop called upon the Imperial Legislature to make impossible to +Irish landlords have since been made impossible by Statute. + +Yet it is on all hands admitted that the "unity, solidity, and +prosperity" of the British Empire have never been so seriously +threatened in Ireland as during the last ten years. Was the Archbishop +wrong, therefore, in his estimate of the situation in 1868? Or has the +centripetal influence of remedial British legislation since 1868 failed +to check a centrifugal advance "by leaps and bounds," in the +"assimilating power" of America upon Ireland? + + +IV. + +Just ten years ago, in 1878, Mr. Michael Davitt and Mr. John Devoy (the +latter of whom had been commissioned in 1865 by the Fenian leader +Stephens, as "chief organiser of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the +British army"), being then together in America, promulgated, Mr. Davitt +in a speech at Boston, and Mr. Devoy in a letter sent to the _Freeman's +Journal_ in Dublin, the outlines of a scheme for overthrowing British +rule in Ireland by revolutionising the ownership of land in that +country. + +The basis of this scheme had been laid thirty years before, in 1848, by +Finton Lalor, John Mitchel, and the present Archbishop of Cashel, then a +simple curate. + +It was thus stated by Lalor in his paper, the _Irish Felon_:-- + +"The entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the sun and +down to the centre of the earth, is vested, as of right, in the people +of Ireland. The soil of the country belongs as of right to the entire +people of the country, not to any one class, but to the nation." + +This was a distinct denial of the right of private property in land. If +true of Ireland and the Irish people this proposition was true of all +lands and of all peoples. Lalor, though more of a patriot than of a +philosopher, saw this plainly; and in one of the three numbers of his +paper which appeared before it was suppressed by the British Government, +he said "the principle I propose goes to the foundations of Europe, and +sooner or later will cause Europe to uprise." Michael Davitt saw this as +clearly in 1878 as Finton Lalor thirty years before. He had matured his +plans in connection with this principle during the weary but not wasted +years of his imprisonment as a Fenian at Dartmoor, a place, the name of +which is connected in America with many odious memories of the second +war between England and the United States; and going out to America +almost immediately after his release on a ticket of leave, he there +found the ideas of Finton Lalor and his associates of 1848, ripened and +harvested in the mind of an American student of sociology, Henry George. +Nowhere in the world has what a shrewd English traveller calls "the +illegitimate development of private wealth" attained such proportions in +modern times as in America, and especially in California. Nowhere, too, +in the world is the ostentatious waste of the results of labour upon the +antics of a frivolous plutocracy a more crying peril of our times than +in America. Henry George, an American of the Eastern States, who went to +the Pacific coast as a lad, had grown up with and watched the progress +of this social disease in California; and when Davitt reached America in +1878, Henry George was preparing to publish his revolutionary book on +_Progress and Poverty_, which appeared in 1879. Dates are important from +this point, as they will trace for the reader the formation of the +strongest forces which, as I believe, are to-day at work to shape the +future of Ireland, and, if Cardinal Manning is right, with the future of +Ireland, the future of the British Empire. + +The year 1878 saw the "Home Rule" movement in Irish politics brought to +an almost ludicrous halt by the success of Mr. Parnell, then a young +member of Parliament for Meath, in unhorsing the leader of that +movement, Mr. Butt. As the Irish members then had no coherent purpose or +policy, Mr. Parnell had, without much trouble, dominated and brigaded +them to follow him blindly into a system of parliamentary obstruction, +which there is reason to suppose was suggested to him by a friend who +had studied the Congressional proceedings of the United States, the +native country of his mother, and especially the tactics which had +enabled Mr. Randall of Pennsylvania, the leader of the Democratic +minority in the House of Representatives, to check the so-called "Civil +Rights Bill," sent down by the Senate to that House, during a continuous +session of forty-six hours and a half, with no fewer than seventy-seven +calls of the house, in the month of January 1875, some time before Mr. +Parnell first took his seat in the House of Commons. + +When Mr. Parnell, early in 1878, thanks to this system, had ousted Mr. +Butt, and got himself elected as President of the Irish "Home Rule +Confederation," he found himself, as an Irish friend of mine wrote to me +at the time, in an awkward position. He had command of the "Home Rule" +members at Westminster, but he had no notion what to do with them, and +neither they nor he could see anyway open to securing a permanent hold +upon the Irish voters. Three bad harvests in succession had thrown the +Irish tenants into a state which disinclined them to make sacrifices +for any sentimental policy, but prepared them to lend their ears eagerly +to Michael Davitt, when, on his return from the United States in the +early spring of 1879, he proclaimed anew, at Irishtown in his native +county of Mayo, the gospel of 1848 giving the land of Ireland to the +people of Ireland. Clearly Mr. Davitt held the winning card. As he +frankly put the case to a special correspondent, whom I sent to see him, +and whose report I published in New York, he saw that "the only issue +upon which Home Rulers, Nationalists, Obstructionists, and each and +every shade of opinion existing in Ireland could be united was the Land +Question," and of that question he took control. Naturally enough, Mr. +Parnell, himself a landowner under the English settlement, shrank at +first from committing himself and his fortunes to the leadership of Mr. +Davitt. But no choice was really left him, and there is reason to +believe that a decision was made easier to him by a then inchoate +undertaking that he should be personally protected against the financial +consequences to himself of the new departure, by a testimonial fund, +such as was in fact raised and presented to him in 1883. In June 1879 he +accepted the inevitable, and in a speech at Westport put himself with +his parliamentary following and machinery at the service of the founder +of the Irish Land League, uttering the keynote of Mr. Davitt's "new +departure" in his celebrated appeal to the Irish tenants to "keep a firm +grip of their homesteads." In the middle of October 1879, Mr. Davitt +formally organised the Irish National Land League, "to reduce rack-rents +and facilitate the obtaining of the ownership of the land of Ireland by +the occupiers," and Mr. Parnell was made its first President. He was +sent out to America in that capacity, at the end of the year to explain +to the Irish-American leaders the importance of supplying the new +organisation with funds sufficient to enable it to take and keep the +field at Westminster with a force of paid members not dependent for +their support upon the Irish constituencies. It was obviously impossible +either to guarantee any considerable number of Irishmen holding property +against loss by a policy aimed at the foundations of property, or to +count upon finding for every Irish seat a member of local weight and +stake, imbued with the spirit of martyrdom. + +Mr. Parnell landed at New York on the 1st of January 1880. An interview +with him, written out on board of the steamer which took him to America +by a correspondent detailed for that purpose, was published on the +morning after his arrival. It made on the whole an unfavourable +impression in America, which was not improved by an injudicious quarrel +into which he drifted with a portion of the American press, and which +was distinctly deepened by his inexcusable misrepresentations of the +conduct of Queen Victoria during the famine of 1847, and by his foolish +attacks upon the management and objects of the Duchess of Marlborough's +fund for the relief of Irish distress. The friends of Mr. Davitt in +America, however, and the leaders of the most active Irish organisations +there, came to the rescue, and as the two American parties were +preparing their lines of battle for the Presidential conflict of 1880, +Mr. Parnell was not only "put through" the usual course of "receptions" +by Mayors and State legislatures, but invited on an "off-day" to address +the House of Representatives at Washington. His tour, however, on the +whole, harmed more than it helped the new Irish movement on my side of +the Atlantic, and when he was called back to take his part in the +electoral contest precipitated by Lord Beaconsfield's dissolution of +Parliament at Easter 1880, Mr. Davitt went out to America himself to do +what his Parliamentary associate had not succeeded in doing. During this +visit of Mr. Davitt to the United States, Mr. Henry George finally +transferred his residence from San Francisco to New York, and made his +arrangements to visit England and Ireland, and bring about a practical +combination between the advocates of "the land for the people" on both +sides of the ocean. These arrangements he carried out in 1881-82, +publishing in 1881, in America, his treatise on the Irish Land question, +while Mr. Davitt, who had been arrested after his return to Europe by +Mr. Gladstone's Government in February 1881, on a revocation of his +ticket-of-leave, lay a prisoner at Portland. Mr. George himself, while +travelling in Ireland with an academical English friend, came under +"suspicion" in the eyes of one of Mr. Forster's officers, and was +arrested, but at once released. During the protracted confinement of Mr. +Davitt at Portland, the utter incapacity of Mr. Parnell and his +Parliamentary associates to manage the social revolution initiated by +the founder of the Land League became fully apparent, not only to +impartial, but even to sympathetic observers in America, long before it +was demonstrated by the incarceration of Mr. Parnell in Kilmainham, the +disavowal, under pressure, of the no-rent manifesto by Archbishop Croke, +and the suppression of the Land League. In sequestrating Mr. Davitt, Mr. +Forster, as was shown by the extraordinary scenes which in the House of +Commons followed his arrest, had struck at the core of the revolution, +and had the Irish Secretary not been deserted by Mr. Gladstone, under +influences which originated at Kilmainham, and were reinforced by the +pressure of the United States Government in the spring of 1882, history +might have had a very different tale to tell of the last six years in +Ireland and in Great Britain.[6] + + +V. + +It was after the return of Mr. George from Ireland to New York in 1882 +that the first black point appeared on the horizon, of the conflict, +inevitable in the nature of things, between the social revolution and +the Catholic Church, which assumed such serious proportions two years +ago in America, and which is now developing itself in Ireland. Among the +ablest and the most earnest converts in America to the doctrine of the +new social revolution was the Rev. Dr. M'Glynn, a Catholic priest, +standing in the front rank of his order in New York, in point alike of +eloquence in the pulpit, and of influence in private life. Finding, like +Michael Davitt, in the doctrine of Henry George an outcome and a +confirmation of the principle laid down in 1848 for the liberation of +Ireland by Finton Lalor, Dr. M'Glynn threw himself ardently into the +advocacy of that doctrine,--so ardently that in August 1882 the Prefect +of the Propaganda, Cardinal Simeoni, found it necessary to invite the +attention of Cardinal M'Closkey, then Archbishop of New York, to +speeches of Dr. M'Glynn, reported in the _Irish World_ of New York, as +"containing propositions openly opposed to the teachings of the Catholic +Church." + +It did not concern the Propaganda that these propositions ran on +all-fours with the policy of the Irish Land League established by Mr. +Davitt, and accepted by Mr. Parnell. What concerned the Propaganda in +the propositions of Dr. M'Glynn at New York in 1882 was precisely what +concerns the Propaganda in the programme of Mr. Davitt as mismanaged by +Mr. Dillon in Ireland in 1888--the incompatibility of these +propositions, and of that programme, with the teachings of the Church. + +Upon receiving the instructions of the Propaganda in August 1882, +Cardinal M'Closkey sent for Dr. M'Glynn, and set the matter plainly +before him. Dr. M'Glynn professed regret for his errors, promised to +abstain in future from political meetings, and begged the Cardinal to +inform the authorities at Home of his intention to walk more +circumspectly. The submission of Dr. M'Glynn was approved at Rome, but +it was gently intimated to him that it needed to be crowned by public +reparation for the scandal he had caused. He disregarded this pastoral +hint, and when the Archbishop Coadjutor of New York, Dr. Corrigan, went +to Rome in 1883 to represent the Cardinal, who was unequal to the +journey, he found the Propaganda by no means satisfied with the attitude +of Dr. M'Glynn. Two years after this, in October 1885, Cardinal +M'Closkey died, and Dr. Corrigan succeeded him as Archbishop of New +York. + +Between the first admonition given to the sacerdotal ally of Mr. George +in 1882 and this event much had come to pass in Ireland. The Land League +suppressed by Mr. Forster had been suffered to reappear as the National +League by Earl Spencer and Mr. Trevelyan. Sir William Harcourt's +stringent and sweeping "Coercion Act" of July 11th, 1882, passed under +the stress of the murders in the Phoenix Park, expiring by its own terms +in July 1885, Mr. Gladstone found himself forced either to alienate a +number of his Radical supporters by proposing a renewal of that Act, or +to invite a catastrophe in Ireland by attempting to rule that country +under "the ordinary law." + +He elected to escape from the dilemma by inviting a defeat in Parliament +on a secondary question of the Budget. He went out of power on the 9th +of June 1885, leaving Lord Salisbury to send the Earl of Carnarvon as +Viceroy to Ireland, and the Irish party in Parliament to darken the air +on both sides of the Atlantic with portentous intimations of a +mysterious compact, under which they were to secure Home Rule for +Ireland by establishing the Conservatives in their places at the general +election in November.[7] + +What came of all this I may briefly rehearse. Going out to America in +November 1885, and returning to England in January 1886, I remained in +London long enough to assure myself, and to publish in America my +conviction of the utter hopelessness of Mr. Gladstone's "Home Rule" +measure, the success of which would have made his government the ally +and the instrument of Mr. Parnell in carrying out the plans of Mr. +Davitt, Mr. Henry George, and the active Irish organisations of the +United States. All this is matter of history. + +The effect of Mr. Gladstone's speech of April 8, 1886, introducing his +Home Rule Bill, upon the Irish in America was simply intoxicating. They +saw him, as in a vision, repeating for the benefit of Ireland at Dublin, +on a grander scale, the impressive scene of his surrender in 1858 at +Corfu of the Protectorate of the Ionian Islands to Greece. + +Upon thousands also of Americans, interested more or less intelligently +in British affairs, but neither familiar, nor caring to be, with the +details of the political situation in Great Britain, this appearance of +the British Premier, as the champion of Home Rule for Ireland, +denouncing the "baseness and blackguardism" of Pitt and his +accomplices, the framers of the Union of 1800, naturally produced a very +profound impression. What might be almost called a "tidal wave" of +sympathy with the Irish National League, and with him as its ally, made +itself felt throughout the United States. Had I witnessed the drama from +the far-off auditorium in New York, I might doubtless have shared the +conviction of so many of my countrymen that we were about to behold the +consummation tunefully anticipated so many years ago by John Quincy +Adams, and-- + + "Proud of herself, victorious over fate, + See Erin rise, an independent state." + +The moment seemed propitious for a resolute forward move in America of +Mr. Henry George, and the other American believers in the doctrine of +"the land for the people." It would have been more propitious had not +the political managers of the Irish party, misapprehending to the last +moment the drift of things in the British Parliament, and counting +firmly upon a victory for Mr. Gladstone, either at Westminster or at the +polls, insisted upon holding a great convention of the Irish in America +at Chicago in August 1886. A proposition to do this had been made in the +spring of 1885, and put off, in judicious deference to the disgust which +many independent Americans of both parties then felt at the course +pursued by Mr. Parnell's friends, Mr. Egan and Mr. Sullivan in 1884, +when these leaders openly led the Irish with drums beating and green +flags flying out of the Democratic into the Republican camp. + +As it was, however, Mr. Gladstone having gone out of power a second +time, on the second day of June in 1886, the non-parliamentary and real +leader in Ireland of the Irish revolutionary movement, Mr. Davitt, came +overtly to the front, and crossed the Atlantic to ride the whirlwind and +direct the storm at the Convention appointed to be held in Chicago on +the 18th of August. + +In New York he found Mr. Henry George quietly preparing to put the +emotions of the moment to profit at the municipal election which was to +occur in that city in November, and Dr. M'Glynn more enamoured than ever +of the doctrine of "the land for the people," and more defiant than ever +of the Propaganda and of his ecclesiastical superiors. It was resolved +that Mr. George should come forward as a candidate for the mayoralty in +November, and Dr. M'Glynn determined to take the field in support of +him. + + +VI. + +We now come to close quarters. + +Dr. Corrigan, as I have said, had become the Archbishop of New York in +October 1885. The Irish-American Convention met at Chicago, Mr. Davitt +dominating its proceedings by his courageous and outspoken support of +his defeated Parliamentary allies in England. The candidacy of Mr. Henry +George had not yet been announced in New York. But Dr. M'Glynn resumed +his practice of addressing public meetings in support of the doctrines +of Mr. Davitt and of Henry George. The Archbishop's duty was plain. It +was not pleasant. A Catholic prelate of Irish blood living in New York +might have been pardoned for avoiding, if he could, an open intervention +at such a moment, to prevent an able and popular priest from disobeying +his ecclesiastical superiors in his zeal for a doctrine hostile to +"landlordism," and cordially approved by the most influential of the +Irish leaders. + +But on the 21st August 1886, while all the Irishmen in New York were +wild with excitement over the proceedings at Chicago, Archbishop +Corrigan did his duty, and admonished Dr. M'Glynn to restrain his +political ardour. The admonition was thrown away. A month later, the +canvass of Mr. Henry George being then fully opened, Dr. M'Glynn sent +Mr. George himself to wait upon the Archbishop with a note of +introduction as his "very dear and valued friend," in the hope of +inducing the Archbishop to withdraw his inhibition and allow him to +speak at a great meeting, then about to be held, of the supporters of +Mr. George. + +The Archbishop replied in a firm but friendly note, forbidding Dr. +M'Glynn "in the most positive manner" to attend the meeting referred to, +or "any other political meeting whatever." + +Dr. M'Glynn deliberately disobeyed this order, attended the meeting, and +threw himself with ever increasing heat into the war against +landlordism. On the 2d of October 1886, therefore, he was formally +"suspended" from his priestly functions--nor has he ever since been +permitted to resume them. Another priest presides over the great church +of St. Stephen, of which he was the rector. More than once the door of +repentance and return has been opened to him; but, I believe, he is +still waging war in his own way, and beyond the precincts of the +priesthood, both upon the right of private property in land and upon the +Pope. + +He is a man of vigorous intellect; and he has defined the issue between +himself and the Church in language so terse and clear that I reproduce +it here. It defines also the real issue of to-day between the Church +speaking through the Papal Decree of April 20, 1888, and the National +League of Ireland acting through the "Plan of Campaign." + +No heed having been paid by Dr. M'Glynn to several successive +intimations summoning him to go to Rome and explain his attitude, he +finally, on the 20th of December 1886, wrote a letter in which, with a +single skilful turn of his wrist, he took out the core of Henry George's +doctrine as to land, which really is the core also of the Irish Plan of +Campaign, and thus laid it before the Archbishop of New York:-- + +"My doctrine about land has been made clear in speeches, in reports of +interviews, and in published articles, and I repeat it here. I have +taught, and I shall continue to teach in speeches and writings, as long +as I live, that land is rightfully the property of the people in common, +and that private ownership of land is against natural justice, no matter +by what civil or ecclesiastical laws it may be sanctioned; and I would +bring about instantly, if I could, such change of laws all over the +world as would confiscate private property in land without one penny of +compensation to the miscalled owners." + +There is no shuffling here. With logical precision Dr. M'Glynn strips +Mr. George's doctrine of its technical disguise as a form of taxation, +and presents it to the world as a simple Confiscation of Rents. Many +acute critics of _Progress and Poverty_ have failed to see that when +Mr. George calls upon the State to take over to itself, and to its own +uses, the whole annual rental value of the bare land of a country, the +land, that is, irrespectively of improvements put upon it by man, he +proposes not "a single tax upon land" at all, but an actual confiscation +of the rental of the land--which for practical purposes is the land--to +the uses of the State, without a levy, and without compensation to "the +miscalled owners." + +When a tax is levied, the need by the State levying it of a certain sum +of money must first be ascertained by competent authority, legislative +or executive, as the case may be, and the law-making power must then, +according to a prescribed form, enact that to raise such a sum a certain +tax shall be levied on designated property or occupations. If the +exigencies of the State are held to require it, a tax may be levied upon +property of more than its value, as in the case, for example, of the +customs duty which was imposed in one of our "tariff revisions" upon +plate glass imported into the United States by way of "protecting" a +single plate-glass factory then existing in the United States. This was +an abominable abuse of a constitutional power, but it was not +"confiscation." What Henry George proposes is confiscation, as Dr. +M'Glynn plainly sees and courageously says. What he proposes is that +the State shall compel the annual rental value of all land to be paid +into the public treasury, without regard to the question whether the +State does or does not need such a sum of money. That is confiscation +pure and simple, the State, in the assumed interest of the State, +proceeding against the private owners of land, or the "miscalled +owners," to use Dr. M'Glynn's significant phrase, precisely as under the +feudal system the State proceeded against the private property of rebels +and traitors. No good reason can be shown why the process should not be +applied to personalty and to debts as well as to land. + +This was the doctrine indorsed at the polls in New York in November 1886 +by 68,000 voters. Nor can there be much doubt that it would have been +indorsed by the few thousand more votes needed to defeat Mr. Hewitt, the +actual Mayor of New York, and to put Mr. Henry George into the Chief +Magistracy of the first city of the New World, had not its teachers and +preachers been confronted by the quiet, cool, and determined prelate who +met it as plainly as it was put. "Your letter," said the Archbishop, +"has brought the painful intelligence that you decline to go to Rome, +and that you have taught, and will continue to teach, the injustice of +private ownership of land, no matter by what laws of Church or State it +may be sanctioned. In view of such declarations, to permit you to +exercise the holy ministry would be manifestly wrong." + +In these few words of the Archbishop of New York, we have plainly +affirmed in 1886 the principle underlying the Papal Decree of 1888 +against the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting in Ireland. There is no +question of parties or of politics in the one case or in the other. When +Dr. M'Glynn talked about the private ownership of land in New York as +"against natural justice," he flung himself not only against the Eighth +Commandment and the teachings of the Catholic Church, touching the +rights of property, but against the constitutions of the State of New +York and of the United States. That "private property shall not be taken +for public uses without just compensation" is a fundamental provision of +the Constitution of the United States, which is itself a part of the +Constitution of every State of the Union; and the right of private +ownership in land is defined and protected beyond doubt or cavil in New +York under the State Constitution. An Act passed in 1830 provides and +declares that all lands within the State "are allodial, so that, subject +only to the liability to escheat, the entire and absolute property is +vested in the owners according to the nature of their respective +estates." + +By this Act "all feudal tenures of every description, with all their +incidents," were "abolished." Most of the "feudal incidents" of the +socage tenure had been previously abolished by an Act passed in 1787, +under the first Constitution of the State, adopted at Kingston in 1777, +a year after the Declaration of American Independence; and socage tenure +by fixed and determinate service, not military or variable by the lord +at his will, had been adopted long before by an Act of the first +Assembly of the Province of New York held in 1691 under the first Royal +Governor, after the reconquest of the province from Holland, and in the +reign of William and Mary. This Act provided that all lands should "be +held in free and common socage according to the tenure of East Greenwich +in England." It is an interesting circumstance that the right of private +ownership in land, thus rooted in our history, should have been defended +against a threatening revolutionary movement in New York by the courage +and loyalty to the Constitution of his country as well as to his Church +of a Catholic Archbishop. For this same Assembly of the Province of New +York in 1693, in an Act "to maintain Protestant ministers and churches," +enacted that "every Jesuit and popish priest" found in the Province +after a certain day named, should be put into "perpetual imprisonment," +with the proviso that if he escaped and was retaken he should suffer +death. And even in the Constitution of 1777 the Protestantism of New +York expressed its hostility to the Catholic Church by exacting +subjection "in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil." + +The position of the Archbishop, both as a churchman and as a citizen, +was impregnable. When Dr. M'Glynn advocated the plan of Henry George, he +advocated at one and the same time the immoral seizure and confiscation +of the whole income of many persons within the protection of the +Constitution of New York, and the overthrow of the Constitution of that +State and of the United States. It may be within the competency of the +British Parliament to enact such a confiscation of rent without a +revolution, there being not only no allodial tenure of land in Great +Britain, but, it would appear, no limit to the power of a British +Parliament over the lives, liberties, and property of British subjects, +but the will of its members. But it is not within the competency of the +Congress of the United States, or of the Assembly of New York, to do +such a thing, the powers of these bodies being controlled and denned by +written Constitutions, which can only be altered or amended in a +prescribed manner and through prescribed and elaborate forms. + + +VII. + +By the middle of October 1886 it became clear that Mr. George, whose +candidacy had at first been regarded with indifference by the party +managers, both Democratic and Republican, in New York, would command a +vote certainly larger than that of one of these parties, and possibly +larger than that of either of them. To put him at the head of a poll of +three parties would elect him. This was so apparent that he and his +friends, including Dr. M'Glynn and Mr. Davitt, were warranted in +expecting a victory. + +It was hardly therefore by a mere coincidence that this precise time was +selected for opening the war in Ireland against Rent. It is quite +possible that if Mr. Dillon and his Parliamentary friends had been in +less of a hurry to open this war before the return of Mr. Davitt from +America, it might have been opened in a manner less "politically +stupid," if not less "morally wrong." But, of course, if Mr. Henry +George had been elected Mayor of New York, as he came so near to being +in November 1886, and Mr. Davitt had returned to Ireland with the +prestige of contributing to place him in the municipal chair of the most +important city in the New World, Mr. Dillon and his Parliamentary +friends would probably have found it necessary to accept a much less +conspicuous part in the conduct of the campaign. + +It was on the 17th of October 1886 that Mr. John Dillon, M.P., first +promulgated the "Plan of Campaign" at Portumna, in a speech which was +promptly flashed under the Atlantic to New York, there to feed the +flame, already fanned by the eloquence of Dr. M'Glynn, into a blaze of +enthusiasm for the apostle of the New Gospel of Confiscation. + +Had the "Plan of Campaign" then been met by the highest local authority +of the Catholic Church in Ireland, as Henry George's doctrine of +Confiscation was met in New York by Archbishop Corrigan, it might never +have been necessary to issue the Papal Decree of April 1888. But while +the Bishop of Limerick unhesitatingly denounced the "Plan of Campaign" +as "politically stupid and morally wrong," the Archbishop of Dublin +bestowed upon it what may be called a left-handed benediction. Admitting +that it empowered one of the parties to a contract to "fix the terms on +which that contract should continue in force," the Archbishop actually +condoned the claim of this immoral power by the tenant, on the ground +that the same immoral power had been theretofore exercised by the +landlord! Peter having robbed Paul from January to July, that is, Paul +should be encouraged by his spiritual guides to rob Peter from July to +January! + +That the Catholic Church should even seem for a time to speak with two +voices on such a point as the moral quality of political machinery, or +that speaking with one voice upon such a point in America, it should +even seem to speak with another voice in Ireland, would clearly be a +disaster to the Church and to civilisation. From the moment therefore, +in 1886, when the issue between Dr. M'Glynn and the Archbishop of New +York was defined, as I have shown, and the Irish National League, with a +quasi-indorsement from the Archbishop of Dublin, had arrayed itself +practically and openly on the side of Dr. M'Glynn and against the +Archbishop of New York, interests far transcending those of any +political party in Ireland, in Great Britain, or in the United States, +were involved. Unfortunately for the immediate and decisive settlement +by Rome of the issue between Dr. M'Glynn and the Archbishop of New York, +a certain vague but therefore more vexatious measure of countenance had +been given, before that issue was raised, to the theories of Mr. Henry +George by another American prelate, the Cardinal Archbishop of +Baltimore, and by more than one eminent ecclesiastic in Europe. Of +course this would have been impossible had these ecclesiastics +penetrated, like Dr. M'Glynn, to the heart of Mr. George's contention, +or discerned with the acumen of the Archbishop of New York the +fundamental difference between any imaginable exercise of the power of +taxation by a Constitutional Government, and Mr. George's doctrine of +the Confiscation of Rent. But this having occurred, it was inevitable +that Rome, which has to deal with a world-wide and complex system of the +most varied and delicate human affairs, should proceed in the matter +with infinite patience and care. In January 1887 the Propaganda +accordingly cabled thus to the Archbishop of New York,--Dr. M'Glynn +persisting in his refusal to go to Rome--"for prudential reasons +Propaganda has heretofore postponed action in the case of Dr. M'Glynn. +The Sovereign Pontiff has now taken the matter into his own hands." + +In the hands of his Holiness the matter was safe; and in the Papal +Decree of April 20, 1888, we have at once the most conclusive +vindication of the wisdom and courage shown by the Archbishop of New +York in 1886, and the most emphatic condemnation of the attitude assumed +in 1886 by the Archbishop of Dublin. + + +VIII. + +It must not be assumed that Mr. George has been finally defeated in +America. On the contrary, he was never more active. A legacy left to +him by an Irish-American for the propagation of his doctrines has just +been declared by the Vice-Chancellor of New Jersey, to be invalid on the +ground that George's doctrines are "in opposition to the laws"; and this +decision has bred an uproar in the press which is reviving popular +attention all over the country to the doctrines and to their author. He +is astute, persevering, as much in earnest as Mr. Davitt, and as +familiar with the weak points in the political machinery of the United +States as is Mr. Davitt with the weak points in the political machinery +of Great Britain. This is a Presidential year. The election of 1888 will +be decided, as was the election of 1884, in New York. The Democratic +party go into the contest with a New York candidate, President +Cleveland, who was presented to the Convention at St. Louis for +nomination, not by an Irishman from New York, but by an Irishman from +the hopelessly Republican State of Pennsylvania, and whose renomination, +distasteful to the Democratic Governor of the State, was also openly +opposed by the Democratic Mayor of the city of New York, Mr. Hewitt, Mr. +George's successful competitor in the Municipal election of 1886. +Leaving Dr. M'Glynn to uphold the Confiscation of Land against the Pope +in New York, as Mr. Davitt, Mr. Dillon, and a certain number of Irish +priests uphold the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting against the Pope in +Ireland, Mr. George supports President Cleveland, and in so doing +cleverly makes a flank movement towards his "exclusive taxation of +land," by promoting, under the cover of "Revenue Reform," an attack on +the indirect taxation from which the Federal Revenues are now mainly +derived. Meanwhile the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore, who is also a +political supporter of President Cleveland, has not yet been confronted +by the supreme authority at Rome with such a final sentence upon the +true nature of Mr. George's "exclusive taxation of land," as the +clear-sighted Archbishop of New York is said to be seeking to obtain +from the Holy Office. What the end will be I have little doubt. But for +the moment, it will be seen, the situation in America is only less +confused and troublesome than the situation in Ireland. It is confused +and troubled too, as I have tried in this prologue to show, by forces +identical in character with those which confuse and trouble the +situation in Ireland. + +Of the social conditions amid and against which those forces are working +in America, I believe myself to have some knowledge. + +To get an actual touch and living sense of the social conditions amid +and against which they are working in Ireland was my object, I repeat, +in making the visits, of which this book is a record. More than this I +could not hope, in the time at my disposal, to do. With very much less +than this, it appears to me, many persons, whose views of Irish affairs +I had been inclined, before making these visits, to regard with respect, +must have found it possible to rest content. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +DUBLIN, _Monday, Jan. 30, 1888._--I left London last night. The train +was full of people going to attend levees and drawing-rooms about to be +held at Dublin Castle. + +Near Watford we lost half an hour by the breaking of a connecting-rod: +but the London and North-Western is a model railway, and we ran +alongside the pier at Holyhead exactly "on time." There is no such +railway travelling in America, excepting on the Pennsylvania Central; +and the North-Western sleeping-carriages, if less monumental and +elaborate than ours, are better ventilated, and certainly not less +comfortable. + +I had expected to come upon unusual things and people in Ireland, but I +had not expected to travel thither in company with an Irish Jacobite. +Two of my fellow-passengers, chatting as they smoked their cigarettes +in the little vestibule between the cabins of the carriage, had much to +say about Lord Ashburnham, and the "Order of the White Rose," and the +Grand Mass to be celebrated to-morrow morning at the Church of the +Carmelites in London, in memory of Charles Edward Stuart, who died at +Rome in 1788, and now lies buried as Charles III., King of Great Britain +and Ireland, in the vaults of the Vatican, together with his father +"James III.," and his brother "Henry IX." One of the two was as hot and +earnest about the "Divine Right of Kings" as the parson who, less than +forty years ago, preached a sermon to prove that the great cholera +visitation of 1849 was a direct chastisement of the impiety of the Royal +Mint in dropping the letters D.G. from the first florins of Queen +Victoria issued in that year. He bewailed his sad fate in being called +over to Ireland by family affairs at such a moment, and evidently did +not know that the Mass in question had been countermanded by the +Cardinal Archbishop. + +The incident, odd enough in itself, interested me the more that +yesterday, as it happens, the Cardinal had spoken with me of this +curious affair. + +He heard of it for the first time on Saturday, and, sending at once for +the priest in charge of the Carmelite Church, forbade the celebration. +Later on in the evening, two strangers came to the Archbishop's house, +and in great agitation besought him to allow the arrangements for the +Mass to go on. He declined to do this, and sent them away impaled on a +dilemma. "What you propose," said the Cardinal, "is either a piece of +theatrical tomfoolery, in which case it is unfit to be performed in a +church, or it is flat treason, in which case you should be sent to the +Tower!" + +They went away, like the Senatus of Augsburg from the presence of +Napoleon--"_très mortifiés et peu contents_." After they had gone, the +Cardinal remembered that for some time past queer documents had reached +him through the post-office, setting forth the doctrine of Divine Right, +and the story of the Stuarts. One of these, which with the rest he had +thrown into the fire, was an elaborate genealogical chart, designed to +show that the crowns of Great Britain and Ireland ought rightfully to be +worn by a certain princess in Bavaria! + +If there is anything more in all this than a new variety of the "blue +China craze," may it not be taken as a symptom of that vague but clearly +growing dissatisfaction with the nineteenth century doctrine of +government by mere majorities, which is by no means confined to Europe? +This feeling underlies the "National Association" for getting a preamble +put into the Constitution of the United States, "recognising Almighty +God as the source of all authority and power in Civil Government." There +was such a recognition in the Articles of Confederation of 1781. +Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia should have mentioned to His Holiness +the existence of this Association, when he presented to Leo XIII., the +other day at Rome, President Cleveland's curious Jubilee gift of an +emblazoned copy of what a Monsignore of my acquaintance calls "the +godless American Constitution."[8] + +We made a quick quiet passage to Kingstown. These boats--certainly the +best appointed of their sort afloat--are owned, I find, in Dublin, and +managed exclusively by their Irish owners, to whom the credit therefore +belongs of making the mail service between Holyhead and Kingstown as +admirable, in all respects, as the mail services between Dover and the +Continental ports are not. + +I landed at Kingstown with Lord Ernest Hamilton, M.P. for North Tyrone, +with whom I have arranged an expedition to Gweedore in Donegal, one of +the most ill-famed of the "congested districts" of Ireland, and just now +made a point of special interest by the arrest of Father M'Fadden, the +parish priest of the place, for "criminally conspiring to compel and +induce certain tenants not to fulfil their legal obligations." + +I could understand such a prosecution as this in America, where the +Constitution makes it impossible even for Congress to pass laws +"impairing the validity of contracts." But as the British Parliament has +been passing such laws for Ireland ever since Mr. Butt in 1870 raised +the standard of Irish Land Reform under the name of Home Rule, it seems +a little absurd, not to say Hibernian, of the British authorities to +prosecute Father M'Fadden merely for bettering their own instruction in +his own way. I could better understand a prosecution of Father M'Fadden +on such grounds by the authorities of his own Church. + +A step from the boat at Kingstown puts you into the train for Dublin. +Before we got into motion, a weird shape as of one just escaped from +the Wild West show of Buffalo Bill peered in at the window, inviting us +to buy the morning papers, or a copy of "the greatest book ever +published, 'Paddy at Home!'" This proved to be a translation of M. de +Mandat Grancey's lively volume, _Chez Paddy_. The vendor, "Davy," is one +of the "chartered libertines" of Dublin. He is supposed to be, and I +dare say is, a warm Nationalist, but he has a keen eye to business, and +alertly suits his cries to his customers. Recognising the Conservative +member for North Tyrone, he promptly recommended us to buy the _Irish +Times_ and the _Express_ as "the two best papers in all Ireland." But he +smiled approval when I asked for the _Freeman's Journal_ also, in which +I found a report of a speech delivered yesterday by Mr. Davitt at +Rathkeale, chiefly remarkable for a sensible protest against the +ridiculous and rantipole abuse lavished upon Mr. Balfour by the +Nationalist orators and newspapers. I am not surprised to see this. Mr. +Davitt has the stuff in him of a serious revolutionary leader, and no +such man can stomach the frothy and foolish vituperation to which +parliamentary agitators are addicted, not in Ireland only. Unlike Mr. +Parnell, who is forced to have one voice for New York and Cincinnati, +and another voice for Westminster, Mr. Davitt is free to be always +avowedly bent on bringing about a thorough Democratic revolution in +Ireland. I believe him to be too able a man to imagine, as some of the +Irish agitators do, that this can be done without the consent of +Democratic England, and he has lived too much in England, and knows the +English democracy too well, I suspect, not to know that to abuse an +executive officer for determination and vigour is the surest way to make +him popular. Calling Mr. Forster "Buckshot" Forster did him no harm. On +the contrary, the epithet might have helped him to success had not Mr. +Gladstone given way behind him at the most critical moment of his +grapple with the revolutionary organisation in Ireland. We hear a great +deal about resistance to tyrants being obedience to God, but I fear that +obedience to God is not the strongest natural passion of the human +heart, and I doubt whether resistance to tyrants can often be promoted +by putting about a general conviction that the tyrant has a thumping big +stick in his hand, and may be relied upon to use it. Even Tom Paine had +the wit to see that it was his "good heart" which brought Louis XVI. to +the scaffold. + +Nobody who had not learned from the speeches made in England, and the +cable despatches sent to America, that freedom of speech and of the +press has been brutally trampled under foot in Ireland by a "Coercion" +Government would ever suspect it from reading the Dublin papers which I +this morning bought. + +As a Democratic journalist I had some practical knowledge of a true +"Coercion" government in America a quarter of a century ago. The +American editor who had ventured in 1862 to publish in a New York or +Philadelphia newspaper a letter from Washington, speaking of the +Unionist Government by President Lincoln, as the letter from London +published to-day in the _Freeman's Journal_ speaks of the Unionist +Government of Lord Salisbury, would have found himself in one of the +casemates of Fort Lafayette within twenty-four hours. Our Republican +rulers acted upon the maxim laid down by Mr. Tilden's friend, Montgomery +Blair,[9] that "to await the results of slow judicial prosecution is to +allow crime to be consummated, with the expectation of subsequent +punishment, instead of preventing its accomplishment by prompt and +direct interference." Perhaps Americans take their Government more +seriously than Englishmen do. Certainly we stand by it more sternly in +bad weather. Even so good a Constitutionalist as Professor Parsons at +Harvard, I remember, when a student asked him if he would not suspend +the _Habeas Corpus_ in the case of a man caught hauling down the +American flag, promptly replied, "I would not suspend the _Habeas +Corpus_; I would suspend the _Corpus_." + +We found no "hansoms" at the Dublin Station, only "outside cars," and +cabs much neater than the London four-wheelers. One of these brought us +at a good pace to Maple's Hotel in Kildare Street, a large, +old-fashioned but clean and comfortable house. My windows look down upon +a stately edifice of stone erecting on Kildare Street for all sorts of +educational and "exhibitional" purposes, with the help of an Imperial +grant, I am told, and to be called the Leinster Hall. The style is +decidedly composite, with colonnades and loggie and domes and porticos, +and recalls the ancient Roman buildings depicted in that fresco of a +belated slave-girl knocking at her mistress's door which with its +companion pieces is fast fading away upon the walls of the "House of +Livia" on the Palatine. + +At one end of this street is the fashionable and hospitable Kildare +Street Club; at the other the Shelburne Hotel, known to all Americans. +This seems to have been "furbished-up" since I last saw it. There, for +the last time as it proved, I saw and had speech of my friend of many +years, the prince of all preachers in our time, Father Burke of Tallaght +and of San Clemente. + +I had telegraphed to him from London that I should halt in Dublin for a +day, on my way to America, to see him. He came betimes, to find me +almost as badly-off as St. Lawrence upon his gridiron. The surgeon whom +the hotel people had hastily summoned to relieve me from a sudden attack +of that endemic Irish ecstasy, the lumbago, had applied what he called +the "heroic treatment" on my telling him that I had no time to be ill, +but must spend that day with Father Burke, dine that night with Mr. +Irving and Mr. Toole, and go on the next day to America. + +"What has this Inquisitor done to you?" queried Father Tom. + +"Cauterised me with chloroform." + +"Oh! that's a modern improvement! Let me see--" and, scrutinising the +results, he said, with a merry twinkle in his deep, dark eyes--"I see +how it is! They brought you a veterinary!" + +This was in 1878. On that too brief, delightful morning, we talked of +all things--supralunar, lunar, and sublunary. Much of Wales, I remember, +where he had been making a visit. "A glorious country," he said, "and +the Welsh would have been Irish, only they lost the faith." Full of love +for Ireland as he was, he was beginning then to be troubled by symptoms +in the Nationalist movement, which could not be regarded with composure +by one who, in his youth at Rome, had seen, with me, the devil of +extremes drive Italy down a steep place into the sea. + +Five years afterwards I landed at Queenstown, in July 1883, intending to +visit him at Tallaght. But when the letter which I sent to announce my +coming reached the monastery, the staunchest Soldier of the Church in +Ireland lay there literally "dead on the field of honour." Chatham, in +the House of Lords, John Quincy Adams, in the House of Representatives, +fell in harness, but neither death so speaks to the heart as the simple +and sublime self-sacrifice of the great Dominican, dragging himself from +his dying bed into Dublin to spend the last splendour of his genius and +his life for the starving children of the poor in Donegal. + +What would I not give for an hour with him now! + +After breakfast I went out to find Mr. Davitt, hoping he might suggest +some way of seeing the Nationalist meeting on Wednesday night without +undergoing the dismal penance of sitting out all the speeches. I wished +also to ask him why at Rathkeale he talked about the Dunravens as +"absentees." He was born in Lord Lucan's country, and may know little of +Limerick, but he surely ought to know that Adare Manor was built of +Irish materials, and by Irish workmen, under the eye of Lord Dunraven, +all the finest ornamental work, both in wood and in stone, of the +mansion, being done by local mechanics; and also that the present owners +of Adare spend a large part of every year in the country, and are +deservedly popular. He was not to be found at the National League +headquarters, nor yet at the Imperial Hotel, which is his usual resort, +as Morrison's is the resort of Mr. Parnell. So I sent him a note through +the Post-Office. + +"You had better seal it with wax," said a friend, in whose chambers I +wrote it. + +"Pray, why?" + +"Oh! all the letters to well-known people that are not opened by the +police are opened by the Nationalist clerks in the Post-Offices. 'Tis a +way we've always had with us in Ireland!" + +I had some difficulty in finding the local habitation of the "National +League." I had been told it was in O'Connell Street, and sharing the +usual and foolish aversion of my sex to asking questions on the highway, +I perambulated a good many streets and squares before I discovered that +it has pleased the local authorities to unbaptize Sackville Street, "the +finest thoroughfare in Europe," and convert it into "O'Connell Street." +But they have failed so ignominiously that the National League finds +itself obliged to put up a huge sign over its doorways, notifying all +the world that the offices are not where they appear to be in Upper +Sackville Street at all, but in "O'Connell Street." The effect is as +ludicrous as it is instructive. Oddly enough, they have not attempted to +change the name of another thoroughfare which keeps green the "pious and +immortal memory" of William III., dear to all who in England or America +go in fear and horror of the scarlet woman that sitteth upon the seven +hills! There is a fashion, too, in Dublin of putting images of little +white horses into the fanlights over the doorways, which seems to smack +of an undue reverence for the Protestant Succession and the House of +Hanover. + +What you expect is the thing you never find in Ireland. I had rather +thoughtlessly taken it for granted the city would be agog with the great +Morley reception which is to come off on Wednesday night. There is a +good deal about it in the _Freeman's Journal_ to-day, but chiefly +touching a sixpenny quarrel which has sprung up between the Reception +Committee and the Trades Council over the alleged making of contracts by +the Committee with "houses not employing members of the regular trades." + +For this the typos and others propose to "boycott" the Committee and the +Reception and the Liberators from over the sea. From casual +conversations I gather that there is much more popular interest in the +release, on Wednesday, of Mr. T.D. Sullivan, ex-Lord Mayor, champion +swimmer, M.P., poet, and patriot. A Nationalist acquaintance of mine +tells me that in Tullamore Mr. Sullivan has been most prolific of +poetry. He has composed a song which I am afraid will hardly please my +Irish Nationalist friends in America: + + "We are sons of Sister Isles, + Englishmen and Irishmen, + On our friendship Heaven smiles; + Tyrant's schemes and Tory wiles + Ne'er shall make us foes again." + +There is to be a Drawing-Room, too, at the Castle on Wednesday night. +One would not unnaturally gather from the "tall talk" in Parliament and +the press that this conjuncture of a great popular demonstration in +favour of Irish nationality, with a display of Dublin fashion doing +homage to the alien despot, might be ominous of "bloody noses and +cracked crowns." Not a bit of it! I asked my jarvey, for instance, on an +outside car this afternoon, whether he expected a row to result from +these counter currents of the classes and the masses. "A row!" he +replied, looking around at me in amazement. "A row is it? and what for +would there be? Shure they'll be through with the procession in time to +see the carriages!" + +Obviously he saw nothing in either show to offend anybody; though he +could clearly understand that an intelligent citizen might be vexed if +he found himself obliged to sacrifice one of them in order to fully +enjoy the other. + +Lady Londonderry, it seems, is not yet well enough to cross the Channel; +but the Duchess of Marlborough, who is staying here with her nephew the +Lord-Lieutenant, has volunteered to assist him in holding the +Drawing-Room, whereupon a grave question has arisen in Court circles as +to whether the full meed of honours due to a Vice-Queen regnant ought to +be paid also to an ex-Vice-Queen. This is debated by the Dublin dames as +hotly as official women in Washington fight over the eternal question of +the relative precedence due to the wives of Senators and "Cabinet +Ministers." It will be a dark day for the democracy when women get the +suffrage--and use it. + +At luncheon to-day I met the Attorney-General, Mr. O'Brien, who, with +prompt Irish hospitality, asked me to dine with him to-morrow night, and +Mr. Wilson of the London _Times_, an able writer on Irish questions from +the English point of view. Mr. Balfour, who was expected, did not +appear, being detained by guests at his own residence in the Park. + +I went to see him in the afternoon at the Castle, and found him in +excellent spirits; certainly the mildest-mannered and most sensible +despot who ever trampled in the dust the liberties of a free people. He +was quite delightful about the abuse which is now daily heaped upon him +in speeches and in the press, and talked about it in a casual dreamy way +which reminded me irresistibly of President Lincoln, whom, if in nothing +else, he resembles alike in longanimity and in length of limb. He had +seen Davitt's _caveat_, filed at Rathkeale, against the foolishness of +trying to frighten him out of his line of country by calling him bad +names. "Davitt is quite right," he said, "the thing must be getting to +be a bore to the people, who are not such fools as the speakers take +them to be. One of the stenographers told me the other day that they had +to invent a special sign for the phrase 'bloody and brutal Balfour,' it +is used so often in the speeches." About the prosecution of Father +M'Fadden of Gweedore, he knew nothing beyond the evidence on which it +had been ordered. This he showed me. If the first duty of a government +is to govern, which is the American if not the English way of looking at +it, Father M'Fadden must have meant to get himself into trouble when he +used such language as this to his people: "I am the law in Gweedore; I +despise the recent Coercion Act; if I got a summons to-morrow, I would +not obey it." From language like this to the attitude of Father M'Glynn +in New York, openly flouting the authority of the Holy See itself, is +but an easy and an inevitable step. + +Neither "Home Rule" nor any other "Rule" can exist in a country in which +men whose words carry any weight are suffered to take up such an +attitude. It is just the attitude of the "Comeouters" in New England +during my college days at Harvard, when Parker Pillsbury and Stephen +Foster used to saw wood and blow horns on the steps of the +meeting-houses during service, in order to free their consciences "and +protest against the Sabbatarian laws." + +To see a Catholic priest assume this attitude is almost as amazing as to +see an educated Englishman like Mr. Wilfrid Blunt trying to persuade +Irishmen that Mr. Balfour made him the confidant of a grisly scheme for +doing sundry Irish leaders to death by maltreating them in prison. + +I see with pleasure that the masculine instincts of Mr. Davitt led him +to allude to this nonsense yesterday at Rathkeale in a half +contemptuous way. Mr. Balfour spoke of it to-day with generosity and +good feeling. "When I first heard of it," he said, "I resented it, of +course, as an outrageous imputation on Mr. Blunt's character, and +denounced it accordingly. What I have since learned leads me to fear +that he really may have said something capable of being construed in +this absurd sense, but if he did, it must have been under the +exasperation produced by finding himself locked up." + +I heard the story of Mr. Balfour's meeting with Mr. Blunt very plainly +and vigorously told, while I was staying the other day at Knoyle House, +in the immediate neighbourhood of Clouds, where the two were guests +under conditions which should be at least as sacred in the eyes of +Britons as of Bedouins. In Wiltshire nobody seemed for a moment to +suppose it possible that Mr. Blunt can have really deceived himself as +to the true nature of any conversation he may have had with Mr. Balfour. +This is paying a compliment to Mr. Blunt's common sense at the expense +of his imagination. In any view of the case, to lie in wait at the lips +of a fellow guest in the house of a common friend, for the counts of a +political indictment against him, is certainly a proceeding, as Davitt +said yesterday of Mr. Blunts tale of horror, quite "open to question." +But, as Mr. Blunt himself has sung, "'Tis conscience makes us sinners, +not our sin," and I have no doubt the author of the _Poems of Proteus_ +really persuaded himself that he was playing lawn tennis and smoking +cigarettes in Wiltshire with a modern Alva, cynically vain of his own +dark and bloody designs. Now that he finds himself struck down by the +iron hand of this remorseless tyrant, why should he not cry aloud and +warn, not Ireland alone, but humanity, against the appalling crimes +meditated, not this time in the name of "Liberty," but in the name of +Order? + +What especially struck me in talking with Mr. Balfour to-day was his +obviously unaffected interest in Ireland as a country rather than in +Ireland as a cock-pit. It is the condition of Ireland, and not the +gabble of parties at Westminster about the condition of Ireland, which +is uppermost in his thoughts. This, I should say, is the best guarantee +of his eventual success. + +The weakest point of the modern English system of government by Cabinets +surely is the evanescent tenure by which every Minister holds his +place. Not only has the Cabinet itself no fixed term of office, being in +truth but a Committee of the Legislature clothed with executive +authority, but any member of the Cabinet may be forced by events or by +intrigues to leave it. In this way Mr. Forster, when he filled the place +now held by Mr. Balfour, found himself driven into resigning it by Mr. +Gladstone's indisposition or inability to resist the peremptory pressure +put upon the British Premier at a critical moment by our own Government +in the spring of 1882. Mr. Balfour is in no such peril, perhaps. He is +more sure, I take it, of the support of Lord Salisbury and his +colleagues than Mr. Forster ever was of the support of Mr. Gladstone; +and the "Coercion" law which it is his duty to administer contains no +such sweeping and despotic clause as that provision in Mr. Gladstone's +"Coercion Act" of 1881, under which persons claiming American +citizenship were arrested and indefinitely locked up on "suspicion," +until it became necessary for our Government, even at the risk of war, +to demand their trial or release. + +But if Mr. Balfour were Chief Secretary for Ireland "on the American +plan"; if he held his office, that is, for a fixed term of years, and +cared nothing for a renewal of the lease, he could not be more +pre-occupied than he seems to be with simply getting his executive duty +done, or less pre-occupied than he seems to be with what may be thought +of his way of getting it done. If all executive officers were of this +strain, Parliamentary government might stand in the dock into which +Prince Albert put it with more composure, and await the verdict with +more confidence. Surely if Ireland is ever to govern herself, she must +learn precisely the lesson which Mr. Balfour, I believe, is trying to +teach her--that the duty of executive officers to execute the laws is +not a thing debateable, like the laws themselves, nor yet determinable, +like the enactment of laws, by taking the yeas and the nays. How well +this lesson shall be taught must depend, of course, very much upon the +quality of the men who make up the machine of Government in Ireland. +That the Irish have almost as great a passion for office-holding as the +Spanish, we long ago learned in New York, where the percentage of Irish +office-holders considerably exceeds the percentage of Irish citizens. +And as all the witnesses agree that the Irish Government has for years +been to an inordinate degree a Government by patronage, there must +doubtless be some reasonable ground for the very general impression that +"the Castle" needs overhauling. It is not true, however, I find, +although I have often heard it asserted in England, that the Irish +Government is officered by Englishmen and Scotchmen exclusively. The +murdered Mr. Burke certainly was not an Englishman; and there is an +apparent predominance of Irishmen in the places of trust and power. That +things at the Castle cannot be nearly so bad, moreover, as we in America +are asked to believe, would seem to be demonstrated by the affectionate +admiration with which Lord Spencer is now regarded by men like Mr. +O'Brien, M.P., who only the other day seemed to regard him as an unfit +survival of the Cities of the Plain. If what these men then said of him, +and of the Castle generally, was even very partially true--or if being +wholly false, these men believed it to be true--every man of them who +now touches Lord Spencer's hand is defiled, or defiles him. + +But that concerns them. Their present attitude makes Lord Spencer a good +witness when he declares that the Civil servants of the Crown in +Ireland, called "the Castle," are "diligent, desire to do their duty +with impartiality, and to hold an even balance between opposing +interests in Ireland," and maintains that they "will act with +impartiality and vigour if led by men who know their own minds, and +desire to be firm in the Government of the country." All this being +true, Mr. Balfour ought to make his Government a success. + +Mr. Balfour introduced me to Sir West Ridgway, the successor of Sir +Redvers Buller, who has been rewarded for the great services he did his +country in Asia, by being flung into this seething Irish stew. He takes +it very composedly, though the climate does not suit him, he says; and +has a quiet workmanlike way with him, which impresses one favourably at +once. + +All the disorderly part of Ireland (for disorder is far from being +universal in Ireland) comes under his direct administration, being +divided into five divisions on the lines originally laid down in 1881 by +Mr. Forster. Over each of these divisions presides a functionary styled +a "Divisional Magistrate." The title is not happily chosen, the powers +of these officers being rather like those confided to a French Prefect +than like those which are associated in England and America with the +title of a "magistrate." They have no judicial power, and nothing to do +with the trial of offenders. Their business is to protect life and +property, and to detect and bring to justice offenders against the law. +They can only be called Magistrates as the Executive of the United +States is sometimes called the "Chief Magistrate." + +One of the most conspicuous and trusted of these Divisional Magistrates, +I find, is Colonel Turner, who was Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, +under Lord Aberdeen. He is now denounced by the Irish Nationalists as a +ruthless tyrant. He was then denounced by the Irish Tories as a +sympathiser with Home Rule. It is probable, therefore, that he must be a +conscientious and loyal executive officer, who understands and acts upon +the plain lines of his executive duty. + +I dined to-night at the Castle, not in the great hall or banqueting-room +of St. Patrick, which was designed by that connoisseur in magnificence, +the famous Lord Chesterfield, during his Viceroyalty, but in a very +handsome room of more moderate dimensions. Much of the semi-regal state +observed at the Castle in the days of the Georges has been put down with +the Battle-Axe Guards of the Lord-Lieutenant, and with the +basset-tables of the "Lady-Lieutenant," as the Vice-queen used to be +called. At dinner the Viceroy no longer drinks to the pious and immortal +memory of William III., or to the "1st of July 1690." No more does the +band play "Lillibullero," and no longer is the pleasant custom +maintained, after a dinner to the city authorities of Dublin, of a +"loving cup" passed around the table, into which each guest, as it +passed, dropped a gold piece for the good of the household. Only so much +ceremonial is now observed as suffices to distinguish the residence of +the Queen's personal representative from that of a great officer of +State, or an opulent subject of high rank. + +Dublin Castle indeed is no more of a palace than it is of a castle. Its +claim to the latter title rests mainly on the fine old "Bermingham" +tower of the time of King John; its claim to the former on the Throne +Room, the Council Chamber, and the Hall of St. Patrick already +mentioned. This last is a very stately and sumptuous apartment. Just +twenty years ago the most brilliant banquet modern Dublin has seen was +given in this hall by the late Duke of Abercorn to the Prince and +Princess of Wales, to celebrate the installation of the Prince as a +Knight of St. Patrick. It is a significant fact, testified to by all +the most candid Irishmen I have ever known, that upon the occasion of +this visit to Ireland in 1868 the Prince and Princess were received with +unbounded enthusiasm by the people of all classes. Yet only the year +before, in 1867, the explosion of some gunpowder at Clerkenwell by a +band of desperadoes, to the death and wounding of many innocent people, +had brought the question of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, in +the mind of Mr. Gladstone, within the domain of "practical politics"! By +parity of reasoning, one would think, the reception of the heir-apparent +and his wife in Ireland ought to have taken that question out of the +domain of "practical politics." + +The Prince of Wales, it is known, brought away from this visit an +impression that the establishment of a prince of the blood in Ireland, +or a series of royal visits to Ireland, would go far towards pacifying +the relations between the two Islands. Mr. Gladstone thought his +Disestablishment would quite do the work. Events have shown that Mr. +Gladstone made a sad mistake as to the effect of his measure. The pains +which, I am told, were taken by Mr. Deasy, M.P., and others to organise +hostile demonstrations at one or two points in the south of Ireland, +during a subsequent visit of the Prince and Princess, would seem to show +that in the opinion of the Nationalists themselves, the impression of +the Prince was more accurate than were the inferences of the Premier. + +There is nothing froward or formidable in the aspect of Dublin Castle. +It has neither a portcullis nor a drawbridge. People go in and out of it +as freely as through the City Hall in New York. There is a show of +sentries at the main entrance, and in one of the courts this morning the +picturesque band of a Scotch regiment was playing to the delectation of +a small but select audience of urchins and little girls. A Dublin mob, +never so little in earnest and led by a dozen really determined men, +ought to be able to make as short work of it as the hordes of the +Faubourgs in Paris made of the Bastille, with its handful of invalids, +on that memorable 14th of July, about which so many lies have passed +into history, and so much effervescent nonsense is still annually talked +and printed. + +The greater part of the Castle as it existed when the Irish Parliaments +sat there under Elizabeth, and just before the last Catholic Viceroy +made Protestantism penal, and planned the transformation of Ireland +into a French province, was burned in the time of James II. The Earl of +Arran then reported to his father that "the king had lost nothing but +six barrels of gunpowder, and the worst castle in the worst situation in +Christendom." + +Here, as at Ottawa, a viceregal dinner-table is set off by the neat +uniforms and skyblue facings of the aides-de-camp and secretaries. For +some mysterious reason Lord Spencer put these officers into chocolate +coats with white facings. But the new order soon gave place to the old +again. + +At the dinner to-night was Lord Ormonde, who is returning to London, but +kindly promised to make arrangements for showing me at Kilkenny Castle +the muniment room of the Butlers, which contains one of the most +valuable private collections of charters and State papers in the realm. + + +_Tuesday, Jan. 31._--I lunched to-day with Sir Michael Morris, the Lord +Chief Justice of Ireland, whom I had last seen in Rome at the Jubilee +Mass of His Holiness. Sir Michael is one of the recognised lights of +social life and of the law in Dublin. While he was in Rome some one +highly commended him in the presence of that staunch Nationalist the +Archbishop of Dublin, who assented so far as to say, "Yes, yes, there +are worse fellows in Dublin than that Morris!" It would be hard to find +a more typical Irishman of the better sort than Sir Michael, a man more +sure, in the words of Sheridan, to "carry his honour and his brogue +unstained to the grave." + +The brogue of Sir Michael, it is said, made his fortune in the House of +Commons. It has hardly the glow which made the brogue of Father Burke a +memory as of music in the ears of all who heard it, and differs from +that miraculous gift of the tongue as a ripe wine of Bordeaux differs +from a ripe wine of Burgundy. But to the ordinary brogue of the street +and the stage, it is as is a Brane Mouton Rothschild of 1868 to the +casual Médoc of a Parisian restaurant. "Do you know Father Healy?" said +one of the company to whom I spoke of it; "he was at a wedding with Sir +Michael. As the happy pair drove off under the usual shower of rice and +old slippers, Sir Michael said to the Father, 'How I wish I had +something to throw after her!' 'Ah, throw your brogue after her,' +replied the Father." + +This brogue comes to Sir Michael lawfully enough. He belongs to one of +the fourteen tribes of Galway. His father, Mr. Martin Morris, was High +Sheriff of the County of Galway City in 1841, being the first Catholic +who had served that office since the time of Tyrconnel. His mother was a +Blake of Galway, and the family seat, Spiddal, came to them through a +Fitzpatrick. "Remember these things," said one of the guests to me, a +Catholic from the south of Ireland, "and remember that Sir Michael, like +myself, and, so far as I know, like every Irish Catholic in this room +to-day, is a thoroughgoing Unionist, who would think it midsummer +madness to hand Ireland over to the 'Home Rule' of the 'uncrowned king,' +Mr. Parnell, who hasn't a drop, I believe, of Irish blood in his veins, +and who, whatever else he may be, is certainly not a Catholic. Didn't +Parnell vote at first against religion and in favour of Bradlaugh? and +didn't he do this to force the bargain for the clerical franchise at the +Parliamentary conventions?" + +"But there are some good Catholics, are there not," I answered, "and +some good Christians, and of Irish blood too, among the associates of +Mr. Parnell?" + +"Associates!" he exclaimed; "if you know anything of Mr. Parnell, you +must know that he has no associates. He has followers, and he has +instruments, but he has no associates. The only Irishmen whom he has +really taken counsel with, or treated, I was about to say, with ordinary +civility, were Egan and Brennan. His manner with them was always +conspicuously different from his cold and almost contemptuous bearing +towards the men whom he commands in Parliament, and Egan, who directs +his forces in your country, rewards him by calling him 'the great and +gifted leader of _our_ race!' 'Our race' indeed! Parnell comes of the +conquering race in Ireland, and he never forgets it, or lets his +subordinates forget it. I was in Galway when he came over there suddenly +to quell the revolt organised by Healy. The rebels were at white-heat +before he came. But he strode in among them like a huntsman among the +hounds--marched Healy off into a little room, and brought him out again +in ten minutes, cowed and submissive, but filled, as anybody can see, +ever since, with a dull smouldering hate which will break out one of +these days, if a good and safe opportunity offers." + +"How do you account, then," I asked, "for the support which all these +men give Mr. Parnell?" + +"For the support which they give him!" exclaimed my new acquaintance, +"for the support they give him! Bless your heart, my dear sir, it is he +gives them the support! Barring Biggar, who, to do him justice, is as +free with his pocket as he is with his tongue--and no man can say more +for anybody than that--barring Biggar and M'Kenna and M'Carthy, and +perhaps a dozen more, all these men are nominated by Mr. Parnell, and +draw salaries from the body he controls; they are paid members, like the +working-men members. Support indeed!" + +"But the constituencies," I urged, "surely the voters must know and care +something about their representatives?" + +The gentleman from the south of Ireland laughed aloud. "Very clear it +is," he said, "that you have made your acquaintance with my dear +countrymen in America, or in England perhaps--not in Ireland. Look at +Thurles, in January '85! The voters selected O'Ryan; Parnell ordered him +off, and made them take O'Connor! The voters take their members to-day +from the League--that is, from Mr. Parnell, just as they used to take +them from the landlords. What Lord Clanricarde said in Galway, when he +made all those fagot votes by cutting up his farms, that he could return +his grey mare to Parliament if he liked, Mr. Parnell can say with just +as much truth to-day of any Nationalist seat in the country. I tell +you, the secret of his power is that he understands the Irish people, +and how to ride them. He is a Protestant-ascendency man by blood, and he +is fighting the unlucky devils of landlords to-day by the old 'landlord' +methods that came to him with his mother's milk--that is rightly +speaking, I should say, with his father's," and here he burst out +laughing at his own bull--"for his mother, poor lady, she was an +American." + +"Thank you," I said. + +"Oh, no harm at all! But did you ever know her? An odd woman she was, +and is." + +"Her father," I replied, "was a gallant American sailor of Scottish +blood." + +"Oh yes, and is it true that he got a great hatred of England from being +captured in the _Chesapeake_ by the English Captain Broke? I always +heard that." + +I explained that there were historical difficulties in the way of +accepting this legend, and that Commodore Stewart's experiences, during +the war of 1812, had been those of a captor, not of a captive. + +"Well, a clever woman she is, only very odd. She was a great terror, I +remember, to a worthy Protestant parson, near Avondale; she used to come +at him quite unexpectedly with such a power of theological discussion, +and put him beside himself with questions he couldn't answer." + +"Very likely," I replied, "but she has transferred her interest to +politics now; and she had the good sense, at the Chicago Convention in +1886, to warn the physical-force men against showing their hand too +plainly in support of her son." + +A curious conversation, as showing the personal bitterness of politics +here. It reminded me of Dr. Duche's description in his famous letter to +Washington of the party which carried the Declaration of Independence +through the Continental Congress. But it had a special interest for me +as confirming the inferences I have often drawn as to Mr. Parnell's +relations with his party, from his singular and complete isolation among +them. I remember the profound astonishment of my young friend Mr. D----, +of New York, who, as the son of, perhaps, the most conspicuous and +influential American advocate of Home Rule, had confidently counted upon +seeing Mr. Parnell in London, when he found that the most important +member of the Irish Parliamentary party, in point of position, was +utterly unable to get at Mr. Parnell for him, or even to ascertain where +Mr. Parnell could be reached by letter. + +Though a staunch Unionist, Sir Michael is no blind admirer of things as +they are, nor even a thick-and-thin partisan of English rule in Ireland. +"If you will have the Irish difficulty in a nutshell," he is reported to +have said to a prosy British politician, "here it is: It is simply a +very dull people trying to govern a very bright people." + +He has quick and wide intellectual sympathies, or, as he put it to a +lawyer who was kindly enlightening him about some matters of scientific +notoriety, "I don't live in a cupboard myself." His own terse summing up +of the Irish difficulty could hardly be better illustrated than by the +current story of the discomfiture of an English Treasury official, who +came into his official chambers to complain of the expenditure for fuel +in the Court over which he presides. The Lord Chief-Justice looked at +him quietly while he set forth his errand, and then, ringing a bell on +his table, said to the servant who responded: "Tell Mary the man has +come about the coals." + +At Sir Michael's I had some conversation also with Mr. Justice Murphy, +who won a great reputation in connection with those murders in the +Phoenix Park, which went near to breaking the heart and hope of poor +Father Burke, and with Lord and Lady Ashbourne, whom I had not seen +since I met them some years ago under the hospitable roof of Lord +Houghton. Lord Ashbourne was then Mr. Gibson, Q.C. He is now the Lord +Chancellor of Ireland, and the author of the Land Purchase Act of 1885, +which many well-informed and sensible men regard as the Magna Charta of +peace in Ireland, while others of equal authority assure me that by +reversing the principle of the Bright clauses in the Act of 1871 it has +encouraged the tenants to expect an eventual concession of the +land-ownership to them on merely nominal terms. + +Naturally enough, he is carped at and reviled almost as much by his +political friends as by his political foes. In the time of Sir Michael +Hicks Beach I remember hearing Lord Ashbourne denounced most bitterly by +a leading Tory light as "a Home Ruler in disguise, who had bedevilled +the Irish Question by undertaking to placate the country if it could be +left to be managed by him and by Lord Carnarvon." + +The disguise appears to me quite impenetrable, and after my talk with +him, I remembered a characteristic remark about him made to me by Lord +Houghton after he had gone away: "A very clever man with a very clever +wife. He ought to be on our side, but he has everything the Tories lack, +so they have stolen him, and will make much of him, and keep him. But +one of these days he will do them some great service, and then they'll +never forgive him!" + +Lord Ashbourne went off early to look up some fine old wooden +mantelpieces and wainscotings in the "slums" of Dublin. A brisk trade it +seems has for some time been driven in such relics of the departed +splendour of the Irish capital. In the last century, when Dublin was +further from London than London now is from New York, the Irish +landlords were more fond of living in Dublin than a good many of the +Irish Nationalists I know now are. In this way the Iron Duke came to be +born in Dublin, where his father and mother had a handsome town house, +whereas when they went up to London they used to lodge, according to old +Lady Cork, "over a pastry-cook's in Oxford Street." In those days there +must have been a good many fine solidly built and well decorated +mansions in Dublin, of a type not unlike that of the ample rather +stately and periwigged houses, all British brick without, and all Santo +Domingo mahogany within, which, in my schoolboy days, used to give such +a dignified old-world air to Third and Fourth Streets in Philadelphia. +It is among such of these as are still standing, and have come to vile +uses, that the foragers from London now find their harvest. + +From the Chief-Justice's I went with Lord Ernest Hamilton to a meeting +of the Irish Unionists. Admission was by tickets, and the meeting +evidently "meant business." I suppose Presbyterian Ulster was largely +represented: but Mr. Smith Barry of Fota Island, near Cork, one of the +kindest and fairest, as well as one of the most determined and resolute, +of the southern Irish landlords, was there, and the most interesting +speech I heard was made by a Catholic lawyer of Dublin, Mr. Quill, Q.C., +who grappled with the question of distress among the Irish tenants, and +produced some startling evidence to show that this distress is by no +means so great or so general as it is commonly assumed to be.[10] Able +speeches were also made by Mr. T.W. Russell, M.P. for Tyrone, and by +Colonel Saunderson, the champion of Ulster at Westminster. Both of these +members, and especially Colonel Saunderson, "went for" their +Nationalist colleagues with an unparliamentary plainness of speech which +commanded the cordial sympathy of their audience. "Is it possible," +asked Colonel Saunderson, "that you should ever consent, on any terms, +to be governed by such--, well, by such wretches as these?" to which the +audience gave back an unanimous "Never," neither thundered nor shouted, +but growled, like Browning's "growl at the gates of Ghent,"--a low deep +growl like the final notice served by a bull-dog, which I had not heard +since the meetings which, at the North, followed the first serious +fighting of the Civil War. I was much struck, too, by the prevalence +among the audience of what may be called the Old Middle State type of +American face and head. A majority of these men might have come straight +from those slopes of the Alleghany which, from Pennsylvania down to the +Carolinas, were planted so largely by the only considerable Irish +emigrations known to our history, before the great year of famine, 1847, +the Irish emigrations which followed the wars against the woollen +industries in the seventeenth century, and the linen industries in the +eighteenth. A staunch, doggedly Protestant people, loving the New +England Puritans and the Anglicans of Eastern Virginia little better +than the Maryland Catholics, but contributing more than their full share +of traditional antipathy to that extreme dislike and dread of the Roman +Church which showed itself half-a-century ago in the burning of +convents, and thirty years ago gave life and fire to the Know-Nothing +movement. Even so late as at the time of Father Burke's grand and most +successful mission to America, I remember how much astonished and +impressed he was by the vigour and the virulence of these feelings. One +of the bishops, he told me, in a great diocese tried (though of course +in vain) to dissuade him on this account from wearing his Dominican +dress. These anti-Catholic passions are much stronger in America to-day +than it always suits our politicians to remember, though to forget it +may some day be found very dangerous. Even now two of the ablest +prelates of the most liberal of the Protestant American bodies, Bishop +Cleveland Coxe of Western New York, and Bishop Beckwith of Georgia, the +latter of whom I met the other day in Rome on his return from Palestine, +are promoting what looks very much like a crusade against the plan for +establishing a Catholic University at Washington. Bishop Cleveland +Coxe's denunciations of what he calls "the alien Church," point straight +to a revival of the "Native American" movement; and I fear that +President Cleveland's gift of a copy of the Constitution to Leo XIII. +will hardly make American Catholics forget either the hereditary +anti-Catholic feeling which led him, when Governor of New York, to +imperil the success of the Democratic party by his dogged resistance to +the Catholic demand for the endowment of Catholic schools and +protectories, or the scandalous persecution (it can be called by no +other name) of Catholics in Alaska, which was carried on in the name and +under the patronage of his sister, Miss Cleveland, by a local missionary +of the Presbyterian Church, to the point of the removal by the President +of a Federal judge, who dared to award a Catholic native woman from +Vancouver the custody of her own child. + +It is hard to imagine a greater misfortune for the Church in Ireland, +and for both the Church and the Irish race in America, than the +identification of the Home Rule movement with the Church, and its +triumph, after being so identified, and with the help of British +sympathisers and professional politicians, over the resistance of +Protestant Ireland. This dilemma of the Church in Ireland, plainly seen +at Rome, as I know, to-day, was forcibly presented in the speech of +Colonel Saunderson. + +The chair at this Loyalist meeting was filled by the Provost of Trinity, +Dr. Jellett, a man of winning and venerable aspect, a kind of "angelic +doctor," indeed, whose musical and slightly tremulous voice gave a +singular pathos and interest to his brief but very earnest speech.[11] + +To-night I dined with the Attorney-General, Mr. O'Brien. Among the +company were the Chief-Baron Palles, whose appointment dates back to Mr. +Gladstone's Administration of 1873, but who is now an outspoken opponent +of Home Rule; Judge O'Brien, an extremely able man, with the face of an +eagle; Mr. Carson, Q.C.; and other notabilities of the bench and bar. My +neighbours at table were a charming and agreeable bencher of the King's +Inn, Mr. Atkinson, Q.C., a leader of the Irish bar, and Mr. T.W. +Russell, M.P., who told me some amusing things of one of his colleagues, +an ideal Orangeman, who writes blood-curdling romances in the vein of La +Tosca, and goes in fear of the re-establishment of the Holy Office in +Dublin and London. In view of the clamours about the severity of the +bench in Ireland, it was edifying to find an Irish Judge astonished by +the drastic decisions of our Courts in regard to the anarchists who were +hanged at Chicago, after a thorough and protracted review of the law in +their cases. He thought no Court in Great Britain or Ireland could have +dealt with them thus stringently, it being understood that the charge of +murder against them rested on their connection, solely as provocative +instigators to violence, with the actual throwing of the bombs among the +police. + +Some good stories were told by the lawyers; one of a descendant of the +Irish Kings, a lawyer more remarkable for his mental gifts than for his +physical graces. + +A peasant looking him carefully over at Cork whispered to a neighbour, +"And is he really of the ould blood of the Irish kings now, indeed?" + +"He is indeed!" + +"Well, then, I don't wonder the Saxons conquered the Island!" + +Of the Home Rule movement one of the lawyers said to me, "The whole +thing is a business operation mainly--a business operation with the +people who see in it the hope of appeasing their land hunger--and a +business operation for the agitators who live by it. Its main strength, +outside of the priests, who for one reason or another countenance or +foment it, is in the small country solicitors. The five hundred thousand +odd Irish tenants are the most litigious creatures alive. They are +always after the local lawyer with half-a-crown to fight this, that, or +the other question with some neighbour or kinsman, usually a kinsman. So +the solicitors know the whole country." + +"When the League has chosen a spot in which to work the 'Plan of +Campaign,' the local attorney whips up the tenants to join it. The +poorer tenants are the most easily pushed into the plan, having least to +lose by it. But the lawyer takes the well-to-do tenants in hand, and +promises them that if they yield to the patriotic pressure of the +League, and come to grief by so doing, the landlord will at all events +have to pay the costs of the proceedings. It is this promise which +finally brings down most of them. To enjoy the luxury of a litigation +without paying for it tempts them almost as strongly as the prospect of +getting the land without paying for it. You will find that the League +always insists, when things come to a settlement, that the landlord +shall pay the costs. If the landlord through poverty of spirit or of +purse succumbs to this demand, the League scores a victory. If the +landlord resists, it is a bad job for the League. The local lawyer is +discredited in the eyes of his clients, and if he is to get any fees he +must come down upon his clients for them. Naturally his clients resent +this. If Mr. Balfour keys up the landlords to stand out manfully against +paying for all the trouble and loss they are continually put to, he will +take the life of the League so far as Ireland is concerned. As things +now stand, it is almost the only thriving industry in Ireland!" + + +_Wednesday, Feb. 1._--This morning I called with Lord Ernest Hamilton +upon Sir Bernard Burke, the Ulster King-at-Arms, and the editor or +author of many other well-known publications, and especially of the +"Peerage," sometimes irreverently spoken of as the "British Bible." + +Sir Bernard's offices are in the picturesque old "Bermingham" tower of +the castle. There we found him wearing his years and his lore as lightly +as a flower, and busy in an ancient chamber, converted by him into a +most cosy modern study. He received us with the most cordial courtesy, +and was good enough to conduct us personally through his domain. + +Many of the State papers formerly kept here have been removed to the +Four Courts building. But Sir Bernard's tower is still filled with +documents of the greatest historical interest, all admirably docketed +and arranged on the system adopted at the Hôtel Soubise, now the Palace +of the Archives in Paris. + +These documents, like the tower itself, take us back to the early days +when Dublin was the stronghold of the Englishry in Ireland, and its +citizens went in constant peril of an attack from the wild and "mere +Irish" in the hills. The masonry of the tower is most interesting. The +circular stone floors made up of slabs held together without cement, +like the courses in the towers of Sillustani, by their exact adjustment, +are particularly noteworthy. High up in the tower Sir Bernard showed us +a most uncomfortable sort of cupboard fashioned in the huge wall of the +tower, and with a loophole for a window. In this cell the Red Hugh +O'Donnell of Tyrconnel was kept as a prisoner for several years under +Elizabeth. He was young and lithe, however, and after his friends had +tried in vain to buy him out, a happy thought one day struck him. He +squeezed himself through the loophole, and, dropping unhurt to the +ground, escaped to the mountains. There for a long time he made head +against the English power. In 1597 he drove Sir Conyers Clifford from +before the castle of Ballyshannon, with great loss to the English, and +when he could no longer keep the field, he sought refuge in Spain. He +was with the Spanish, as Prince of Tyrconnel, at the crushing defeat of +Kinsale in 1601. Escaping again, he died, poisoned, at Simancas the next +year. + +Sir Bernard showed us, among other curious manuscripts, a correspondence +between one Higgins, a trained informer, and the Castle authorities in +1798. This correspondence shows that the revolutionary plans of the +Nationalists of 1798 were systematically laid before the Government. + +When one thinks how very much abler were the leaders of the Irish +rebellion in 1798 than are the present heads of the Irish party in +Parliament, how much greater the provocations to rebellion given the +Irish people then were than they are now even alleged to be--how little +the Irish people in general have now to gain by rebellion, and how much +to lose, it is hard to resist a suspicion that it must be even easier +now than it was in 1798 for the Government to tap the secrets of the +organisations opposed to it. + +Sir Bernard showed us also a curious letter written by Henry Grattan to +the founder of the great Guinness breweries, which have carried the fame +of Dublin porter into the uttermost parts of the earth. The Guinnesses +are now among the wealthiest people of the kingdom, and Ireland +certainly owes a great deal to them as "captains of industry," but they +are not Home Rulers. + +At the Kildare Street Club in the afternoon I talked with two Irish +landlords from the north of Ireland, who had come up to take their +womenkind to the Drawing-Room. + +I was struck by their indifference to the political excitements of the +day. One of them had forgotten that the Ripon and Morley reception was +to take place to-night. The other called it "the love-feast of Voltaire +and the Vatican." Both were much more fluent about hunting and farming. +I asked if the hunting still went on in their part of the island. + +"It has never stopped for a moment," he replied. + +"No," added the other, "nor ever a dog poisoned. They were poisoned, +whole packs of them, in the papers, but not a dog really. The stories +were printed just to keep up the agitation, and the farmers winked at it +so as not to be 'bothered.'" + +Both averred that they got their rents "fairly well," but both also said +that they farmed much of their own land. One, a wiry, energetic, elderly +man, of a brisk presence and ruddy complexion, said he constantly went +over to the markets in England. "I go to Norwich," he said, "not to +Liverpool. Liverpool is only a meat-market, and overdone at that. +Norwich is better for meat and for stores." Both agreed this was a great +year for the potatoes, and said Ireland was actually exporting potatoes +to America. One mentioned a case of two cargoes of potatoes just taken +from Dundrum for America, the vessel which took them having brought over +six hundred tons of hay from America. + +They were breezy, out-of-door men, both of them. One amused us with a +tale of espying, the other day, two hounds, a collie dog, a terrier, and +eighteen cats all amicably running together across a farmyard, with +their tails erect, after a dairymaid who was to feed them. The other +capped this with a story of a pig on his own place, which follows one of +his farm lads about like a dog,--"the only pig," he said, "I ever saw +show any human feeling!" The gentleman who goes to Norwich thought the +English landlords were in many cases worse off than the Irish. "Ah, no!" +interfered the other, "not quite; for if the English can't get their +rents, at least they keep their land, but we can neither get our rents +nor keep our land!" They both admitted that there had been much bad +management of the land in Ireland, and that the agents had done the +owners as well as the tenants a great deal of harm in the past, but they +both maintained stoutly that the legislation of late years had been +one-sided and short-sighted. "The tenants haven't got real good from +it," said one, "because the claims of the landlord no longer check their +extravagance, and they run more in debt than ever to the shopkeepers and +traders, who show them little mercy." Both also strenuously insisted on +the gross injustice of leaving the landlords unrelieved of any of the +charges fixed upon their estates, while their means of meeting those +charges were cut down by legislation. + +"You have no landlords in America," said one, "but if you had, how would +you like to be saddled with heavy tithe charges for a Disestablished +Church at the same time that your tenants were relieved of their dues +to you?" + +I explained to him that so far from our having no landlords in America, +the tenant-farmer class is increasing rapidly in the United States, +while it is decreasing in the Old World, while the land laws, especially +in some of our older Western States, give the landlords such absolute +control of their tenants that there is a serious battle brewing at this +moment in Illinois[12] between a small army of tenants and their +absentee landlord, an alien and an Irishman, who holds nearly a hundred +thousand acres in the heart of the State, lives in England, and grants +no leases, except on the condition that he shall receive from his +tenants, in addition to the rent, the full amount of all taxes and +levies whatsoever made upon the lands they occupy. + +"God bless my soul!" exclaimed the gentleman who goes to Norwich, "if +that is the kind of laws your American Irish will give us with Home +Rule, I'll go in for it to-morrow with all my heart!" + +After an early dinner, I set out with Lord Ernest to see the +Morley-Ripon procession. It was a good night for a torchlight +parade--the weather not too chill, and the night dark. The streets were +well filled, but there was no crowding--no misconduct, and not much +excitement. The people obviously were out for a holiday, not for a +"demonstration." It was Paris swarming out to the Grand Prix, not Paris +on the eve of the barricades; very much such a crowd as one sees in the +streets and squares of New York on a Fourth of July night, when the city +fathers celebrate that auspicious anniversary with fireworks at the City +Hall, and not in the least such a crowd as I saw in the streets of New +York on the 12th of July 1871, when, thanks to General Shaler and the +redoubtable Colonel "Jim Fiske," a great Orange demonstration led to +something very like a massacre by chance medley. + +Small boys went about making night hideous with tom-toms, extemporised +out of empty fig-drums, and tooting terribly upon tin trumpets. There +was no general illumination, but here and there houses were bright with +garlands of lamps, and rockets ever and anon went up from the +house-tops. + +We made our way to the front of a mass of people near one of the great +bridges, over which the procession was to pass on its long march from +Kingstown to the house of Mr. Walker, Q.C., in Rutland Square, where the +distinguished visitors were to meet the liberated Lord Mayor, with Mr. +Dwyer Gray, and other local celebrities. A friendly citizen let us perch +on his outside car. + +The procession presently came in sight, and a grand show it made--not of +the strictly popular and political sort, for it was made up of guilds +and other organised bodies on foot and on horseback, marching in +companies--but imposing by reason of its numbers, and of the flaring +torches. Of these there were not so many as there should have been to do +justice to the procession. The crowd cheered from time to time, with +that curious Irish cheer which it is often difficult to distinguish from +groaning, but the only explosive and uproarious greeting given to the +visitors in our neighbourhood came from a member of "the devout female +sex," a young lady who stood up between two friends on the top of a car +very near us, and imperilled both her equilibrium and theirs by wildly +waving her hand-kerchief in the air, and crying out at the top of a +somewhat husky voice, "Three cheers for Mecklenburg Street! Three +cheers for Mecklenburg Street!" + +This made the crowd very hilarious, but as Lord Ernest's local knowledge +did not enable him to enlighten me as to the connection between +Mecklenburg Street and the liberation of Ireland, I must leave the +mystery of their mirth unsolved till a more convenient season. + +At Rutland Square the crowd was tightly packed, but perfectly +well-behaved, and the guests were enthusiastically cheered. But even +before they had entered the house of Mr. Walker it began to break up, +and long files of people wended their way to see "the carriages" +hastening with their lovely freight to the Castle. Thither Lord Ernest +has just gone, arrayed in a captivating Court costume of black velvet, +with cut-steel buttons, sword, and buckles--just the dress in which +Washington used to receive his guests at the White House, and in which +Senator Seward, I remember, insisted in 1860 on getting himself +presented by Mr. Dallas to Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +SION HOUSE, COUNTY TYRONE, _Feb. 3d._--Hearing nothing from Mr. Davitt +yesterday, I gave up the idea of attending the Ripon-Morley meeting last +night. As I have come to Ireland to hear what people living in Ireland +have to say about Irish affairs, I see no particular advantage in +listening to imported eloquence on the subject, even from so clever a +man as his books prove Mr. Morley to be, and from so conscientious a man +as an acquaintance, going back to the days when he sat with Kingsley at +the feet of Maurice, makes me believe Lord Ripon to be. How much either +of them knows about Ireland is another matter. A sarcastic Nationalist +acquaintance of mine, with whom I conversed about the visitors +yesterday, assured me it had been arranged that Lord Ripon should wear +the Star of the Garter, "so the people might know him from Morley." When +I observed that Dublin must have a short memory to forget so soon the +face of a Chief Secretary, he replied: "Forget his face? Why, they never +saw his face! It's little enough he was here, and indoors he kept when +here he was. He shook hands last night with more Irishmen than ever he +spoke to while he was Chief Secretary; for he used to say then, I am +told, in the Reform Club, that the only way to get along with the Irish +was to have nothing to do with them!" + +There was a sharp discussion, I was told, in the private councils of the +Committee yesterday as to whether the Queen should be "boycotted," and +the loyal sentiments usual in connection with her Majesty's name dropped +from the proceedings. I believe it was finally settled that this might +put the guests into an awkward position, both of them having worn her +Majesty's uniform of State as public servants of the Crown. + +During the day I walked through many of the worst quarters of Dublin. I +met fewer beggars in proportion than one encounters in such parts of +London as South Kensington and other residential regions not +over-frequented by the perambulating policemen; but I was struck by the +number of persons--and particularly of women--who wore that most +pathetic of all the liveries of distress, "the look of having seen +better days." In the most wretched streets I traversed there was more +squalor than suffering--the dirtiest and most ragged people in them +showing no signs of starvation, or even of insufficient rations; and +certainly in the most dismal alleys and by-streets, I came upon nothing +so revolting as the hives of crowded misery which make certain of the +tenement house quarters of New York more gruesome than the Cour des +Miracles itself used to be. + +This morning at 7.25 A.M. I left Dublin with Lord Ernest Hamilton for +Strabane. My attention was distracted from the reports of the great +meeting by the varied and picturesque beauty of the landscape, through +which we ran at a very respectable rate in a very comfortable carriage. +We passed Dundalk, where Edward Bruce got himself crowned king of +Ireland, after his brother Robert had won a throne in Scotland. + +These masterful Normans, all over Europe from Apulia to Britain, worked +out the problem of "satisfied nationalities" much more successfully and +simply than Napoleon III. in our own day. If Edward Bruce broke down +where Robert succeeded, the causes of his failure may perhaps be worth +considering even now by people who have set themselves the task in our +times of establishing "an Irish nationality." Leaving out the +Cromwellian English of Tipperary and the South, and the Scotch who have +done for Ulster, what he aimed at for all Ireland, they have very much +the same materials to deal with as those which he dismally failed to +fashion. + +Drogheda stands beautifully in a deep valley through which flows the +Boyne Water, spanned by one of the finest viaducts in Europe. Here, two +years after the discovery of America, Poyning's Parliament enacted that +all laws passed in Ireland must be subject to approval by the English +Privy Council. I wonder nobody has proposed a modification of this form +of Home Rule for Ireland now. Earl Grey's recent suggestion that +Parliamentary government be suspended for ten years in Ireland, which I +heard warmly applauded by some able lawyers and business men in Dublin, +involves like this an elimination of the Westminster debates from the +problem of government in Ireland. As we passed Drogheda, Father Burke's +magnificent presence and thrilling voice came back to me out of the +mist of years, describing with an indignant pathos, never to be +forgotten, the fearful scenes which followed the surrender of Sir Arthur +Ashton's garrison, when "for the glory of God," and "to prevent the +further effusion of blood," Oliver ordered all the officers to be +knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed, and the +rest shipped as slaves to the Barbadoes. But how different was the +spirit in which the great Dominican recalled these events from that in +which the "popular orators," scattering firebrands and death, delight to +dwell upon them! + +At Strabane station we found a handsome outside car waiting on us, and +drove off briskly for this charming place, the home of one of the most +active and prosperous manufacturers in Ireland. A little more than half +way between the station and Sion House, Mr. Herdman met us afoot. We +jumped off and walked up with him. Sion House, built for him by his +brother, an accomplished architect, is a handsome Queen Anne mansion. It +stands on a fine knoll, commanding lovely views on all sides. Below it, +and beyond a little stream, rise the extensive flax-mills which are the +life of the place, under the eye and within touch of the hand of the +master. These works were established here by Mr. Herdman's father, after +he had made a vain attempt to establish them at Ballyshannon in Donegal, +half a century ago. As all salmon fishers know, the water-power is +admirable at Ballyshannon, where the Erne pours in torrents down a +thirty feet fall. But the ignorance and indolence of the people made +Ballyshannon quite impossible, with this result, that while the Erne +still flows unvexed to the sea, and the people of Ballyshannon live very +much as they lived in 1835, here at Sion the Mourne enables 1100 Irish +operatives to work up £90,000 worth of Irish flax every year into yarn +for the Continent, and to divide among themselves some £20,000 a year in +wages. + +After luncheon we walked with Mr. Herdman through the mills and the +model village which has grown up around them. Everywhere we found order, +neatness, and thrift. The operatives are almost all people of the +country, Catholics and Protestants in almost equal numbers. "I find it +wise," said Mr. Herdman, "to give neither religion a preponderance, and +to hold my people of both religions to a common standard of fidelity and +efficiency." The greatest difficulty he has had to contend with is the +ineradicable objection of some of the peasantry to continuous industry. +He told us of a strapping lass of eighteen who came to the mills, but +very soon gave up and went back to the parental shebeen in the mountains +rather than get up early in the morning to earn fourteen shillings a +week. + +Three weeks of her work would have paid the year's rent of the paternal +holding. + +In the village, which is regularly laid out, is a reading-room for the +workpeople. There are cricket clubs, and one of the mill buildings (just +now crammed with bales of flax) has been fitted up by Mr. Herdman as a +theatre. There is a drop-curtain representing the Lake of Como, and the +flies are flanked by life-size copies in plaster of the Apollo Belvidere +and the Medicean Venus. This is a development I had hardly looked to see +in Ulster. + +After we had gone over the works thoroughly, Mr. Herdman took us back, +on a transparent pretext of enlightened curiosity touching certain +qualities of spun flax, to give us a glimpse of the "beauty of Sion"--a +well-grown graceful girl of fifteen or sixteen summers. She +concentrated her attention, as soon as we appeared, upon certain +mysterious bobbins and spindles, with an exaggerated determination which +proved how completely she saw through our futile and frivolous devices. +Mr. Herdman told us, as we came away discomfited, a droll story of the +ugliest girl ever employed here--a girl so preternaturally ugly that one +of his best blacksmiths having been entrapped into offering to marry +her, lost heart of grace on the eve of the sacrifice, and, taking ship +at Derry for America, fled from Sion for ever. + +In the evening came, with other guests, Dr. Webb, Q.C., Regius Professor +of Laws and Public Orator of Trinity at Dublin, well known both as a +Grecian capable of composing "skits" as clever as the verses yclept +Homerstotle--in which the _Saturday Review_ served up the Donnelly +nonsense about Bacon and Shakespeare--and as a translator of _Faust_. He +was abused by the Loyalists at Dublin, in 1884, for his defence of P.N. +Fitzgerald, the leader who beat Parnell and Archbishop Croke so badly at +Thurles the other day; and he is in a fair way now to be denounced with +equal fervour by the Nationalists as a County Court judge in Donegal. +He finds this post no sinecure. "I do as much work in five days," he +said to-night, "as the Superior Judges do in five weeks." + +He is a staunch Unionist, and laughs at the notion that the Irish people +care one straw for a Parliament in Dublin. "Why should they?" he said. +"What did any Parliament in Dublin ever do to gratify the one real +passion of the Irish peasant--his hunger for a bit of land? So far as +the Irish people are concerned, Home Rule means simply agrarian reform. +Would they get that from a Parliament in Dublin? If the British +Parliament evicts the landlords and makes the tenants lords of the land, +they will be face to face with Davitt's demand for the nationalising of +the land. Do you suppose they will like to see the lawyers and the +politicians organising a labour agitation against the 'strong farmers'? +The last thing they want is a Parliament in Dublin. Lord Ashbourne's Act +carries in its principle the death-warrant of the 'National League.'" + +Some excellent stories were told in the picturesque smoking-room after +dinner, one of a clever and humorous, sensible and non-political priest, +who, being taken to task by some of his brethren for giving the cold +shoulder to the Nationalist movement, excused himself by saying, "I +should like to be a patriot; but I can't be. It's all along of the +rheumatism which prevents me from lying out at nights in a ditch with a +rifle." The same priest being reproached by others of the cloth with a +fondness for the company of some of the resident landlords in his +neighbourhood, replied, "It's in the blood, you see. My poor mother, God +rest her soul! she always had a liking for the quality. As for my dear +father, he was just a blundering peasant like the rest of ye!" + + +GWEEDORE, _Saturday, 4th Feb._--A good day's work to-day! + +We left our hospitable friends at Sion House early in the morning. The +sun was shining brightly; the air so soft and bland that the thrushes +were singing like mad creatures in the trees and the shrubbery; and the +sky was more blue than Italy. "A foine day it is, sorr," said our jarvey +as we took our seats on the car. There is some point in the old Irish +sarcasm that English travellers in Ireland only see one side of the +country, because they travel through it on the outside car. But to make +this point tell, four people must travel on the car. In that case they +must sit two on a side, each pair facing one side only of the landscape. +It is a very different business when you travel on an outside car alone, +with the driver sitting on one side of it, or with one companion only, +when the driver occupies the little perch in front between the sides of +the car. When you travel thus, the outside car is the best thing in the +world, after a good roadster, for taking you rapidly over a country, and +enabling you to command all points of the horizon. Double up one leg on +the seat, let the other dangle freely, using the step as a stirrup, and +you go rattling along almost as if you were on horseback. + +We drove through a long suburb of Strabane into the busiest quarter of +the busy little place. The names on the shops were predominantly +Scotch--Maxwells, Stewarts, Hamiltons, Elliotts. I saw but one Celtic +name, M'Ilhenny, and one German, Straub. I changed gold for enormous +Bank of Ireland notes at a neat local bank, and the cheery landlord of +the Abercorn Arms gave us a fresh car to take us on to Letterkenny, a +drive of some twenty miles. + +The car came up like a small blizzard, flying about at the heels of an +uncanny little grey mare. Lord Ernest knew the beast well, and said she +was twenty-five years old. She behaved like an unbroken filly at first, +but soon striking her pace, turned out a capital goer, and took us on +without turning a hair till her work was done. The weather continued to +be good, but clouds rolled up around the horizon. + +"It'll always be bad weather," said our saturnine jarvey, "when the +Judges come to hold court, and never be good again till they rise." + +Here is a consequence of alien rule in Ireland, never, so far as I know, +brought to the notice of Parliament. + +"Why is this?" I asked; "is it because of the time of the year they +select?" + +"The time of year, sorr?" he replied, glancing compassionately at me. +"No, not at all; it's because of the oaths!" + +We reached Letterkenny in time for a very good luncheon at "Hegarty's," +one of the neatest little inns I have ever found in a place of the size. +It stands on the long main street which is really the town. At one end +of this street is a very pretty row of picturesque ivy-clad brick +cottages, built by a landlord whose property and handsome park bound +the town on the west; and the street winds alongside the slope of a hill +rising from the bank of the Swilly river. A fair was going on. The +little market-place was alive with bustling, chattering, and chaffering +country-folk. Smartly-dressed young damsels tripped in and out of the +neat well-filled shops, and in front of a row of semidetached villas, +like a suburban London terrace, on the hill opposite "Hegarty's," a +German band smote the air with discordant fury. Decidedly a lively, +prosperous little town is Letterkenny, nor was I surprised to learn from +a communicative gentleman, nursing his cane near the inn-door, that +advantage would be taken of the presence of the Hussars sent to keep +order at Dunfanaghy, to "give a ball." + +"But I thought all the country was in arms about the trials at +Dunfanaghy," I said. + +"In arms about the trials at Dunfanaghy? Oh no; they'll never be locked +up, Father M'Fadden and Mr. Blane. And the people here at Letterkenny, +they've more sinse than at Dunfanaghy. Have you heard of the champagne?" + +Upon this he proceeded to tell me, as a grand joke, that Father +M'Fadden and Mr. Blane, M.P., having declined to accept the tea offered +them by the authorities during their detention, they had been permitted +to order what they liked from the local hotel-keeper. After the trial +was over, and they were released on bail to prosecute their appeal, the +hotel-keeper demanded of the authorities payment of his bill, including +two bottles of champagne ordered to refresh the member for Armagh! + +A conspicuous, smart, spick-and-span house on the main street, built of +brick and wood, with a verandah, and picked out in bright colours, was +pointed out to me by this amiable citizen as the residence of a +"returned American." This was a man, he said, who had made some money in +America, but got tired of living there, and had come back to end his +days in his native place He was a good man, my informant added, "only he +puts on too many airs." + +A remarkably handsome, rosy-faced young groom, a model of manhood in +vigour and grace, presently brought us up a wagonette with a pair of +stout nags, and a driver in a suit of dark-brown frieze, whose head +seemed to have been driven down between his shoulders. He never lifted +it up all the way to Gweedore, but he proved to be a capital jarvey +notwithstanding, and knew the country as well as his horses. + +Not long after leaving the town by a road which passes the huge County +Asylum (now literally crammed, I am told, with lunatics), we passed a +ruined church on the banks of a stream. Here the country people, it +seems, halt and wash their feet before entering Letterkenny, failing +which ceremony they may expect a quarrel with somebody before they get +back to their homes. This wholesome superstition doubtless was +established ages ago by some good priest, when priests thought it their +duty to be the preachers and makers of peace. + +We soon left the wooded country of the Swilly and began to climb into +the grand and melancholy Highlands of Donegal. The road was as fine as +any in the Scottish Highlands, and despite the keen chill wind, the +glorious and ever-changing panoramas of mountain and strath through +which we drove were a constant delight, until, just as we came within +full range of Muckish, the giant of Donegal, the weather finally broke +down into driving mists and blinding rain. + +We pulled up near a picturesque little shebeen, to water the horses and +get our Highland wraps well about us. Out came a hardy, cheery old +farmer. He swept the heavens with the eye of a mountaineer, and +exclaimed:--"Ah! it's a coorse day intirely, it is." "A coorse day +intirely" from that moment it continued to be. + +Happily the curtain had not fallen before we caught a grand passing +glimpse of the romantic gorge of Glen Veagh, closed and commanded in the +shadowy distance by the modern castle of Glenveagh, the mountain home of +my charming country-woman, Mrs. Adair. + +Thanks to its irregular serpentine outline, and to the desolate majesty +of the hills which environ it, Lough Veagh, though not a large sheet of +water, may well be what it is reputed to be, a rival of the finest lochs +in Scotland. No traces are now discernible on its shores of the too +celebrated evictions of Glen Veagh. But from the wild and rugged aspect +of the surrounding country it is probable enough that these evictions +were to the evicted a blessing in disguise, and that their descendants +are now enjoying, beyond the Atlantic, a measure of prosperity and of +happiness which neither their own labour nor the most liberal +legislation could ever have won for them here. We caught sight, as we +drove through Mrs. Adair's wide and rocky domain, of wire fences, and I +believe it is her intention to create here a small deer forest. This +ought to be as good a stalking country as the Scottish Highlands, +provided the people can be got to like "stalking" stags better than +landlords and agents. + +Long before we reached Glen Veagh we had bidden farewell, not only to +the hedges and walls of Tyrone and Eastern Donegal, but to the +"ditches," which anywhere but in Ireland would be called "embankments," +and entered upon great stone-strewn wastes of land seemingly unreclaimed +and irreclaimable. Huge boulders lay tossed and tumbled about as if they +had been whirled through the air by the cyclones of some prehistoric +age, and dropped at random when the wild winds wearied of the fun. The +last landmark we made out through the gathering storm was the pinnacled +crest of Errigal. Of Dunlewy, esteemed the loveliest of the Donegal +lakes, we could see little or nothing as we hurried along the highway, +which follows its course down to the Clady, the river of Gweedore; and +we blessed the memory of Lord George Hill when suddenly turning from +the wind and the rain into what seemed to be a mediaeval courtyard +flanked by trees, we pulled up in the bright warm light of an open +doorway, shook ourselves like Newfoundland dogs, and were welcomed by a +frank, good-looking Scottish host to a glowing peat fire in this really +comfortable little hotel, the central pivot of a most interesting +experiment in civilisation. + + +GWEEDORE, _Sunday, Feb. 5th._--A morning as soft and bright almost as +April succeeded the stormy night. Errigal lifted his bold irregular +outlines royally against an azure sky. The sunshine glinted merrily on +the swift waters of the Clady, which flows almost beneath our windows +from Dunlewy Lough to the sea. The birds were singing in the trees, +which all about our hotel make what in the West would be called an +"opening" in the wide and woodless expanse of hill and bog. + +This hotel was for many years the home of Lord George Hill, who built it +in the hope of making Gweedore, what in England or Scotland it would +long ago have become, a prosperous watering-place. Now that a +battle-royal is going on between Lord George's son and heir and the +tenants on the estate, organised by Father M'Fadden under the "Plan of +Campaign," it is important to know something of the history of the +place. + +Is this a case of the sons of the soil expropriated by an alien and +confiscating Government to enrich a ruthless invader? I was told by a +Nationalist acquaintance in Dublin that the owner of Gweedore is a near +kinsman of the Marquis of Londonderry, and that the property came to him +by inheritance under an ancient confiscation of the estates of the +O'Dounels of Tyrconnel. All of this I find is embroidery. + +The "Carlisle" room, which our landlord has assigned to us, contains a +number of books, the property of the late Lord George, and ample +materials are here for making out the annals of Gweedore. Lord George, +it seems, was a posthumous son of the fourth Marquis of Downshire, and a +nephew of that Marchioness of Salisbury who was burned to death with the +west wing of Hatfield House half a century ago. He inherited nothing in +Donegal, nor was any provision made for him under his father's will. His +elder brothers made up and settled upon him a sum of twenty thousand +pounds. He entered the Army, and being quartered for a time at +Letterkenny, shot and fished all about Donegal. He found the people here +kindly and friendly, but in a deplorable state of ignorance and of +destitution. Their holdings under sundry small proprietors were entirely +unimproved, and as their families increased, these holdings were cut up +by themselves into even smaller strips under the system known as +"rundale,"--each son as he grew up taking off a slice of the paternal +holding, putting up a hut with mud, and scratching the soil after his +own rude fashion. This custom, necessarily fatal to civilisation, +doubtless came down from the traditional times when the lands of a sept +were held in common by the sept, before the native chieftains had +converted themselves into landlords, and defeated Sir John Davies's +attempt to convert their tribal kinsmen into peasant proprietors. + +Whatever its origin, it had reduced Gweedore, or "Tullaghobegly," fifty +years ago to barbarism. Nearly nine thousand people then dwelt here with +never a landlord among them. There was no "Coercion" in Gweedore, +neither was there a coach nor a car to be found in the whole district. +The nominal owners of the small properties into which the district was +divided knew little and cared less about them. The rents were usually +"made by the tenants,"--a step in advance, it will be seen, of the +system which the collective wisdom of Great Britain has for the last +twenty years been trying to establish in Ireland. But they were only +paid when it was convenient. An agent of one of these properties who +travelled fourteen miles one day to collect some rents gave it up and +drove back again, because the "day was too bad" for him to wander about +in the mountains on the chance of finding the tenants at home and +disposed to give him a trifle on account. On most of the properties +there were arrears of eight, ten, and twenty years' standing. + +There was one priest in the district, and one National School, the +schoolmaster, with a family of nine persons, receiving the munificent +stipend of eight pounds a year. These nine thousand people, depending +absolutely upon tillage and pasture, owned among them all one cart and +one plough, eight saddles, two pillions, eleven bridles, and thirty-two +rakes! They had no means of harrowing their lands but with meadow rakes, +and the farms were so small that from four to ten farms could be +harrowed in a day with one rake. + +Their beds were of straw, mountain grass, or green and dried rushes. +Among the nine thousand people there were but two feather-beds, and but +eight beds stuffed with chaff. There were but two stables and six +cow-houses in the whole district. None of the women owned more than one +shift, nor was there a single bonnet among them all, nor a looking-glass +costing more than threepence. + +The climate and the scenery took the fancy of Lord George. He made up +his mind to see what could be done with this forgotten corner of the +world, and to that end bought up as he could the small and scattered +properties, till he had invested the greater part of his small fortune, +and acquired about twenty thousand acres of land. Of this, little was +fit for cultivation, even with the help of capital and civilised +management. There was not a road in the district, nor a drain. + +Lord George came and established himself here. He went to work +systematically to improve the country, reclaiming bog-lands, building +roads, and laying out the property into regular farms. He went about +among the people himself, trying to get their confidence, and to let +them know what he wanted to do for them, and with their help. + +For a long time they wouldn't believe him to be a lord at all, "because +he spoke Irish"; and the breaking up of the rundale system, under which +they had lived in higgledy-piggledy laziness, exasperated them greatly. +Of the first man who took a fenced and well-defined farm from Lord +George, and went to work on it, the others observed that he would come +to no good by it, because he would "have to keep a maid just to talk to +his wife." Men could not be got for any wages to work at draining, or at +making the "ditches" or embankments to delineate the new holdings; and +when Lord George found adventurous "tramps" willing to earn a few +shillings by honest work of the kind, conspiracies were formed to undo +by night what was done by day. However, Lord George persevered. + +There was not a shop, nor a dispensary, nor a doctor, nor a warehouse, +nor a quay for landing goods in this whole populous and sea-washed +region. He put up storehouses, built a little harbour at Bunbeg, +established a dispensary, got a doctor to settle in the district, and +finally put up the hotel in which we are. He advanced money to tenants +disposed to improve their holdings. Finding the women, as usual, more +thrifty and industrious than the men, and gifted with a natural aptitude +for the loom and the spindle, he introduced the weaving of woollen yarn +into stout frieze stuffs and foot-gear for both sexes. This was in 1840, +and in 1854 Gweedore hand-knit socks and stockings were sold to the +amount of £500, being just about the annual estimated rents of all the +properties bought by Lord George at the time when he bought them in +1838! But with this difference: The owners from whom Lord George bought +the properties got their £500 very irregularly, when they got it at all; +whereas the wives and daughters of the tenants, who made the socks and +stockings, were paid their £500 in cash. + +Clearly in Gweedore I have a case not of the children of the soil +despoiled and trampled upon by the stranger, but of the honest +investment of alien capital in Irish land, and of the administration by +the proprietor himself of the Irish property so acquired for the benefit +alike of the owner and of the occupiers of the land. + +That the deplorable state in which he found the people was mainly due to +their own improvidence and gregarious incapacity is also tolerably +clear. On the west coast of Norway, dear to the heart of the +salmon-fisher, you find people living under conditions certainly no more +favourable than here exist. North of the Hardanger Fjord, the spring +opens only in June. The farmers grow only oats and barley; but they have +no market except for the barley, and live chiefly by the pasturage. It +is as rocky a region as Donegal. But the Norsemen never try to make the +land do more than it is capable of doing. With them the oldest son takes +the farm and works it. The juniors are welcome to work on the farm if +they like for their brother, but they are not allowed to cut it up. +There is no rundale in Norway; and when the cadets see that there is no +room for them they quietly "pull up stakes," and go forth to seek a new +home, no matter where. + +For fourteen years Lord George Hill spent on Gweedore all the rents he +received from it, and a great deal more. During that time the relations +between the people and their new landlord seem to have been, in the +main, most friendly, notwithstanding his constant efforts to break up +their old habits, or, to use their own language, to "bother them." But +there were no "evictions"; rents were not raised even where the tenants +were visibly able to pay better rents; prizes were given annually for +the best and neatest cottages, for the best crops of turnips (neither +turnips, parsnips, nor carrots were there at Gweedore when Lord George +bought the estate), for the best pigs (there was not a pig in Gweedore +in 1838!), for calves and colts, for the best fences, the best ordered +tillage farms, the best labourers' cottages, the best beds and bedding, +the best butter, the best woollen goods made on the estate. The old +rundale plan of dividing up the land among the children was put a stop +to, and every tenant was encouraged not to make his holding smaller, but +to add to and enlarge it. A corn-mill, saw-mill, and flax-mill were +established. In 1838 there was not a baker within ten miles. In 1852 the +local baker was driving a good business in good bread. The tenant's +wife, for whom in 1838 a single shift was a social superiority, in 1852 +went shopping at Bunbeg for the latest fashions from Derry or Dublin. + +Whatever "landlordism" may mean elsewhere in Ireland, it is plain enough +that in the history of Gweedore it has meant the difference between +savage squalor and civilisation. + +Lord George Hill died in 1879, the year in which the Land League began +its operations. He bequeathed this property to his son, Captain Hill, by +whom the management of it has been left to agents. After Lord George's +death two tracts of mountain pasture, reserved by him to feed imported +sheep, were let to the tenants, who by that time had come to own quite a +considerable number, some thousands, of live stock, cattle, horses, and +sheep. + +Concurrently with this concession to the tenants the provisions made by +Lord George against the subdivision of holdings began to give way. +Father M'Fadden, combining the position of President of the National +League with that of parish priest, seems to have favoured this tendency, +and to have encouraged the putting up of new houses on reduced holdings +to accommodate an increasing population. A flood which in August 1880 +damaged the chapel and caused the death of five persons gave him an +opportunity of bringing before the British public the condition of the +people in a letter to the London _Times_, which elicited a very generous +response, several hundred pounds, it is said, having been sent to him +from London alone. Large contributions of relief were also made to +Gweedore from the Duchess of Marlborough's Fund, and Gweedore became a +standing butt of British benevolence. Two results seem to have followed, +naturally enough,--a growing indisposition on the part of the tenants to +pay rent, and a rapid rise in the value of tenant rights. With the +National League standing between them and the landlord, with the British +Parliament legislating year after year in favour of the Irish tenant and +against the Irish landlord, and with the philanthropic public ready to +respond to any appeal for help made on their behalf, the tenants at +Gweedore naturally became a privileged class. In no other way at least +can I explain the extraordinary fact that tenant rights at Gweedore have +been sold, according to Lord Cowper's Blue-book of 1886, during the +period of the greatest alleged distress and congestion in this district, +at prices representing from forty to a hundred-and-thirty years' +purchase of the landlord's rent! + +In this Blue-book the Rev. Father M'Fadden appears as receiving no less +than £115 sterling for the tenant-right sold by him of ground, the head +rent of which is £1, 2s. 6d. a year. The worst enemy of Father M'Fadden +will hardly suspect him, I hope, of taking such a sum as this from a +tenant farmer for the right to starve to death by inches.[13] + +A shrewd Galway man, now here, who seems to know the region well, and +likes both the scenery and the people, tells me that the troubles which +have now culminated in the arrest of Father M'Fadden have been +aggravated by the vacillation of Captain Hill, and by the foibles of his +agent, Colonel Dopping, who not long ago brought down Mr. Gladstone with +his unloaded rifle. That the tenants as a body have been, or now are, +unable to pay their rent he does not believe. On the contrary, he thinks +them, as a body, rather well off. Certainly I have seen and spoken with +none of them about the roads to-day who were not hearty-looking men, and +in very good case. Colonel Dopping, according to my Galwegian, is not an +Englishman, but a Longford Irishman of good family, who got his +training in India as an official of the Woods and Forests in Bengal. "He +is not a bad-hearted man, nor unkind," said my Galwegian, "but he is +too much of a Bengal tiger in his manner. He went into the cottages +personally and lectured the people, and that they never will stand. They +don't require or expect you to believe what they say--in fact they have +little respect for you if you do--but they like to have the agent +pretend that he believes them, and then go on and show that he don't. +But he must never lose his temper about it. Colonel Dopping, I have +heard, argued with an old woman one day who was telling him more yarns +than were ever spun into cloth in Gweedore, till she picked up her cup +of tea and threw it in his face. He flounced out of the cottage, and +ordered the police to arrest her. That did him more harm than if he had +shot a dozen boys." "What with the temper of Colonel Dopping and the +vacillation of Captain Hill, who is always of the mind of the last man +that speaks to him, Father M'Fadden has had it all his own way. Captain +Hill's claim was for £1800 of arrears, long arrears too, and £400 of +costs. How much the people paid in under the Plan of Campaign nobody +knows but Father M'Fadden. But he is a clever _padre_, and he played +Captain Hill till he finally gave up the costs, and settled for £1450." + +"And this sum represents what?" + +"It represents in round numbers about two years' income from an estate +in which Captain Hill's father must have invested, first and last, more +nearly £40,000 than £20,000 of money that never came out of it." + +"That doesn't sound like a very good operation. But isn't the question, +Whether the tenants have earned this sum, such as it is, out of the land +let to them by Captain Hill?" + +"No, not exactly, I think. You must remember there are some twelve +hundred families living here on land bought with Lord George's money, +and enjoying all the advantages which the place owes to his investment +and his management, much more than to any labour or skill of theirs. You +must look at their rents as accommodation rents. Suppose they earn the +rent in Scotland, or England, or Tyrone, or wherever you like, the +question is, What do they get for it from Captain Hill? They get a +holding with land enough to grow potatoes on, and with as much free fuel +as ever they like, and with free pasture for their beasts, and all this +they get on the average, mind you, for no more than ten shillings a +year! Why, there was a time, I can assure you, when the women here +earned the value of all the Hill rents by knitting stockings and making +woollen stuffs. You see the stuffs lying here in this window that they +make even now, and good stuffs too. But before the League boycotted the +agency here, the agency ten years ago used to pay out £900 in a year, +where it pays less than £100 to the women for their work." + +"Why did the League do this?" + +"Why? Why, because it wanted to control the work itself, and to know +just what it brings into the place. You must remember Father M'Fadden is +the President of the League, and the people will do anything for him. I +have heard of one old woman who sat up of nights last year knitting +socks to send up to London, to pay the Christmas dues to the +Father,--six shillings' worth." + +"And are these stuffs here in the hotel made for the agency you speak +of?" + +"Oh no; these are just made by women that know the hotel, and Mr. +Robinson here, he kindly takes in the stuffs. You see the name of every +woman on every one of them that made it, and the price. If a stranger +buys some, he pays the money to Mr. Robinson, and so it goes to the +women, and no commission charged." + +The "stuffs" are certainly excellent, very evenly woven; and the +patterns, all devised, I am told, by the women themselves, very simple +and tasteful. The only dyes used are got by the women also from the +sea-weeds and the kelp, which must be counted among the resources of the +place. The browns and ochres thus produced are both soft and vivid; +while nothing can be better than a peculiar warm grey, produced by a +skilful mingling of the undyed wools. + +"What, then, causes the distress for which the name of Gweedore is a +synonym?" I asked. + +"It doesn't exist," responded my Galwegian; "that is, there is no such +distress in Gweedore as you find in Connemara, for instance;[14] but +what distress there is in Gweedore is due much more to the habits the +people have been getting into of late years, and to the idleness of +them, than to any pressure of the rents you hear about, or even to the +poverty of the soil. Go down to the store at Bunbeg, and see what they +buy and go in debt for! You won't find in any such place as Bunbeg in +England such things. And even this don't measure it; for, you see, +two-thirds of them are not free to deal at Bunbeg." + +"Why not? Is Bunbeg 'boycotted'?" + +"No, not at all. But they are on the books of the 'Gombeen man'--Sweeney +of Dungloe and Burtonport. They're always in debt to him for the meal; +and then he backs the travelling tea-pedlars, and the bakers that carry +around cakes, and all these run up the accounts all the time. Tot up +what these people lay out for tea at four shillings a pound--and they +won't have cheap tea--and what they pay for meal, and what they pay for +interest, and the 'testimonials,'--they paid for the monument here to +O'Donnell, the Donegal man that murdered Carey,--and the dues to the +priest, and you'll find the £700 or so they don't pay the landlord going +in other directions three and four times over." + +"Then they are falling back into all the old laziness, the men +sauntering about, or sitting and smoking, while the women do all the +work." + +The maid having told us Mass would be performed at noon, I walked with +Lord Ernest a mile or so up the road to Derrybeg, to see the people +thronging down from the hills; the women in their picturesque fashion +wearing their bright shawls drawn over their heads. But the maid had +deceived us. The Mass was fixed for eleven, and I suspect her of being a +Protestant in disguise. + +On the way back we met Mr. Burke, the resident magistrate. He has a neat +house here, with a garden, and had come over from Dunfanaghy to see his +wife. He meant to return before dark. The country was quiet enough, he +said; but there were some troublesome fellows about, keeping up the +excitement over the arrest at Father M'Fadden's trial of Father +Stephens--a young priest recently from Liverpool, who has become the +curate of quite another Father M'Fadden--the parish priest of +Falcarragh, and is giving his local superior a great deal of trouble by +his activity in connection with the "Plan of Campaign." Mr. Wybrants +Olphert of Ballyconnell, the chief landlord of Falcarragh, has been +"boycotted," on suspicion of promoting the arrest of the two priests. +Five policemen have been put into his house. At Falcarragh, where six +policemen are usually stationed, there are now forty. Mr. Burke +evidently thinks, though he did not say so, that Father Stephens has +been spoiled of his sleep by the laurels of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore. +He is to be tried at Dunfanaghy on Tuesday, and there are now 150 troops +quartered there--Rifles and Hussars. + +"Are they not boycotted?" I asked. + +"No. The people rather enjoy the bustle and the show, not to speak of +the money the soldiers spend." + +Lord Ernest, who knows Mr. Olphert, sent him over a message by Mr. Burke +that we would drive over to-morrow, and pay our respects to him at +Ballyconnell. From this Mr. Burke tried to dissuade us, but what he told +us naturally increased our wish to go. + +After luncheon I ordered a car, and drove to Derrybeg, to call there on +Father M'Fadden, Lord Ernest, who has already seen him, agreeing to call +there for me on his return from a walk. We passed much reclaimed +bogland, mostly now in grass, and looking fairly well; many piles of +turf and clusters of cottages, well-built, but not very neatly kept. +From each, as we passed, the inevitable cur rushed out and barked +himself hoarse. Then came a waste of bog and boulders, and then a long, +neat stone wall, well coped with unhewn stone, which announced the +vicinity of Father M'Fadden's house, quite the best structure in the +place after the chapel and the hotel. It is of stone, with a neat side +porch, in which, as I drove up, I descried Father M'Fadden, in his trim +well-fitting clerical costume, standing and talking with an elderly +lady. I passed through a handsome iron wicket, and introduced myself to +him. He received me with much courtesy, and asked me to walk into his +well-furnished comfortable study, where a lady, his sister, to whom he +presented me, sat reading by the fire. + +I told Father M'Fadden I had come to get his view of methods and things +at Gweedore, and he gave it to me with great freedom and fluency. He is +a typical Celt in appearance, a M'Fadden Roe, sanguine by temperament, +with an expression at once shrewd and enthusiastic, a most flexible +persuasive voice. All the trouble at Gweedore, he thought, came of the +agents. "Agents had been the curse both of Ireland and of the landlord. +The custom being to pay them by commissions on the sums collected, and +not a regular salary, the more they can screw either out of the soil, or +out of any other resources of the tenants, the better it is for them. At +Gweedore the people earn what they can, not out of the soil, but out of +their labour exported to Scotland, or England, or America. Only +yesterday," he continued, turning to his neat mahogany desk and taking +up a letter, "I received this with a remittance from America to pay the +rent of one of my people." + +"This was in connection," I asked, "with the 'Plan of Campaign' and your +contest here?" + +"Yes," he replied; "and a girl of my parish went over to Scotland +herself and got the money due there for another family, and brought it +back to me here. You see they make me a kind of savings-bank, and have +done so for a long time, long before the 'Plan of Campaign' was talked +about as it is now." + +This was interesting, as I had heard it said by a Nationalist in Dublin +that the "Plan of Campaign" was originally suggested by Father M'Fadden. +He made no such claim himself, however, and I made no allusion to this +aspect of the matter. "I have been living here for fifteen years, and +they listen to me as to nobody else." + +In these affairs with the agents, he had always told his people that +"whenever a settlement came to be made, cash alone in the hand of the +person representing them could make it properly." "Cash I must have," he +said, "and hold the cash ready for the moment. When I had worked out a +settlement with Captain Hill, I had a good part of the money in my hand +ready to pay down. £1450 was the sum total agreed upon, and after the +further collection, necessitated by the settlement, there was a deficit +of about £200. I wrote to Professor Stuart," he added, after a pause, +"that I wanted about £200 of the sum-total. But more has come in since +then. This remittance, from America yesterday, for example." + +"Do they send such remittances without being asked for them?" I +inquired. + +"Yes; they are now and again sending money, and some of them don't send, +but bring it. Some of them go out to America now as they used to go to +England--just to work and earn some money, and come back. + +"If they get on tolerably well they stay for a while, but they find +America is more expensive than Ireland, and if, for any cause, they get +out of work there, they come back to Ireland to spend what they have. +Naturally, you see," said Father M'Fadden, "they find a certain pleasure +to be seen by their old friends in the old place, after borrowing the +four pounds perhaps to take them to America, coming back with the money +jingling in their pockets, and in good clothes, and with a watch and a +chain--and a high hat. And there is in the heart of the Irishman an +eternal longing for his native land constantly luring him back to +Ireland. All do not succeed, though, in your country," he said. "We hear +of two out of ten perhaps who do very well. They take care we hear of +that. The rest disappear, and are never heard of again." + +"Then you do not encourage emigration?" I, asked, "even although the +people cannot earn their living from the soil?" + +Father M'Fadden hesitated a moment, and then replied, "No, for things +should be so arranged that they may earn their living, not out of the +country, but on the soil at home. It is to that I want to bring the +condition of the district." + +At this point Lord Ernest Hamilton came up and knocked at the door. He +was most courteously received by Father M'Fadden. To my query why the +Courts could not intervene to save the priests from taking all this +trouble on themselves between the owners and the occupiers of the land, +Father M'Fadden at first replied that the Courts had no power to +intervene where, as in many cases in Gweedore, the holdings are +subdivided. + +"The Courts," he said, "may not be, and I do not think they are, all +that could be desired, though they undoubtedly do supply a more or less +impartial arbitrator between the landlord and the tenant. It is an +improvement on the past when the landlords fixed the rents for +themselves." + +I did not remind him of what Lord George Hill tells us, that in the +olden time at Gweedore the tenants fixed their own rents--and then did +not pay them--but I asked him how this could be said when the tenant +clearly must have accepted the rent, no matter who fixed it. "Oh!" said +Father M'Fadden, "that may be so, but the tenant was not free, he was +coerced. With all his life and labour represented in the holding and its +improvements, he could not go and give up his holding. It's a +stand-and-deliver business with him--the landlord puts a pistol to his +head!" + +"But is it not true," I said, "that under the new Land Bill the Land +Commissioner's Court has power to fix the rents judicially without +regard to landlord or tenant during fifteen years?" + +"Yes, that is so," said Father M'Fadden. "Under Mr. Gladstone's Act of +81, and under the later Act of the present Government, the rents so +fixed from '81 to '86 inclusive are subject to revision for three years; +but the people have no confidence in the constitution of the Courts, +and, as a matter of fact, the improvements of the tenants are +confiscated under the Act of '81, and the reductions allowed under the +Act of '87 are incommensurate with the fall in prices by 100 per cent. +And there still remains the burden of arrears. I feel that I must stand +between my people and obligations which they are unable to meet. To that +end I take their money, and stand ready to use it to relieve them when +the occasion offers. That is my idea of my work under the 'Plan of +Campaign'; and, furthermore, I think that by doing it I have secured +money for the landlord which he couldn't possibly have got in any other +way." + +This struck me as a very remarkable statement, nor can I see how it can +be interpreted otherwise than as an admission that if the people had +the money to pay their rents, they couldn't be trusted to use it for +that purpose, unless they put it into the control of the priest or of +some other trustee. + +Reverting to what he had said of the necessity for some change in the +conditions of life and labour here, I asked if, in his opinion, the +people could live out of the land if they got the ownership of it. + +In existing circumstances he thought they could not. + +Was he in favour, then, of Mr. Davitt's plan of Land Nationalisation? + +"Well, I have not considered the question of Nationalisation of the +land." + +To my further question, What remedies he would himself propose for a +state of things in which it was impossible for the people to live out of +the land either as occupiers or as owners--emigration being barred, +Father M'Fadden, without looking at Lord Ernest, replied, "Oh, I think +abler men who draw up Parliamentary Acts and live in public life ought +to devise remedies, and that is a matter which would be best settled by +a Home Government." + +The glove was well delivered, but Lord Ernest did not lift it. + +"But, Father M'Fadden," I said, "I am told you are a practical +agriculturist and engineer, and that you have contrived to get excellent +work done by the people here, dividing them off into working squads, and +assigning so many perches to so many--surely then you must understand +better than a dozen members of Parliament what they can be got to do?" + +He smiled at this, and finally admitted that he had a plan of his own. +It was that the Government should advance sums for reclaiming the land. +"The people could live on part of their earnings while thus employed, +and invest the surplus in sheep to be fed on the hill pastures. When the +reclamation was effected the families could be scattered out, and the +holdings increased. In this district alone there are 350 holdings of +reclaimable land of 20 acres each, the reclamation of which, according +to a competent surveyor, "would pay well." And the district could be +improved by creating employment on the spot, establishing factories, +developing fisheries, giving technical education, and encouraging +cottage industries, which are so vigorously reviving in this district +owing to the benevolent efforts of the Donegal Industrial Fund." + +Father M'Fadden spoke freely and without undue heat of his trial, and +gave us a piquant account of his arrest. + +This was effected at Armagh, just as he was getting into an early +morning train. A sergeant of police walked up as the train was about to +start, and asked-- + +"Are you not Father M'Fadden of Gweedore?" + +"What interest have you in my identity?" responded the priest. + +"Only this, sir," said the officer, politely exhibiting a warrant. + +"I had been in Armagh the previous day," said Father M'Fadden, +"attending the month's memory of the late deceased Primate of All +Ireland, Dr. M'Gettigan, and stayed at a private residence, that of +Surgeon-Major Lavery, not suspecting that while enjoying the genial +hospitality of the Surgeon-Major my steps were dogged by a detective, +and that gentleman's house watched by police." + +Of the trial Father M'Fadden spoke with more bitterness. His eyes glowed +as he exclaimed, "Can you imagine that they refused me bail, when bail +had been allowed to such a felon as Arthur Orton? Why should I have +been locked up over two Sundays, for ten days, when I offered to pledge +my honour to appear?" He made no other complaint of the magistrate, and +none of the prosecutor, Mr. Ross. He praised his own lawyer, too, but he +strongly denounced the stenographer who took down his speech, or the +parts of it which I told him I had seen in Dublin. + +"Why, just think of it," he exclaimed; "it took the clerk just eight +minutes to read the report given by that stenographer of a speech which +it took me an hour and twenty minutes to deliver! I do not speak from +the lips, I speak from the heart, and consequently rather rapidly; and a +stenographer who can take down 190 words a minute has told me I run +ahead of him!" + +I suggested that the report, without pretending even to be a full +summary of his speech, might be accurate as to phrases and sentences +pronounced by him. + +"Yes, as to phrases," he answered, "that might be; but the phrases may +be taken out of their true connection, and strung together in an +untruthful, yet telling way. Even my words were not fully set down," he +said, with some heat. "I was made to call a man 'level,' when I said in +the American way that he was 'level-headed.'" _A propos_ of this, I am +told that the American word "spree" has become Hibernian, and is used to +describe meetings of the National League and "other political +entertainments." + +When I told Father M'Fadden I had just come from Rome, where, as I had +reason to believe, the Vatican was anxious to get evidence from others +than Archbishop Walsh and Monsignore Kirby, of the Irish College, as to +the attitude of the priests in Ireland towards the laws of the United +Kingdom, he said he knew that "some Italian prelates neither understood +nor approved the 'Plan of Campaign,' nor is the Irish Land question +understood at Rome;" but this did not seem to disturb him much, as he +was quite sure that in the end the "Plan of Campaign" would be legalised +by the British Government. "I think I see plainly," he said, "that Lord +Ernest's government is fast going to pieces, though I can't expect him +to admit it!" Lord Ernest laughed good-naturedly, and said that Father +M'Fadden saw more in Donegal than he (Lord Ernest) was able to see in +Westminster. Upon my asking him whether the "Plan of Campaign" did not +in effect abrogate the moral duty of a man to meet the legal obligations +he had voluntarily incurred, Father M'Fadden advanced his own theory of +the subject, which was that, "if a man can pay a fair year's rent out of +the produce of his holding, he is bound to pay it. But if the rent be a +rack-rent, imposed on the tenant against his will, or if the holding +does not produce the rent, then I don't think that is a strict +obligation in conscience." + +In America, the courts, I fear, would make short work of this theory of +Father M'Fadden. If a tenant there cannot pay his first quarter's rent +(they don't let him darken his soul by a year's liabilities) they +promptly and mercilessly put him out. + +Interesting as was our conversation with the parish priest of Gweedore, +I felt that we might be trespassing too far upon his kindness and his +time. So we rose to go. He insisted upon our going into the dining-room, +where, as he told us, he had hospitably entertained sundry visiting +statesmen from England, and there offered us a glass of the excellent +wine of the country. He excused himself from joining us as being +"almost a teetotaller." + +On our return to the hotel I met the Galwegian strolling about. When I +told him of Father M'Fadden's courteous hospitality, he said, "I am very +glad you took that glass he offered. I really believe his quarrel with +Captain Hill dates back to Hill's declining that same courtesy under +Father M'Fadden's roof." + + +GWEEDORE, _Monday, Feb. 6._--Another very beautiful morning--as a farmer +said with whom I chatted on my morning stroll, "A grand day, sorr!" +Errigal, which in this mountain atmosphere seems almost to hang over our +hotel, but is in reality three or four miles away, stood out superbly +against a clear azure sky, wreaths of soft luminous mist floating like a +divine girdle half way up his bare volcanic peak. + +I walked up to the Bunbeg road with Lord Ernest to call upon some +peasants whom he knows. In one stone cabin, very well built and +plastered, standing sidewise to the road, with doors on either side, we +found the house apparently in charge of a little girl of nine or ten +years, a weird but pretty child with very delicate well-cut features, +who lay couchant upon her doubled-up arm on a low bed in a corner of the +main room, and peered at us over her elbow with sparkling inquisitive +eyes. + +By her side sat a man with his cap on, who might have been the "young +Pretender," or the "old Kaiser," so far as his looks went towards +indicating his age. He never rose or welcomed us, being, as we +afterwards found out, only a visitor like ourselves, and a kinsman of +Mrs. M'Donnell, the head of the house. "Mrs. M'Donnell," he said, "is +gone to the store at Bunbeg." + +This main room rose perhaps ten feet in height to the open roof. It had +one large and well-glazed window. When Lord George Hill came here there +were not ten square feet of window-glass in the whole parish outside of +the Church, the national school, and the residence of the chief +police-officer. + +Windows when there were any were closed with dried sheepskins, through +which the cats ran in and out as freely as through the curious tunnel +which the kindly Master of Blantyre has constructed at Sheba's Cross for +their special benefit. + +There were two beds in the main room; rather high than low, one of +rushes, on which lay the child of whom I have spoken, and one of +greater pretensions vacant in another corner. + +The door stood wide open, but the cabin was warm and comfortable, and a +peat fire smouldered, sending up, to me, most agreeable odours. An inner +room seemed to be a sort of granary, full of hay and straw. There the +cow is kept at night. "It's handy if you want a drink of milk," said the +visitor. In comparison with the dwellings of small farmers in Eastern +France or in Southern Italy this Donegal cabin was not only clean but +attractive. It was more squalid perhaps, but less dreary than the +extemporised and flimsy dwellings of settlers in the extreme Far West of +the United States, and I should say decidedly a more wholesome +habitation than the hermetically sealed and dismal wooden houses of +hundreds of struggling farmers in the older Eastern States. I am sure my +old friend Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, who made the only thorough surveys +of agricultural life in the United States before the Civil War, would +have pronounced it in all respects superior, so far as health and +comfort go, to the average home of the average "poor buccra," between +the Chesapeake and the Sabine. I am afraid a great deal of not wholly +innocuous nonsense has been written and spoken about this part of the +United Kingdom by well-meaning philanthropists who have gauged the +condition of the people here by their own standards of comfort and +enjoyment. Most things in this life of ours are relative. I well +remember hearing an American millionaire, who began life in New York as +the patentee of a mouse-trap, express his profound compassion for a +judge of the Supreme Court condemned to live "upon a pittance of eight +thousand dollars a year." + +These dwellers in the cabins of Donegal are millionaires, so far as +those essentials of life are concerned, which we call room and air and +freedom to move and breathe, in comparison with hundreds and thousands +of their own race in the slums of New York and Chicago and Liverpool and +London. + +Mrs. M'Donnell's cousin, however, took dark views of things. The times +"were no good at all." + +The potatoes, I had heard, were doing well this year. + +"No! they wouldn't keep the people; indeed, they wouldn't. There would +have to be relief." + +"Why not manure the land?" + +"Manure? oh yes, the sea-stuff was good manure, but the people couldn't +get it. They had no boats; and it cost eighteenpence a load to haul it +from Bunbeg. No! they couldn't get it off the rocks. At the Rosses they +might; the Rosses were not so badly off as Derrybeg or Gweedore, for all +they might say." + +"But Father M'Fadden had urged me," I said, "to see the Rosses, because +the people there were worse off than any of the people." + +"Well, Father M'Fadden was a good man; he was a friend of the people; +and they were bad indeed at the Rosses, but they could get the sea-stuff +there, and hadn't to pay for cartage. And indeed, if you put the +sea-stuff on the bogland, the land was better in among the rocks' at the +Rosses than was the bogland, it was indeed: the stuff did no good at all +the first year. The second and the third it gave good crops--but then +you must burn it--and by the fourth year and the fifth it was all ashes, +and no good at all! This was God's truth, it was; and there must be +relief." + +"But could the people earn nothing in Scotland or in Tyrone?" + +"Oh no, they could earn nothing at all. They could pay no rent." + +So he sat there, a Jeremiah among the potsherds, quite contented and +miserable--well and hearty in a ragged frieze coat, with his hat over +his eyes. + +While we talked, a tall lusty young beggar-girl wandered in and out +unnoticed. Chickens pecked and fluttered about, and at intervals the +inevitable small dog suddenly barked and yelped. + +On our way back we met the elder daughter of Mrs. M'Donnell, a girl of +sixteen, the "beauty of Gweedore." A beauty she certainly is, and of a +type hardly to have been looked for here. + +Her lithe graceful figure, her fine, small, chiselled features, her +shapely little head rather defiantly set on her sloping shoulders, her +fair complexion and clear hazel eyes, her brown golden hair gathered up +behind into a kind of tress, all these were Saxon rather than Celtic. +Her trim neat ankles were bare, after the mountain fashion, but she was +prettily dressed in a well-fitting dark blue gown, wore a smartly +trimmed muslin apron, with lace about her throat, and carried over her +arm a new woollen shawl, very tasteful and quiet in colour. She greeted +us with a self-possessed smile. + +"No," she had not, been shopping with her mother. The shawl was a +present from one of her cousins. Did we not think it very pretty? She +was only out for a walk, and had no notion where her mother might be. A +stalwart red-bearded man who lounged and loitered behind her on the road +was "only a friend," she said, "not a relation at all!" Nor did she +show, I am sorry to say, any compassion for the evident uneasiness with +which, from a distance, he regarded her long and affable parley with two +strangers. + +We asked her whether she expected and wished to live in Gweedore, or +would like to follow elsewhere some calling or trade. "Oh yes," she +unhesitatingly replied, "I should like to be a dress-maker in Deny; +but," she added pensively, "it's no use my thinking about it, for I know +I shouldn't be let!" + +"Wouldn't you like Dublin as well?" I asked. + +"Perhaps; but I shouldn't be let go to Dublin either!" + +Would she like to go to America? + +"No!" she didn't think much of "the Americans who came back," and +America must be "a very hard country for work, and very cold in the +winter." + +Now this was a widow's daughter, living in such a cabin as I have +described, and upon a small holding in a parish reputed to be the most +"distressful" in Donegal![15] + +Returning to the hotel we found our car ready for Falcarragh. Our driver +was a quiet, sensible fellow, who did not seem to care sixpence about +the great Nationality question, though he knew the country very well. + +Iron was visible in the rocks as we drove along, and we passed some +abandoned mining works, "lead and silver mines;" he said, "they were +given up long before his time." We got many fine views of the mountains +Errigal, Aghla More, and Muckish. Lough Altan, a wild tarn, lies between +Errigal and Aghla More. + +The peasants we met stared at us curiously, but, were very civil, even +at a place bearing the ominous name of Bedlam, against which Mr. Burke +had warned us as the most troublesome on the way. All the countryside +was there attending a fair, and we drove through throngs of red-shawled, +barelegged women, ponies, horses, cattle, and sheep. Of Tory Island, +with its famous tower, dating back to the fabled "Fomorians," we had +some grand glimpses. The white surf, flashing and leaping high in the +air on the nearer islets accented and gave life to the landscape. + +In one glorious landlocked bay, we saw not a single boat riding. Our +driver said, "The fishermen all live on Tory Island, and send their fish +to Sligo. The people on the mainland don't like going out in the boats." + +Lord Ernest tells me there is a movement to have a telegraph station set +up on Tory Island, to announce the Canadian steamers coming into Moville +for Deny. + +We found Falcarragh, or "Cross-Roads," a large clean-looking village, +consisting of one long and broad street, through which horses and cattle +were wandering in numbers, apparently at their own sweet will. + +Ballyconnell House, the seat of Mr. Wybrants Olphert, is the manor house +of the place. As we drew near, no signs appeared of the dreadful +"Boycott." The great gates of the park stood hospitably open, and we +drove in unchallenged past a pretty ivy-clad lodge, and through low, but +thickly planted groves. A huge boulder, ruddy with iron ore, bears the +uncanny and unspellable name of the "Clockchinnfhaelaidh," or "Stone of +Kinfaele." Upon this stone, tradition tells us, Balor, a giant of Tory +Island, chopped off the head of an unreasonable person named +Mackinfeale, for complaining that Balor, under some prehistoric "Plan of +Campaign," had driven away his favourite cow, Glasgavlan. + +Ballyconnell House, a substantial mansion of the Georgian era, stands +extremely well. Over a fine sloping lawn in front, you have a glorious +view of the sea, and of a very fine headland, known as "the Duke's +Head," from the really remarkable resemblance it bears to the profile of +Wellington. The winds have such power here that there are but few +well-grown trees, and those near the house. About them paraded many +game-hens, spirited birds, looking like pheasants. These, as we learned, +never sleep save in the trees. + +The "boycotted" lord of the manor came out to greet us--a handsome, +stalwart man of some seventy years, with a kindly face, and most +charming manners. His family, presumably of Dutch origin, has been +established here since Charles II. He himself holds 18,133 acres here, +valued at £1802 a year; and he is a resident landlord in the fullest +sense of the term. For fifty years he has lived here, during all which +time, as he told us to-day, he has "never slept for a week out of the +country." His furthest excursions of late years have been to Raphoe, +where he has a married daughter. "Absenteeism" clearly has nothing to do +with the quarrel between Mr. Olphert and his tenants, or with the +"boycotting" of Ballyconnell. + +The dragoons from Dunfanaghy had just ridden away as we came up. They +had come over in full fig to show themselves, and to encourage the +respectable Catholics of Falcarragh, who side with their parish priest, +Father M'Fadden of Glena, and object to the vehement measures, promoted +by his young curate, Father Stephens, recently of Liverpool. The people +had received them with much satisfaction. "They had never seen the +cavalry before, and were much delighted!" + +Before we sat down to luncheon young Mr. Olphert came in. It was curious +to see this quiet, well-bred young gentleman throw down his belt and his +revolver on the hall table, like his gloves and his umbrella. "Quite +like the Far West," I said. "And we are as far in the West as we can +get," he replied laughingly. + +Our luncheon was excellent--so good, in fact, that we felt a kind of +remorse as if we had selfishly quartered ourselves upon a beleaguered +garrison. But Mr. Olphert said he had no fear of being starved out. +Personally he was, and always had been, on the best terms with the +people of Falcarragh. The older tenants, even now, if he met them +walking in the fields when no one was in sight, would come up and salute +him, and say how "disgusted" they were with what was going on. It was +the younger generation who were troublesome--more troublesome, he added, +to their own parish priest than they were to him. Three or four years +ago a returned American Irishman, an avowed unbeliever, but an active +Nationalist and one of Mr. Forster's "suspects," had come into the +neighbourhood and done his worst to break up the parish. He used to come +to Falcarragh on a Sunday, and get up on a stone outside the chapel +while Father M'Fadden was saying Mass or preaching, and harangue such +people as would listen to him, and caricature the priest and the sermon +going on within sound of his own voice. "I am myself a Protestant," +said Mr. Olphert, "but I have a great respect for priests who do their +duty; and the conduct of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, in countenancing +this man, who tried to overthrow the authority of Father M'Fadden of +Glena, excited my indignation. As to what is going on now," said Mr. +Olphert, "it is to Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, and to Father Stephens +here, that the trouble is chiefly to be charged." This tallies with what +I heard at Gweedore from my Galwegian acquaintance. He thought Mr. +Olphert, and Mr. Hewson, the agent, ought to have made peace on the +terms which Father Stephens said he was willing to accept for the +tenants, these being a reduction of 3s. 4d. in the pound, if Mr. Olphert +would extend the reduction to the whole year. My Galwegian thought this +reasonable, because in this region the rent, it appears, is only +collected once a year. With this impartial temper, my Galwegian still +maintained that but for the two priests--the parish priest of Gweedore +and the curate of Falcarragh--there need have been no trouble at +Falcarragh. There had been no "evictions." When the tenants first went +to Mr. Olphert they asked a reduction of 4s. in the pound on the +non-judicial rents, and this Mr. Olphert at once agreed to give them. +The tenants had regularly paid their rents for ten years before. That +they are not going down in the world would appear from the fact that the +P.O. Savings Banks' deposits at Falcarragh, which stood at £62, 15s. +10d. in 1880, rose in 1887 to £494, 10s. 8d. A small number of them had +gone into Court and had judicial rents fixed; and it was on the +contention promoted by the two priests, through these judicial tenants, +he said, that all the difficulty hinged. Father M'Fadden of Glena, who +thought the quarrel unjustifiable and silly, had an interview with Mr. +Blane, M.P., and with Father Stephens, and tried to arrange it all. He +would have succeeded, my Galwegian thought, had not the agent, Mr. +Hewson, obstinately fought with the obstinate curate, Father Stephens, +over the suggestion made by the latter, that the terms granted on the +fine neighbouring estate of Mr. Stuart of Ards--a man of wealth, who +lives mainly at Brighton, though Ards is one of the loveliest places in +Ireland--should be extended by Mr. Olphert for a whole year to his own +people, who had never asked for anything of the kind! + +Mr. Olphert said he knew Gweedore well. He owns a "townland"[16] there, +on which he has thirty-five tenants, none of them on a holding at more +more than £4 a year. Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, he said, finding that +the people on Mr. Olphert's townland were going back to the "Rundale" +practices, tried to induce Mr. Olphert to return all these subdivisions +as "tenancies." This he refused to do. As to the resources of the +peasantry, he thought them greater than they appeared to be. "This comes +to light," said Mr. Olphert, "whenever there is a tenant-right for sale. +There is never any lack of money to buy it, and at a round good price." +The people also, he thinks, spend a great deal on what they regard as +luxuries, and particularly on tea. "A cup of tea could not be got for +love or money in Gweedore, when Lord George Hill came there. You might +as well have asked for a glass of Tokay." + +Now they use and abuse it in the most deleterious way imaginable. They +buy the tea at exorbitant rates, often at five shillings a pound, and +usually on credit, paying a part of one bill on running up another, put +it into a saucepan or an iron pot, and boil, or rather stew, it over the +fire, till they brew a kind of hell-broth, which they imbibe at odd +moments all day long! Oddly enough, this is the way in which they +prepare tea in Cashmere and other parts of India, with this essential +difference, though, that the Orientals mitigate the astringency of the +herb with milk and almonds and divers ingredients, tending to make a +sort of "compote" of it. Taken as it is taken here, it must have a +tremendous effect on the nerves. Mr. Olphert thinks it has had much to +do with the increase of lunacy in Ireland of late years. From his +official connection with the asylum at Letterkenny, he knows that while +it used to accommodate the lunatics of three counties, it is now hardly +adequate to the needs of Donegal alone. + +Everything about Ballyconnell House is out of key with the actual +military conditions of life here. It is essentially what Tennyson calls +"an ancient home of ordered peace." In the ample hall hang old portraits +and trophies of the chase. The large and handsome library, panelled in +rich dark wood, is filled full of well-bound books. Prints, busts, the +thousand and one things of "bigotry and virtue" which mark the +dwelling-place of educated and thoughtful people are to be seen on every +side. Mr. Olphert showed us a cabinet full of bronzes, picked up on the +strand of the sea. Among these were brooches, pins, clasps, buckles, two +very fine bronze swords, and a pair of bronze links engraved with +distinctly Masonic emblems, such as the level, the square, and the +compasses. When were these things made, and by what people? + +So far as I know, Masonry in the British Islands cannot be historically +traced back much, if at all, beyond the Revolution of 1688. + +Mr. Olphert and his son walked about the place with us. They have no +fears of an attack, but think it wise to keep a force of police on the +premises. The only demonstration yet made of any kind against the house +was the march from Falcarragh some time ago of a mob of young men, who +promptly withdrew on catching sight of half-a-dozen policemen within the +park gates. As to getting his work done, some of his people had steadily +refused to acknowledge the "boycott," and they were now strengthened by +the attitude of those who had surrendered to the pressure, and were now +sullen and angry with the League which had given them nothing to do, and +no supplies. + +At Falcarragh we met a person who knew much about the late Lord Leitrim, +who was murdered in this neighbourhood on the highway some years ago. He +spoke freely of the murderer by name, as if it were matter of common +notoriety. Of the murdered man, he said that he had made himself +extremely unpopular and odious, not so much by certain immoralities +freely alleged at the time of his death, as by vexatious meddling with +the prejudices and whims of his tenants. "He used to go into the houses +and pull down cartoons and placards, if he saw them put up on the +walls." "No! he had no party feeling in the matter; he used to pull down +William III. and the Pope with an equal hand." It seems that in this +region, too, a local legend has grown up of the birth at a place called +Cashelmore of a "Queen of France." The case is worth noting as throwing +light on the genesis and accuracy of local traditions. The "Queen of +France" referred to proves, on inquiry, to have been Miss Patterson, who +married Jerome Bonaparte, brother of the first Emperor, afterwards +created by him King of Westphalia! This Avas the lady so well known in +America as Mrs. Patterson Bonaparte of Baltimore, who died at a great +age only a few years ago. I have no reason to suppose that she was born +at Cashelmore at all or in Ireland. But her father, reputed in the time +of Washington to be the richest man in the United States, who came from +the North of Ireland and settled in Baltimore as a merchant, may very +well have been born there. + +To my great regret Father M'Fadden of Glena, or Falcarragh, was absent +from home. As we drove homeward we met on the way a young lady on a +smart jaunting-car, with a servant in livery. This was the daughter, our +driver told us, of Mr. Griffiths, the Protestant clergyman, past whose +residence our road lay. His church stands high upon a commanding cliff, +and is a feature in the landscape. We met the parson himself also, +walking with a friend. The road from Bedlam to Derrybeg goes by a region +of the "Rosses," reputed the most woe-begone part of the Gweedore +district. This is the scene of a curious tale told about Father M'Fadden +of Gweedore, by his ill-wishers in these parts, to the effect that he +advises English Members of Parliament and other "sympathising" visitors +who come here to make a pilgrimage to "the Bosses," where, no matter at +what time of day they appear, they invariably find sundry of the people +sitting in their huts and eating stewed seaweed out of iron pots. I +cannot vouch for this tale, but certainly I have seen no people here of +either sex, or of any age, who look as if they lived on stewed seaweed. +Another person at Falcarragh told us, as an illustration of the +influence exerted by Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, in this parish, over +which he has no proper authority, that, in obedience to an intimation +from him, the persons whose seats in the chapel had been occupied on two +successive Sundays by the policemen now stationed here, yesterday +refused to allow the policemen to occupy them, the only exception being +in the case of a man who had been arrested at the same time with Father +Stephens, and who had been so well treated by the police, that he felt +bound to repay their courtesy by offering one of them his seat. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +DUNGLOE, _Tuesday, Feb. 7._--We rose early this morning at Gweedore; the +sun shining so brightly that we were forced to drop the window-shades at +breakfast, while I read my letter from Rome, telling me of the bitter +cold there, and of a slight snow-fall last week. Here the birds were +singing, and the air was as soft and exhilarating as that of an April +morning in the Highlands of Mexico or Costa Rica. + +Our host gave us a capital car, with a staunch nag and a wide-awake +jarvey, thanks to all which I found the thirteen miles drive to this +place too short. No doubt it will be a great thing for Donegal when +"light railways" are laid down here. But I pity the traveller of the +future here, if he is never to know the delight of traversing these wild +and picturesque wastes in such weather as we have had to-day, on a car, +well-balanced by a single pleasant companion, drinking, as he goes, +deep draughts of the Atlantic air! Truly on a jaunting-car "two are +company and three are none." You have almost the free companionship of a +South American journey in the saddle, jumping off to walk, when you +like, more freely still. + +We drove near the house of the "beauty of Gweedore," but she was not +visible, though we met her mother (by no means a _pulchra mater_) as we +crossed the Clady at Bryan's Bridge. + +We soon passed from the bogland into a wilderness of granite. Our +jarvey, however, maintained that there was "better land among the stones +than any bogland could be." He was a shrewd fellow, and summed up the +economical situation, I thought, better than some of his betters, when +he said of the whole region that "it will fatten four, feed five, and +starve six." + +It may well fatten six, though, I should say, if the natural wealth of +this vast granite range can be properly turned to account. On every side +of us lay vast blocks of granite of all hues and grades, all absolutely +unworked, but surely not unworkable. We stopped and picked up many +specimens, some of them almost as rich in colour as porphyry. Of lakes +and lakelets supplying water-power the name too, is legion. + +Beyond Annagary we caught a glimpse of the Isle of Arran, the scene, a +few years ago, of so much suffering, and that of a kind I should think +as much beyond the control of legislation as the misery and destruction +which have overtaken successive attempts to establish settlements on +Anticosti in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. + +This town of Dungloe sprawls along the shore of the sea. It is reputed +the most ill-favoured town in Donegal, and it certainly is not a dream +of beauty. But it blooms all over with evidences of the prosperity of +that interesting type of Irish civilisation, the "Gombeen man," of whom +I had heard so much at Gweedore. Over the doorways of most of the shops +appear the names of various members of the family of Sweeney, all of +them, I am told, brought here and established within a few years past by +the head of the sept, who is not only the great "Gombeen man" of the +region, but a leading local member of the National League, and Her +Majesty's Postmaster. The Sweeneys, in fact, commercially speaking, +dominate Dungloe, their, only visible rivals being a returned Irish +American, who has built himself a neat two-story house and shop just at +the entrance of the village, and our own host, Mr. Maurice Boyle, whose +extremely neat little inn just faces a large shop, the stronghold of the +Chief of the Sweeneys. I am sorry to find that this important citizen of +Dungloe is not now here. We went into his chief establishment to make +some purchases, and found it full of customers, chiefly women, neatly +dressed after the Donegal fashion, and busily chaffering with the +shopgirls and shopmen, who had their hands full, exhibiting goods such +as certainly would not be found in any New York or New England village +of this sort. When we secured the attention of the chief shopman, a +nattily dressed, dark-haired young man who would not have discredited +the largest "store" in Grand Street or the Bowery of New York, we asked +him to show us some of the home-made woollen goods of the country. +These, he assured us, had no sale in Dungloe, and he did not keep them. +But he showed us piles of handsome Scottish tweeds at much higher +prices. Now as this is an exclusively agricultural region, it is evident +that the tenants must be able to make it worth a trader's while to keep +on hand such goods as we here found, and therefore that they cannot be +exactly on "the ragged edge" of things. + +Mr. Sweeney is also the proprietor of the chief "hotel" of Dungloe; our +host, Mr. Boyle, being in fact supposed to be "boycotted" for +entertaining officers of the police. This "boycott," however, has +entailed no practical inconvenience upon us; and Mr. Boyle's pretty and +plucky daughters, who manage his house for him, laughed scornfully at +the notion of being "bothered" by it. + +After luncheon we took a car and drove out to Burtonport, on the Roads +of Arranmore, to visit the parish priest there, Father Walker, and Mr. +Hammond, the agent of the Conyngham estates. + +We passed near a large inland lake, Lough Meela, and the seaward views +along the coast were very fine. With peace and order this corner of +Ireland might easily become the chosen site of the most delightful +seaside homes in the United Kingdom. The Recorder of Cork has discovered +this, and passes a great part of the year here. This Donegal coast is no +further from the great centres of British wealth and population than are +Mount Desert and the other summer resorts of Maine and New Hampshire +from New York and Philadelphia; and the islands which break the great +roll of the Atlantic here cannot well be more nearly in "a state of +nature" than were the Isles of Shoals, for example, in my college days, +long after Mr. Lowell first wandered there with the transcendental +Thaxters to celebrate the thunders of the surf at Appledore. + +The wonderful granitic formations we had seen on the way from Gweedore +stretch all along the coast to the Roads of Arranmore. At Burtonport +they lie on the very water's edge. At a place called Lickeena, masses of +beautiful salmon-and rose-coloured granite actually trend into the +tidewater, and at Burtonport proper is a promontory of that +richly-mottled granite which I had supposed to be the peculiar heritage +of Peterhead, and which is now largely exported from Scotland to the +United States. Why should not this Irish granite be shipped directly +from Donegal to America, there to be built up into cathedrals, and +shaped into monuments for the Exiles of Erin? All these formations which +we have seen present themselves in great cubical blocks, so jointed that +they may be detached without blasting, with great comparative ease, and +with little of the waste which results from the squaring of shapeless +masses. At the same time, as we saw while coming from Gweedore, the +many lakes of this region offer all the water-power necessary for +polishing-works, columnar lathes, and the general machinery used in +developing such quarries. Without being an expert in granites, I have +seen enough of the granite works at home to feel quite sure that a +moderate and judiciously managed investment here ought to return a +handsome result. If the National League is as well off as it is reputed +to be, it might go into this business open a new and remunerative +industry to the people of a "congested" district, and earn dividends +large enough to enable it to pay the expenses of the war against England +at Westminster, without drawing on the savings of the servant-girls in +America, The only person likely to suffer would be the "Gombeen man," if +the peasantry earned enough to pay off their debts to him, and stop the +flow of interest into his coffers. + +At Burtonport we found the "Gombeen man," of Dungloe, represented by a +very large "store." He runs steamers between this place and various +ports on the Scottish and Irish coasts, bringing in goods and taking out +the crops which his debtors turn over to him. + +This Burtonport "store" towers high above the modest home of the parish +priest, Father Walker. To our great regret he was absent on parochial +duty, but his niece very kindly welcomed us into his modest study, where +we left a note begging him to honour us with his company at dinner in +Dungloe. + +Mr. Hammond, too, was absent, so after paying our respects to his wife, +we drove back to Dungloe, and walked about the village till dark, +chatting with the good-natured, civil people. The local sensation here +they tell us is not the trial of the priests at Dunfanaghy, but a "row" +breeding between the chief of the Sweeneys and one of his brethren over +the possession of Her Majesty's Post-office. It seems there is an +official regulation or custom that the post-office once established in a +particular building shall not be moved thence without positive cause +shown. The head of the Sweeneys, having completed his new and grand +establishment, wishes to move the post-office thither; but the brother +to whom he confided the office in the older building, where he left it +while making the change of his own business, now desires to keep the +office where it is, and, I suppose, to become postmaster himself![17] A +trivial matter enough, but not without edification for students of the +actual situation in this most curious country. + +About seven o'clock Father Walker made his appearance--a fine-looking, +dignified, most amiable man. He is a teetotaller, which we esteemed a +stroke of good fortune, a bottle of port wine which we obtained, despite +the "boycott," from the Gombeen shop, proving to be of such a quality +that it might have been concocted in the last century, expressly to +discredit the Methuen treaty. + +Father Walker is the President of the National League branch. + +Like Father M'Fadden at Gweedore, he speaks of the landlords in this +part of Donegal as really owning, not so much farms as residential +grounds for tenants who export their thews and sinews to Scotland and +other countries, and live by that traffic mainly. It is a common +practice here, he tells me, for the children, who are very sharp and +bright, to be taken by their parents into Tyrone and other parts of the +North, and put out to live with the people there, who prize them, and +pay very good wages. I asked him if he thought the official estimate I +had seen of the proportion of these "migratory labourers" to the whole +population of Ulster, as about one-tenth of one per cent., an +under-statement. He thought it was an under-statement for this part of +the county of Donegal, but to be explained, perhaps, by the fact that so +much of the migration is merely from one county into another, and not +out of the kingdom. He agreed that the practice goes on upon a much more +extensive scale in the County Mayo, where more than thirteen per cent, +of all the adult male population are said to belong to the category of +migratory labourers. The Irish population of England seems to be +recruited at regular seasons in this way, very much as is the Albanian +population of Constantinople. + +Father Walker was full of information about the granite quarries, and +much interested in the prospect of their development. He told us that a +practical engineer from Liverpool had, not long ago, been here seeking a +lease of the quarries--or, in other words, of the quarrying rights over +sixty or seventy miles of Donegal--from the agent of Lord Conyngham. +This engineer had come to Donegal on a sporting expedition last year, +and gone back full of the capabilities of the granite region. Father +Walker had been told by him that similar quarries also exist in the +County Mayo at Belmullet, where preparations are now making, he thinks, +to develop them, though on a smaller scale than would be both +practicable and desirable here. + +In Mayo, as in Donegal, labour must be plentiful enough, and the +comparatively unskilled labour required in such quarries would be +particularly abundant here. It would be a great thing, Father Walker +thought, to introduce here the custom of a regular pay-day, and with it +gradually habits of exactness and economy, not easily developed without +it. + +He gave me also, at my request, some valuable information as to the +stipends of the Catholic clergy, and the sources from which they are +derived. This subject has been agitated in the local press of this part +of Ireland in connection with estimates of Father M'Fadden's income at +Gweedore, which Father M'Fadden declares, I believe, to be greatly +exaggerated. Father Walker has been parish priest at Burtonport for +about nine years. In all that time the highest sum reached in one year +by the stipend has been £560; this sum having to be divided between the +parish priest, who received £280, and two curates receiving £140 each. +The annual stipend, however, has more than once fallen below £480, and +Father Walker thinks £520 a fair average, giving £260 to the parish +priest, and £130 each to his curates. Where there are only two priests +in a parish, as is the case, for example, in each of the parishes of +Gweedore and Falcarragh, the parish priest receives two-thirds, and the +curate one-third of the stipend. + +The sources of this stipend are various, and in speaking upon this point +Father Walker desired me to note that he could only speak positively of +the rules of this particular diocese, as they do not cover in their +entirety the usages of other provinces, or even of other dioceses in +this province of Ireland. One general and invariable rule indeed exists +throughout Ireland, which is that every parish priest is bound to offer +the Holy Sacrifice, _pro populo_, for the whole people, without fee or +reward, on all Sundays and Holy Days, making in all some eighty-seven +times a year. + +In the diocese of Raphoe, to which Burtonport belongs, there are four +recognised methods by which the revenues of the priests are raised. The +first is an annual fixed stipend of four shillings for each household or +family. "Sometimes," said Father Walker, "but rarely, the better-off +families give more than this; and not unfrequently the poorer families +fail to give anything under this head." The second is a fixed stipend of +one pound upon the occasion of a marriage. "Sometimes, but not often, +this sum is exceeded by generous and prosperous parishioners." The third +is a standard stipend of two shillings for a baptism. "This also +suffers, but on rare occasions," said the good priest, "a favourable +exception. I mention the exceptions as well as the rules," said the good +Father, "in order to make grateful allusion to the donors." + +The fourth and last consists of the offerings at interments. "These vary +very much indeed, but they constitute an important, and, I may say, a +necessary item in the incomes of the clergy." + +Besides these four forms of stipend, the priests derive a revenue from +"those who ask them to offer the Holy Sacrifice 'for their special +intention.'" In such cases it is customary to offer a sum, usually of +two shillings, but sometimes of half-a-crown, which is intended both as +a remuneration for the priest, and to cover the cost of altar +requisites. + +Father Walker estimates the families in his own parish in round numbers +at about thirteen hundred, and in Gweedore and Falcarragh at about nine +hundred each. We had some conversation about the great fisheries, which +one would think ought to exist, but do not exist, on this coast, such +fishing as is done here by the natives being on a very limited scale. +Father Walker tells me that formerly £80,000 worth of herring were taken +on this coast, though he is not sure that Donegal fishermen took them. +But of late years he thinks the herring have deserted these waters. He +admits, however, that the people have no liking for the sea. "Going over +once," he said, "to Arranmore from the mainland in a boat with a priest +of the country, the water was a little rough, and the poor man nearly +pinched a piece out of my arm holding on to me!" Father Walker himself +thought the trip across the "sound" to Tory Island rather a ticklish +piece of business. Yet the natives make it sometimes in their little +corraghs or canvas boats, which would seem to show that some of them +must be capable of seamanship. Most of these islands, notably +Arranmore, Father Walker thought quite incapable of supporting the +people who dwell on them, without constant help from the mainland. Is it +not an open question whether an age which countenances the condemnation +of private property in houses declared unfit for human habitation ought +to hesitate at dealing in the same spirit with nurseries of chronic +penury and intermittent famine? On one of these islands, known as Scull +Island, Father Walker tells me great quantities of human bones are found +in circular graves or trenches, very shallow, and going all around the +island. There are legends of great battles fought on the little island, +and of pestilences, to account for these. But it is likely enough that +the island was simply used as a cemetery by the dwellers on the shore at +some early date. Father Walker when he was last, there had brought away +some of these relics. One he showed us, the beautifully formed jawbone +of a young child, apparently ten or twelve years old, with exquisite +pearly teeth. The chin was not in the least prognathous, but very well +formed. In this district of Dungloe, too, the women weave and knit as +well as at Gweedore; and Father Walker, before he left us for his home, +after a most agreeable evening, promised to send me some specimens of +their handiwork. He is sure that with a proper organisation this +industry might be so developed as to materially relieve the people here +from the pressure of their debts to the dealers of all kinds, a pressure +much more severe than that of the rent. According to the dealers +themselves, no tenant really in debt to them can now expect to work +himself free of the burden under four or five years. It is obvious how +much power, political as well as social, is thus lodged in the hands of +the dealers, and especially of the "Gombeen men." + + +BARON'S COURT, _Wednesday, Feb. 8._--Since last night I have travelled +from one extreme to the other of Irish life--from the desolation of the +Rosses of Donegal to the grandly wooded, picturesque, and beautiful +demesne of Baron's Court. We made an early start from Dungloe on a +capital car for Letterkenny, where we were to strike the railway for +Strabane and Newtown-Stewart. The morning was clear, but cold. On +leaving Dungloe we drove directly into a region of reclaimed land, where +improvements of various kinds seemed to be going on. All this our +jarvey informed us, with a knowing look, belonged to Mr. Sweeney. + +"Was he a squire of this country?" I asked innocently. + +"A squire of this country, sorr? He is just Mr. Sweeney, the Gombeen +man; he and his brothers, they all came here from where I don't know." + +An energetic man, certainly, Mr. Sweeney, and not likely, I should +think, to allow the National League, to push matters here to the point +of nationalising the land of Donegal, if he can prevent it. In the +highway we met, two or three miles out of Dungloe, a very trim dainty +little lady, in a long, well-fitting London waterproof ulster, with a +natty little umbrella in her hand, walking merrily towards the town. How +weatherwise she was soon appeared, the rain coming up suddenly, and +coming down sharply, in the whirling way it has among the hills +everywhere. The scenery was desolate, but grand. Countless little lochs +give sparkle and life to it. Everywhere the granite. About Doocharry, a +romantic little spot, where Lord Cloncurry has a fishing-box in the +heart of a glorious landscape, masses crop out of a rich red granite, +finer in colour than any we had previously seen. In that neighbourhood +the wastes of Donegal take on an aspect which recalls, though upon quite +a different key in colour, the inimitable beauty of those treeless +North-western highlands of Scotland, upon which Nature has lavished all +the wealth of her palette. Vast spaces of brown and red and gold shimmer +away under the softly luminous mountain atmosphere to the dark blues and +purples of the hills. We passed Glen Veagh again, but from quite a +different point of view, which gave us a beautiful picture of Lough +Veagh in its length, and of the smiling pastoral landscape upon its +further shore. + +As we drew near the eastern boundary of Donegal, hedges and civilised +agriculture reappeared. With these we came upon mud cottages, such as I +had not seen in Donegal, being the huts provided for their labourers by +the tenant-farmers, whose comfortable stone-houses and out-buildings +stood well back under the long ranges of the hills. + +We passed through much striking scenery, perhaps the finest point being +a magnificent Gap in the hills, guarded and defined by three colossal +headlands, one of them a vast long rampart, the other two gigantic +counterscarps. The immediate approach to Letterkenny, too, from the west +is charming, passing in full view of the extensive and beautiful park +and the large mansion of Colonel Stewart of the Guards, and skirting the +well-kept estate of Mr. Boyd, the owner of the ivy-clad cottages which +so took my fancy the other day. + +In the Ulster settlement under King James I. a patent for Letterkenny +was issued to one of the Crawfords. Then, as the records tell us, "Sir +George Marburie dwelt there, and there were forty houses all inhabited +by British tenants. A great market town, and standeth well for the +King's service." + +Again we found a fair going on--this time attended by swarms of peddlers +vending old clothes and all sorts of small wares, bread-cartmen, and +tea-vendors. These latter aver that it is easier to sell tea in the +"congested" districts at 4s. 6d. than at 2s. 6d. The people have no test +of its quality but its price! + +The town was gay with soldiers and police--whose advent had created such +a demand for bread and meat, a man told us, that all the butchers and +bakers in Letterkenny and Dunfanaghy were at their wits' ends to meet +it. "But they don't complain of that!" We reached Newtown-Stewart by +railway after dark. As we passed Sion the mills were all lighted up, +giving it the look of an English or New England town. A New England +snow-storm, too, awaited us at our journey's end; and, after a wild +drive of several miles through the whirling white mists, it was a +delectable thing to find ourselves welcomed in a hall full of light and +warmth and flowers by merry children and lively dogs, the guard of +honour of the most gracious and charming of hostesses. + + +BARON'S COURT, _Thursday, Feb. 9._--Among a batch of letters received +this morning I find one from a most estimable and accomplished priest in +the West of Ireland, to whom I wrote from Dublin announcing my intention +of visiting the counties of Clare and Kerry. "I shall be very glad," he +says, "to learn that no evil hath befallen you during your visit to that +solitary plague-spot, where dwell the disgraceful and degraded +'Moonlighters.' Would not 'martial law,' if applied to that particular +spot, suffice to stamp out, these-insensate pests of society?" This +language, strong, but not too strong in view of the hideous murder last +week near Lixnaw of a farmer in the presence of his daughter for the +atrocious crime of taking a farm "boycotted" by the National League, +shows that the open alliance between this organisation and the criminal +classes in certain parts of Ireland is beginning (not a day too soon) to +arouse the better order of priests in Ireland to the peril of playing +with edged tools. For my correspondent is not only a priest, but a +Nationalist. I have sent him in reply a letter received by me, also +to-day, touching the conduct in connection with the Lixnaw murder of a +priest, a curate, I think, comparatively new to the place, who, +standing by the corpse of the murdered man, endeavoured, so my informant +states, to make his unfortunate daughter give up the names of the +murderers, the effect of which would have been to put them on their +guard, and "under the protection of that public conspiracy of silence, +which is the shield of all such criminals in these parts!" Baron's Court +is a very large, stately mansion, lacking elevation perhaps like +Blenheim, but imposing by its mass and the area it covers. It was +rebuilt almost entirely by the late Duke of Abercorn, who also made +immense plantations here which cover the country for miles around. His +grandfather, the handsome Marquis of the days of the Prince Regent, +came here a great deal towards the end of his life, but did little +towards making the mansion worthy of its site. Two very good portraits +of him here show that he deserved his reputation as the finest-looking +man of his day, a reputation attested by a diamond ring, the history of +which is still preserved in the family. A fine though irregular pearl +given by Philip of Spain to his hapless spouse, Mary Tudor, is another +of the heirlooms of Baron's Court; but the ring and the note left by +Mary Stuart to Claud Hamilton, Lord Paisley, mysteriously disappeared +during the long minority of the late Duke under the trusteeship of the +fourth Earl of Aberdeen, and have since, it is said, come into the +possession of the Duke of Hamilton. + +Of the three castles given to Lord Claud Hamilton by James I., to enable +him to hold this country, one which stood at Strabaue has disappeared, +the memory of it surviving only in the name of Castle Street in that +town. The ivy-clad ruins of another adorn a height in this beautiful +park. They are "bosomed high in tufted trees," and overlook one of three +most lovely lakes, stretching in a shining chain through the length of +the demesne. + +Another ruined tower of the time of King John stands on an island in +one of these lakes. When the Ulster settlement was made, these lands +with all the countryside were held by the O'Kanes. With the other Celtic +and Catholic inhabitants, they were driven by the masterful invaders +into the mountains and bogs. There still remain their descendants, still +Celtic and still Catholic, and still dreaming of the day when they shall +descend into the low country and drive the Protestant Scotch and English +from the "fat lands" which they occupy. In this way the racial and +religious animosities are kept alive, which have died out in Tipperary +and Waterford, for example, where the Cromwellian English have become +more Irish and often more Catholic than the Irish themselves. + +I took a long drive and walk with Lord Ernest this afternoon through the +park, which rivals Curraghmore in extent. It is nowhere divided from the +lands of the adjoining tenants, and with great liberality is thrown open +to the people, not only of Newtown-Stewart and Strabane, but of all the +country. Parties, sometimes of seven hundred people, from Belfast come +down to pass the day in these sylvan solitudes, and it is to be recorded +to the praise of Ireland that these visitors always behave with perfect +good sense and good feeling. + +The "terrible trippers" of the English midlands, as I once heard an old +verger in a northern Cathedral call them, who chip off relics from +monuments, pull up flowers by the roots, and scatter sandwich papers and +empty gingerbeer bottles broadcast over well-rolled lawns, are not +known, Lord Ernest tells me, in this island. As he neatly puts it, the +Irishman, no matter what his station in life may be, or how great a +blackguard he may really be, always instinctively knows when he ought to +behave like a gentleman, and knows how to do so. In the lakes were +hundreds of wild fowl. The sky was a sky of Constable--silvery-white +clouds, floating athwart a dome of clear Italian blue. The soil here +must be extraordinarily fertile. The woods and groves are dense beyond +belief. Cut down what you like, the growth soon overtakes you, as lush +almost as in the tropics. + +There was a great cyclone here a year or two ago, which prostrated in a +night over a hundred thousand trees. You see the dentated gaps left by +this disaster in the great circle of firs and birches on the surrounding +hills, but they make hardly a serious break in the thoroughly sylvan +character of the landscape. We visited the centre of the devastation, +where I found myself in what seemed to be a backwoods clearing in +America. An enterprising Scot, Kirkpatrick by name, has taken a contract +under the Duke, built himself a neat wooden cabin and stables, set up a +small saw-mill driven by steam, and is hard at work turning the fallen +trees into timber, and making a very good thing of it, both for the Duke +and for himself. He has one or two of his own people with him, but +employs the labour of the country, and has no fear of disturbance. He +thinks, however, that he must get "a good wicked dog" to frighten away +the tramps, who sometimes stray into his woodland, and put the +enterprise in peril by smoking and drowsing under haystacks. + +Near this clearing is a model village, the houses scrupulously neat, +with trees and flowers, and here we met the Duchess with her devoted dog +walking briskly along to visit one of her people, a wonderful old man, +bearing the ancient name of the O'Kanes, and five years older than the +Kaiser William. Until six months ago this veteran was an active +carpenter, coming and going, about his work at ninety-six like a man in +middle age. Then he went to bed with a bad cold, and will probably +never rise again. In all his life he never has touched meat or soup, and +when they are now offered him rejects them angrily. He has lived, and +preferred to live, entirely on oatmeal in the form of cakes and +porridge, and on potatoes; so I make a present of him as a glorious +example to the vegetarians. As in so many other cases, his memory of +recent events is dim and clouded--of events long past, clear and +photographic: the negatives taken in youth quite perfect, the lenses +which now take, dimmed and fractured. + +He perfectly recollects, for example, the assembling here of the +recruits going out to the Continent before the battle of Waterloo, and +can give the names and describe the peculiarities of stalwart lads long +since crumbled into dust around Mont St. Jean. With the curious +unconcern about death which marks his people, this expectant emigrant +into the unknown world chats about his departure as if it were for +Dublin, and his kinsfolk chat with him. + +"Ye'll be going soon!" + +"Oh yes, I shan't trouble ye more than an hour or two more." + +In quite another part of the domain we came upon a Covenanter--a true, +authentic Covenanter, who might have walked out of _Old Mortality_; the +name of him, Keyes. He greeted Lord Ernest cheerily enough, nodded to me +in a not unfriendly way, and at once broke into exhortation: "It's a +very short life we live; man that is born of woman is of few days, and +full of trouble. Well for them that are the children of light--if seeing +the light they sin not against it"; and so on with amazing volubility. + +There are eighty-five of these Covenanters here. They touch not nor have +touched the accursed thing. To them all parties and all governments are +alike evil. The Whigs persecuted the Solemn League and Covenant--so did +the Tories. Nationalists and Unionists are to them alike abominable, +sold under sin. Withal they are shrewd, canny, successful farmers--and, +as I inferred from sundry incidents, before Lord Ernest confided the +fact to me, not averse from a "right gude williewaught" now and then. + +Mr. Keyes, I thought, was not a blue-ribbon man, nor a ribbon-man of any +kind. + +The Duchess told me afterwards she had vainly endeavoured more than once +to get these people to vote at elections. + +We had a sprinkling of such people, and very good people in quiet times +they were, in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War, to whom +Federals and Confederates were alike anathema. + +We wound up our drive to-day just beyond "the Duke's seat," a little +rustic bench put up by the late Duke on a hill range which commands a +magnificent view over the whole domain of hill and forest and lakes, and +far away to the mountains of Munterlony. There, in the bogs and woods +James Hamilton, "lord baron of Strabane," with "other rebels, unknown, +in his company," hid himself till, after the fall of Charlemont in +August 1650, he was captured by a party of the Commonwealth's +men--whereby, as the record here runs, "all and singular his manors, +towns, lands, and so forth were forfeited to the Commonwealth of +England." Under this pressure he sought "protection," and got it a +fortnight later from Cromwell's General, Sir Charles Coote, whose +descendants still nourish in Wicklow. But on the 31st of December 1650 +he "broke the said protection, and joined himself with Sir Phelim +O'Neill, being then in rebellion." + +Troublous times those, and a "lord baron of Strabane" needed almost the +alacrity in turning his coat of a harlequin or a modern politician! It +is a comfort to know that at last, on the 16th of June 1655, he found +rest, dying at Ballyfathen, "a Roman Catholic and a papist recusant." As +we came back into the gardens and grounds, Lord Ernest showed me, +imbedded in the earth, a huge anchor presented to the present Duke by +the Corporation of Waterford, as having belonged to the French 28-gun +frigate, on which in 1689 James II. and Lord Abercorn sailed away from +Ireland for Prance. I believe that because of its weight the present +First Lord of the Admiralty avers that it is no anchor at all, but a +buoy fixture. It might have been ten times as heavy, and yet not have +availed to keep James from getting to sea at that particular time. + + +BARON'S COURT, _Friday, Feb. 10._--Here also, in County Tyrone, the +Irish women show their skill in women's work. Mrs. Dixon, the English +wife of the house-steward of Baron's Court, has charge of a woollen +industry founded here, after a discourse on thrift, delivered at a +temperance meeting of the people by the then Marquis of Hamilton, had +stirred the country up to consider whether the peasant women might not +possibly find some better and more profitable way of passing their +winter evenings than in sitting huddled around a peat fire with their +elbows on their knees, gossiping about their neighbours. Lord Hamilton +cited the women of Gweedore as proofs that such a way might by searching +be found. + +The Duke and Duchess found the funds, the stewardess invested them in +buying the necessary yarn and knitting-needles, and the Marchioness of +Hamilton acted as corresponding clerk and business agent of the new +industry. The clothing department of the British army lent a listening +ear to the business proposals made to it, and the work began. From that +time on it has been the main substantial resource against suffering and +starvation of the families of some three hundred labourers in the hill +country near Baron's Court. + +These labourers work for the small farmers from April to November; and +between the autumn and the spring their wives and daughters knit, and by +the Baron's Court machinery are enabled to dispose of, nearly twenty +thousand pairs of woollen socks. The yarns are brought from Edinburgh to +the store-house at Baron's Court. Thither every Wednesday come the +knitters. Mrs. Dixon weighs the hanks of yarn, and gives them out. + +On the following Wednesday the knitters reappear, each with her bale of +stockings or socks. These are again weighed, and the knitters receive +their pay according to the weight, quality, and size of the goods. In +some families there are four, five, or six knitters. All these people, +with four or five exceptions, are small cottars living on wretched +little mountain farms, not on the Duke of Abercorn's property; and but +for this industry they would be absolutely without employment all the +winter through. + +Some of them come from a distance of twelve or fourteen miles, and but +for this resource would literally starve. They are nearly all of them +Catholics, and the Protestants here being Unionists, they are probably +Nationalists. About three hundred knitters in all are employed. In the +year 1886-87 the orders given for Baron's Court work enabled Mrs. Dixon +to pay out regularly about five pounds a week, not including casual +private orders. For the current year the orders have been much larger, +and the expenditure proportionally greater. Mrs. Dixon's storehouse was +full of goods to-day. The long knickerbocker stockings which she showed +us were remarkably good, some in "cross-gartered" patterns, handsomer, +I thought, than similar goods in the Scottish Highlands--and all of them +staunch and well-proportioned. + +For socks such as are supplied to the volunteers and the troops the War +Office pays 8-3/4d. a pair. + +It was pleasant to learn from Mrs. Dixon that these people thoroughly +appreciate the spirit which prompted and still directs this enterprise. +Last spring when the Duchess was thought for a time to be hopelessly +ill, a young girl came down to Baron's Court weeping bitterly. On her +arm was a basket, in which were two young chanticleers crowing lustily. +The poor girl said these were all she had, and she had brought them "to +make soup for the Duchess, for she heard that was what the great people +lived on, and it might save her life." + +This afternoon I went over by the railway to Derry with Lord Ernest to +attend a meeting there. The "Maiden City" stands picturesquely on the +Foyle, and has a fine, though not large, cathedral of St. Colomb, +restored only last year, of which it may be noted that the work never +was undertaken while the Protestant Church of Ireland was established by +law, and has been successfully carried out since the disendowment of +that Church. The streets were white with snow, but the meeting in the +old Town Hall was largely attended. It was, in fact, a sort of Orange +symposium--tea being served at long tables, and the platform decorated +with a pianoforte. The Mayor of the city presided, and between the +speeches, songs, mostly in the Pyramus or condoling vein, were sung by a +local tenor of renown. It was very like an American tea-fight in the +country, and the audience were unquestionably enthusiastic. They quite +cheered themselves hoarse when Lord Ernest Hamilton reminded them that +he had made his first political speech in that hall on a "memorable +occasion," when, being an as yet unfledged Parliamentarian, he had taken +a hand in a successful attempt to prevent the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr. +Dawson, from making a speech in Derry. One of my neighbours, a merchant +in the city, told me that a project is afoot for tearing down the old +hall in which we met "to enlarge the street," but he added that "the +people of Derry were too proud of their history to allow it!" + +I understood him to say it is one of the very few buildings in Derry +which witnessed the famous siege, and the breaking of the boom. + +We left the "revel" early, caught a fast train to Newtown-Stewart, and +returned here an hour ago through a driving snowstorm, most dramatically +arranged to enhance the glow and genial charm of our welcome. + + +BARON'S COURT, _Saturday, Feb. 11th._--All the world was white with snow +this morning. Alas! for the deluded birds we have been listening to for +days past; thrushes, larks, and as, I believe, blackbirds, though there +is a tradition in these parts that no man ever heard the blackbird sing +before the 15th of February. I suspect it grew out of the date of St. +Valentine's Day. We had some lovely music, however, within doors this +morning; and, in spite of the snow and the chill wind, a little fairy of +a girl, with her groom, went off like mad across country on her pony, +"Guinea Pig," to fetch the mails from Newtown-Stewart. + +Not long after breakfast came in from Letterkenny Sergeant Mahony of the +constabulary, on whose testimony Father M'Fadden was convicted. We had +heard at Letterkenny that he was now on leave at Belfast, and Lord +Ernest had kindly arranged matters so that he should come here and +tell us his story of Gweedore. + +An admirable specimen he is of a most admirable body of men. He is as +thoroughly Celtic in aspect as he is by name--a dark Celt, with a quiet +resolute face, and a wiry well-built frame. + +Nothing could be better than his manner and bearing, at once respectful +and self-respectful: that manner of a natural gentleman one so often +sees in the Irish peasant. He is a devout Catholic, but no admirer of +Father M'Fadden. + +As to his evidence, he explains very clearly that he was not sent to +report Father M'Fadden's speech at all, but to note and take down and +report language used in the speech of a sort to excite the people +against the law. He was selected for this duty for three reasons: he is +a Donegal man who has lived at Gweedore for sixteen years; he is a fair +stenographer; and he speaks Irish, in which language Father M'Fadden +made his speech. + +"I speak Irish quite as well as he does," said the Sergeant quietly, +"and he knows I do. What I did was to put down in English words what I +heard said in Irish. This I had to do because I have no stenographic +signs for the Irish words." He tells me he taught himself stenography. + +"As for Father M'Fadden," he said, "he told the people that' he was the +law in Gweedore, and they should heed no other.' He spoke the truth, +too, for he makes himself the law in Gweedore. He dislikes me because I +am a living proof that he is not the only law in Gweedore!" Of the +business shrewdness and ability of Father M'Fadden, Sergeant Mahony +expressed a very high opinion, though hardly in terms which would have +gratified such an ecclesiastic as the late Cardinal Barnabo. Possibly +Cardinal Cullen might have relished them no better. "Certainly he has +the finest house in Gweedore, sir, and what's more he made it the finest +himself." + +"Do you mean that he built it?" + +"He did, indeed; and did you not notice the beautiful stone fences he is +putting up all about it, and the four farms he has?" + +"Then he is certainly a man of substance?" + +"And of good substance, sir! The Government, they gave him a hundred +pounds towards the house. But it was the flood that was the blessed +thing for him and made a great man of him!" + +"The flood?" I asked, with some natural astonishment; "the flood? What +flood?" + +"And did you never hear of the great flood of Gweedore? It was in +August 1880. You will mind the water that comes down behind the chapel? +Well, there was a flood, and it swelled, and it swelled, and it burst +the small pipe there behind the chapel: too small it was entirely for +carrying off' the great water, and nobody took notice of it, or that +there was anything wrong, and so the water was piled up behind the +chapel, and at Mass on the Sunday, while the chapel was full, the walls +gave way, and the water rushed in, and was nine feet deep. There were +five people that couldn't get out in time, and were drowned--two old +people and three children, young people. It was a great flood. And +Father M'Fadden wrote about it--oh, he is a clever priest with the +pen--and they made a great subscription in London for the poor people +and the chapel. I can't rightly say how much, but it was in the papers, +a matter of seven hundred pounds, I have heard say. And it was all sent +to Father M'Fadden." + +"And it was spent, of course," I said, "on the repairs of the chapel, or +given to the relatives of the poor people who were drowned." + +"Oh, no doubt; very likely it was, sir! But the repairs of the +chapel--there isn't a mason in Donegal but will tell you a hundred +pounds would not be wanted to make the chapel as good as it ever was. +And for the people that were drowned--two of them were old people, as I +said to you, sir, that had no kith or kin to be relieved, and for the +others they were of well-to-do people that would not wish to take +anything from the parish." + +"What was done with it, then?" + +"Oh! that I can't tell ye. It was spent for the people some way. You +must ask Father M'Fadden. He is the fund in Gweedore, just as he is the +law in Gweedore. Oh! they came from all parts to see the great ruin of +the flood at Gweedore. They did, indeed. And some of them, it was poor +sight they had; they couldn't see the big rift in the walls, when Father +M'Fadden pointed it out to them. 'Whisht! there it is!' he would say, +pointing with his finger. Then they saw it!" + +I asked him at what figure he put the income of Father M'Fadden from his +parish. Without a moment's hesitation he answered, "It's over a thousand +pounds a year, sir, and nearer twelve hundred than eleven." I expressed +my surprise at this, the whole rental of Captain Hill, the landlord, +falling, as I had understood, below rather than above £700 a year; and +Gweedore, as Father Walker had told me, containing fewer houses than +Burtonport. + +"Fewer houses, mayhap," said the sergeant, "though I'm not sure of that; +but if fewer they pay more. There's but one curate--poor man, he does +all the parish work, barring the high masses, and a good man he is, but +he gets £400 a year, and that is but a third of the income!" + +I asked by what special stipends the priest's income at Gweedore could +be thus enhanced. "Oh, it's mainly the funeral-money that helps it up," +he replied. "You see, sir, since Father M'Fadden came to Gweedore it's +come to be the fashion." + +"The fashion?" I said. + +"Yes, sir, the fashion. This is the way it is, you see. When a poor +creature comes to be buried--no matter who it is, a pauper, or a tenant, +or any one--the people all go to the chapel; and every man he walks up +and lays his offering for the priest on the coffin; and the others, they +watch him. And, you see, if a man that thinks a good deal of himself +walks up and puts down five shillings, why, another man that thinks less +of him, and more of himself, he'll go up and make it a gold ten-shilling +piece, or perhaps even a sovereign! I've known Father M'Fadden, sir, to +take in as much as £15 in a week in that way." + +Sergeant Mahony told us a curious tale, too, of the way in which Father +M'Fadden dealt with the people of the neighbouring parish of Falcarragh. +He would go down to the parish boundary, if he wanted to address the +people of Falcarragh, and stand over the line, with one foot in each +parish! + +At our request Sergeant Mahony made some remarks in Irish; very wooing +and winning they were in sound. Before he left Baron's Court he promised +to make out and send me a schedule of the parochial income at Gweedore, +under the separate heads of the sources whence it is derived. + +Obviously Sergeant Mahony would make a good "devil's advocate" at the +canonization of Father M'Fadden. But, all allowances made for this, one +thing would seem to be tolerably clear. Of the three personages who take +tribute of the people of Gweedore, the law intervenes in their behalf +with only one--the landlord. The priest and the "Gombeen man" deal with +them on the old principle of "freedom of contract." But it is by no +means so clear which of the three exacts and receives the greatest +tribute. + +We leave Baron's Court in an hour for Dublin, whence I go on alone +to-night into Queen's County. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +ABBEYLEIX, _Sunday, Feb. 12._--Newtown-Stewart, through which I drove +yesterday afternoon with Lord Ernest to the train, is a prettily +situated town, with the ruins of a castle in which James II. slept for a +night on his flight to France. He was cordially received, and by way of +showing his satisfaction left the little town in flames when he +departed. Here appears to be a case, not of rack-renting, but of +absenteeism. The town belongs to a landlord who lives in Paris, and +rarely, if ever, comes here. There are no improvements--no +sanitation--but the inhabitants make no complaint. "Absenteeism" has its +compensations as well as its disadvantages. They pay low rents, and are +little troubled; the landlord drawing, perhaps, £400 a year from the +whole place. The houses are small, though neat enough in appearance, but +the town has a sleepy, inert look. On the railway between Dundalk and +Newry, we passed a spot known by the ominous name of "The Hill of the +Seven Murders," seven agents having been murdered there since 1840! I +suppose this must be set down to the force of habit. At Newry a cavalry +officer whom Lord Ernest knew got into our carriage. He was full of +hunting, and mentioned a place to which he was going as a "very fine +country." + +"From the point of view of the picturesque?" I asked. + +"Oh no! from the point of view of falling off your horse!" + +At Maple's Hotel I found a most hospitable telegram, insisting that I +should give up my intention of spending the night at Maryborough, and +come on to this lovely place in my host's carriage, which would be sent +to meet me at that station. I left Kingsbridge Station in Dublin about 7 +P.M. We had rather a long train, and I observed a number of people +talking together about one of the carriages before we started; but there +was no crowd at all, and nothing to attract special attention. As we +moved out of the station, some lads at the end of the platform set up a +cheer. We ran on quietly till we reached Kildare. There quite a +gathering awaited our arrival on the platform, and as we slowed up, a +cry went up from among them of, "Hurrah for Mooney! hurrah for Mooney!" +The train stopped just as this cry swelled most loudly, when to my +surprise a tall man in the gathering caught one or two of the people by +the shoulder, shaking them, and called out loudly, "Hurrah for +Gilhooly--you fools, hurrah for Gilhooly!" + +This morning I learned that I had the honour, unwittingly, of travelling +from Dublin to Maryborough with Mr. Gilhooly, M.P., who appears to have +been arrested in London on Friday, brought over yesterday by the day +train, and sent on at once from Dublin to his destined dungeon. + +An hour's drive through a rolling country, showing white and weird under +its blanket of snow in the night, brought us to this large, rambling, +delightful house, the residence of Viscount de Vesci. Mr. Gladstone came +here from Lord Meath's on his one visit to Ireland some years ago. I +find the house full of agreeable and interesting people; and the chill +of the drive soon vanished under the genial influences of a light +supper, and of pleasant chat in the smoking-room. A good story was told +there, by the way, of Archbishop Walsh, who being rather indiscreetly +importuned to put his autograph on a fan of a certain Conservative lady +well known in London, and not a little addicted to lion-hunting, +peremptorily refused, saying, "no, nor any of the likes of her!" And +another of Father Nolan, a well-known priest, who died at the age of +ninety-seven. When someone remonstrated with him on his association with +an avowed unbeliever in Christianity, like Mr. Morley, Father Nolan +replied, "Oh, faith will come with time!" The same excellent priest, +when he came to call on Mr. Gladstone, here at Abbeyleix, on his arrival +from the Earl of Meath's, pathetically and patriarchally adjured him, on +his next visit to Ireland, "not to go from one lord's house to another, +but to stay with the people." This was better than the Irish journal +which, finding itself obliged to chronicle the fact that Mr. Gladstone, +with his wife and daughter, was visiting Abbeyleix, gracefully observed +that he "had been entrapped into going there!" Some one lamenting the +lack of Irish humour and spirit in the present Nationalist movement, as +compared with the earlier movements, Lord de Vesci cited as a solitary +but refreshing instance of it, the incident which occurred the other day +at an eviction in Kerry,[18] of a patriotic priest who chained himself +to a door, and put it across the entrance of the cabin to keep out the +bailiffs! + +It is discouraging to know that this delightful act was bitterly +denounced by some worthy and well-meaning Tory in Parliament as an +"outrage"! + +Despite the snow the air this morning, in this beautiful region, is soft +and almost warm, and all the birds are singing again. The park borders +upon and opens into the pretty town of Abbeyleix, the broad and +picturesque main thoroughfare of which, rather a rural road than a +street, is adorned with a fountain and cross, erected in memory of the +late Lord de Vesci. There is a good Catholic chapel here (the ancient +abbey which gave the place its name stood in the grounds of the present +mansion), and a very handsome Protestant Church. + +It is a curious fact that two of the men implicated in the Phoenix Park +murders had been employed, one, I believe, as a mason, and one as a +carver, in the construction of this church. Both the chapel and the +church to-day were well attended. I am told there has been little real +trouble here, nor has the Plan of Campaign been adopted here. Sometimes +Lord de Vesci finds threatening images of coffins and guns scratched in +the soil, with portraits indicating his agent or himself; but these mean +little or nothing. Lady de Vesci, who loves her Irish home, and has done +and is doing a good deal for the people here, tells me, as an amusing +illustration of the sort of terrorism formerly established by the local +organisations, that when she met two of the labourers on the place +together, they used to pretend to be very busy and not to see her. But +if she met one alone, he greeted her just as respectfully as ever. + +The women here do a great deal of embroidery and lace work, in which she +encourages them, but this industry has suffered what can only be a +temporary check, from the change of fashion in regard to the wearing of +laces. Why the loveliest of all fabrics made for the adornment of women +should ever go "out of fashion" would be amazing if anything in the +vagaries of that occult and omnipotent influence could be. The Irish +ladies ought to circulate Madame de Piavigny's exquisite _Lime +d'Heures_, with its incomparable illustrations by Carot and Meaulle, +drawn from the lace work of all ages and countries, as a tonic against +despair in respect to this industry. In one of the large rooms of her +own house, Lady de Vesci has established and superintends a school of +carving for the children of poor tenants. It has proved a school of +civilisation also. The lads show a remarkable aptitude for the arts of +design, and of their own accord make themselves neat and trim as soon as +they begin to understand what it is they are doing. They are always busy +at home with their drawings and their blocks, and some of them are +already beginning to earn money by their work. + +What I have seen at Adare Manor near Limerick, where the late Earl of +Dunraven educated all the workmen employed on that mansion as +stone-cutters and carvers, suffices to show that the people of this +country have not lost the aptitudes of which we see so many proofs in +the relics of early Irish art. + +Among the guests in the house is a distinguished officer, Colonel +Talbot, who saw hard service in Egypt, and in the advance on Khartoum, +with camels across the desert--a marvellous piece of military work. I +find that he was in America in 1864-65, with Meade and Hunt and Grant +before Petersburg, being in fact the only foreign officer then present. +He there formed what seem to me very sound and just views as to the +ability of the Federal commanders in that closing campaign of the Civil +War, and spoke of Hunt particularly with much admiration. Of General +Grant he told me a story so illustrative of the simplicity and modesty +which were a keynote in his character that I must note it. The day +before the evacuation of Petersburg by the Con federates, Grant was +urged to order an attack upon the Confederate positions. He refused to +do so. The next day the Confederates were seen hastily abandoning them. +Grant watched them quietly for a while, and then putting down his glass, +said to one of the officers who had urged the assault, "You were right, +and I was wrong. I ought to have attacked them." + +It is provoking to know that the notes taken by this British officer at +that time, being sent through the Post Office by him some years ago to +Edinburgh for publication, were lost in the transmission, and have never +been recovered. Curiously enough, however, he thinks he has now and then +discerned indications in articles upon the American War, published in a +newspaper which he named, going to show that his manuscripts are in +existence somewhere. + +ABBEYLEIX, _Monday, Feb. 13._--To-day, in company with Lord de Vesci +and a lady, I went over to Kilkenny. We left and arrived in a snowstorm, +but the trip was most interesting. Kilkenny, chiefly known in America, I +fear, as the city of the cats, is a very picturesque place, thanks to +its turrets and towers. It has two cathedrals, a Bound Tower (one of +these in Dublin was demolished in the last century!), a Town Hall with a +belfry, and looming square and high above the town, the Norman keep of +its castle. The snow enlivened rather than diminished the scenic effect +of the place. Bits of old architecture here and there give character to +the otherwise commonplace streets. Notable on the way to the castle is a +bit of mediaeval wall with Gothic windows, and fretted with the +scutcheon in stone of the O'Sheas. The connection of a gentleman of this +family with the secret as well as the public story of the Parnellite +movement may one day make what Horace Greeley used to call "mighty +interestin' reading." A dealer in spirits now occupies what is left of +the old Parliament House of Kilkenny, in which the rival partisans of +Preston and O'Neill outfought the legendary cats, to the final ruin of +the cause of the Irish confederates, and the despair of the loyal +legate of Pope Innocent. + +Of Kilkenny Castle, founded by Strongbow, but two or three towers +remain. The great quadrangle was rebuilt in 1825, and much of it again +so late as in 1860. There is little, therefore, to recall the image of +the great Marquis who, if Rinuccini read him aright, played so +resolutely here two centuries and a half ago for the stakes which Edward +Bruce won and lost at Dundalk. The castle of the Butlers is now really a +great modern house. + +The town crowds too closely upon it, but the position is superb. The +castle windows look clown upon the Nore, spanned by a narrow ancient +bridge, and command, not only all that is worth seeing in the town, but +a wide and glorious prospect over a region which is even now beautiful, +and in summer must be charming. + +Over the ancient bridge the enterprise of a modern brewer last week +brought a huge iron vat, so menacingly ponderous that the authorities +made him insure the bridge for a day. + +Within the castle, near the main entrance, are displayed some +tapestries, which are hardly shown to due advantage in that position. +They were made here at Kilkenny in a factory established by Piers +Butler, Earl of Ormonde, in the sixteenth century, and they ought to be +sent to the Irish Exhibition of this year in London, as proving what +Irish art and industry well directed could then achieve. They are +equally bold in design and rich in colour. The blues are especially +fine. + +The grand gallery of the castle, the finest in the kingdom, though a +trifle narrow for its length, is hung with pictures and family +portraits. One of the most interesting of these is a portrait of the +black Earl of Ormon'de, a handsome swarthy man, evidently careful of his +person, who was led by that political flirt, Queen Elizabeth, to believe +that she meant to make him a visit in Ireland, and, perhaps, to honour +him with her hand. He went to great expenses thereupon. At a parley with +his kinsman, the Irish chieftain O'Moore of Abbeyleix, this black earl +was traitorously captured, and an ancient drawing representing this +event hangs beneath his portrait. + +The muniment room, where, thanks to Lord Ormonde's courtesy, we found +everything prepared to receive us, is a large, airy, and fire-proof +chamber, with well-arranged shelves and tables for consulting the +records. These go back to the early Norrnan days, long before Edward +III. made James Butler Earl of Ormonde, upon his marriage with Alianore +of England, granddaughter of Edward I. The Butlers came into Ireland +with Henry II., and John gave them estates, the charters of some of +which, with the seals annexed, are here preserved. There are fine +specimens of the great seals also of Henry III., and of his sons Edward +I. and Edmund Crouchback, and of the Tudor sovereigns, as well as many +private seals of great interest. The wax of the early seals was +obviously stronger and better than the wax since used. Of Elizabeth, who +came of the Butler blood through her mother, one large seal in yellow +wax, attached to a charter dated Oct. 24, 1565, is remarkable for the +beauty of the die. The Queen sits on the obverse under a canopy; on the +reverse she rides in state on a pacing steed as in her effigy at the +Tower of London. The seals of James I. follow the design of this die. +Two of these are particularly fine. At the Restoration something +disappears of the old stateliness. A seal of Charles II., of 1660, very +large and florid in style, shows the monarch sitting very much at his +ease, with one knee thrown negligently over the other. Many of the +private letters and papers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth +centuries, during which Kilkenny, as it had been often before, was a +great centre of Irish politics and intrigues, have been bound up in +volumes, and the collection has been freely drawn upon by historians. +But it would obviously bear and reward a more thorough co-ordination and +examination than it has ever yet received. + +There is a curious Table Book here preserved of Charles I. while at +Oxford in 1644, from which it appears that while the colleges were +melting up their plate for the King, his Majesty fared better than might +have been expected. His table was served with sixty pounds of mutton a +day; and he wound up his dinner regularly with "sparaguss" so long as it +lasted, and after it went out with artichokes. + +An Expense Book, too, of the great Marquis, after he became the first +Duke of Ormonde, Colonel Blood's Duke, kept at Kilkenny in 1668 throws +some interesting light on the cost of living and the customs of great +houses at that time. The Duke, who was in some respects the greatest +personage in the realm, kept up his state here at a weekly cost of +about £50, a good deal less--allowing for the fall in the power of the +pound sterling--than it would now cost him to live at a fashionable +London hotel. He paid £9, 10s. a week for the keep of nineteen horses, +18 shillings board wages for three laundry-maids, and £1, 17s. 4d. for +seven dozen of tallow-candles. The wines served at the ducal table were +Burgundy, Bordeaux, "Shampane," Canary, "Renish," and Portaport, the +last named at a shilling a bottle, while he paid no more than £3, 18s. +for six dozen bottles of Bordeaux, and £1, 1s. for a dozen and a half of +"Shampane." This of course was not the sparkling beverage which in our +times is the only contribution of Champagne to the wine markets of the +world, for the _Ay Mousseux_ first appears in history at the beginning +of the eighteenth century. It was the red wine of Champagne, which so +long contested the palm with the vintages of Burgundy. St. Evremond, who +with the Comte d'Olonne and the great _gourmets_ of the seventeenth +century thought Champagne the best, as the Faculty of Paris also +pronounced it the most wholesome of wines, doubtless introduced his own +religion on the subject into England--but the entry in the Duke's +Expense Book of 1668 is an interesting proof that the duel of the +vintages was even then going as it finally went in favour of Burgundy. +While the Duke got his Champagne for 1s. 2d. a bottle, he had to pay +twenty shillings a dozen, or 1s. 8d. a bottle, for five dozen of +Burgundy. He got his wines from Dublin, which then, as long before, was +the most noted wine mart of Britain. The English princes drew their best +supplies thence in the time of Richard II. + +From the castle we drove through the snow to the Cathedral of St. +Canice, a grand and simple Norman edifice of the twelfth century, now +the Church of the Protestant bishop. An ancient Round Tower of much +earlier date stands beside it like a campanile, nearly a hundred feet in +height. + +There is a legend that Rinuccini wanted to buy and carry away one of the +great windows of this Cathedral, in which mass was celebrated while he +was here. The Cathedral contains some interesting monuments of the +Butlers, and there are many curiously channelled burial slabs in the +floor, like some still preserved in the ruins of Abbeyleix. Lord de +Vesci pointed out to me several tombs of families of English origin once +powerful here, but now sunk into the farmer class. On one of these I +think it was that we saw a remarkably well-preserved effigy of a lady, +wearing a plaited cap under a "Waterford cloak"--one of the neatest +varieties of the Irish women's cloak--garment so picturesque at once, +and so well adapted to the climate, that I am not surprised to learn +from Lady de Vesci that it is very fast going out of fashion. This +morning before we left Abbeyleix she showed us two such cloaks, types +from two different provinces, each in its way admirable. Put on and worn +about the room by two singularly stately and graceful ladies, they fell +into lines and folds which recalled the most exquisitely beautiful +statuettes of Tanagra; and all allowance made for the glamour lent them +by these two "daughters of the gods, divinely tall," it was impossible +not to see that no woman could possibly look commonplace and +insignificant in such a garment. Yet Lady de Vesci says that more than +once she has known peasant women, to whom such cloaks had been +presented, cut off the characteristic and useful hood, and trim the +mangled robe with tawdry lace. So it is all over the world! Women who +are models for an artist when they wear some garment indigenous to their +country and appropriate to its conditions, prefer to make guys of +themselves in grotesque travesties of the latest "styles" from London +and Paris and Dublin! + +Kilkenny boasts that its streets are paved with marble. It is in fact +limestone, but none the worse for that. The snow did not improve them. +So without going on a pilgrimage to the Kilkenny College, at which +Swift, Congreve, and Farquhar,--an odd concatenation of +celebrities--were more or less educated, we made our way to the Imperial +Hotel for luncheon. The waiter was a delightful Celt. Upon my asking him +whether the house could furnish anything distantly resembling good Irish +whisky, he produced a bottle of alleged Scotch whisky, which he put upon +the table with a decisive air, exclaiming, "And this, yer honour, is the +most excellent whisky in the whole world, or I'm not an Irishman!" + +Urged by the cold we tempered it with hot water and tasted it. It shut +us up at once to believe the waiter a Calmuck or a Portuguese--anything, +in short, but an Irishman. It is an extraordinary fact that, so far, the +whisky I have found at Irish hotels has been uniformly quite execrable. +I am almost tempted to think that the priests sequestrate all the good +whisky in order to discourage the public abuse of it, for the "wine of +the country" which they offer one is as uniformly excellent. + +Kilkenny ought to be and long was a prosperous town. In 1702, the second +Duke of Ormonde made grants (at almost nominal ground-rents) of the +ground upon which a large portion of the city of Kilkenny was then +standing, or upon which houses have since been built. + +These grants have passed from hand to hand, and form the "root of title" +of very many owners of house property in Kilkenny. The city is the +centre of an extensive agricultural region, famous, according to an +ancient ditty, for "fire without smoke, air without fog, water without +mud, and land without bog"; but of late it has been undeniably +declining. For this there are many reasons. The railways and the +parcel-post diminish its importance as a local emporium. The almost +complete disappearance of the woollen manufacture, the agricultural +depression which has made the banks and wholesale houses "come down" +upon the small dealers, and the "agitation," bankrupting or exiling the +local gentry, have all conspired to the same result. + +From Abbeyleix station we walked back to the house through the park +under trees beautifully silvered with the snow. At dinner the party was +joined by several residents of the county. One of them gave me his views +of the working of the "Plan of Campaign." It is a plan, he maintains, +not of defence as against unjust and exacting landlords, but of offence +against "landlordism," not really promoted, as it appears to be, in the +interest of the tenants to whose cupidity it appeals, but worked from +Dublin as a battering engine against law and order in Ireland. Every +case in which it is applied needs, he thinks, to be looked into on its +own merits. It will then be found precisely why this or that spot has +bees selected by the League for attack. At Luggacurren, for instance, +the "Plan of Campaign" has been imposed upon the tenants because the +property belongs to the Marquis of Lansdowne, who happens to be +Governor-General of Canada, so that to attack him is to attack the +Government. The rents of the Lansdowne property at Luggacurren, this +gentleman offers to prove to me, are not and never have been excessive; +and Lord Lansdowne has expended very large sums on improving the +property, and for the benefit of the tenants. Two of the largest +tenants having got into difficulties through reckless racing and other +forms of extravagance found it convenient to invite the league into +Luggacurren, and compel other tenants in less embarrassed circumstances +to sacrifice their holdings by refusing to pay rents which they knew to +be fair, and were abundantly able and eager to pay. At Mitchelstown the +"Plan of Campaign" was aimed again, not at the Countess of Kingston, the +owner, but at the Disestablished Protestant Church of Ireland, the +trustees of which hold a mortgage of a quarter of a million sterling on +the estates. On the Clanricarde property in Galway the "Plan of +Campaign" has been introduced, my informant says, because Lord +Clanricarde happens to be personally unpopular. "Go down to Portumna and +Woodford," he said, "and look into the matter for yourself. You will +find that the rents on the Clanricarde estates are in the main +exceptionally fair, and even low. The present Marquis has almost never +visited Ireland, I believe, and he is not much known even in London. +People who dislike him for one reason or another readily believe +anything that is said to his disadvantage as a landlord. Most people who +don't like the cut of Dr. Fell's whiskers, or the way in which he takes +soup, are quite disposed to listen to you if you tell them he beats his +wife or plays cards too well. The campaigners are shrewd fellows, and +they know this, so they start the 'Plan of Campaign' on the Portumna +properties, and get a lot of English windbags to come there and hobnob +with some of the most mischievous and pestilent parish priests in all +Ireland--and then you have the dreadful story of the 'evictions,' and +all the rest of it. Lord Clanricarde, or his agent, or both of them, +getting out of temper, will sit down and do some hasty or crabbed or +injudicious thing, or write a provoking letter, and forthwith it is +enough to say 'Clanricarde,' and all common sense goes out of the +question, to the great damage, not so much of Lord Clanricarde--for he +lives in London, and is a rich man, and, I suppose, don't mind the +row--but of landlords all over Ireland, and therefore, in the long-run, +of the tenants of Ireland as well." + +At Luggacurren, this gentleman thinks, the League is beaten. There are +eighty-two tenants there, evicted and living dismally in what is called +the Land League village, a set of huts erected near the roadside, while +their farms are carried on for the owner by the Land Corporation. As +they were most of them unwilling to accept the Plan, and were +intimidated into it for the benefit of the League, and of the two chief +tenants, Mr. Dunn and Mr. Kilbride, men of substance who had squandered +their resources, the majority of the evicted are sore and angry. + +"At first each man was allowed £3 a month by the League for himself and +his family. But they found that Mr. Kilbride, who has been put into +Parliament by Mr. Parnell for Kerry, a county with which he has no more +to do than I have with the Isle of Skye, was getting £5 a week, and so +they revolted, and threatened to bolt if their subsidy was not raised to +£4 a month." + +"And this they get now? Out of what funds?" + +"Out of the League funds, or, in other words, out of their own and other +people's money, foolishly put by the tenants into the keeping of the +League to 'protect' it! They give it the kind of 'protection' that +Oliver gave the liberties of England: once they get hold of it, they +never let go!" + +I submitted that at Gweedore Father M'Fadden had paid over to Captain +Hill the funds confided to him. + +"No doubt; but there the landlord gave in, and the more fool he!" + +With another guest I had an interesting conversation about the Ulster +tenant-right, which got itself more or less enacted into British law +only in 1870, and of which Mr. Froude tells me he sought in vain to +discover the definite origin. "The best lawyers in Ireland" could give +him no light on this point. He could only find that it did not exist +apparently in 1770, but did exist apparently twenty years later. The +gentleman with whom I talked to-night tells me that the custom of Ulster +was really once general throughout Ireland, and is called the "Ulster" +custom, only because it survived there after disappearing elsewhere. +There is a tradition too, he says, in Ulster that the recognition of +this tenant-right as a binding custom there is really due to Lord +Castlereagh. It would be a curious thing, could this be verified, to +find Lord Castlereagh, whose name has been execrated in Ireland for +fourscore years, recommending and securing a century ago that +recognition of the interest of the Irish tenant in his holding, which, +in our time, Mr. Gladstone, just now the object of Irish adulation, was, +with much difficulty and reluctance, brought to accord in the +Compensation for Disturbances clause of his Act of 1870! + +Of this clause, too, I am told to-night that the scale of compensation +fixed for the awards of the Court in the third section of it was devised +(though Mr. Gladstone did not know this) by an Irish member in the +interest of the "strong farmers," who wish to root out the small +farmers. There is an apparent confirmation of this story in the fact +that under this section the small farmers, under £10, may be awarded +against the landlord seven years' rent as compensation for disturbance, +while the number of years to be accounted for in the award diminishes as +the rental increases, a discrimination not unlikely to strengthen the +preference of the landlords for the large farm system. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +DUBLIN, _Tuesday, Feb. 14th._--I left Abbeyleix this morning for Dublin, +in company with Mr. and Mrs. Henry Doyle. Mr. Doyle, C.B., a brother of +that inimitable master of the pencil, and most delightful of men, +Richard Doyle, is the Director of the Irish National Gallery. He was +kind enough to come and lunch with me at Maple's, after which we went +together to the Gallery. It occupies the upper floors of a stately and +handsome building in Merrion Square, in front of which stands a statue +of the founder, Mr. William Dargan, who defrayed all the expenses of the +Dublin Exhibition in 1853, and declined all the honours offered to him +in recognition of his public spirited liberality, save a visit paid to +his wife by Queen Victoria. The collection now under Mr. Doyle's charge +was begun only in 1864, and the Government makes it an annual grant of +no more than £2500, or about one-half the current price, in these days, +of a fine Gainsborough or Sir Joshua! "They manage these things better +in France," was evidently the impression of a recent French tourist in +Ireland, M. Daryl, whose book I picked up the other day in Paris, for +after mentioning three or four of the pictures, and gravely affirming +that the existence here of a gallery of Irish portraits proves the +passionate devotion of Dublin to Home Rule, he dismisses the collection +with the verdict that "_ce ne vaut pas le diable_." Nevertheless it +already contains more really good pictures than the Musée either of +Lyons or of Marseilles, both of them much larger and wealthier cities +than Dublin. Leaving out the Three Maries of Perugino at Marseilles, and +at Lyons the Ascension, which was once the glory of San Pietro di +Perugia, the Moses of Paul Veronese, and Palma Giovanni's Flagellation, +these two galleries put together cannot match Dublin with its Jan Steen, +most characteristic without being coarse, its Terburg, a life-size +portrait of the painter's favourite model, a young Flemish gentleman, +presented to him as a token of regard, its portrait of a Venetian +personage by Giorgione, with a companion portrait by Gian Bellini, its +beautiful Italian landscape by Jan Both, its flower-wreathed head of a +white bull by Paul Potter, its exquisitely finished "Vocalists" by +Cornells Begyn, its admirable portrait of a Dutch gentleman by Murillo, +and its two excellent Jacob Ruysdaels. A good collection is making, too, +of original drawings, and engravings, and a special room is devoted to +modern Irish art. I wish the Corcoran Gallery (founded, too, by an +Irishman!) were half as worthy of Washington, or the Metropolitan Museum +one-tenth part as worthy of New York! + +The National Gallery in London has loaned some pictures to Dublin, and +Mr. Doyle is getting together, from private owners, a most interesting +gallery of portraits of men and women famous in connection with Irish +history. The beautiful Gunnings of the last century, the not less +beautiful and much more brilliant Sheridans of our own, Burke, Grattan, +Tom Moore, Wellington, Curran, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, O'Connell, Peg +Woffington, Canning, and Castlereagh, Dean Swift, Laurence Sterne are +all here--wits and statesmen, soldiers and belles, rebels and royalists, +orators and poets. Two things strike one in this gallery of the "glories +of Ireland." The great majority of the faces are of the Anglo-Irish or +Scoto-Irish type; and the collection owes its existence to an +accomplished public officer, who bears an Irish name, who is a devout +Catholic, and who is also an outspoken opponent of the Home Rule +contention as now carried on. + +The gallery is open on liberal conditions to students. Mr. Doyle tells +me that a young sister of Mr. Parnell was at one time an assiduous +student here. He used to stop and chat with her about her work as he +passed through the gallery. One day he met her coming out. "Mr. Doyle," +she said, "are you a Home Ruler?" "Certainly not," he replied +good-naturedly. Whereupon, with an air of melancholy resignation, the +young lady said, "Then we can never more be friends!" and therewith +flitted forth. + +A small room contains some admirable bits of the work of Richard Doyle, +among other things a weird and grotesque, but charming cartoon of an +elfish procession passing through a quaint and picturesque mediaeval +city. It is a _conte fantastique_ in colour--a marvel of affluent fancy +and masterly skill. + +I found here this morning letters calling me over to Paris for a short +time, and one also from Mr. Davitt, in London, explaining that my note +to him through the National League had never reached him, and that he +had gone to London on his woollen business. I have written asking him to +meet me to-morrow in London, and I shall cross over to-night. + + +LONDON, _Wednesday, Feb. 15th._--Mr. Davitt spent an hour with me +to-day, and we had a most interesting conversation. His mind is just now +full of the woollen enterprise he is managing, which promises, he +thinks, in spite of our tariff, to open the American markets to the +excellent woollen goods of Ireland. He has gone into it with all his +usual earnestness and ability. This is not a matter of politics with +him, but of patriotism and of business. He tells me he has already +secured very large orders from the United States. I hope he is not +surprised, as I certainly am not, to find that the Parliamentarian Irish +party give but a half-hearted and lukewarm support to such enterprises +as this. Perhaps he has forgotten, as I have not, the efforts which a +certain member of that party made in 1886 to persuade an Irish gentleman +from St. Louis, who had brought over a considerable sum of money for the +relief of the distress in North-Western Ireland, into turning it over +to the League, on the express ground that the more the people were made +to feel the pinch of the existing order of things, the better it would +be for the revolutionary movement. + +The Irish Woollen Company will, nevertheless, be a success, I believe, +and a success of considerably more value to Ireland than the election of +Mr. Wilfrid Blunt as M.P. for Deptford would be. + +As to this election, Mr. Davitt seems to feel no great confidence. He +has spoken in support of Mr. Blunt's candidacy, and is hard at work now +to promote it. But he is not sanguine as to the result, as on all +questions, save Home Rule for Ireland, Mr. Blunt's views and ideas, he +thinks, antagonise the record of Mr. Evelyn and the local feeling at +Deptford. I was almost astonished to learn from Mr. Davitt that Mr. +Blunt, by the way, had told him at Ballybrack, long before he was locked +up, how Mr. Balfour meant to lock up and kill four men, the "pivots" of +the Irish movement, to wit, Mr. O'Brien, Mr. Harrington, Mr. Dillon, and +Mr. Davitt himself. But I was not at all astonished to learn that Mr. +Blunt told him all this most seriously, and evidently believed it. + +"How did you take it?" I asked. + +"Oh, I only laughed," said Mr. Davitt, "and told him it would take more +than Mr. Balfour to kill me, at any rate by putting me in prison. As for +being locked up, I prefer Cuninghame Graham's way of taking it, that he +meant 'to beat the record on oakum!'" + +If all the Irish "leaders" were made of the same stuff with Mr. Davitt, +the day of a great Democratic revolution, not in Ireland only, but in +Great Britain, might be a good deal nearer than anything in the signs of +the times now shows it to be. Mr. Parnell and the National League are +really nothing but the mask of Mr. Davitt and the Land League. Mr. +Forster knew what he was about when he proclaimed the Land League in +October 1881, six months or more after he had arrested and locked up Mr. +Davitt in Portland prison. This was shown by the foolish No-Rent +manifesto which Mr. Parnell and his associates issued from Kilmainham +shortly after their incarceration, and without the counsel or consent at +that time of Mr. Davitt--a manifesto which the Archbishop of Cashel, +despite his early sympathies and connection with the agrarian agitation +of 1848, found it expedient promptly to disavow. It would have been +still more clearly shown had not Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Forster parted +company under the restiveness of Mr. Gladstone's Radical followers, and +the pressure of the United States Government in the spring of 1882. But +after the withdrawal of Mr. Forster, and the release of Mr. Davitt, the +English lawyers and politicians who led Lord Spencer and Sir George +Trevelyan into allowing the Land League to be revived under the +transparent alias of the National League, gave Mr. Davitt an +opportunity, of which he promptly availed himself, to regain the ground +lost by the blundering of the men of Kilmainham. From that time forth I +have always regarded him as the soul of the Irish agitation, of the war +against "landlordism" (which is incidentally, of course, a war against +the English influence in Ireland), and of the movement towards Irish +independence. Whether the agitation, the war, and the movement have gone +entirely in accordance with his views and wishes is quite another +matter. + +I have too good an opinion of his capacity to believe that they have; +and when the secret history of the Chicago Convention comes to be +written, I expect to find such confirmation therein of my notions on +this subject as I could neither ask nor, if I asked, could expect to get +from him. + +Meanwhile the manliness and courage of the man must always command for +him the respect, not to say the admiration, even of those who most +sternly condemn his course and oppose his policy. + +Born the child of an evicted tenant, in the times when an eviction meant +such misery and suffering as are seldom, if ever, now caused by the +process--bred and maimed for life in an English factory--captured when +hardly more than a lad in Captain M'Cafferty's daring attempt to seize +Chester Castle, and sent for fifteen years by Lord Chief-Justice +Cockburn into penal servitude of the most rigorous kind, Michael Davitt +might have been expected to be an apostle of hate not against the +English Government of Ireland alone, but against England and the English +people. The truculent talk of too many of his countrymen presents +Ireland to the minds of thoughtful men as a flagrant illustration of the +truth so admirably put by Aubrey de Vere that "worse than wasted weal is +wasted woe." But woe has not been wasted upon Michael Davitt, in this, +that, so far as I know (and I have watched his course now with lively +personal interest ever since I made his acquaintance on his first visit +to America), he has never made revenge and retaliation upon England +either the inspiration or the aim of his revolutionary policy. I have +never heard him utter, and never heard of his uttering, in America, such +malignant misrepresentations of the conduct of the English people and +their sovereign during the great famine of 1847, for example, as those +which earned for Mr. Parnell in 1880 the pretty unanimous condemnation +of the American press. How far he went with Mr. Parnell on the lines of +that speech at New Ross, in which murder was delicately mentioned as "an +unnecessary and prejudicial measure of procedure" in certain +circumstances, I do not know. But he can hardly have gone further than +certain persons calling themselves English Liberals went when the +assassins of Napoleon III. escaped to England. And he has a capacity of +being just to opponents, which certainly all his associates do not +possess. I was much struck to-day by the candour and respect with which +he spoke of John Bright, whose name came incidentally into our +conversation. He seemed to feel personally annoyed and hurt as an +Irishman, that Irishmen should permit themselves to revile and abuse Mr. +Bright because he will not go with them on the question of Home Rule, in +utter oblivion of the great services rendered by him to the cause of +the Irish people "years before many of those whose tongues now wag +against him had tongues to wag." I was tempted to remind him that not +with Irishmen only is gratitude a lively sense of favours to come. + +I find Mr. Davitt quite awake to the great importance of the granite +quarries of Donegal. He is bestirring himself in connection with some +men of Manchester, in behalf of the quarries at Belmullet in Mayo, +which, if I am not mistaken, is his native county. This bent of his mind +towards the material improvement of the condition of the Irish people, +and the development of the resources of Ireland, is not only a mark of +his superiority to the rank and file of the Irish politicians--it goes +far to explain the stronger hold which he undoubtedly has on the people +in Ireland. "Home Rule," as now urged by the Irish politicians, +certainly excites much more attention and emotion in America and England +than it seems to do in Ireland. It seems so simple and elementary to +John Bull and Brother Jonathan that people should be suffered to manage +their own affairs! Yet the North would not suffer the South to do +this--and what would become of India if England turned it over in +fragments to the native races? The Land Question, on the contrary, +touches the "business and bosom" of every Irishman in Ireland, while it +is so complicated with historical conditions and incidents as to be +troublesome and therefore uninteresting to people not immediately +affected by it. If I am right in my impressions the collapse of the +National League will hardly weaken the hold of Mr. Davitt on the Irish +people in Ireland, and it may even strengthen his hold on the agrarian +movement in Wales, England, and Scotland, unless he identifies himself +too completely in that collapse with his Parliamentary instruments. On +the other hand, the triumph of the National League on its present lines +of action would diminish the value for good or evil of any man's hold +upon the Irish people, for the obvious reason that by driving out of +Ireland, and ruining, the class of "landlords" and capitalists, it would +leave the country reduced to a dead level of peasant-holdings, saddled +with a system of poor-rates beyond the ability of the peasant-holders to +carry, and at the mercy, therefore, of the first bad year. The "war +against the landlords," as conducted by the National League, would end +where the Irish difficulty began, in a general surrender of the people +to "poverty and potatoes." + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +ENNIS, _Saturday, Feb. 18._--I found it unnecessary to go on to Paris, +and so returned to Ireland on Thursday night; we had a passage as over a +lake. In the train I met a lively Nationalist friend, whose acquaintance +I made in America. He is a man of substance, but not overburdened with +respect for the public men, either of his own party or of the Unionist +side. When I asked him whether he still thought it would be safe to turn +over Ireland to a Parliament made up of the Westminster members, of whom +he gave me such an amusing but by no means complimentary account, he +looked at me with astonishment:-- + +"Do you suppose for a moment we would send these fellows to a Parliament +in Dublin?" + +He told me some very entertaining tales of the methods used by certain +well-meaning occupants of the Castle in former days to capture Irish +popularity, as, for example, one of a Vice-Queen who gave a fancy dress +ball for the children of the local Dublin people of importance, and had +a beautiful supper of tea and comfits, and cakes served to them, after +which she made her appearance, followed by servants bearing huge bowls +of steaming hot Irish potatoes, which she pressed upon the horrified and +overstuffed infants as "the true food of the country," setting them +herself the example of eating one with much apparent gusto, and a pinch +of salt! + +"Now, fancy that!" he exclaimed; "for the Dublin aristocracy who think +the praties only fit for the peasants!" + +Of a well-known and popular personage in politics, he told me that he +once went with him on a canvassing tour. It was in a county the +candidate had never before visited. "When we came to a place, and the +people were all out crying and cheering, he would whisper to me, 'Now +what is the name of this confounded hole?' And I would whisper back, +'Ballylahnich,' or whatever it was. Then he would draw himself up to the +height of a round tower, and begin, 'Men of Ballylahnich, I rejoice to +meet you! Often has the great Liberator said to me, with tears in his +voice, 'Oh would I might find myself face to face with the noble men of +Ballylahnich!" + +"A great man he is, a great man! + +"Did you ever hear how he courted the heiress? He walked up and down in +front of her house, and threatened to fight every man that came to call, +till he drove them all away!" + +A good story of more recent date, I must also note, of a well-known +priest in Dublin, who being asked by Mr. Balfour one day whether the +people under his charge took for gospel all the rawhead and bloody-bones +tales about himself, replied, "Indeed, I wish they only feared and hated +the devil half as much as they do you!" + +In a more serious vein my Nationalist friend explained to me that for +him "Home Rule" really meant an opportunity of developing the resources +of Ireland under "the American system of Protection." About this he was +quite in earnest, and recalled to me the impassioned protests made by +the then Mayor of Chicago, Mr. Carter Harrison, against the Revenue +Reform doctrines which I had thought it right to set forth at the great +meeting of the Iroquois Club in that city in 1883. "Of course," he +said, "you know that Mr. Harrison was then speaking not only for +himself, but for the whole Irish vote of Chicago which was solidly +behind him? And not of Chicago only! All our people on your side of the +water moved against your party in 1884, and will move against it again, +only much more generally, this year, because they know that the real +hope of Ireland lies in our shaking ourselves free of the British Free +Trade that has been fastened upon us, and is taking our life." I could +only say that this was a more respectable, if not a more reasonable, +explanation of Mr. Alexander Sullivan's devotion to Mr. Blaine and the +Republicans, and of the Irish defection from the Democratic party than +had ever been given to me in America, but I firmly refused to spend the +night between London and Dublin in debating the question whether Meath +could be made as prosperous as Massachusetts by levying forty per cent. +duties on Manchester goods imported into Ireland. + +He had seen the reception of Mr. Sullivan, M.P., in London. "I believe, +on my soul," he said, "the people were angry with him because he didn't +come in a Lord Mayor's coach!" + +When I told him I meant to visit Luggacurren, he said, a little to my +surprise, "That is a bad job for us, and all because of William +O'Brien's foolishness! He always thinks everybody takes note of whatever +he says, and that ruins any man! He made a silly threat at Luggacurren, +that he would go and take Lansdowne by the throat in Canada, and then he +was weak enough to suppose that he was bound to carry it out. He +couldn't be prevented! And what was the upshot of it? But for the +Orangemen in Canada, that were bigger fools than he is, he would have +been just ruined completely! It was the Orangemen saved him!" + +I left Dublin this morning at 7.40 A.M. The day was fine, and the +railway journey most interesting. Before reaching Limerick we passed +through so much really beautiful country that I could not help +expressing my admiration of it to my only fellow-traveller, a most +courteous and lively gentleman, who, but for a very positive brogue, +might have been taken for an English guardsman. + +"Yes, it is a beautiful country," he said, "or would be if they would +let it alone!" + +I asked him what he specially objected to in the recent action of +Parliament as respects Ireland? + +"Object?" he responded; "I object to everything. The only thing that +will do Ireland any good will be to shut up that talking-mill at +Westminster for a good long while!" + +This, I told him, was the remedy proposed by Earl Grey in his recent +volume on Ireland. + +"Is it indeed? I shall read the book. But what's the use? 'For judgment +it is fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.'" + +This he said most cheerily, as if it really didn't matter much; and, +bidding me good-bye, disappeared at Limerick, where several friends met +him. In his place came a good-natured optimistic squire, who thinks +"things are settling down." There is a rise in the price of cattle. +"Beasts I gave £8 for three mouths ago," he said, "I have just sold for +£12. I call that a healthy state of things." And with this he also left +me at Ardsollus, the station nearest the famous old monastery of Quin. + +At Ennis I was met by Colonel Turner, to whom I had written, enclosing a +note of introduction to him. With him were Mr. Roche, one of the local +magistrates, and Mr. Richard Stacpoole, a gentleman of position and +estate near Ennis, about whom, through no provocation of his, a great +deal has been said and written of late years. Mr. Stacpoole at once +insisted that I should let him take me out to stay at his house at +Edenvale, which is, so to speak, at the gates of Ennis. Certainly the +fame of Irish hospitality is well-founded! Meanwhile my traps were +deposited at the County Club, and I went about the town. I walked up to +the Court-house with. Mr. Roche, in the hope of hearing a case set down +for trial to-day, in which a publican named Harding, at Ennis--an +Englishman, by the way--is prosecuted for boycotting. The parties were +in Court; and the defendant's counsel, a keen-looking Irish lawyer, Mr. +Leamy, once a Nationalist member, was ready for action; but for some +technical reason the hearing was postponed. There were few people in +Court, and little interest seemed to be felt in the matter. The +Court-house is a good building, not unlike the White House at Washington +in style. This is natural enough, the White House having been built, I +believe, by an Irish architect, who must have had the Duke of Leinster's +house of Carton, in Kildare, in his mind when he planned it. Carton was +thought a model mansion at the beginning of this century; and Mr. +Whetstone, a local architect of repute, built the Ennis Court-house some +fifty years ago. It is of white limestone from quarries belonging to +Mr. Stacpoole, and cost when built about £12,000. To build it now would +cost nearly three times as much. In fact, a recent and smaller +Court-house at Carlow has actually cost £36,000 within the last few +years. + +I was struck by the extraordinary number of public-houses in Ennis. A +sergeant of police said to me, "It is so all over the country." Mr. +Roche sent for the statistics, from which it appears that Ennis, with a +population of 6307, rejoices in no fewer than 100 "publics"; Ennistymon, +with a population of 1331, has 25; and Milltown Malbay, with a +population of 1400, has 36. At Castle Island the proportion is still +more astounding--51 public-houses in a population of 800. In Kiltimagh +every second house is a public-house! These houses are perhaps a legacy +of the old days of political jobbery.[19] No matter when or why granted, +the licence appears to be regarded as a hereditary "right" not lightly +to be tampered with; and of course the publicans are persons of +consequence in their neighbourhood, no matter how wretched it may be, +or how trifling their legitimate business. Three police convictions are +required to make the resident magistrates refuse the usual yearly +renewal of a licence; and if an application is made against such a +renewal, cause must be shown. The "publics" are naturally centres of +local agitation, and the publicans are sharp enough to see the advantage +to them of this. The sergeant told me of a publican here in Ennis, into +whose public came three Nationalists, bent not upon drinking, but upon +talking. The publican said nothing for a while, but finally, in a +careless way, mentioned "a letter he had just received from Mr. Parnell +on a very private matter." Instantly the politicians were eager to see +it. The publican hesitated. The politicians immediately called for +drinks, which were served, and after this operation had been three times +repeated, the publican produced the letter, began with a line or two, +and then said, "Ah, no! it can't be done. It would be a betrayal of +confidence; and you know you wouldn't have that! But it's a very +important letter you have seen!" So they went away tipsy and happy. + +Only yesterday no fewer than twenty-three of these publicans from +Milltown Malbay appeared at Ennis here to be tried for "boycotting" the +police. One of them was acquitted; another, a woman, was discharged. Ten +of them signed, in open court, a guarantee not further to conspire, and +were thereupon discharged upon their own recognisances, after having +been sentenced with their companions to a month's imprisonment with hard +labour. The magistrate tells me that when the ten who signed (and who +were the most prosperous of the publicans) were preparing to sign, the +only representative of the press who was present, a reporter for _United +Ireland_, approached them in a threatening manner, with such an obvious +purpose of intimidation, that he was ordered out of the court-room by +the police. The eleven who refused to sign the guarantee (and who were +the poorest of the publicans, with least to lose) were sent to gaol. + +An important feature of this case is the conduct of Father White, the +parish priest of Milltown Malbay. In the open court, Colonel Turner +tells me, Father White admitted that he was the moving spirit of all +this local "boycott." While the court was sitting yesterday all the +shops in Milltown Malbay were closed, Father White having publicly +ordered the people to make the town "as a city of the dead." After the +trial was over, and the eleven who elected to be locked up had left in +the train, Father White visited all their houses to encourage the +families, which, from his point of view, was no doubt proper enough; but +one of the sergeants reports that the Father went by mistake into the +house of one of the ten who had signed the guarantee, and immediately +reappeared, using rather unclerical language. All this to an American +resembles a tempest in a tea-pot. But it is a serious matter to see a +priest of the Church assisting laymen to put their fellow-men under a +social interdict, which is obviously a parody on one of the gravest +steps the Church itself can take to maintain the doctrine and the +discipline of the Faith. What Catholics, if honest, must think of this +whole business, I saw curiously illustrated by some marginal notes +pencilled in a copy of Sir Francis Head's _Fortnight in Ireland_, at the +hotel in Gweedore. The author of the _Bubbles from the Brunnen_ +published this book in 1852. At page 152 he tells a story, apparently on +hearsay, of "boycotting" long before Boycott. It is to the effect that, +in order to check the proselyting of Catholics by a combination of +Protestant missionary zeal with Protestant donations of "meal," certain +priests and sisters in the south of Ireland personally instructed the +people to avoid all intercourse of any sort with any Roman Catholic who +"listened to a Protestant clergyman or a Scripture Reader"; and Sir +Francis cites an instance--still apparently on hearsay--of a "shoemaker +at Westport," who, having seceded from the Church, found that not a +single "journeyman dared work for him"; that only "one person would sell +him leather"; and, "in short, lost his custom, and rapidly came to a +state of starvation." + +On the margin of the pages which record these statements, certain +indignant Catholics have pencilled comments, the mildest of which is to +the effect that Sir Francis was "a most damnable liar." It is certainly +most unlikely that Catholics should have arrogated to themselves the +Church's function of combating heresy and schism in the fashion +described by Sir Francis. But without mooting that question, these +expressions are noteworthy as showing how just such proceedings, as are +involved in the political "boycottings" of the present day, must be +regarded by all honest and clear-headed people who call themselves +Catholics; and it is a serious scandal that a parish priest should lay +himself open to the imputation of acting in concert with any political +body whatever, on any pretext whatever, to encourage such proceedings. + +I asked one of the sergeants how the publicans who had signed the +guarantee would probably be treated by their townspeople. He replied, +there was some talk of their being "boycotted" in their turn by the +butchers and bakers. "But it's all nonsense," he said, "they are the +snuggest (the most prosperous) publicans in this part of the country, +and nobody will want to vex them. They have many friends, and the best +friend they have is that they can afford to give credit to the country +people. There'll be no trouble with them at all at all!" + +Walking about the town, I saw many placards calling for subscriptions in +aid of a newsvendor who has been impounded for selling _United Ireland_. +"It'll be a good thing for him," said a cynical citizen, to whom I spoke +of it, "a good deal better than he'd be by selling the papers." And, in +fact, it is noticeable all over Ireland how small the sales of the +papers appear to be. The people about the streets in Ennis, however, +seemed to me much more effervescent and hot in tone than the Dublin +people are--and this on both sides of the question. One very decent and +substantial-looking man, when I told him I was an American, assured me +that "if it was not for the soldiers, the people of Ennis would clear +the police out of the place." He told me, too, that not long ago the +soldiers of an Irish regiment here cheered for Home Rule in the +Court-house, "but they were soon sent away for that same." On the other +hand, a Protestant man of business, of whom I made some inquiries about +the transmission of an important paper to the United States in time to +catch to-morrow's steamer from Queenstown, spoke of the Home Rulers +almost with ferocity, and thought the "Coercion" Government at Dublin +ought to be called the "Concession" Government. He was quite indignant +that the Morley and Ripon procession through the streets of Dublin +should not have been "forbidden." + +There are some considerable shops in Ennis, but the proprietor of one of +the best of them says all this agitation has "killed the trade of the +place." I am not surprised to learn that the farmers and their families +are beginning seriously to demand that the "reduction screw" shall be +applied to other things besides rent. "A very decent farmer," he says, +"only last week stood up in the shop and said it was 'a shame the +shopkeepers were not made to reduce the tenpence muslin goods to +sixpence!'" + +This shopkeeper finds some dreary consolation for the present state of +things in standing at his deserted shop-door and watching the doors of +his brethren. He finds them equally deserted. In his own he has had to +dismiss a number of his attendants. "When a man finds he is taking in +ten shillings a day, and laying out three pounds ten, what can he do but +pull up pretty short?" As with the shopkeepers, so it is with the +mechanics. "They are losing custom all the time. You see the tenants are +expecting to come into the properties, so they spend nothing now on +painting or improvements. The money goes into the bank. It don't go to +the landlords, or to the shopkeepers, or the mechanics; and then we that +have been selling on credit, and long credit too, where are we? +Formerly, from one place, Dromoland, Lord Inchiquin's house, we used +regularly to make a bill of a hundred pounds at Christmas, for blankets +and other things given away. Now the house is shut up and we make +nothing!" + +It is a short but very pleasant drive from Ennis to Edenvale--and +Edenvale itself is not ill-named. The park is a true park, with fine +wide spaces and views, and beautiful clumps of trees. A swift river +flows beyond the lawn in front of the spacious goodly house--a river +alive with wild fowl, and overhung by lofty trees, in which many pairs +of herons build. A famous heronry has existed here for many years, and +the birds are held now by Mr. and Mrs. Stacpoole as sacred as are the +storks in Holland. Where the river widens to a lake, fine terraced +gardens and espalier walls, on which nectarines, apricots, and peaches +ripen in the sun, stretch along the shore. Deer come down to the further +bank to drink, and in every direction the eye is charmed and the mind is +soothed by the loveliest imaginable sylvan landscapes. + + +EDENVALE, _Sunday, Feb. 19._--I was awakened at dawn by the clamour of +countless wild ducks, to a day of sunshine as brilliant and almost as +warm as one sees at this season in the south of France. Mrs. Stacpoole +speaks of this place with a kind of passion, and I can quite understand +it. Clearly this, again, is not a case of the absentee landlord draining +the lifeblood of the land to lavish it upon an alien soil! The demesne +is a sylvan sanctuary for the wild creatures of the air and the wood, +and they congregate here almost as they did at Walton Hall in the days +of that most delightful of naturalists and travellers, whose adventurous +gallop on the back of a cayman was the delight of all English-reading +children forty years ago, or as they do now at Gosford. Yet the crack of +the gun, forbidden in the precincts of Walton Hall, is here by no means +unknown--the whole family being noted as dead shots. I asked Mr. +Stacpoole this morning whether the park had been invaded by trespassers +since the local Nationalists declared war upon him. He said that his +only experience of anything like an attack befell not very long ago, +when his people came to the house on a Sunday afternoon and told him +that a crowd of men from Ennis, with dogs, were coming towards the park +with a loudly proclaimed intent to enter it, and go hunting upon the +property. + +Upon this Mr. Stacpoole left the house with his brother and another +person, and walked down to the park entrance. Presently the men of Ennis +made their appearance on the highway. A very brief parley followed. The +men of Ennis announced their intention of marching across the park, and +occupying it. + +"I think not," the proprietor responded quietly. "I think you will go +back the way you came. For you may be sure of one thing: the first man +who crosses that park wall, or enters that gate, is a dead man." + +There was no show of weapons, but the revolvers were there, and this the +men of Ennis knew. They also knew that it rested with themselves to +create the right and the occasion to use the revolvers, and that if the +revolvers were used they would be used to some purpose. To their credit, +be it said, as men of sense, they suddenly experienced an almost +Caledonian respect for the "Sabbath-day," and after expressing their +discontent with Mr. Stacpoole's inhospitable reception, turned about and +went back whence they had come. + +This morning an orderly from Ennis brought out news of the arrest +yesterday, at the Clare Road, of Mr. Lloyd, a Labour delegate from +London, on his return from an agitation meeting at Kildysart. Harding, +the Englishman I saw awaiting his trial yesterday, became bail for +Lloyd. + +In the afternoon we took a delightful walk to Killone Abbey, a pile of +monastic ruins on a lovely site near a very picturesque lake. The ruins +have been used as a quarry by all the country, and are now by no means +extensive. But the precincts are used as a graveyard, not only by the +people of Ennis, but by the farmers and villagers for many miles around. +Nothing can be imagined more painful than the appearance of these +precincts. The graves are, for the most part, shallow, and closely +huddled together. The cemetery, in truth, is a ghastly slum, a +"tenement-house" of the dead. The dead of to-day literally elbow the +dead of yesterday out of their resting-places, to be in their turn +displaced by the dead of to-morrow. Instead of the crosses and the fresh +garlands, and the inscriptions full of loving thoughtfulness, which lend +a pathetic charm to the German "courts of peace"--instead of the +carefully tended hillocks and flower-studded turf which make the +churchyard of a typical old English village beautiful,--all here is +confusion, squalor, and neglect. Fragments of coffins and bones lie +scattered among the sunken and shattered stones. We picked up a skull +lying quite apart in a corner of the enclosure. A clean round bullet +hole in the very centre of the frontal bone was dumbly and grimly +eloquent. Was it the skull of a patriot or of a policeman? of a +"White-boy" or of a "landlord"? + +One thing only was apparent from the conformation of the grisly relic. +It was the skull of a Celt. Probably, therefore, not of a land agent, +shot to repress his fiduciary zeal, but perhaps of some peasant +selfishly and recklessly bent on paying his rent. + +While we wandered amid the ruins we came suddenly upon a woman wearing a +long Irish cloak, and accompanied by two well-dressed men. One of the +men started upon catching sight of Colonel Turner, who was of our party, +grew quite red for a moment, and then very civilly exchanged salutations +with him. The party walked quietly away on a lower road leading to +Ennis. When they had gone Colonel Turner told us that the man who had +spoken to him was a local Nationalist of repute and influence in Ennis. +"He would never have ventured to be civil to me in the town," he said. A +discussion arose as to the probable object of the party in visiting +these ruins. A gentleman who was with us half-laughingly suggested that +they might have been putting away dynamite bombs for an attack on +Edenvale. Colonel Turner's more practical and probable theory was that +they were looking about for a site for the grave of the Fenian veteran, +Stephen J. Meany, who died in America not long ago. He was a native, I +believe, of Ennis, and his remains are now on their way across the +Atlantic for interment in his birth-place. "Would a processional funeral +be allowed for him?" I asked. Colonel Turner could see no reason why it +should not be. + +One exception I noted to the general slovenliness of the graves. A new +and handsome monument had just been set up by a man of Ennis, living in +Australia, to the memory of his father and mother, buried here twenty +years ago. But this touching symbol of a heart untravelled, fondly +turning to its home, had been so placed, either by accident or by +design, as to block the entrance way to the vault of a family living, or +rather owning property, in this neighbourhood. Until within a year or +two past this family had occupied a very handsome mansion in a park +adjoining the park of Edenvale. But the heir, worn out with local +hostilities, and reduced in fortune by the pressure of the times and of +the League, has now thrown up the sponge. His ancestral acres have been +turned over for cultivation to Mr. Stacpoole. His house, a large fine +building, apparently of the time of James II., containing, I am told, +some good pictures and old furniture, is shut up, as are the model +stables, ample enough for a great stud; and so another centre of local +industry and activity is made sterile. + +Near the ruins of Killone is a curious ancient shrine of St. John, +beside a spring known as the Holy Well. All about the rude little altar +in the open air simple votive offerings were displayed, and Mrs. +Stacpoole tells me pilgrims come here from Galway and Connemara to climb +the hill upon their knees, and drink of the water. Last year for the +first time within the memory of man the well went dry. Such was the +distress caused in Ennis by this news, that on the eve of St. John +certain pious persons came out from the town, drew water from the lake, +and poured it into the well! + +As we walked away one of the party pointed to a rabbit fleeing swiftly +into a hole in one of the graves. "I was on this hill," he said, "one +day not very long ago when a funeral train came out from Ennis. As it +entered the precincts a rabbit ran rapidly across the grounds. Instantly +the procession broke up; the coffin was literally dropped to the +ground, and the bearers, the mourners, and the whole company united in a +hot and general chase of bunny. Of course, I need not say," he added, +"that there was no priest with them. The fixed charge of the priest for +a burial is twenty shillings, but there is usually no service at the +grave whatever." + +This may possibly be a trace of the practices which grew up under the +Penal Laws against Catholics. When Rinuccini came to Ireland in the time +of the Civil War, he found the observances of the Church all fallen into +degradation through these laws. The Holy Sacrifice was celebrated in the +cabins, and not unfrequently on tables which had been covered +half-an-hour before with the remains of the last night's supper, and +would be cleared half-an-hour afterwards for the midday meal, and +perhaps for a game of cards. + +Several guests joined us at dinner. One gentleman, a magistrate familiar +with Gweedore, told me he believed the statements of Sergeant Mahony as +to the income of Father M'Fadden to fall within the truth. While he +believes that many people in that region live, as he put it, "constantly +within a hair's-breadth of famine," he thinks that the great body of +the peasants there are in a position, "with industry and thrift, not +only to make both ends meet, but to make them overlap." + +Mr. Stacpoole told us some of his own experiences nearer home. Not long +ago he was informed that the National League had ordered some decent +people, who hold the demesne lands of his neighbour, Mr. Macdonald +(already alluded to) at a very low rental, to make a demand for a +reduction, which would have left Mr. Macdonald without a penny of +income. To counter this Mr. Stacpoole offered to take the lands over for +pasture at the existing rental, whereupon the tenants promptly made up +their minds to keep their holdings in defiance of the League. + +Last year a man, whom Mr. Stacpoole had regarded as a "good" tenant, +came to him, bringing the money to pay his rent. "I have the rint, +sorr," the man said, "but it is God's truth I dare not pay it to ye!" +Other tenants were waiting outside. "Are you such a coward that you +don't dare be honest?" said Mr. Stacpoole. The man turned rather red, +went and looked out of all the windows, one after another, lifted up the +heavy cloth of the large table in the room, and peeped under it +nervously, and finally walked up to Mr. Stacpoole and paid the money. +The receipt being handed to him, he put it back with his hand, eyed it +askance as if it were a bomb, and finally took it, and carefully put it +into the lining of his hat, after which, opening the door with a great +noise, he exclaimed as he went out, "I'm very, very sorry, master, that +I can't meet you about it!" This man is now as loud in protestation of +his "inability" to pay his rent as any of the "Campaigners." Mr. +Stacpoole thinks one great danger of the actual situation is that men +who were originally "coerced" by intimidation into dishonestly refusing +to pay just rents, which they were abundantly able to pay, are beginning +now to think that they will be, and ought to be, relieved by the law of +the land from any obligation to pay these rents. + +It seems to be his impression that things look better, however, of late +for law and order. On Monday of last week at Ennis an example was made +of a local official, which, he thinks, will do good. This was a Poor-Law +Guardian named Grogan. He was bound over on Monday last to keep the +peace for twelve months towards one George Pilkington. Pilkington, it +appears, in contempt of the League, took and occupied, in 1886, a +certain farm in Tarmon West. For this he was "boycotted" from that time +forth. In December last he was summoned, with others, before the Board +of Guardians at Kilrush, to fix the rents of certain labourers' +cottages. While he sat in the room awaiting the action of the Board, +Grogan, one of its members, rose up, and, looking at Pilkington, said in +a loud voice, "There's an obnoxious person here present that should not +be here, a land-grabber named Pilkington." There was a stir in the room, +and Pilkington, standing up, said, "I am here because I have had notice +from the Guardians. If I am asked to leave the place, I shall not come +back." The Chairman of the Board upon this declared that "while the +ordinary business of the Board was transacting, Mr. Pilkington would be +there only by the courtesy of the Board;" and treating the allusions of +Grogan to Pilkington as a part of the business of the Board, he said, "A +motion is before the Board, does any one second it?" Another guardian, +Collins, got up, and said "I do." Thereupon the Chairman put it to the +vote whether Pilkington should be requested to leave. The ayes had it, +and the Chairman of the Board thereupon invited Pilkington to leave the +meeting which the Board had invited him to attend! + +Grogan has now been prosecuted for the offence of "wrongfully, and +without legal authority, using violence and intimidation to and towards +George Pilkington of Tarmon West, with a view to cause the said +Pilkington to abstain from doing an act which he had a legal right to +do, namely, to hold, occupy, and work on a certain farm of land at +Tarmon West." + +Plainly this case is one of a grapple between the two Governments which +have been and are now contending for the control of Ireland: the +Government of the Queen of Ireland, which authorises Pilkington to take +and farm a piece of land, and the Government of the National League, +which forbids him to do this. Is it possible to doubt which of the two +is the government of Liberty, as well as the government of Law? + +It illustrates the demoralising influence upon society in Ireland of the +protracted toleration of such a contest as has been waging between the +authority of the Law and the authority of the League, that, when this +case came up for consideration ten days ago, an official here actually +thought it ought to be put off. Colonel Turner insisted it should be +dealt with at once; and so Mr. Grogan was proceeded against, with the +result I have stated. + +The trees on this demesne are the finest I have so far seen in Ireland, +beautiful and vigorous pencil-cedars, ilexes, Scotch firs, and Irish +yews. There is one noble cedar of Lebanon here worth a special trip to +see. In conversation about the country to-night, Mr. Stacpoole mentioned +that tobacco was grown here, strong and of good quality, and he was much +interested, as I remember were also the charming châtelaine of Newtown +Anner and Mr. Le Poer of Gurteen four or five years ago, to learn how +immensely successful has been the tobacco-culture introduced into +Pennsylvania only a quarter of a century ago, as a consequence of the +Civil War. The climatic conditions here are certainly not more +unfavourable to such an experiment in agriculture than they were at +first supposed to be in the Pennsylvanian counties of York and +Lancaster. Of course the Imperial excise would deal with it as harshly +as it is now dealing with a similar experiment in England. But the Irish +tobacco-growers would not now have to fear such hostile legislation as +ruined the Irish linen industries in the last century. The +"Moonlighters" of 1888 lineally represent, if they do not simply +reproduce, the "Whiteboys" of 1760; and the domination of the "uncrowned +king" constantly reminds one of Froude's vivid and vigorous sketch of +the sway wielded by "Captain Dwyer" and "Joanna Maskell" from Mallow to +Westmeath, between the years 1762 and 1765. On that side of the quarrel +there seems to be nothing very new under the sun in Ireland. But the +spirit and the forms of the Imperial authority over the country have +unquestionably undergone a great change for the better, not only since +the last century, but since the accession of Queen Victoria. + +Upon the question of land improvements, Mr. Stacpoole told me, to-night, +that he borrowed £1000 of the Government for drainage improvements on +his property here, the object of which was to better the holdings of +tenants. Of this sum he had to leave £400 undrawn, as he could not get +the men to work at the improvements, even for their own good. They all +wanted to be gangers or chiefs. It reminded me of Berlioz's reply to the +bourgeois who wanted his son to be made a "great composer." "Let him go +into the army," said Berlioz, "and join the only regiment he is fit +for." "What regiment is that?" "The regiment of colonels." + +In the course of the evening a report was brought out from Ennis to +Colonel Turner. He read it, and then handed it to me, with an +accompanying document. The latter, at my request, he allowed me to keep, +and I must reproduce it here. It tells its own tale. + +A peasant came to the authorities and complained that he was "tormented" +to make a subscription to a "testimonial" for one Austen Mackay of +Kilshanny, in the County Clare, producing at the same time a copy of the +circular which had been sent about to the people. It is a +cheaply-printed leaflet, not unlike a penny ballad in appearance, and +thus it runs:-- + + +"_Testimonial to_ Mr. AUSTEN MACKAY, _Kilshanny_, _County Clare_. + +"We, the Nationalists and friends of Mr. Austen Mackay, at a meeting +held in March 1887, agreed and resolved on presenting the long-tried and +trusted friend--the persecuted widow's son--with a testimonial worthy of +the fearless hero who on several occasions had to hide his head in the +caves and caverns of the mountains, with a price set on his body. First, +for firing at and wounding a spy in his neighbourhood, as was alleged +in '65, for which he had to stand his trial at Clare Assizes. Again, for +firing at and wounding his mother's agent and under-strapper while in +the act of evicting his widowed mother in the broad daylight of Heaven, +thus saved his mother's home from being wrecked by the robber agent, the +shock of which saved other hearths from being quenched; but the noble +widow's son was chased to the mountains, where he had to seek shelter +from a thousand bloodhounds. + +"The same true widow's son nobly guarded his mother's homestead and that +of others from the foul hands of the exterminators. This is the same +widow's son who bravely reinstated the evicted, and helped to rebuild +the levelled houses of many; for this he was persecuted and convicted at +Cork Assizes, and flung into prison to sleep on the cold plank beds of +Cork and Limerick gaols. Many other manly and noble services did he +which cannot be made known to the public. At that meeting you were +appointed collector with other Nationalists of Clare at home and abroad. +This is the widow's son, Austen Mackay, whom we, the Committee to this +testimonial, hope and trust every Irishman in Clare will cheerfully +subscribe, that he may be enabled in his present state of health to get +into some business under the protection of the Stars and Stripes, where +he is a citizen of." + +"Subscriptions to be sent to Henry Higgins, Ennis. + +"Treasurers: Daniel O'Loghlen, Lisdoonvarna; James Kennedy, Ennistymon." + +Then follow, with the name of the Society, the names of the committee. + +In behalf of the Stars and Stripes, "where he is a citizen of," I thanked +Colonel Turner for this interesting contribution to the possible future +history of my country, there being nothing to prevent the election of +any heir of this illustrious "widow's son," born to him in America, to +the Presidency of the Republic. The use of this phrase, the "widow's +son," by the way, gives a semi-masonic character to this curious +circular. + +One officer says in his report upon this Committee: "All the persons +named are well known to their respective local police, and, except one, +have little or no following or influence in their respective localities. +They are all members of the National League." The same officer subjoins +this instructive observation: "I beg to add that I find no matter how +popular a man may be in Clare, start a testimonial for him, and from +that time forth his influence is gone." + +Can it be possible that the "testimonial," which, as the papers tell me, +is getting up all over Ireland for Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, can have been +"started" with a sinister eye to this effect, by local patriots jealous +of any alien intrusion into their bailiwick? I am almost tempted to +suspect this, remembering that a Nationalist with whom I talked about +Mr. Blunt in Dublin, after lavishing much praise upon his disinterested +devotion to the cause of Ireland, moodily remarked, "For all that, I +don't believe he will do us any good, for he comes of the blood of +Mountjoy, I am told!" + + +EDENVALE, _Monday, Feb. 20._--This morning Colonel Turner called my +attention to the report in the papers of a colloquy between the Chief +Secretary for Ireland and Mr. J. Redmond, M.P., in the House, on the +subject of last week's trials at Ennis. In speaking of the boycotting at +Milltown Malbay of a certain Mrs. Connell, Mr. Balfour described the +case as one of barbarous inhumanity shown to a helpless old woman. Mr. +Redmond denying this, asserted that he had seen the woman Connell a +fortnight ago in Court, and that so far from her being a decrepit old +woman, she was only fifty years of age, hale and hearty, but +disreputable and given to drink; he also said she was drunk at the +trial, so drunk that the Crown prosecutor, Mr. Otter, was obliged to +order her down from the table. + +"What are the facts?" I asked. "Mr. Balfour speaks from report and +belief, Mr. Redmond asserts that he speaks from actual observation." + +"The facts," said Colonel Turner quietly, "are that Mr. Balfour's +statement is accurate, and that Mr. Redmond, speaking from actual +observation, asserts the thing that is not." + +"Where is this old woman?" I asked. "Would it be possible for me to see +her?" + +"Certainly; she is at no great distance, and I will with pleasure send a +car with an officer to bring her here this afternoon!" + +"Meanwhile, how came the old woman into Court? and what is her +connection with the cases of boycotting last week tried?" + +"Those cases arose out of her case," said Colonel Turner; "the publicans +last week arraigned, 'boycotted' a fortnight ago the police and +soldiers who were called in to keep the peace during the trial of the +dealers who 'boycotted' her. + +"Her case was first publicly made known by a letter which appeared in +the Dublin _Express_ on the 28th of January. That day a line was sent to +me from Dublin ordering an inquiry into it. I endorsed upon the order, +'Please report. I imagine this is greatly exaggerated.' This was on +January 30th. The next day, January 31st, I received a full report from +Milltown Malbay. Here it is,"--taking a document from a portfolio and +handing it to me--"and you may make what use you like of it." + +It is worth giving at length:-- + + "James Connell, ex-soldier, and his mother, Hannah Connell, of + Fintamore, in this sub-district are boycotted, and have been since + July last. James Connell held a farm and a garden from one Michael + Carroll, a farmer, who was evicted from his holding for non-payment + of three years' rent, July 14, 1886. After the period of redemption, + six months, had passed, the agent made Connell a tenant for his + house and garden, giving him in addition about half an acre (Irish) + of the evicted farm which adjoins his house. In consequence Connell + was regarded by the National League here as a 'land-grabber.' About + the same time the agent also appointed him a rent-warner. + + "On the 22d June last Connell received a letter through the + Post-Office threatening him if he did not give up his place as a + rent-warner. I have no doubt the letter was written by (here a + resident was named). On the 10th, and again on the 17th, of July, + Connell was brought before indoor meetings of the National League + here for having taken the half acre of land, when he through fear + declared he had not done it. + + "At the first meeting the Rev. J.S. White, P.P., suggested that in + order to test whether Connell had taken the land, Carroll, the + evicted tenant, should go and cut the meadowing on it, which he did, + when Connell interfered and prevented him. At the next meeting + Carroll brought this under notice, and Connell was thereupon + boycotted. Immediately afterwards the men who had been engaged + fishing for Connell refused to fish, saying that if they fished for + him the sale of the fish would be boycotted, which was true. + + "Since then Connell has been deprived of his means of livelihood, + and no one dare employ him. He, however, through his mother, was + able to procure the necessaries of life until about the 22d of + November last, when his mother was refused goods by the tradesmen + with whom she had dealt, owing to a resolution passed at a meeting + of the 'suppressed' branch of the League here, to the effect that + any person supplying her would be boycotted. December 23d she came + into Milltown Malbay for goods, and was refused. The police + accompanied her, but no person would supply her. On the 2d of + January she came again, when one trader supplied her with some + bread, but refused groceries. The police accompanied her to several + traders, who all refused. Ultimately she was supplied by the + post-mistress. On the 7th of January she came, and the police + accompanied her to several traders, all of whom refused her even + bread. Believing she wanted it badly, we, the police, supplied her + with some. On these three occasions she was followed by large + numbers of young people about the street, evidently to frighten and + intimidate her, and their demeanour was so hostile that we were + obliged to disperse them and protect her home. On a subsequent + occasion she stated that stones were thrown at her. Since then she + has not come here for goods, and, in my opinion, it would not be + safe for her to do so without protection. She and her son are now + getting goods from Mrs. Moroney's shop at Spanish Point, which she + opened a few years ago to supply boycotted persons. + + "The Connells find it hard to get turf, and are obliged to bring it + a distance in bags so that it may not be observed. As for milk, the + person who did supply them privately for a considerable time + declined some weeks ago to do so any longer. They are now really + destitute, as any little money Connell had saved is spent, and, + although willing and anxious to work, no person will employ him. + Summonses have been issued against the tradesmen for refusing to + supply Hannah Connell on the occasions already referred to. I have + only to add that I have from time to time reported fully the + foregoing facts with regard to the persecution of this poor man and + his aged mother; and I regret to say that boycotting and + intimidation never prevailed to a greater extent here than at + present. Connell's safety is being looked after by patrols from this + and Spanish Point station." + +Three things seem to me specially noteworthy in this tale of cowardly +and malignant tyranny. The victims of this vulgar Vehmgericht are +neither landlords nor agents. They are a poor Irish labourer and his +aged mother. The "crime" for which these poor creatures are thus +persecuted is simply that one of them--the man--chose to obey the law of +the land in which he lives, and to work for his livelihood and that of +his mother. And the priest of the parish, instead of sheltering and +protecting these hunted creatures, is presented as joining in the hunt, +and actually devising a trap to catch the poor frightened man in a +falsehood. + +Upon this third point, a correspondence which passed between Father +White and Colonel Turner, after the conviction of the boycotters of Mrs. +Connell, and copies of which the latter has handed to me at my request, +throws an instructive light. + +When the report of January 31st reached him, Colonel Turner ordered the +tradespeople implicated in the persecution to be proceeded against. Six +of them were put on their trials on the 3d and 4th of February. All the +shops in Milltown Malbay were closed, by order of the local League, +during the trial, and the police and the soldiers called in were refused +all supplies. + +On the 4th, one of the persons arraigned was bound over for +intimidation, and the five others were sentenced to three months' +imprisonment with hard labour. + +A week later, February 11th, Colonel Turner addressed the following +letter to Father White, twenty-six publicans of Milltown Malbay having +meanwhile been prosecuted for boycotting the police and the soldiers:-- + + "DEAR SIR,--I write to you as a clergyman who possesses great + influence with the people in your part of the country, to put it to + you whether it would not be better for the interests of all + concerned if the contemptible system of petty persecution, called + boycotting, were put an end to in and about Milltown Malbay, which + would enable me to drop prosecutions. If it is not put a stop to, I + am determined to stamp it out, and restore to all the ordinary + rights of citizenship. + + "But I should very greatly prefer that the people should stop it + themselves, and save me from taking strong measures, which I should + deplore. The story of a number of men combining to persecute a poor + old woman is one of the most pitiful I ever heard.--I am, sir, yours + truly, + + ALFRED TURNER." + +As the cost of the extra policemen sent to Milltown Malbay at this time +falls upon the people there, this letter in effect offered the priest an +opportunity to relieve his parish of a burden as well as to redeem its +character. + +The next day Father White replied:-- + + "DEAR SIR,--No one living is more anxious for peace in this district + than I. During very exciting times I have done my best to keep it + free from outrage, and with success, except in one mysterious + instance.[20] There is but one obstacle to it now. If ever you can + advise Mrs. Moroney to restore the evicted tenant, whose rent you + admitted was as high as Colonel O'Callaghan's, I can guarantee on + the part of the people the return of good feelings; or, failing + that, if she and her employees are content with the goods which she + has of all kinds in her own shop, there need be no further trouble. + + "I have a promise from the people that the police will be supplied + for the future. This being so, if you will kindly have prosecutions + withdrawn, or even postponed for say a month, it will very much + strengthen me in the effort I am making to calm down the feeling. + Regarding Mrs. Connell, the head-constable was told by me that she + was to get goods, and she did get bread, till the police went round + with her. This upset my arrangements, as I had induced the people to + give her what she might really want. In fact she was a convenience + to Mrs. Moroney for obvious reasons, and her son is now in her + employment in place of Kelly, who has been dismissed since his very + inconvenient evidence. It is, and was, well known they were not + starving as they said, they having a full supply of their accustomed + food.--Thanking you for your great courtesy, I am, dear sir, truly + yours, + + "J. White." + +On the 14th Colonel Turner replied:-- + + "My dear Sir,--We cannot adjourn the cases. But if those who are + prosecuted are prepared to make reparation by promising future good + conduct in Court, I can then see my way to interfere, and to prevent + them from suffering imprisonment. + + "These cases have nothing whatever to do with Mrs. Moroney.[21] They + are simply between the defendants and the police and other + officials, who were at Milltown Malbay that day. I am greatly + pleased at your evident wish to co-operate with me in calming down + the ill-feeling which unfortunately exists, and I am satisfied that + success will attend our efforts." + +On Thursday and Friday last, as I have recorded, the cases came on of +the twenty-six publicans charged. Between February 4th, when the +offences were committed, and the 17th of February, one of these +publicans had died, one had fled to America, and there proved to be an +informality in the summons issued against a third. Twenty-three only +were put upon their trial. As I have stated, one was acquitted and the +others were found guilty, and sentenced to be imprisoned. In accordance +with his promise made to Father White, Colonel Turner offered to relieve +them all of the imprisonment if they would sign an undertaking in Court +not to repeat the offence. Ten, the most prosperous and substantial of +the accused, accepted this offer and signed, as has been already stated. +One, a woman, was discharged without being required to sign the +guarantee, the other eleven refused to sign, and were sent to prison. +Father White, whose own evidence given at the trial, as his letter to +Colonel Turner would lead one to expect, had gone far to prove the +existence of the conspiracy, encouraged the eleven in their attitude. + +This was his way of "co-operating" with Colonel Turner to "calm down the +ill-feeling which exists"! + +During the morning Mrs. Stacpoole sent for the clerk and manager of the +estate, and asked him to show me the books. He is a native of these +parts, by name Considine, and has lived at Edenvale for eighteen years. +In his youth he went out to America, but there found out that he had a +"liver," an unpleasant discovery, which led him to return to the land of +his birth, and to the service of Mr. Stacpoole. He is perfectly familiar +with the condition of the country here, and as the accounts of this +estate are kept minutely and carefully from week to week, he was able +this morning to show me the current prices of all kinds of farm produce +and of supplies in and about Ennis--not estimated prices, but prices +actually paid or received in actual transactions during the last ten +years. I am surprised to see how narrow has been the range of local +variations during that time; and I find Mr. Considine inclined to think +that the farmers here have suffered very little, if at all, from these +fluctuations, making up from time to time on their reduced expenses what +they have lost through lessened receipts. The expenses of the landlord +have however increased, while his receipts have fallen off. In 1881 +Edenvale paid out for labour £466, 0s. 1-1/2d., in 1887 £560, 6s. +3-1/2d., though less labour was employed in 1887 than in 1881. The wages +of servants, where any change appears, have risen. In 1881 a gardener +received £14 a year, in 1888 he receives 15s. a week, or at the rate of +£39 a year. A housemaid receiving £12 a year in 1881, receives now £17 a +year. A butler receiving in 1881 £26 a year, now receives £40 a year. A +kitchen maid receiving in 1881 £6, now receives £10, 10s. a year. +Meanwhile, the Sub-Commissioners are at this moment cutting down the +Edenvale rents again by £190, 3s. 2d., after a walk over the property in +the winter. Yet in July 1883 Mr. Reeves, for the Sub-Commission, +"thought it right to say there was no estate in the County Clare so +fairly rented, to their knowledge, or where the tenants had less cause +for complaint." In but one case was a reduction of any magnitude made by +the Commission of 1883, and in one case that Commission actually +increased the rent from £11, 10s. to £16. In January 1883 the rental of +this property was £4065, 5s. 1d. The net reduction made by the +Commissioners in July 1883 was £296, 14s. 0-1/2d. + +After luncheon a car came up to the mansion, bringing a stalwart, +good-natured-looking sergeant of police, and with him the boycotted old +woman Mrs. Connell and her son. The sergeant helped the old woman down +very tenderly, and supported her into the house. She came in with some +trepidation and uneasiness, glancing furtively all about her, with the +look of a hunted creature in her eyes. Her son, who followed her, was +more at his ease, but he also had a worried and careworn look. Both were +warmly but very poorly clad, and both worn and weatherbeaten of aspect. +The old woman might have passed anywhere for a witch, so wizened and +weird she was, of small stature, and bent nearly double by years and +rheumatism. Her small hands were withered away into claws, and her head +was covered with a thick and tangled mat of hair, half dark, half grey, +which gave her the look almost of the Fuegian savages who come off from +the shore in their flat rafts and clamour to you for "rum" in the +Straits of Magellan. Her eyes were intensely bright, and shone like hot +coals in her dusky, wrinkled face. It was a raw day, and she came in +shivering with the cold. It was pathetic to see how she positively +gloated with extended palms over the bright warm, fire in the +drawing-room, and clutched at the cup of hot tea which my kind hostess +instantly ordered in for her. + +This was the woman of whom Mr. Redmond wrote to Mr. Parnell that she was +"an active strong dame of about fifty." When Mr. Balfour, in Parliament, +described her truly as a "decrepit old woman of eighty," Mr. Redmond +contradicted him, and accused her of being "the worse for liquor" in a +public court. + +"How old is your mother?" I asked her son. + +"I am not rightly sure, sir," he replied, "but she is more than eighty." + +"The man himself is about fifty," said the sergeant; "he volunteered to +go to the Crimean War, and that was more than thirty years ago!" + +"I did indeed, sir," broke in the man, "and it was from Cork I went. And +I'd be a corpse now if it wasn't for the mercy of God and the +protection. God bless the police, sir, that protected my old mother, +sir, and me. That Mr. Redmond, sir, they read me what he said, and sure +he should be ashamed of his shadow, to get up there in Parliament, and +tell those lies, sir, about my old mother!" I questioned Connell as to +his relations with Carroll, the man who brought him before the League. +He was a labourer holding a bit of ground under Carroll. Carroll refused +to pay his own rent to the landlord. But he compelled Connell to pay +rent to him. When Carroll was evicted, the landlord offered to let +Connell have half an acre more of land. He took it to better himself, +and "how did he injure Carroll by taking it?" How indeed, poor man! Was +he a rent-warner? Yes; he earned something that way two or three times +a year; and for that he had to ask the protection of the police--"they +would kill him else." What with worry and fright, and the loss of his +livelihood, this unfortunate labourer has evidently been broken down +morally and physically. It is impossible to come into contact with such +living proofs of the ineffable cowardice and brutality of this business +of "boycotting" without indignation and disgust. + +While Connell was telling his pitiful tale a happy thought occurred to +the charming daughter of the house. Mrs. Stacpoole is a clever amateur +in photography. "Why not photograph this 'hale and hearty woman of +fifty,' with her son of fifty-three?" Mrs. Stacpoole clapped her hands +at the idea, and went off at once to prepare her apparatus. + +While she was gone the sergeant gave me an account of the trial, which +Mr. Redmond, M.P., witnessed. He was painfully explicit. "Mr. Redmond +knew the woman was sober," he said; "she was lifted up on the table at +Mr. Redmond's express request, because she was so small and old, and +spoke in such a low voice that he could not hear what she said. Connell +had always been a decent, industrious fellow--a fisherman. But for the +lady, Mrs. Moroney, he and his mother would have starved, and would +starve now. As for the priest, Father White, Connell went to him to ask +his intercession and help, but he could get neither." + +The sergeant had heard Father White preach yesterday. "It was a curious +sermon. He counselled peace and forbearance to the people, because they +might be sure the wicked Tory Government would very soon fall!" + +Presently the sun came out with golden glow, and with the sun came out +Mrs. Stacpoole. It was a job to "pose" the subjects, the old woman +evidently suspecting some surgical or legal significance in the +machinery displayed, and her son finding some trouble in making her +understand what it meant. But finally we got the tall, personable +sergeant, with his frank, shrewd, sensible face, to put himself between +the two, in the attitude as of a guardian angel; the camera was nimbly +adjusted, and lo! the thing was done. + +Mrs. Stacpoole thinks the operation promises a success. I suppose it +would hardly be civil to send a finished proof of the group to Mr. J. +Redmond, M.P. + + + + +APPENDIX. + + +NOTE A. + +MR. GLADSTONE AND THE AMERICAN WAR. (Prologue, p. xxix.) + + +This statement as to the action of Lord Palmerston in connection with +Mr. Gladstone's Newcastle speech of October 7th, 1862, made upon the +authority of a British public man whose years and position entitle him +to speak with confidence on such a subject, appeared to me of so much +interest, that after sending it to the printer I caused search to be +made for the speech referred to as made by Sir George Cornewall Lewis. +My informant's statement was that Lord Palmerston insisted that Sir +George Lewis should find or make an immediate opportunity of covering +what Mr. Gladstone had said at Newcastle. He was angry about it, and his +anger was increased by an article which Mr. Delane printed in the +_Times_, intimating that Mr. Gladstone's speech was considered by many +people to be a betrayal of Cabinet secrets. Sir George Lewis was far +from well (he died the next spring), and reluctant to do what his chief +wished; but he did it on the 17th of October 1862 in a speech at +Hereford. Mr. Milner-Gibson was also put forward to the same end, and +after Parliament met, in February 1863, Mr. Disraeli gave the +Government a sharp lashing for sending one or two Ministers into the +country in the recess to announce that the Southern States would be +recognised, and then putting forward the President of the Board of Trade +(Milner-Gibson) to attack the Southern States and the pestilent +institution of slavery. Mr. Gladstone's speech at Newcastle, coming as +it did from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, after the close of a +session during which everybody knew that the Emperor of the French had +been urging upon England the recognition of the Confederate States, and +that Mr. Mason had been in active correspondence on that subject with +Lord Russell, was taken at Newcastle, and throughout the country, to +mean that the recognition was imminent. Mr. Gladstone even went so far +as to say he rather rejoiced that the Confederates had not been able to +hold Maryland, as that might have made them aggressive, and so made a +settlement more difficult, it being, he said, as certain as anything in +the future could be that the South must succeed in separating itself +from the Union. This remark about Maryland distinctly indicated +consultation as to what limits and boundaries between the South and the +North should be recognised in the recognition, and on that account, it +seems, was particularly resented by Earl Russell as well as by Lord +Palmerston. + +Sir George Cornewall Lewis's speech of October 17, 1862, was a most +skilful and masterly attempt to protect the Cabinet against the +consequences of what the _Times_, on the 9th of October, had treated as +the "indiscretion or treason" of his colleague. But it did not save the +Government from the scourge of Mr. Disraeli, or much mitigate the effect +in America of Mr. Gladstone's performance at Newcastle, which was a much +more serious matter from the American point of view than any of the +speeches recently delivered about "Home Rule" in the American Senate +can be fairly said to be from the British point of view. + + + +NOTE B. + +MR. PARNELL AND THE DYNAMITERS. (Prologue, p. xxxiii.) + + +The relation of Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates to what is +called the extreme and "criminal" section of the Irish American +Revolutionary Party can only be understood by those who understand that +it is the ultimate object of this party not to effect reforms in the +administration of Ireland as an integral part of the British Empire, but +to sever absolutely the political connection between Ireland and the +British Empire. Loyal British subjects necessarily consider this object +a "criminal" object, just as loyal Austrian subjects considered the +object of the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 to be a "criminal" object. +But the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 did not accept this view of their +object. On the contrary, they held their end to be so high and holy that +it more or less sanctified even assassination when planned as a means to +that end. Why should the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 be judged by one +standard and the Irish Revolutionists of 1888 by another? + +If Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates were to declare in +unequivocal terms their absolute loyalty to the British Crown, and their +determination to maintain in all circumstances the political connection +between Great Britain and Ireland, they might or might not retain their +hold upon Mr. Davitt and upon their constituents in Ireland, but they +would certainly put themselves beyond the pale of support by the great +Irish American organisations. Nor do I believe they could retain the +confidence of those organisations if it were supposed that they really +regarded the most extreme and violent of the Irish Revolutionists, the +"Invincibles" and the "dynamiters" as "criminals," in the sense in which +the "Invincibles" and the "dynamiters" are so regarded by the rest of +the civilised world. Can it, for example, be doubted that any English or +Scottish public man who co-operates with Mr. Parnell and his +Parliamentary associates would instantly hand over to the police any +"Invincible" or "dynamiter" who might come within his reach? And can it +for a moment be believed that Mr. Parnell, or any one of his +Parliamentary associates, would do this? There are thousands of Irish +citizens in the United States who felt all the horror and indignation +expressed by Mr. Parnell at the murders in the Phoenix Park, but I +should be very much surprised to learn that any one of them all ever +did, or ever would do, anything likely to bring any one of the authors +of these murders to the bar of justice. Mr. Parnell and his +Parliamentary associates are held and bound by the essential conditions +of their political existence to treat with complaisance the most extreme +and violent men of their party. Nor is this true of them alone. + +There is no more respectable body of men in the United States than the +Hibernian Society of Philadelphia. This society was instituted in 1771, +five years before the declaration of American Independence. It is a +charitable and social organisation only, with no political object or +colour. It is made up of men of character and substance. Its custom has +always been to celebrate St. Patrick's Day by a banquet, to which the +most distinguished men of the country have repeatedly been bidden. +Immediately after the inauguration of Mr. Cleveland as President, on +the 4th of March 1885, Mr. Bayard, the new Secretary of State of the +United States, was invited by this Society to attend its one hundred and +fourteenth banquet. It will be remembered that, on the 30th of May 1884, +London had been startled and shocked by an explosion of dynamite in St. +James's Square, which shattered many houses and inflicted cruel injuries +upon several innocent people. It was not so fatal to life as that +explosion at the Salford Barracks, which Mr. Parnell treated as a +"practical joke." But it excited lively indignation on both sides of the +Atlantic, and Mr. Bayard, who at that time was a Senator of the United +States, sternly denounced it and its authors on the floor of the +American Senate. What he had said as a Senator he thought it right to +repeat as the Foreign Secretary of the United States in his reply to the +invitation of the Hibernian Society in March 1885. This reply ran as +follows:-- + + "WASHINGTON, D.C., _March_ 9, 1885. + + "NICHOLAS J. GRIFFIN, Esq., _Secretary of the Hibernian Society of + Philadelphia._ + + "Dear Sir,--I have your personal note accompanying the card of + invitation to dine with your ancient and honourable Society on their + one hundred and fourteenth anniversary, St. Patrick's Day, and I + sincerely regret that I cannot accept it. The obvious and many + duties of my public office here speak for themselves, and to none + with more force than to American citizens of Irish blood or birth + who are honestly endeavouring to secure liberty by maintaining a + government of laws, and who realise the constant attention that is + needful. + + "In the midst of anarchical demonstrations which we witness in other + lands, and the echoes of which we can detect even here in our own + free country, where base and silly individuals seek to stain the + name of Ireland by associating the honest struggle for just + government with senseless and wicked crimes, there are none of our + citizens from whom honest reprobation can be more confidently + expected than from such as compose your respected and benevolent + Society. Those who worthily celebrate the birthday[22] of St. + Patrick will not forget that he drove out of Ireland the reptiles + that creep and sting. + + "The Hibernian Society can contain no member who will not resent the + implication that sympathy with assassins can dwell in a genuine + Irish heart, which will ever be opposed to cruelty and cowardice, + whatever form either may take. + + "Present to your Society my thanks for the kind remembrance, and + assure them of the good-will and respect with which I am--Your + obedient servant, + + T.F. BAYARD." + +What was the response of this Society, representing all the best +elements of the Irish American population of the United States, to this +letter of the Secretary of State, the highest executive officer of the +American Government after the President, upon whom under an existing law +the succession of the chief magistracy now devolves in the event of the +death or disability of the President and the Vice-President? + +_The letter was not read at the banquet._ + +But it was given to the press by the officers of the Society, and the +most influential Irish American newspaper in the United States did not +hesitate to describe it as an "insulting letter," going to show that its +author was "an Englishman in spirit who will not allow any opportunity +to go by, however slight, without testifying his sympathy with the +British Empire and his antipathy for its foes." + +This was capped by an American political journal which used the +following language: "Lord Granville himself would hardly strike a more +violent attitude against the dynamite section of the Irish people. When +Lord Wolseley, whom it is proposed to make Governor-General of the +Soudan, is offering a reward for the head of Ollivier Pain, it is hardly +in good taste for an American Secretary of State to condemn so bitterly +a class of Irishmen which, while it includes bad men no doubt, also +includes men who are moved by as worthy motives as Lord Wolseley." + +In the face of this testimony to the "solidarity" of all branches of the +Irish revolutionary movement in America, how can Mr. Parnell, or any +other Parliamentary Irishman who depends upon Irish American support, be +expected by men of sense to condemn in earnest "the dynamite section of +the Irish people"? + + + +NOTE C. + +THE AMERICAN "SUSPECTS" OF 1881. (Prologue, p. xlvii.) + + +In his recently published and very interesting _Life of Mr. Forster_, +Mr. Wemyss Reid alludes to some action taken by the United States +Government in the spring of 1882 as one of the determining forces which +brought about the abandonment at that time by Mr. Gladstone of Mr. +Forster's policy in Ireland. Without pretending to concern myself here +with what is an essentially British question as between Mr. Forster and +Mr. Gladstone, it may be both proper and useful for me to throw some +light, not, perhaps, in the possession of Mr. Reid, upon the part taken +in this matter by the American Government. Sir William Harcourt's +"Coercion Bill" was passed on the 2d of March 1881, two days before the +inauguration of General Garfield as President of the United States. Mr. +Blaine, who was appointed by the new President to take charge of the +Foreign Relations of the American Government, received, on the 10th of +March, at Washington, a despatch written by Mr. Lowell, the American +Minister in London, on the 26th of February, being the day after the +third reading in the Commons of the "Coercion Bill." In this despatch +Mr. Lowell called the attention of the American State Department to a +letter from Mr. Parnell to the Irish National Land League, dated at +Paris, February 13, 1881, in which Mr. Parnell attempted to make what +Mr. Lowell accurately enough described as an "extraordinary" distinction +between "the American people" and "the Irish nation in America." + +"This double nationality," said Mr. Lowell, "is likely to be of great +practical inconvenience whenever the 'Coercion Bill' becomes law." By +"this double nationality" in this passage, the American Minister, of +course, meant "this claim of a double nationality;" for neither by Great +Britain nor by the United States is any man permitted to consider +himself at one and the same time a citizen of the American republic and +a subject of the British monarchy. Nor was he quite right in +anticipating "great practical inconvenience" from this "claim," upon +which neither the British nor the American Government for a moment +bestowed, or could bestow, the slightest attention. + +The "great practical inconvenience" which, first to the American +Legation in England, then to the United States Government at Washington, +and finally to the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone, did, however, arise from +the application of Sir William Harcourt's Coercion Act of 1881 to +American citizens in Ireland, had its origin not in Mr. Parnell's +preposterous idea of an Irish nationality existing in the United States, +but in the failure of the authorities of the United States to deal +promptly and firmly with the situation created for American citizens in +Ireland by the administration of Sir William Harcourt's Act. + +As I have said, Sir William Harcourt's Act became law on the 2d of +March 1881, two days before the inauguration of President Garfield at +Washington. Without touching the question of the relations between Great +Britain and Ireland, and between the British Parliament and the Irish +National Land League, it was clearly incumbent upon the Secretary of +State of the United States, who entered upon his duties three days after +Sir William Harcourt's Bill went into force in Ireland, to inform +himself minutely and exactly as to the possible effects of that Bill +upon the rights and interests of American citizens travelling or +sojourning in that country. This was due not only to his own Government +and to its citizens, but to the relations which ought to exist between +his own Government and the Government of Great Britain. It was no affair +of an American Secretary of State either to impede or to further the +execution of "Coercion Acts" in Ireland against British subjects. But it +was his affair to ascertain without delay the nature and the measure of +any new and unusual perils, or "inconveniences," to which American +citizens in Ireland might be exposed in the execution there by the +British authorities of such Acts. + +And it is on record, under his own hand, in a despatch to the American +Minister in London, dated May 26, 1881, that Mr. Blaine had not so much +as seen a copy of Sir William Harcourt's Coercion Act at that date, +three months after it had gone into effect; three months after many +persons claiming American citizenship had been arrested and imprisoned +under it; and two months after his own official attention had been +called by the American Minister in London, in an elaborate despatch, to +the arrest under it of one such person, a man of Irish birth, who based +his claim of American citizenship upon allegations of military service +during the Civil War, of residence and citizenship in New York, and of +the granting to him, by an American Secretary of State, of a citizen's +passport. And when he did finally take the trouble to look at this Act, +Mr. Elaine seems to have examined it so cursorily, and with such slight +attention, that he overlooked a provision made in it, under which, had +its true force and meaning been perceived by him, the State Department +of the United States might, in the early summer of 1881, have secured +for American citizens in Ireland the consideration due to them as the +citizens of a friendly State. A curious despatch from Mr. Sackville +West, the British Minister at Washington, to Earl Granville, published +in a British Blue-book now in my possession, plainly intimates that in +the summer of 1881 the American Secretary of State had given the British +Minister to understand that no representations made to him or to his +Government by the Government of the United States touching +American-Irish "suspects" need be taken at all seriously. The whole +diplomatic correspondence on this subject which went on between the two +Governments while Mr. Blaine was Secretary of State, from the 4th of +March 1881 to the 20th of December 1881, was of a sort to lull the +British Government into the belief that "suspects" might be freely and +safely arrested and locked up all over Ireland, with no more question of +their nationality than of any evidence to establish their guilt or their +innocence. During the whole of that time the State Department at +Washington seems to have substantially remained content with the +declaration of Earl Granville, in a letter sent to the American Legation +on the 8th of July 1881, four months after the Coercion Act went into +effect, that "no distinction could be made in the circumstances between +foreigners and British subjects, and that in the case of British +subjects the only information given was that contained in the warrant." + +No fault can be found with the British Government for standing by this +declaration so long as it thus seemed to command the assent of the +Government of the United States. + +But when Mr. Frelinghuysen was called into the State Department by +President Arthur in December 1881, to overhaul the condition into which +our foreign relations had been brought by his predecessor, he found that +in no single instance had Mr. Blaine succeeded in inducing the British +Government, either to release any American citizen arrested under a +general warrant without specific charges of criminal conduct, and on +"suspicion" in Ireland, or to order the examination of any such citizen. +The one case in which an American citizen arrested under the Coercion +Act in Ireland during Mr. Blaine's tenure of office had been liberated +when Mr. Frelinghuysen took charge of the State Department, was that of +Mr. Joseph B. Walsh, arrested at Castlebar, in Mayo, March 8, 1881, and +discharged by order of the Lord-Lieutenant, October 21, 1881, not +because he was an American citizen, nor after any examination, but +expressly and solely on the ground of ill-health. + +When Mr. Frelinghuysen became Secretary of State in December 1881 the +Congress of the United States was in session. So numerous were the +American "suspects" then lying in prison in Ireland, some of whom had +been so confined for many months, that the doors of Congress were soon +besieged by angry demands for an inquiry into the subject. A resolution +in this sense was adopted by the House of Representatives, and +forwarded, through the American Legation in London, to the British +Foreign Office. Memorials touching particular cases were laid before +both Houses of the American Congress. On the 10th of February 1882, Mr. +Bancroft Davis, the Assistant-Secretary of State, instructed the +American Minister at London to take action concerning one such case, and +to report upon it. The Minister not moving more rapidly than he had been +accustomed to do under Mr. Blaine, Mr. Davis grew impatient, and on the +2d of March 1882 (being the anniversary of the adoption of the Coercion +Act in England) the American Secretary of State cabled to the Minister +in London significantly enough, "Use all diligence in regard to the late +cases, especially of Hart and M'Sweeney, and report by cable." + +Mr. Lowell replied the next day, giving the views in regard to Hart of +the American Vice-Consul, and of the British Inspector of Police at +Queenstown, and adding an expression of his own opinion that neither +Hart nor M'Sweeney was "more innocent than the majority of those under +arrest." + +This was an unfortunate despatch. It roused the American Secretary of +State into responding instantly by cable in the following explicit and +emphatic terms: "Referring to the cases of O'Connor, Hart, M'Sweeney, +M'Enery, and D'Alton, American citizens imprisoned in Ireland, say to +Lord Granville that, without discussing whether the provisions of the +Force Act can be applied to American citizens, the President hopes that +the Lord-Lieutenant will be instructed to exercise the powers intrusted +to him by the first section to order early trials in these and all other +cases in which Americans may be arrested." + +There was no mistaking the tone of this despatch. It was instantly +transmitted to the British Foreign Secretary, who replied the same day +that "the matter would receive the immediate attention of Her Majesty's +Government." + +The reference made to the Coercion Act by Mr. Frelinghuysen touched a +plain and precise provision, that persons detained under the Act +"should not be discharged or tried by any court without the direction of +the Lord-Lieutenant." Had the Coercion Act received from Mr. Blaine in +March 1881 the attention bestowed upon it in March 1882 by Mr. +Frelinghuysen, this provision might have been used to obviate the +dangerous accumulation of injustice to individuals, and of international +irritation, resulting from the application to possibly innocent foreign +citizens in Ireland of the despotic powers conferred by that Act upon +Mr. Gladstone's Government, powers as nearly as possible analogous with +those which Mr. Gladstone himself, years before, had denounced in +unmeasured terms when they were claimed and exercised by the Government +of Naples in dealing with its own subjects. + +After the consideration by Her Majesty's Government of this despatch of +the United States Government, it is understood in America that Mr. +Forster, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, was invited to communicate with +the Lord-Lieutenant, and request him to exercise his discretion in the +sense desired, and that Mr. Forster positively refused to do this. + +How this may be I do not pretend to say. But as no satisfactory reply +was made to the American despatch, and as public feeling in the United +States grew daily more and more determined that a stop should be put to +the unexplained arrest and the indefinite detention of American citizens +in Ireland, the American Secretary of State made up his mind towards the +end of the month of March to repeat his despatch of March 3d in a more +terse and peremptory form. As a final preliminary to this step, however, +Mr. Frelinghuysen was induced to avail himself of the unusual and +officious intervention of his most distinguished living predecessor in +the State Department, Mr. Hamilton Fish. After measuring the gravity of +the situation, Mr. Fish at the end of March sent a despatch to an +eminent public man, well known on both sides of the Atlantic, and now +resident in London, with authority to show it personally to Mr. +Gladstone, to the effect that if any further delay occurred in complying +with the moderate and reasonable demand of the American Government for +the immediate release or the immediate trial of the American "suspects," +the relations between Great Britain and the United States would be very +seriously "strained." + +This despatch was at once communicated to Mr. Gladstone. Within the +week, the liberation was announced of six American "suspects." Within a +fortnight, Mr. Parnell, Mr. O'Kelly, and Mr. Dillon, it is understood, +imprisoned members of Parliament, were offered their liberty if they +would consent to a sham exile on the Continent for a few weeks, or even +days; and within a month Mr. Forster, in his place in Parliament, was +imputing to his late chief and Premier the negotiation of that +celebrated "Treaty of Kilmainham," which was repudiated with equal +warmth by the three Irish members already named, and by Mr. Gladstone. + + + + +NOTE D. + +THE PARNELLITES AND THE ENGLISH PARTIES. + +(Prologue, p. 1.) + + +As I am not writing a history of English parties, I need not discuss +here the truth or falsehood of this contention. But I cannot let it pass +without a word as to two cases which came under my own observation, and +which aggravate the inherent improbability of the tale. In November 1885 +I went to America, and on my way passed through Stockport, where my +friend, Mr. Jennings, long my correspondent in England, was then +standing as a Conservative candidate. I attended one of his meetings and +heard him make an effective speech, much applauded, which turned +exclusively upon imperial and financial issues. That he had no +understanding whatever with the "managers" of the Irish vote in +Stockport, I have the best reason to believe. But he was assured by them +that the Irish intended to vote for him; and at a subsequent time he was +rashly assailed in the House of Commons by an Irish member with the +charge that he had broken faith with the Irish who elected him. It was +an unlucky assault for the assailant, as it gave Mr. Jennings an +opportunity, which he promptly improved, to show that he owed nothing to +the Irish voters of Stockport. Whether they voted for him in any number +in 1885 was more than doubtful; while in 1886 they voted solidly against +him, with the result of swelling his majority from 369 to 518 votes. + +In January 1886 I returned to Europe, and going on a visit into +Yorkshire, there met a prominent Irish Nationalist, who told me that he +had come into the north of England expressly to regiment the Irish +voters, and throw their votes for the Conservative candidates, on the +ground that it was necessary to make the Liberals fully understand their +power. He had fully expected in this way to elect a Conservative member +for the city of York. Great was his chagrin, therefore, when he found +the Liberal candidate returned. Upon investigation he discovered, as he +told me, that the catastrophe was due to the activity of a local Irish +priest, _who was a devoted Fenian_, utterly opposed to the Parliamentary +programme, and who had exerted his authority over the local Irish to +bring them to the polls for the Liberal candidate. + +Sir Frederick Milner, Bart., the defeated Conservative candidate for +York, afterwards told me that the local priest referred to here was a +most excellent man, and that so far from playing the part thus ascribed +to him, he took the trouble, as a matter of fair dealing, to see his +parishioners on the morning of the election and warn them against +believing a pamphlet which was sedulously circulated among the Irish +voters on the night before the polling, with a message to the effect +that Sir Frederick despised the Irish, and wanted nothing to do with +them or their votes. Sir Frederick has no doubt, from his knowledge of +what occurred during the canvass, that direct instructions were sent by +Mr. Parnell or his agents to the Irish voters in York to throw their +votes against the Radical candidates. These latter brought down a Home +Rule lecturer to counteract the effect of these instructions, and the +pamphlet above referred to was an eleventh-hour blow in the same +interest. It was successful; the Irish votes, some 500 in number, being +polled early in the morning under the impression produced by it. The +moral of this incident would seem to be, not that there was any real +understanding in 1885 between the Parnellites and the English +Conservatives at all, but simply that the English Radical wirepullers +are more alert and active than either the Irish Parnellites or the +English Conservatives. It is interesting, too, as it illustrates the +deep dread and distrust of the "Fenians" in which the Parnellites +habitually go. + + + +NOTE E. + +THE "BOYCOTT" AT MILTOWN-MALBAY. + +(Vol. i. p. 209.) + + +Father White of Miltown-Malbay, taking exception to the statement made +by me, upon the authority of Colonel Turner, that he was "the moving +spirit" of the local "boycott" of policemen and soldiers at that place, +addressed a note to Colonel Turner on the 5th of September, in which he +desired to know whether Colonel Turner, had given me grounds for making +this statement. To this note Colonel Turner tells me he returned at once +the following reply, which he kindly forwards to me for publication:-- + + "ENNIS, _6th September_ 1888. + + "REV. SIR,--I am in receipt of your letter of yesterday, and in + reply thereto beg to state that I informed Mr. Hurlbert that you + said 'in open court' that you had directed (I believe from the + altar) that the town was to be 'made as a city of the dead' during + the trials of 23 publicans who were charged for conspiracy in + boycotting the forces of the Crown who had been employed in + preserving the peace on the occasion of a former trial--this you + said you did in the interests of peace. The magistrates, however, + took a different view, viz., that it was done with the object of + preventing the military and police from obtaining any supplies, + which they were unable to do; and that their view was the correct + one was proved by the fact that half of the accused pleaded guilty + to the offence, and on promise of future good behaviour were allowed + out on their own recognisances. That the people followed your + instructions on that day, coupled with the fact that in your letter + to the _Freeman's Journal_, dated 17th March of this year, you + stated that you offered me peace all round on certain conditions, + thereby showing that at least you consider yourself possessed of + authority to bring about a state of peace or otherwise, probably led + Mr. Hurlbert, to whom I showed a copy of this letter, to infer that + you admitted that you were the moving spirit of all this 'local + boycott,' while you only did so in the particular case above + mentioned. Whether Mr. Hurlbert is correct in drawing the inference + he does as to your being the moving spirit, and as to your conduct, + may perhaps be gathered from the numerous numbers of _United + Ireland_ and other papers which he saw giving reports of illegal + meetings of the suppressed branch of the Miltown-Malbay National + League, at which you were stated to have presided, and at some of + which condemnatory resolutions were passed, and also from the fact + that you are reported to have presided at a meeting on Sunday, April + 8, which was held at Miltown-Malbay in defiance of Government + proclamation.--I am, dear Sir, yours faithfully, + + ALFRED E. TURNER. + + "Rev. P. White, P.P., Miltown-Malbay." + +On further investigation of his records, Colonel Turner found it +necessary to follow up this letter with another, a copy of which, +through his courtesy, I subjoin:-- + + "ENNIS, _10th September_ 1888. + + "REV. SIR,--A slight inaccuracy has been pointed out to me in my + letter to you of the 6th inst., which I hasten to correct. It + occurred in transcribing my letter from the original draft. I should + have said that I told Mr. Hurlbert that you stated in open court, at + the trial of 23 publicans charged with boycotting the forces of the + Crown on the occasion of a former trial, that you had told the + people (I believe from the altar) that the town was to be made as a + city of the dead during the former trial; and that in consequence + the soldiers and police could get nothing to eat or drink in Miltown + that day. + + "I also told him that this boycotting of the police was by no means + new, since on the 13th March 1887, at a meeting of the + Miltown-Malbay branch of the League at which you are reported to + have presided, in _United Ireland_ of 19/3/87, the following + resolution was unanimously adopted:-- + + "'That from this day any person who supplies the police while + engaged in work which is opposed to the wishes of the people with + drink, food, or cars, be censured by this branch, and that no + further intercourse be held with them.' + + "I regret that through inadvertence I have had to trouble you with a + second letter.--I am, Rev. Sir, yours faithfully, + + "ALFRED E. TURNER. + + "Rev. P. White, P.P." + + + + +[1] Vol. ii. p. 376. + +[2] Vol. ii. p. 364-370. + +[3] The exasperation of the local agitators under the cool and +determined treatment of Mr. Tener may be measured by the facts stated in +the following communication received by me from Mr. Tener on the 20th of +September. I leave them to speak for themselves:-- + + + "POLICE BARRACKS, WOODFORD, _17th Sept._ 1888. + + "DEAR MR. HURLBERT,--I enclose you _a printed_ placard found posted + up in Woodford district on Sunday morning the 9th inst. It alludes + to _tenants_ who had paid me their rent,--and broken the 'unwritten + law of the League.' All the men named are now in great danger. The + police force of the district has been increased--for their + protection; but the police are very anxious about their safety! + + "I send you also a _pencil_ copy taken from a more _perfect_ placard + which the police preserve. John White or Whyte is the tenant whose + name I already have given you. He is the tall dark man whom you saw + (with an ex-bailiff) at Portumna. He was then an "Evicted Tenant." + He has since been, on payment of his rent, restored to his farm by + me. And now, as you see in the placard, he is held up to the + vengeance of the "League of Hell," as P.J. Smyth called it.--Yours, + etc. + + "ED. TENER. + + "_P.S._--The evictions were finished on the 1st of September, and on + the 9th (_after_ it became known that the men whose names are in the + placard had paid) the placard was issued." + + + _(Placard.)_ + + "IRISHMEN!--Need we say in the face of the desperate Battle the + People are making for their Hearths and Homes that the time has come + for every HONEST MAN, trader and otherwise, to extend a helping hand + to the MEN in the GAP. You may ask, How will that be done? The + answer is plain. + + "Let those who have become traitors to their neighbours and their + Country be shunned as if they were possessed by a devil. Let no man + buy from them or sell to them, let no man work for them. Leave them + to Tener and his Emergency gang. The following are a few of the + greatest traitors and meanest creatures that ever walked--John + Whyte, of Dooras; Fahey (of the hill) of Dooras; big Anthony + Hackett, of Rossmore; Tom Moran, of Rossmore! Your Country calls on + you to treat them as they deserve. Bravo Woodford! Remember Tom + Larkin!--'GOD SAVE IRELAND!'" + + +[4] Appendix, Note A. + +[5] Appendix, Note B. + +[6] Appendix, Note C. + +[7] Appendix, Note D. + +[8] Since this was written fifteen Catholic bishops in England, +headed by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, have united (April 12, +1888) in a public protest against the Optional Oaths Bill, in which they +say: "To efface the recognition of God in our public legislature is an +act which will surely bring evil consequences." Yet how can the +recognition of God be more effectually "effaced" than by the unqualified +assertion that the will of the people, or of a majority, is the one +legitimate source of political authority? + +[9] Mr. Blair was then a member of the Lincoln Cabinet, and its +"fighting member." + +[10] Mr. Quill stated that the Savings-Banks deposits increased +in Ireland during 1887 eight per cent. more than in thrifty Scotland, +and _forty per cent._ more than in England and Wales! + +[11] This was the Provost's last appearance in public. He died +rather suddenly a few weeks afterwards. + +[12] In the Census of 1880 it appears that of 255,741 farms in +Illinois, 59,624 were held on the métayer system, pronounced by Toubeau +the worst of systems, and 20,620 on a money rental. + +[13] I have since learned that Father M'Fadden sold another +holding, rental 6s. 8d., for £80. He has three more holdings from +Captain Hill, at 15s., 6s. 8d., and 11s. 2d., for which he was in +arrears for two years in April 1887, when ejectment decrees were +obtained against him. For his house holding he pays 2s. a year! So he +was really fighting his own battle as a tenant in the Plan of Campaign. + +[14] Yet of Connemara, Cardinal Manning, in his letter to the +Archbishop of Armagh, August 31, 1873, cites the "trust-worthy" evidence +of "an Englishman who had raised himself from the plough's tail," and +who had gone "to see with his own eyes the material condition of the +peasantry in Ireland." It was to the effect that in abundance and +quality of food, in rate of wages, and even if the comfort of their +dwellings, the working men of Connemara were better off than the +agricultural labourers of certain English counties. + +[15] For this holding, of 10 Irish acres, I have since learned +the widow O'Donnell pays 10s. a year. She is in the receipt of outdoor +relief, there being fever in the house (May 1888). + +[16] This "townland" is a curious use of a Saxon term to +describe a Celtic fact. The territory of an Irish sept seems to have +been divided up into "townlands," each townland consisting of four, or +in some cases six, groups of holdings, occupied by as many families of +the "sept." The chief of the "sept" divided up each "townland" +periodically among these groups, while the common fields were cut up +among the families as they increased and multiplied according to the +system--against which Lord George Hill battled at Gweedore--known as +"rimdale" or "rundeal," from the Celtic, "ruindioll," a "partition" or +"man's share." This is quite unlike the Russian "mir" or collective +village, and not more like the South Slav "zadruga" which makes each +family a community, the land belonging to all, as, according to M. +Eugene Simon, it does in China. But it is as inconsistent with Henry +George's State ownership of the land or the rents as either of those +systems. + +[17] From a question just asked (July 12) in the House of +Commons, and answered by the Postmaster-General, I gather that this +"local question" has been further complicated by the removal of Mr. +Sweeney, the sub-postmaster, under an official regulation. + +[18] The incident occurred in Clare. See p. 45. + +[19] Or they may date back to the Parliament of Grattan, who +wrote to Mr. Guinness that he regarded the brewery of Ireland as "the +actual nurse of the people, and entitled to every encouragement, favour, +and exemption." + +[20] This refers, I am told, to the murder, in open daylight, +in 1881, of an old man, Linnane, who acted as a "caretaker" for Mrs. +Moroney. It should gratify Father White to know that, as I am now +informed (May 21, 1888), a clue has just been found to the assassins, +who appear to have received the same price for doing their work that was +paid the murderers of Fitzmaurice. + +[21] Mrs. Moroney, so often referred to here, is the widow of a +gentleman formerly High Sheriff and Deputy-Lieutenant for the County +Clare, who died in 1870. She lives at Milton House, and has fought the +local League steadily and successfully. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of +2) (1888), by William Henry Hurlbert + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14510 *** diff --git a/14510-h/14510-h.htm b/14510-h/14510-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..84c2d2d --- /dev/null +++ b/14510-h/14510-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,8310 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> +<head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" + content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> + + <title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ireland Under Coercion (vI) by William Henry Hurlbert</title> + <style type="text/css"> + /*<![CDATA[*/ + + <!-- + body {margin-left: 7%; margin-right: 10%;} + p {text-indent: 2em; text-align: justify;} + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center;} + h1 {margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 0em} + h2 {margin-top: 4em; margin-bottom: 2em} + h3 {margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em} + + pre {font-size: 0.7em;} + + hr {text-align: center; width: 50%;} + hr.full {width: 100%;} + hr.short {text-align: center; width: 20%;} + + .note {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; } + + .pagenum {text-indent: 0px; position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: 8pt;} + + .footnote { margin-right: 10%; margin-left: 10%;} + + div.trans-note {border-style: solid; border-width: 1px; + margin: 3em 15%; padding: 1em; text-align: center;} + + .illustrations {margin: 0.5em 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + + .author {text-align: right; margin-right: 5%;} + .center {text-align: center; margin-right: 5%;} + .signed {text-align: right; margin-right: 5%;} + .dateline {text-align: right; margin-top: 2em; margin-right: 5%;} + .diary { margin-top:5em; font-weight: bold;} + .fnheader {margin-top:5em; font-weight: bold;} + .i0 {text-indent: 0px} + .i2 {text-indent: 0px; margin-left: 2em} + .i4 {text-indent: 0px; margin-left: 4em} + + + .poem { text-indent: 0px; margin-left: 4em} + .placard {padding: 2em; border: thin solid} + + .TOC { list-style-type: none; position: relative;} + .TOCSub { margin-right: 5%; list-style-type: none; position: relative;} + + li { margin-top: 0.53em; line-height: 1.2em } + + --> + /*]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14510 ***</div> + +<h1>IRELAND UNDER COERCION</h1> + +<h2>THE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN</h2> + +<h1>BY<br />WILLIAM HENRY HURLBERT</h1> + +<h2>VOL. I.</h2> + +<h3><i>SECOND EDITION.</i></h3> + +<h2>1888</h2> + + +<h3>“Upon the future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire.”<br />CARDINAL MANNING TO EARL GREY, 1868</h3> + +<h3><a href="#pagexvii" />CONTENTS OF VOL. I.</h3> + +<div class="ctr"> + <a id="map"></a> + <img src="images/iucmap.png" width="95%" + alt="MAP TO ILLUSTRATE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN." + title="MAP TO ILLUSTRATE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN." /> + +</div> + +<hr /> + +<h2><a name="pagev" id="pagev"></a> + +<span class="pagenum">[pg v] +</span> +PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.</h2> + + +<p>Although barely a month has elapsed since the publication of these +volumes, events of more or less general notoriety have so far confirmed +the views taken in them of the actual state and outlook of affairs in +Ireland, that I gladly comply with the request of my publisher for a +Preface to this Second Edition.</p> + +<p>Upon one most important point—the progressive demoralisation of the +Irish people by the methods of the so-called political combinations, +which are doing the work of the Agrarian and Anti-Social Revolution in +Ireland, some passages, from a remarkable sermon delivered in August in +the Cathedral of Waterford by the Catholic bishop of that diocese, will +be found to echo almost to the letter the statement given to me in June +by a strong Protestant Home Ruler, that “the Nationalists are stripping +Irishmen as bare of moral sense as the bushmen of South Africa.”</p> + +<p>Speaking of what he had personally witnessed in one of the lanes of +Waterford, the Bishop says, in <a name="pagevi" id="pagevi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg vi] +</span> +the report which I have seen of his +sermon, “the most barbarous tribes of Africa would justly feel ashamed +if they were guilty of what I saw, or approached to the guilt I +witnessed, on that occasion.” As a faithful shepherd of his people, he +is not content with general denunciations of their misconduct, but goes +on to analyse the influences which are thus reducing a Christian people +to a level below that of the savages whom Cardinal Lavigerie is now +organising a great missionary crusade to rescue from their degradation.</p> + +<p>He agrees with Archbishop Croke in attributing much of this +demoralisation to the excessive and increasing use of strong drink, +striking evidences of which came under my own observation at more than +one point of my Irish journeys. But I fear Archbishop Croke would +scarcely agree with the Bishop of Waterford in his diagnosis of the +effects upon the popular character of what has now come to pass current +in many parts of Ireland as “patriotism.”</p> + +<p>The Bishop says, “The women as well as the men were fighting, and when +we sought to bring them to order, one man threatened to take up a weapon +and drive bishop, priests, and police from the place! On the Quay, I +understand, it was one scene of riot and disorder, and what made matters +worse was that when the police went to discharge their <a name="pagevii" id="pagevii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg vii] +</span> +duty for the +protection of the people, the moment they interfered the people turned +on them and maltreated them in a shocking way. I understand that some +police who were in coloured clothes were picked out for the worst +treatment—knocked down and kicked brutally. One police officer, I +learn, had his fingers broken. This is a state of things that nothing at +all would justify. It is not to be justified or excused on any principle +of reason or religion. What is still worse, sympathy was shown for those +who had obstructed and attacked the police. The only excuse I could find +that was urged for this shameful misconduct was that it was dignified +with the name of ‘patriotism’! All I can say is, that if rowdyism like +this be an indication of the patriotism of the people, as far as I am +concerned, I say, better our poor country were for ever in political +slavery than attain to liberty by such means.”</p> + +<p>This is the language of a good Catholic, of a good Irishman, and of a +faithful Bishop. Were it more often heard from the lips of the Irish +Episcopate the true friends of Ireland might look forward to her future +with more hope and confidence than many of the best and ablest of them +are now able to feel. As things actually are, not even the Papal Decree +has yet sufficed to restrain ecclesiastics, not always of the lowest +degree, from encouraging <a name="pageviii" id="pageviii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg viii] +</span> +by their words and their conduct “patriotism” +of the type commemorated by the late Colonel Prentiss of Louisville, in +a story which he used to tell of a tipsy giant in butternut garments, +armed with a long rifle, who came upon him in his office on a certain +Fourth of July demanding the loan of a dollar on the ground that he felt +“so confoundedly patriotic!”</p> + +<p>The Colonel judiciously handed the man a dollar, and then asked, “Pray, +how do you feel when you feel confoundedly patriotic?”</p> + +<p>“I feel,” responded the man gravely, “as if I should like to kill +somebody or steal something.”</p> + +<p>It is “patriotism” of this sort which the Papal Decree was issued to +expel from within the pale of the Catholic Church. And it is really, in +the last analysis of the facts of the case, to the suppression of +“patriotism” of this sort that many well-intentioned, but certainly not +well-informed, “sympathisers” with what they suppose to be the cause of +Ireland, object, in my own country and in Great Britain, when they +denounce as “Coercion” the imprisonment of members of Parliament and +other rhetorical persons who go about encouraging or compelling ignorant +people to support “boycotting” and the “Plan of Campaign.”</p> + +<p>Yet it would seem to be sufficiently obvious that “patriotism” of this +sort, once full-blown and flourishing on the soil of Ireland, must tend +to <a name="pageix" id="pageix"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg ix] +</span> +propagate itself far beyond the confines of that island, and to +diversify with its blood-red flowers and its explosive fruits the social +order of countries in which it has not yet been found necessary for the +Head of the Catholic Church to reaffirm the fundamental principles of +Law and of Liberty.</p> + +<p>Since these volumes were published, too, the Agrarian Revolution in +Ireland has been brought into open and defiant collision with the +Catholic Church by its leader, Mr. Davitt, the founder of the Land +League. In the face of Mr. Davitt’s contemptuous and angry repudiation +of any binding force in the Papal Decree, it will be difficult even for +the Cardinal-Archbishop of Sydney to devise an understanding between the +Church and any organisation fashioned or led by him. It may be inferred +from Mr. Davitt’s contemporaneous and not less angry intimation, that +the methods of the Parnellite party are inadequate to the liberation of +Ireland from the curse of landlordism, that he is prepared to go further +than Mr. George, who still clings in America to the shadowy countenance +given him by the Cardinal-Archbishop of Baltimore, and that the +Nationalisation of the Land will ere long be urged both in Ireland and +in Great Britain by organisations frankly Anti-Catholic as well as +Anti-Social.</p> + +<p>This is to be desired on many accounts. It will bring the clergy in +Ireland face to face with the <a name="pagex" id="pagex"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg x] +</span> +situation, which will be a good thing +both for them and for the people; and it should result in making an end +of the pernicious influence upon the popular mind of such extraordinary +theological outgivings; for example, as the circular issued in 1881 to +the clergy and laity of Meath by the Bishop of that diocese, in which it +was laid down that “the land of every country is the common property of +the people of that country, because its real owner, the Creator who made +it, has transferred it as a voluntary gift to them.”</p> + +<p>Language of this sort addressed to ignorant multitudes must do harm of +course whenever and by whomsoever used. It must tend to evil if +addressed by demagogues to the Congress of a Trade Union. But it must do +much more harm when uttered with the seeming sanction of the Church by a +mitred bishop to congregations already solicited to greed, cunning, and +dishonesty, by an unscrupulous and well-organised “agitation.”</p> + +<p>Not less instructive than Mr. Davitt’s outburst from the Church is his +almost furious denunciation of the Irish tenants who obeyed an instinct, +thought honourable to mankind in most ages and countries, by agreeing +together to present to their landlord, Earl Fitzwilliam, a token of +their respect and regard on the celebration of his golden wedding day.</p> + +<p>These tenants are denounced, not because they <a name="pagexi" id="pagexi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xi] +</span> +were paying homage to a +tyrannical or an unworthy landlord, though Mr. Davitt was so transported +beyond his ordinary and cooler self with rage at their action that he +actually stooped to something like an insinuation of disbelief in the +excellence of Lord Fitzwilliam’s character. The true and avowed burden +of his diatribe was that no landlord could possibly deserve well of his +tenants. The better he is as a man, the more they ought to hate him as a +landlord.</p> + +<p>The ownership of land, in other words, is of itself in the eyes of Mr. +Davitt what the ownership of a slave was in the eyes of the earlier +Abolitionists—crime so monstrous as to be beyond pardon or endurance. +If this be true of Great Britain and Ireland, where no allodial tenure +exists, how much more true must it be of New York? And if true of the +man who owns a thousand acres, it must be equally true of the man who +owns an acre. There could not be a better illustration than Mr. Davitt +has given in his attack on the Fitzwilliam tenants of the precise +accuracy of what I have had occasion to say in these volumes of the +“irrepressible conflict” between his schemes and the establishment of a +peasant proprietorship in Ireland. It is more than this. It is a +distinct warning served upon the smallest tenants as well as upon the +greatest landlords in the United Kingdom that fixity of any <a name="pagexii" id="pagexii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xii] +</span> +form of +individual tenure is irreconcilable with the Agrarian agitations.</p> + +<p>I anticipated this demonstration, but I did not anticipate that it would +come so fully or so soon.</p> + +<p>I anticipated also abundant proof from my own side of the water of the +accuracy of my impressions as to the drift of the American-Irish towards +Protection and Republicanism in American politics. This, too, has come +earlier and not less fully than I had expected. Mr. Patrick Ford, the +most influential leader of the American-Irish, issued early in August a +statement of his views as to the impending Presidential election. “The +issue to-day,” he says, “is the Tariff. It is the American system +<i>versus</i> the British Colonial system. The Irish are instinctively +Protectionists.” And why? Mr. Ford goes on to explain. “The fact,” he +observes, “that the Lion and the Unicorn have taken the stump for +Cleveland and Thurnan is not calculated to hurt Harrison and Morton in +the estimation of the Irish, who will, I promise, give a good account of +themselves in the coming Presidential election.” Hatred of England, in +other words, is an axiom in their Political Economy!</p> + +<p>Mr. Davitt’s menacing allusion to Parnell as a landlord, and Mr. +O’Leary’s scornful treatment in a letter to me of the small-fry English +Radicals, <a id="footnotetag1" + name="footnotetag1"></a><a href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a> <a name="pagexiii" id="pagexiii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xiii] +</span> +when taken together, distinctly prefigure an imminent +rupture between the Parnellite party and the two wings—Agrarian and +Fenian—of the real revolutionary movement in Ireland. It is clear that +clerical agitators, high and low, must soon elect between following Mr. +George, Dr. M‘Glynn, and Mr. Davitt, and obeying fully the Papal Decree.</p> + +<p>It is a most curious feature of the situation in Ireland that much more +discontent with the actual conditions of life in that country seems to +be felt by people who do not than by people who do live in Ireland. It +is the Irish in America and Australia, who neither sow nor reap in +Ireland, pay no taxes there, and bear no burdens, who find the alien +oppression most intolerable. This explains the extreme bitterness with +which Mr. Davitt in some recent speeches and letters denounces the +tameness of the Irish people, and rather amusingly berates the British +allies of his Parnellite associates for their failure to develop any +striking and sensational resistance to the administration of law in +Ireland. I have printed in this edition <a id="footnotetag2" + name="footnotetag2"></a><a href="#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a> an instructive account, +furnished to me by Mr. Tener, of some recent evictions on the +Clanricarde property in Galway, which shows how hard it is for the most +determined “agitators” to keep the Irish tenants up to that high concert +pitch of resistance <a name="pagexiv" id="pagexiv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xiv] +</span> +to the law which alone would meet the wishes of the +true agrarian leaders; and how comparatively easy it is for a just and +resolute man, armed with the power of the law resolutely enforced, to +break up an illegal combination even in some of the most disturbed +regions of Ireland. <a id="footnotetag3" + name="footnotetag3"></a><a href="#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a> While this is encouraging to the friends of law +and order in Ireland, it must not be forgotten that it involves also a +certain peril for them. The more successfully the law is enforced in +Ireland, the greater perhaps is the danger that the British +constituencies, upon which, of course, the administrators of the law +depend for their authority, may lose <a name="pagexv" id="pagexv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xv] +</span> +sight and sense of the +Revolutionary forces at work there. History shows that this has more +than once happened in the past. Englishmen and Scotchmen will be better +able than I am to judge how far it is unlikely that it should happen +again in the future. + +As to one matter of great moment—the effect of Lord Ashbourne’s Act—a +correspondent sends me a statement, which I reproduce here, as it gives +a very satisfactory account of the automatic financial machinery upon +which that Act must depend for success:—</p> + + +<blockquote><a name="pagexvi" id="pagexvi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xvi] +</span> +“Out of £90,630 of instalments due last May, less than £4000 is + unpaid at the present moment, on transactions extending over three + years with all classes of tenants. The total amount which accrued, + due to the Land Commission in respect of instalments since the + passing of the Act to the 1st November 1887, was £50,910. Of this + there is only now unpaid £731, 17s. 9d. There accrued a further + amount to the 1st May 1888 of £39,720, in respect of which only + £4071, 16s. 11d. is now unpaid, making in all only £4803, 14s. 8d. + unpaid, out of a total sum of £90,630 due up to last gale day, some + of which by this time has been paid off.” </blockquote> + +<p>This would seem to be worth considering in connection with the objection +made to any serious extension of Lord Ashbourne’s Act by Mr. Chamberlain +in his extremely clear and able preface to a programme of “Unionist +Policy for Ireland” just issued by the “National Radical Union.”</p> + +<p class="dateline">LONDON, <i>21st Sept</i>. 1888.</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="pagexvii" id="pagexvii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xvii] +</span> +CONTENTS OF VOL. I.</h2> + + +<p class="i0">CLUE MAP <i>Frontispiece</i></p> +<p class="i0">PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION p. <a href="#pagev">v</a></p> +<p class="i0">PROLOGUE <a href="#pagexxi">xxi</a>-<a href="#pagelxvii">lxvii</a></p> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER I.</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>London to Dublin, Jan. 20, 1888, p. <a href="#page1">1</a></li> +<li>Irish Jacobite, <a href="#page1">1</a></li> +<li>Proposed Mass in memory of Charles Edward, <a href="#page2">2</a></li> +<li>Cardinal Manning, <a href="#page3">3</a></li> +<li>President Cleveland’s Jubilee Gift to Leo XIII, <a href="#page4">4</a></li> +<li>Arrival at Kingstown, <a href="#page5">5</a></li> +<li>Admirable Mail Service, <a href="#page5">5</a></li> +<li>“Davy,” the newsvendor, <a href="#page6">6</a></li> +<li>Mr. Davitt, <a href="#page7">7</a></li> +<li>Coercion in America and Ireland, <a href="#page8">8</a></li> +<li>Montgomery Blair’s maxim, <a href="#page8">8</a></li> +<li>Irish cars, <a href="#page9">9</a></li> +<li>Maple’s Hotel, <a href="#page9">9</a></li> +<li>Father Burke of Tallaght, <a href="#page10">10</a>, <a href="#page11">11</a></li> +<li>Peculiarities of Post-offices, <a href="#page12">12</a>, <a href="#page13">13</a></li> +<li>National League Office, <a href="#page13">13</a></li> +<li>The Dublin National Reception, <a href="#page14">14</a></li> +<li>Mr. T.D. Sullivan, M.P., <a href="#page14">14</a></li> +<li>Dublin Castle, <a href="#page15">15</a></li> +<li>Mr. O’Brien, Attorney-General, <a href="#page16">16</a></li> +<li>The Chief-Secretary, Mr. Balfour, <a href="#page17">17</a>-<a href="#page24">24</a></li> +<li>Fathers M‘Fadden and M‘Glynn, <a href="#page18">18</a></li> +<li>Come-outers of New England, <a href="#page18">18</a></li> +<li>Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, <a href="#page19">19</a>, <a href="#page20">20</a></li> +<li>Sir West Ridgway, <a href="#page24">24</a></li> +<li>Divisional Magistrates, <a href="#page24">24</a></li> +<li>Colonel Turner, <a href="#page25">25</a></li> +<li>The Castle Service, p. <a href="#page25">25</a>-<a href="#page29">29</a></li> +<li>Visit of the Prince of Wales, <a href="#page27">27</a></li> +<li>Lord Chief-Justice Morris, <a href="#page29">29</a>-<a href="#page37">37</a></li> +<li>An Irish Catholic on Mr. Parnell, <a href="#page31">31</a>-<a href="#page33">33</a></li> +<li>Mr. Justice Murphy, <a href="#page36">36</a></li> +<li>Lord Ashbourne, <a href="#page37">37</a>, <a href="#page38">38</a></li> +<li>Unionist meeting, <a href="#page39">39</a></li> +<li>Old Middle State type of American-Irish Protestant, <a href="#page39">39</a></li> +<li>Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in America, <a href="#page41">41</a></li> +<li>Difficulties of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, <a href="#page43">43</a></li> +<li>Dr. Jellett, <a href="#page43">43</a></li> +<li>Dinner at the Attorney-General’s, <a href="#page43">43</a>-<a href="#page46">46</a></li> +<li>Sir Bernard Burke, <a href="#page46">46</a>-<a href="#page49">49</a></li> +<li>Irish Landlords at Kildare Street Club, <a href="#page49">49</a>-<a href="#page52">52</a></li> +<li>The people and the procession, <a href="#page53">53</a>-<a href="#page55">55</a></li> +<li>Ripon and Morley, <a href="#page54">54</a>, <a href="#page55">55</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER II.</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Dublin to Sion, Feb 3, <a href="#page56">56</a></li> +<li>Poor of the city, <a href="#page57">57</a></li> +<li>Strabane, <a href="#page58">58</a>-<a href="#page60">60</a></li> +<li>Sion flax-mills, <a href="#page60">60</a>-<a href="#page62">62</a></li> +<li>Dr. Webb, <a href="#page63">63</a>-<a href="#page65">65</a></li> +<li>Gweedore, Feb 4, <a href="#page65">65</a></li> +<li>A good day’s work, <a href="#page65">65</a></li> +<li>Strabane, <a href="#page66">66</a></li> +<li>Names of the people, <a href="#page66">66</a></li> +<li>Bad weather judges, <a href="#page67">67</a></li> +<li>Letterkenny, p <a href="#page67">67</a>, <a href="#page68">68</a></li> +<li>Picturesque cottages, <a href="#page67">67</a></li> +<li>Communicative gentleman, <a href="#page68">68</a></li> +<li>Donegal Highlands, <a href="#page68">68</a>-<a href="#page70">70</a></li> +<li>Glen Veagh, <a href="#page71">71</a></li> +<li>Errigal, <a href="#page72">72</a></li> +<li>Dunlewy and the Clady, <a href="#page72">72</a></li> +<li>Gweedore, Feb 5, <a href="#page73">73</a></li> +<li>Lord George Hill, <a href="#page74">74</a></li> +<li>Gweedore 1838 to 1879, <a href="#page75">75</a>-<a href="#page81">81</a></li> +<li>Gweedore 1879 to 1888, <a href="#page81">81</a>-<a href="#page91">91</a></li> +<li>Father M‘Fadden, <a href="#page83">83</a>-<a href="#page104">104</a></li> +<li>A Galway man’s opinions, <a href="#page84">84</a>-<a href="#page89">89</a></li> +<li>Value of tenant-right, <a href="#page83">83</a></li> +<li>Condition of tenantry, <a href="#page84">84</a></li> +<li>Woollen stuffs, <a href="#page87">87</a>, <a href="#page88">88</a></li> +<li>Distress in Gweedore, <a href="#page88">88</a></li> +<li>Distress in Connemara, <a href="#page88">88</a></li> +<li>Mr Burke, <a href="#page90">90</a></li> +<li>Plan of Campaign, <a href="#page93">93</a></li> +<li>Emigration, <a href="#page94">94</a>, <a href="#page95">95</a></li> +<li>Settlement with Captain Hill, <a href="#page94">94</a></li> +<li>Landlord and tenant, <a href="#page96">96</a>-<a href="#page98">98</a></li> +<li>Land Nationalisation, <a href="#page98">98</a></li> +<li>Father M‘Fadden’s plan, <a href="#page98">98</a></li> +<li>Gweedore, Feb 6, <a href="#page104">104</a></li> +<li>On the Bunbeg road, <a href="#page104">104</a>-<a href="#page110">110</a></li> +<li>Falcarragh, <a href="#page111">111</a>-<a href="#page123">123</a></li> +<li>Ballyconnell House, <a href="#page112">112</a>-<a href="#page123">123</a></li> +<li>Townland and Rundale, <a href="#page118">118</a></li> +<li>Use and abuse of tea, <a href="#page119">119</a></li> +<li>Lord Leitrim, <a href="#page121">121</a></li> +<li>A “Queen of France,” <a href="#page121">121</a></li> +<li>The Rosses, <a href="#page123">123</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER III.</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Dungloe, Feb. 7, <a href="#page124">124</a></li> +<li>From Gweedore, <a href="#page124">124</a></li> +<li>Irish “jaunting car,” <a href="#page125">125</a></li> +<li>“It will fatten four, feed five, and starve six,” <a href="#page125">125</a></li> +<li>Natural wealth of the country, <a href="#page125">125</a></li> +<li>Isle of Arran and Anticosti, p <a href="#page12">12</a></li> +<li>The Gombeen man, <a href="#page126">126</a>-<a href="#page130">130</a></li> +<li>Dungloe, <a href="#page126">126</a>-<a href="#page131">131</a></li> +<li>Burtonport, <a href="#page129">129</a></li> +<li>Lough Meela, <a href="#page128">128</a></li> +<li>Attractions of the Donegal coast, <a href="#page128">128</a></li> +<li>Compared with Isles of Shoals and Appledore, <a href="#page129">129</a></li> +<li>Wonderful granite formations, <a href="#page129">129</a></li> +<li>Material for a new industry, <a href="#page129">129</a></li> +<li>Father Walker, <a href="#page131">131</a></li> +<li>Migratory labourers, <a href="#page133">133</a></li> +<li>Granite quarries, <a href="#page133">133</a></li> +<li>Stipends of the Roman Catholic clergy, <a href="#page134">134</a>-<a href="#page137">137</a></li> +<li>Herring Fisheries, <a href="#page137">137</a></li> +<li>Arranmore, <a href="#page137">137</a></li> +<li>Dungloe woollen work, <a href="#page138">138</a></li> +<li>Baron’s Court, Feb 8, <a href="#page139">139</a></li> +<li>Dungloe to Letterkenny, <a href="#page139">139</a>-<a href="#page141">141</a></li> +<li>Doocharry Red Granite, <a href="#page140">140</a></li> +<li>Fair at Letterkenny, <a href="#page142">142</a></li> +<li>Feb 9, <a href="#page143">143</a></li> +<li>On Clare and Kerry, <a href="#page143">143</a></li> +<li>A Priest’s opinion on Moonlighters, <a href="#page143">143</a></li> +<li>The Lixnaw murder, <a href="#page143">143</a></li> +<li>Baron’s Court, <a href="#page144">144</a></li> +<li>James I.’s three castles, <a href="#page145">145</a></li> +<li>Ulster Settlement, <a href="#page146">146</a></li> +<li>Descendants of the old Celtic stock, <a href="#page146">146</a></li> +<li>The park at Baron’s Court, <a href="#page146">146</a></li> +<li>A nonogenarian O’Kane, <a href="#page148">148</a></li> +<li>Irish “Covenanters,” <a href="#page150">150</a></li> +<li>Shenandoah Valley people, <a href="#page151">151</a></li> +<li>The murderers of Munterlony, <a href="#page151">151</a></li> +<li>A relic of 1689, <a href="#page152">152</a></li> +<li>Woollen industry, <a href="#page152">152</a>-<a href="#page155">155</a></li> +<li>Londonderry Orange symposium, <a href="#page156">156</a></li> +<li>February 11, <a href="#page157">157</a></li> +<li>Sergeant Mahony on Father M‘Fadden, <a href="#page157">157</a>-<a href="#page163">163</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER IV. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Abbeyleix, Feb. 12, p. <a href="#page164">164</a></li> +<li>Newtown-Stewart, <a href="#page164">164</a></li> +<li>An absentee landlord, <a href="#page164">164</a></li> +<li>“The hill of the seven murders,” <a href="#page165">165</a></li> +<li>Newry, Dublin, Maple’s Hotel, Maryborough, <a href="#page165">165</a></li> +<li>“Hurrah for Gilhooly,” <a href="#page166">166</a></li> +<li>Abbeyleix town, chapel, and church, <a href="#page168">168</a></li> +<li>Embroidery and lace work, <a href="#page169">169</a></li> +<li>Wood-carving, <a href="#page170">170</a></li> +<li>General Grant, <a href="#page171">171</a></li> +<li>Kilkenny, <a href="#page172">172</a></li> +<li>Kilkenny Castle, <a href="#page173">173</a></li> +<li>Muniment-room, <a href="#page174">174</a></li> +<li>Table and Expense Books, <a href="#page176">176</a></li> +<li>Dublin once the most noteD wine-mart of Britain, <a href="#page177">177</a>, <a href="#page178">178</a></li> +<li>Cathedral of St. Canice, <a href="#page178">178</a></li> +<li>The Waterford cloak, <a href="#page179">179</a></li> +<li>The College, <a href="#page180">180</a></li> +<li>Irish and Scotch whisky, <a href="#page180">180</a></li> +<li>Duke of Ormonde’s grants, <a href="#page181">181</a></li> +<li>The Plan of Campaign, <a href="#page182">182</a>-<a href="#page186">186</a></li> +<li>Ulster tenant-right, <a href="#page186">186</a>, <a href="#page187">187</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER V.</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Dublin, Feb. 14, <a href="#page188">188</a></li> +<li>The Irish National Gallery, <a href="#page188">188</a>-<a href="#page191">191</a></li> +<li>Feb. 15, <a href="#page192">192</a></li> +<li>London: Mr. Davitt, <a href="#page192">192</a></li> +<li>Irish Woollen Company, <a href="#page193">193</a></li> +<li>Mr. Davitt and Mr. Blunt, <a href="#page193">193</a></li> +<li>Mr. Davitt’s character and position, <a href="#page192">192</a>-<a href="#page199">199</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER VI.</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Ennis, Feb. 18, <a href="#page200">200</a></li> +<li>Return to Ireland, <a href="#page200">200</a></li> +<li>Irish Nationalists, <a href="#page200">200</a>, <a href="#page201">201</a></li> +<li>Home Rule and Protection, p. <a href="#page202">202</a></li> +<li>Luggacurren and Mr. O’Brien, <a href="#page204">204</a></li> +<li>Dublin to Limerick and Ennis, <a href="#page204">204</a>, <a href="#page205">205</a></li> +<li>Colonel Turner, <a href="#page205">205</a></li> +<li>Architecture of Ennis Courthouse—Resemblance + to White House, Washington, <a href="#page206">206</a></li> +<li>Number of public-houses in Ennis, and in Ireland, <a href="#page207">207</a>, <a href="#page208">208</a></li> +<li>Innkeepers of Milltown Malbay, <a href="#page208">208</a>, <a href="#page209">209</a></li> +<li>Father White (see Note E), <a href="#page209">209</a></li> +<li>Sir Francis Head, <a href="#page210">210</a>, <a href="#page211">211</a></li> +<li>Different opinions in Ennis, <a href="#page212">212</a>, <a href="#page213">213</a></li> +<li>State of trade in Ennis, <a href="#page213">213</a>, <a href="#page214">214</a></li> +<li>Edenvale, Heronry, <a href="#page215">215</a> <i>seq.</i></li> +<li>Feb. 19, <a href="#page215">215</a></li> +<li>The men of Ennis at Edenvale, <a href="#page216">216</a></li> +<li>Killone Abbey, <a href="#page218">218</a>-<a href="#page221">221</a></li> +<li>Stephen J. Meany, <a href="#page220">220</a></li> +<li>“Holy Well” of St. John, <a href="#page221">221</a></li> +<li>Superstition as to rabbits, <a href="#page222">222</a></li> +<li>Religious practices under Penal Laws, <a href="#page222">222</a></li> +<li>Experiences under National League, <a href="#page223">223</a>, <a href="#page224">224</a></li> +<li>Case of George Pilkington, <a href="#page224">224</a>-<a href="#page226">226</a></li> +<li>Trees at Edenvale, <a href="#page227">227</a></li> +<li>Moonlighters, a reproduction of Whiteboys, <a href="#page227">227</a>, <a href="#page228">228</a></li> +<li>Difficulty in getting men to work, <a href="#page228">228</a></li> +<li>A testimonial to Mr. Austen Mackay, <a href="#page229">229</a>-<a href="#page232">232</a></li> +<li>Effect of testimonials, <a href="#page232">232</a></li> +<li>Feb. 20, <a href="#page232">232</a></li> +<li>The case of Mrs. Connell at Milltown Malbay, <a href="#page232">232</a> <i>seq.</i></li> +<li>Estate accounts and prices, <a href="#page240">240</a></li> +<li>A rent-warner, <a href="#page245">245</a></li> +<li>Mr. Redmond, M.P., <a href="#page245">245</a></li> +<li>Father White’s Sermon, <a href="#page246">246</a></li> +<li>A photograph, <a href="#page246">246</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0"><a name="pagexx" id="pagexx"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xx] +</span>APPENDIX <br /><br />NOTES—</p><ul class="TOC"> + +<li> <a href="#noteA">A.</a> Mr. Gladstone and the American War (Prologue xxix), <a href="#page249">249</a> +</li><li> <a href="#noteB">B.</a> Mr. Parnell and the Dynamiters (Prologue xxxiii), <a href="#page251">251</a></li> + <li><a href="#noteC">C.</a> The American “Suspects” of 1881 (Prologue xlvii), <a href="#page255">255</a></li> + <li><a href="#noteD">D.</a> The Parnellites and the English Parties (Prologue l.), <a href="#page262">262</a></li> + <li><a href="#noteE">E.</a> The “Boycott” at Miltown-Malbay (p. <a href="#page209">209</a>), <a href="#page264">264</a></li> +</ul> + + + +<h2><a name="pagexxi" id="pagexxi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxi] +</span> +PROLOGUE.</h2> + + +<h3>I.</h3> +<p>This book is a record of things seen, and of conversations had, during a +series of visits to Ireland between January and June 1888.</p> + +<p>These visits were made in quest of light, not so much upon the +proceedings and the purposes of the Irish “Nationalists,”—with which, +on both sides of the Atlantic, I have been tolerably familiar for many +years past—as upon the social and economical results in Ireland of the +processes of political vivisection to which that country has been so +long subjected.</p> + +<p>As these results primarily concern Great Britain and British subjects, +and as a well-founded and reasonable jealousy exists in Great Britain of +American intromission in the affairs of Ireland, it is proper for me to +say at the outset, that the condition of Ireland interests me not +because I believe, with Cardinal Manning, that upon the future of +Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire, but because I know that +America is largely responsible for the actual condition of Ireland, and +because the future condition of Ireland, and of the British <a name="pagexxii" id="pagexxii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxii] +</span> +Empire, +must gravely influence the future of my own country.</p> + +<p>In common with the vast majority of my countrymen, who come with me of +what may now not improperly be called the old American stock—by which I +mean the three millions of English-speaking dwellers in the New World, +who righteously resented, and successfully resisted, a hundred years +ago, the attempt—not of the Crown under which the Colonies held their +lands, but of the British Parliament in which they were +unrepresented—to take their property without their consent, and apply +it to purposes not passed upon by them, I have always felt that the +claim of the Irish people to a proper control of matters exclusively +Irish was essentially just and reasonable. The measure of that proper +control is now, as it always has been, a question not for Americans, but +for the people of Great Britain and of Ireland. If Lord Edward +Fitzgerald and his associates had succeeded in expelling British +authority from Ireland, and in founding an Irish Republic, we should +probably have recognised that Republic. Yet an American minister at the +Court of St. James’s saw no impropriety in advising our Government to +refuse a refuge in the United States to the defeated Irish exiles of +’98.</p> + +<p>It is undoubtedly the opinion of every Irish <a name="pagexxiii" id="pagexxiii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxiii] +</span> +American who possesses any +real influence with the people of his own race in my country, that the +rights and liberties of Ireland can only be effectually secured by a +complete political separation from Great Britain. Nor can the right of +Irish American citizens, holding this opinion, to express their sympathy +with Irishmen striving in Ireland to bring about such a result, and with +Englishmen or Scotchmen contributing to it in Great Britain, be +questioned, any more than the right of Polish citizens of the French +Republic to express their sympathy with Poles labouring in Poland for +the restoration of Polish nationality. It is perhaps even less open to +question than the right of Americans not of Irish race, and of Frenchmen +not of Polish race, to express such sympathies; and certainly less open +to question than the right of Englishmen or Americans to express their +sympathy with Cubans bent on sundering the last link which binds Cuba to +Spain, or with Greeks bent on overthrowing the authority of the Sultan +in Crete.</p> + +<p>But for all American citizens of whatever race, the expression of such +sympathies ceases to be legitimate when it assumes the shape of action +transcending the limits set by local or by international law. It is of +the essence of American constitutionalism that one community shall not +lay hands upon the domestic affairs of another; and it is an undeniable +<a name="pagexxiv" id="pagexxiv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxiv] +</span> +fact that the sympathy of the great body of the American people with +Irish efforts for self-government has been diminished, not increased, +since 1848, by the gradual transfer of the head-quarters and machinery +of those efforts from Ireland to the United States. The recent refusal +of the Mayor of New York, Mr. Hewitt, to allow what is called the “Irish +National flag” to be raised over the City Hall of New York is vastly +more significant of the true drift of American feeling on this subject +than any number of sympathetic resolutions adopted at party conventions +or in State legislatures by party managers, bent on harpooning Irish +voters. If Ireland had really made herself a “nation,” with or without +the consent of Great Britain, a refusal to hoist the Irish flag on the +occasion of an Irish holiday would be not only churlish but foolish. But +thousands of Americans, who might view with equanimity the disruption of +the British Empire and the establishment of an Irish republic, regard, +not only with disapprobation, but with resentment, the growing +disposition of Irish agitators in and out of the British Parliament to +thrash out on American soil their schemes for bringing about these +results with the help of Irishmen who have assumed the duties by +acquiring the rights of American citizenship. It is not in accordance +with the American doctrine of “Home Rule” that “Home Rule” of any sort +for <a name="pagexxv" id="pagexxv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxv] +</span> +Ireland should be organised in New York or in Chicago by +expatriated Irishmen.</p> + +<p>No man had a keener or more accurate sense of this than the most +eloquent and illustrious Irishman whose voice was ever heard in America.</p> + +<p>In the autumn of 1871 Father Burke of Tallaght and San Clemente, with +whom I had formed at Rome in early manhood a friendship which ended only +with his life, came to America as the commissioned Visitor of the +Dominican Order. His mission there will live for ever in the Catholic +annals of the New World. But of one episode of that mission no man +living perhaps knows so much as I, and I make no excuse for this +allusion to it here, as it illustrates perfectly the limits between the +lawful and the unlawful in the agitation of Irish questions upon +American soil.</p> + +<p>While Father Burke was in New York Mr. Froude came there, having been +invited to deliver before a Protestant Literary Association a series of +lectures upon the history of Ireland. My personal relations with Mr. +Froude, I should say here, and my esteem for his rare abilities, go back +to the days of the <i>Nemesis of Faith</i>, and I did not affect to disguise +from him the regret with which I learned his errand to the New World. +That his lectures would be brilliant, impressive, and interesting, was +quite certain; but it was equally certain, I thought, that <a name="pagexxvi" id="pagexxvi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxvi] +</span> +they would +do a world of mischief, by stirring up ancient issues of strife between +the Protestant and the Catholic populations of the United States.</p> + +<p>That they would be answered angrily, indiscreetly, and in a fashion to +aggravate prejudices which ought to be appeased on both sides of the +questions involved, was much more than probable. All this accordingly I +urged upon Father Burke, begging him to find or make time in the midst +of his engrossing duties for a systematic course of lectures in reply. +What other men would surely say in heat and with virulence would be said +by him, I knew, temperately, loftily, and wisely. Three strenuous +objections he made. One was that his work as a Catholic missionary +demanded all his thought and all his time; another that he was not +historically equipped to deal with so formidable an antagonist; and a +third that America ought not to be a battle-ground of Irish contentions. +It was upon the last that he dwelt most tenaciously; nor did he give way +until he had satisfied himself, after consulting with the highest +authorities of his Church, and with two or three of the coolest and most +judicious Irish citizens of New York, that I was right in believing that +his appearance in the arena as the champion of Ireland, would lift an +inevitable controversy high above the atmosphere of unworthy passion, +and put it beyond the reach of political mischief-makers.</p> + +<p><a name="pagexxvii" id="pagexxvii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxvii] +</span> +How nobly he did his work when he had become convinced that he ought to +do it, is now matter of history. But it is a hundredfold more needful +now than it was in 1871 and 1872, that the spirit in which he did it +should be known and published abroad. In the interval between the +delivery of two of his replies to Mr. Froude, Mr. Froude went to Boston. +A letter from Boston informed me that upon Mr. Froude’s arrival there, +all the Irish servants of the friend with whom he was to stay had +suddenly left the house, refusing to their employer the right to invite +under his roof a guest not agreeable to them. I handed this letter, +without a word, to Father Burke a few hours before he was to speak in +the Academy of Music. He read it with a kind of humorous wrath; and when +the evening came, he prefaced his lecture with a few strong and stirring +words, in which he castigated with equal sense and severity the +misconduct of his country-people, anticipating thus by many a year the +spirit in which the supreme authority of his Church has just now dealt +with the social plague of “boycotting,” whereof the strike of the +servant girls at Boston sixteen years ago was a precursory symptom.</p> + +<p>Father Burke understood that American citizenship imposes duties where +it confers rights. Nobody expects the European emigrant who abjures his +foreign allegiance to divest himself of his native <a name="pagexxviii" id="pagexxviii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxviii] +</span> +sympathies or +antipathies. But American law, and the conditions of American liberty, +require him to divest himself of the notion that he retains any right +actively to interfere in the domestic affairs of the country of his +birth. For public and political purposes, the Irishman who becomes an +American ceases to be an Irishman. When Mr. Gladstone’s Government in +1881 seized and locked up indefinitely, on “suspicion” of what they +might be about to do, American citizens of Irish birth, these “suspects” +clamoured, and had a right to clamour, for the intervention of the +American Government to protect them against being dealt with as if they +were Irishmen and British subjects. But by the abjuration of British +allegiance which gave them this right to clamour for American +protection, they had voluntarily made themselves absolute foreigners to +Ireland, with no more legal or moral right to interfere in the affairs +of that country than so many Chinamen or Peruvians.</p> + +<p>Having said this, I ought, in justice to my fellow-citizens of Irish +birth, to say that these elementary truths have too often been obscured +for them by the conduct of public bodies in America, and of American +public men.</p> + +<p>No American public man of reputation, holding an executive office in the +Federal Government, has ever thrust himself, it is true, so inexcusably +into <a name="pagexxix" id="pagexxix"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxix] +</span> +the domestic affairs of Great Britain and Ireland as did Mr. +Gladstone into the domestic affairs of the United States when, speaking +at Newcastle in the very crisis of our great civil war, he gave all the +weight of his position as a Cabinet Minister to the assertion that Mr. +Jefferson Davis had created not only an army and a navy, but a nation, +and thereby compelled the Prime Minister of Great Britain to break the +effect of this declaration by insisting that another Cabinet Minister, +Sir George Cornewall Lewis, should instantly make a speech countering +it, and covering the neutrality of the British Government. <a id="footnotetag4" + name="footnotetag4"></a><a href="#footnote4"><sup>4</sup></a></p> + +<p>Nor has either House of the Congress of the United States ever been +guilty of the impertinence of adopting resolutions of sympathy with the +Home Rule, or any other movement affecting directly the domestic affairs +of the British Empire, though, within my own knowledge, very strong +pressure has been more than once put upon the Foreign Affairs Committees +of both Houses to bring this about.</p> + +<p>But such resolutions have been repeatedly adopted by State Legislatures, +and individual members, both of the Federal Senate and of the Federal +Lower House, have discredited themselves, and brought such discredit as +they could upon the Congress, by effusions of the same sort. The bad +citizenship of <a name="pagexxx" id="pagexxx"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxx] +</span> +Irish-American citizens, however, is not the less bad +citizenship because they may have been led into it by the recklessness +of State Legislatures—which have no responsibility for our foreign +relations—or the sycophancy of public men. If it were proved to +demonstration that Home Rule would be the salvation of Ireland, no +American citizen would have any more right to take an active part in +furthering it than to take an active part in dethroning the Czar of all +the Russias. The lesson which Washington administered to Citizen Genet, +when that meddlesome minister of the French Republic undertook to “boom” +the rights of men by issuing letters of marque at Charleston, has +governed the foreign relations of the United States ever since, and it +is as binding upon every private citizen as upon every public servant of +the Republic.</p> + +<p>I must ask my readers, therefore, to bear it constantly in mind that all +my observations and comments have been made from an American, not from a +British or an Irish point of view. How or by whom Ireland shall be +governed concerns me only in so far as the government of Ireland may +affect the character and the tendencies of the Irish people, and +thereby, through the close, intimate, and increasing connection between +the Irish people and the people of the United States, may tend to affect +the future of my country. This being my point of view, <a name="pagexxxi" id="pagexxxi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxi] +</span> +it will be +apparent, I think, that I have at least laboured under no temptation to +see things otherwise than as they were, or to state things otherwise +than as I saw them.</p> + +<p>With Arthur Young, who more clearly than any other man of his time saw +the end from the beginning of the fatuous and featherheaded French +Revolution of 1789, I have always been inclined to think “the +application of theory to methods of government a surprising imbecility +in the human mind:” and it will be found that in this book I have done +little more than set down, as fully and clearly as I could, what I +actually saw and heard in Ireland. My method has been as simple as my +object. During each day as occasion served, and always at night, I made +stenographic notes of whatever had attracted my attention or engaged my +interest. As I had no case to make for or against any political party or +any theory of government in Ireland, I took things great and small, and +people high and low, as they came, putting myself in contact by +preference, wherever I could, with those classes of the Irish people of +whom we see least in America, and concerning myself, as to my notes, +only that they should be made under the vivid immediate impress of +whatever they were to record. These notes I have subsequently written +out in the spirit in which I made them, in all cases taking what pains +<a name="pagexxxii" id="pagexxxii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxii] +</span> +I could to verify statements of facts, and in many cases, where it +seemed desirable or necessary, submitting the proofs of the pages as +finally printed to the persons whom, after myself, they most concerned.</p> + +<p>I have been more annoyed by the delay than by the trouble thus entailed +upon me; but I shall be satisfied if those who may take the pains to +read the book shall as nearly as possible see what I saw, and hear what +I heard.</p> + +<p>I have no wish to impress my own conclusions upon others who may be +better able than I am accurately to interpret the facts from which these +conclusions have been drawn. Such as they are, I have put them into a +few pages at the end of the book.</p> + +<p>It will be found that I have touched only incidentally upon the subject +of Home Rule for Ireland. Until it shall be ascertained what “Home Rule +for Ireland” means, that subject seems to me to lie quite outside the +domain of my inquiries. “Home Rule for Ireland” is not now a plan—nor +so much as a proposition. It is merely a polemical phrase, of little +importance to persons really interested in the condition of Ireland, +however invaluable it may be to the makers of party platforms in my own +country, or to Parliamentary candidates on this side of the Atlantic. It +may mean anything or nothing, from Mr. Chamberlain’s imperialist scheme +of four Provincial Councils—which recalls the <a name="pagexxxiii" id="pagexxxiii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxiii] +</span> +outlines of a system +once established with success in New Zealand—to that absolute and +complete separation in all particulars of the government of Ireland from +the government of Great Britain, which has unquestionably been the aim +of every active Irish organisation in the United States for the last +twenty years, and which the accredited leader of the “Home Rule” party +in the British Parliament, Mr. Parnell, is understood in America to have +pledged himself that he will do anything to further and nothing to +impede. On this point, what I took to be conclusive documentary evidence +was submitted to me in New York several years ago by Mr. Sheridan, at a +time when the fever-heat of British indignation excited by those murders +in the Phoenix Park, for which I believe it is now admitted by the best +informed authorities that Mr. Sheridan had no responsibility, was +driving Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates into disavowals of +the extreme men of their connection, which, but for Mr. Sheridan’s +coolness and consciousness of his well-assured domination over them, +might have led to extremely inconvenient consequences to all +concerned. <a id="footnotetag5" + name="footnotetag5"></a><a href="#footnote5"><sup>5</sup></a> But whatever “Home Rule” may or may not mean, I went to +Ireland, not to find some achromatic meaning for a prismatic phrase, +which is flashed at you fifty times <a name="pagexxxiv" id="pagexxxiv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxiv] +</span> +in England or America where you +encounter it once in Ireland, but to learn what I could of the social +and economical condition of the Irish people as affected by the +revolutionary forces which are now at work in that country.</p> + +<p>I have watched the development of these forces too long and too closely +to be under any illusion as to the real importance relatively with them +of the so-called “Parliamentary” action of the Irish Nationalists.</p> + + +<h3>II.</h3> +<p>The visits to Ireland, of which this book is a record, were made on my +return from a sojourn in Rome during the celebration of the Jubilee of +His Holiness Leo XIII. What I then and there learned convinced me that +the Vatican was on the eve of grappling in Ireland with issues +substantially identical with those which were forced, in my own country, +two years ago, upon a most courageous and gifted member of the American +Catholic hierarchy, the Archbishop of New York, by the open adhesion of +an eminent Irish American ecclesiastic, the Rev. Dr. M‘Glynn, to the +social revolution of which Mr. Henry George is the best-equipped and +most indefatigable apostle. Entertaining this conviction (which events +have since shown to have been well-founded), I was anxious to survey on +the <a name="pagexxxv" id="pagexxxv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxv] +</span> +spot the conditions under which the conflict so vigorously +encountered by the Archbishop in New York must be waged by the Vatican +in Ireland.</p> + +<p>To suppose that the Vatican, in dealing with this conflict, either in +Ireland or in America, is troubling itself about the balancing of +political acrobats, British or American, upon the tight-rope of “Home +Rule,” is as absurd as it would have been to suppose that in 1885 the +Vatican concerned itself with the subterranean intrigues which there is +reason to believe the Irish Nationalists then sought to carry on with +the wire-pullers of the two great British political parties. To get a +correct perspective of the observations which I came from Rome this year +to make in Ireland, my readers, as I have already said, must allow me to +take them across the Atlantic, and must put aside as accessory and +incidental the forensic and polemic phenomena of Irish politics, with +which they are perhaps only too familiar.</p> + +<p>It is as easy to go too far back as it is not to go back far enough in +the study of such a revolutionary movement as that of which Ireland is +just now the arena.</p> + +<p>Many and sore are the historical grievances of the Irish people. That +they are historical and not actual grievances would seem to be admitted +by so sympathetic and minutely well-informed a writer <a name="pagexxxvi" id="pagexxxvi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxvi] +</span> +as Dr. Sigerson, +when he gives it as his opinion, that after the passage of the Land Act +of 1870, “the concession in principle of the demands of the cultivators +as tenants” had “abolished the class war waged between landlords and +their tenantry.”</p> + +<p>The class war between the tenantry and their landlords, therefore, which +is now undoubtedly waging in Ireland cannot be attributed to the +historical grievances of the Irish people. The tradition and the memory +of these historical grievances may indeed be used by designing or +hysterical traders in agitation to inflame the present war. But the war +itself is not the old war, nor can it be explained by recurring to the +causes of the old war. It has the characteristics no longer of a +defensive war, nor yet of a war of revenge absolutely, but of an +aggressive war, and of a war of conquest. In his able work on “The Land +Tenure and the Land Classes of Ireland,” Dr. Sigerson, writing in 1871, +looked forward to the peaceful co-existence in Ireland of two systems of +land-holding, “whereby the country might enjoy the advantage of what is +good in the ‘landlord,’ or single middleman system, and in the peasant +proprietary or direct system.”</p> + +<p>What we now see in Ireland, after nearly twenty years of legislation, +steadily tending to the triumph of equal rights, is an agitation +threatening not only the “co-existence” of these two systems, but the +very existence of each of these systems.</p> + +<p><a name="pagexxxvii" id="pagexxxvii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxvii] +</span> +To get at the origin and the meaning of this agitation we must be +content, I believe, to go no further back than ten years, and to look +for them, not in Ireland, but in America, not to Mr. Parnell and Mr. +Gladstone primarily, but to Mr. Davitt and Mr. Henry George.</p> + + +<h3>III.</h3> +<p>In a very remarkable letter written to Earl Grey in 1868, after the +Clerkenwell explosions had brought the disestablishment of the Irish +Protestant Church into Mr. Gladstone’s scheme of “practical politics,” +the Archbishop of Westminster, not then a Cardinal, called the attention +of Englishmen to the fact, not yet I fear adequately apprehended by +them, that “the assimilating power of America upon the Irish people, if +seven days slower than that of England in reaching Ireland, is sevenfold +more penetrating and powerful upon the whole population.” By this the +Archbishop meant, what was unquestionably true, that even in 1868, only +twenty years after the great Irish exodus to America began, the social +and political ideas of America were exerting a seven-fold stronger +influence upon the character and the tendencies of the Irish people than +the social and political ideas of England. Thanks to the development of +the cables and the <a name="pagexxxviii" id="pagexxxviii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxviii] +</span> +telegraph since 1868, and to the enormous progress +of America since that time in wealth and population, this “assimilating +power” reaches Ireland much more rapidly, and exerts upon the Irish +people a very much more drastic influence than in 1868. This +establishes, of course, a return current westward, which is as necessary +to he watched, and is as much neglected by American as the original +eastward current is by British public men.</p> + +<p>In this letter of 1868 to Earl Grey, the Archbishop of Westminster +desiring, as an Englishman, to counteract, if possible, this influence +which was drawing Ireland away from the British monarchy, and towards +the American Republic, maintained that by two things the “heart of +Ireland” might be won, and her affections enlisted with her interests in +the support of the unity, solidity, and prosperity of the British +Empire. One of these two things was “perfect religious equality between +the Catholics and the Protestants of Ireland.” The other was that the +Imperial Legislature should by statute make it impossible for any +landlord in Ireland to commit three wrongs,—“first, the wrong of +abusing his rights by arbitrary eviction; secondly, by exacting an +exorbitant rent; thirdly, by appropriating to his own use the +improvements effected by the industry of his tenants.”</p> + +<p>Perfect religious equality has since been estab<a name="pagexxxix" id="pagexxxix"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxix] +</span> +lished between the +Catholics and the Protestants of Ireland. The three wrongs which the +Archbishop called upon the Imperial Legislature to make impossible to +Irish landlords have since been made impossible by Statute.</p> + +<p>Yet it is on all hands admitted that the “unity, solidity, and +prosperity” of the British Empire have never been so seriously +threatened in Ireland as during the last ten years. Was the Archbishop +wrong, therefore, in his estimate of the situation in 1868? Or has the +centripetal influence of remedial British legislation since 1868 failed +to check a centrifugal advance “by leaps and bounds,” in the +“assimilating power” of America upon Ireland?</p> + + +<h3>IV.</h3> +<p>Just ten years ago, in 1878, Mr. Michael Davitt and Mr. John Devoy (the +latter of whom had been commissioned in 1865 by the Fenian leader +Stephens, as “chief organiser of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the +British army”), being then together in America, promulgated, Mr. Davitt +in a speech at Boston, and Mr. Devoy in a letter sent to the <i>Freeman’s +Journal</i> in Dublin, the outlines of a scheme for overthrowing British +rule in Ireland by revolutionising the ownership of land in that +country.</p> + +<p><a name="pagexl" id="pagexl"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xl] +</span> +The basis of this scheme had been laid thirty years before, in 1848, by +Finton Lalor, John Mitchel, and the present Archbishop of Cashel, then a +simple curate.</p> + +<p>It was thus stated by Lalor in his paper, the <i>Irish Felon</i>:—</p> + +<p>“The entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the sun and +down to the centre of the earth, is vested, as of right, in the people +of Ireland. The soil of the country belongs as of right to the entire +people of the country, not to any one class, but to the nation.”</p> + +<p>This was a distinct denial of the right of private property in land. If +true of Ireland and the Irish people this proposition was true of all +lands and of all peoples. Lalor, though more of a patriot than of a +philosopher, saw this plainly; and in one of the three numbers of his +paper which appeared before it was suppressed by the British Government, +he said “the principle I propose goes to the foundations of Europe, and +sooner or later will cause Europe to uprise.” Michael Davitt saw this as +clearly in 1878 as Finton Lalor thirty years before. He had matured his +plans in connection with this principle during the weary but not wasted +years of his imprisonment as a Fenian at Dartmoor, a place, the name of +which is connected in America with many odious memories of the second +war between England and <a name="pagexli" id="pagexli"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xli] +</span> +the United States; and going out to America +almost immediately after his release on a ticket of leave, he there +found the ideas of Finton Lalor and his associates of 1848, ripened and +harvested in the mind of an American student of sociology, Henry George. +Nowhere in the world has what a shrewd English traveller calls “the +illegitimate development of private wealth” attained such proportions in +modern times as in America, and especially in California. Nowhere, too, +in the world is the ostentatious waste of the results of labour upon the +antics of a frivolous plutocracy a more crying peril of our times than +in America. Henry George, an American of the Eastern States, who went to +the Pacific coast as a lad, had grown up with and watched the progress +of this social disease in California; and when Davitt reached America in +1878, Henry George was preparing to publish his revolutionary book on +<i>Progress and Poverty</i>, which appeared in 1879. Dates are important from +this point, as they will trace for the reader the formation of the +strongest forces which, as I believe, are to-day at work to shape the +future of Ireland, and, if Cardinal Manning is right, with the future of +Ireland, the future of the British Empire.</p> + +<p>The year 1878 saw the “Home Rule” movement in Irish politics brought to +an almost ludicrous halt by the success of Mr. Parnell, then a young +member of Parliament for Meath, in unhorsing the leader of <a name="pagexlii" id="pagexlii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xlii] +</span> +that +movement, Mr. Butt. As the Irish members then had no coherent purpose or +policy, Mr. Parnell had, without much trouble, dominated and brigaded +them to follow him blindly into a system of parliamentary obstruction, +which there is reason to suppose was suggested to him by a friend who +had studied the Congressional proceedings of the United States, the +native country of his mother, and especially the tactics which had +enabled Mr. Randall of Pennsylvania, the leader of the Democratic +minority in the House of Representatives, to check the so-called “Civil +Rights Bill,” sent down by the Senate to that House, during a continuous +session of forty-six hours and a half, with no fewer than seventy-seven +calls of the house, in the month of January 1875, some time before Mr. +Parnell first took his seat in the House of Commons.</p> + +<p>When Mr. Parnell, early in 1878, thanks to this system, had ousted Mr. +Butt, and got himself elected as President of the Irish “Home Rule +Confederation,” he found himself, as an Irish friend of mine wrote to me +at the time, in an awkward position. He had command of the “Home Rule” +members at Westminster, but he had no notion what to do with them, and +neither they nor he could see anyway open to securing a permanent hold +upon the Irish voters. Three bad harvests in succession had thrown the +Irish tenants <a name="pagexliii" id="pagexliii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xliii] +</span> +into a state which disinclined them to make sacrifices +for any sentimental policy, but prepared them to lend their ears eagerly +to Michael Davitt, when, on his return from the United States in the +early spring of 1879, he proclaimed anew, at Irishtown in his native +county of Mayo, the gospel of 1848 giving the land of Ireland to the +people of Ireland. Clearly Mr. Davitt held the winning card. As he +frankly put the case to a special correspondent, whom I sent to see him, +and whose report I published in New York, he saw that “the only issue +upon which Home Rulers, Nationalists, Obstructionists, and each and +every shade of opinion existing in Ireland could be united was the Land +Question,” and of that question he took control. Naturally enough, Mr. +Parnell, himself a landowner under the English settlement, shrank at +first from committing himself and his fortunes to the leadership of Mr. +Davitt. But no choice was really left him, and there is reason to +believe that a decision was made easier to him by a then inchoate +undertaking that he should be personally protected against the financial +consequences to himself of the new departure, by a testimonial fund, +such as was in fact raised and presented to him in 1883. In June 1879 he +accepted the inevitable, and in a speech at Westport put himself with +his parliamentary following and machinery at the service of the founder +of the Irish Land League, <a name="pagexliv" id="pagexliv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xliv] +</span> +uttering the keynote of Mr. Davitt’s “new +departure” in his celebrated appeal to the Irish tenants to “keep a firm +grip of their homesteads.” In the middle of October 1879, Mr. Davitt +formally organised the Irish National Land League, “to reduce rack-rents +and facilitate the obtaining of the ownership of the land of Ireland by +the occupiers,” and Mr. Parnell was made its first President. He was +sent out to America in that capacity, at the end of the year to explain +to the Irish-American leaders the importance of supplying the new +organisation with funds sufficient to enable it to take and keep the +field at Westminster with a force of paid members not dependent for +their support upon the Irish constituencies. It was obviously impossible +either to guarantee any considerable number of Irishmen holding property +against loss by a policy aimed at the foundations of property, or to +count upon finding for every Irish seat a member of local weight and +stake, imbued with the spirit of martyrdom.</p> + +<p>Mr. Parnell landed at New York on the 1st of January 1880. An interview +with him, written out on board of the steamer which took him to America +by a correspondent detailed for that purpose, was published on the +morning after his arrival. It made on the whole an unfavourable +impression in America, which was not improved by an in<a name="pagexlv" id="pagexlv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xlv] +</span> +judicious quarrel +into which he drifted with a portion of the American press, and which +was distinctly deepened by his inexcusable misrepresentations of the +conduct of Queen Victoria during the famine of 1847, and by his foolish +attacks upon the management and objects of the Duchess of Marlborough’s +fund for the relief of Irish distress. The friends of Mr. Davitt in +America, however, and the leaders of the most active Irish organisations +there, came to the rescue, and as the two American parties were +preparing their lines of battle for the Presidential conflict of 1880, +Mr. Parnell was not only “put through” the usual course of “receptions” +by Mayors and State legislatures, but invited on an “off-day” to address +the House of Representatives at Washington. His tour, however, on the +whole, harmed more than it helped the new Irish movement on my side of +the Atlantic, and when he was called back to take his part in the +electoral contest precipitated by Lord Beaconsfield’s dissolution of +Parliament at Easter 1880, Mr. Davitt went out to America himself to do +what his Parliamentary associate had not succeeded in doing. During this +visit of Mr. Davitt to the United States, Mr. Henry George finally +transferred his residence from San Francisco to New York, and made his +arrangements to visit England and Ireland, and bring about a practical +combination be<a name="pagexlvi" id="pagexlvi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xlvi] +</span> +tween the advocates of “the land for the people” on both +sides of the ocean. These arrangements he carried out in 1881-82, +publishing in 1881, in America, his treatise on the Irish Land question, +while Mr. Davitt, who had been arrested after his return to Europe by +Mr. Gladstone’s Government in February 1881, on a revocation of his +ticket-of-leave, lay a prisoner at Portland. Mr. George himself, while +travelling in Ireland with an academical English friend, came under +“suspicion” in the eyes of one of Mr. Forster’s officers, and was +arrested, but at once released. During the protracted confinement of Mr. +Davitt at Portland, the utter incapacity of Mr. Parnell and his +Parliamentary associates to manage the social revolution initiated by +the founder of the Land League became fully apparent, not only to +impartial, but even to sympathetic observers in America, long before it +was demonstrated by the incarceration of Mr. Parnell in Kilmainham, the +disavowal, under pressure, of the no-rent manifesto by Archbishop Croke, +and the suppression of the Land League. In sequestrating Mr. Davitt, Mr. +Forster, as was shown by the extraordinary scenes which in the House of +Commons followed his arrest, had struck at the core of the revolution, +and had the Irish Secretary not been deserted by Mr. Gladstone, under +influences which originated at Kilmainham, and were reinforced by <a name="pagexlvii" id="pagexlvii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xlvii] +</span> +the +pressure of the United States Government in the spring of 1882, history +might have had a very different tale to tell of the last six years in +Ireland and in Great Britain. <a id="footnotetag6" + name="footnotetag6"></a><a href="#footnote6"><sup>6</sup></a></p> + + +<h3>V.</h3> +<p>It was after the return of Mr. George from Ireland to New York in 1882 +that the first black point appeared on the horizon, of the conflict, +inevitable in the nature of things, between the social revolution and +the Catholic Church, which assumed such serious proportions two years +ago in America, and which is now developing itself in Ireland. Among the +ablest and the most earnest converts in America to the doctrine of the +new social revolution was the Rev. Dr. M‘Glynn, a Catholic priest, +standing in the front rank of his order in New York, in point alike of +eloquence in the pulpit, and of influence in private life. Finding, like +Michael Davitt, in the doctrine of Henry George an outcome and a +confirmation of the principle laid down in 1848 for the liberation of +Ireland by Finton Lalor, Dr. M‘Glynn threw himself ardently into the +advocacy of that doctrine,—so ardently that in August 1882 the Prefect +of the Propaganda, Cardinal Simeoni, found it necessary to invite the +attention of Car<a name="pagexlviii" id="pagexlviii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xlviii] +</span> +dinal M‘Closkey, then Archbishop of New York, to +speeches of Dr. M‘Glynn, reported in the <i>Irish World</i> of New York, as +“containing propositions openly opposed to the teachings of the Catholic +Church.”</p> + +<p>It did not concern the Propaganda that these propositions ran on +all-fours with the policy of the Irish Land League established by Mr. +Davitt, and accepted by Mr. Parnell. What concerned the Propaganda in +the propositions of Dr. M‘Glynn at New York in 1882 was precisely what +concerns the Propaganda in the programme of Mr. Davitt as mismanaged by +Mr. Dillon in Ireland in 1888—the incompatibility of these +propositions, and of that programme, with the teachings of the Church.</p> + +<p>Upon receiving the instructions of the Propaganda in August 1882, +Cardinal M‘Closkey sent for Dr. M‘Glynn, and set the matter plainly +before him. Dr. M‘Glynn professed regret for his errors, promised to +abstain in future from political meetings, and begged the Cardinal to +inform the authorities at Home of his intention to walk more +circumspectly. The submission of Dr. M‘Glynn was approved at Rome, but +it was gently intimated to him that it needed to be crowned by public +reparation for the scandal he had caused. He disregarded this pastoral +hint, and when the Archbishop Coadjutor of New York, Dr. Corrigan, went +to Rome in 1883 to <a name="pagexlix" id="pagexlix"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xlix] +</span> +represent the Cardinal, who was unequal to the +journey, he found the Propaganda by no means satisfied with the attitude +of Dr. M‘Glynn. Two years after this, in October 1885, Cardinal +M‘Closkey died, and Dr. Corrigan succeeded him as Archbishop of New +York.</p> + +<p>Between the first admonition given to the sacerdotal ally of Mr. George +in 1882 and this event much had come to pass in Ireland. The Land League +suppressed by Mr. Forster had been suffered to reappear as the National +League by Earl Spencer and Mr. Trevelyan. Sir William Harcourt’s +stringent and sweeping “Coercion Act” of July 11th, 1882, passed under +the stress of the murders in the Phoenix Park, expiring by its own terms +in July 1885, Mr. Gladstone found himself forced either to alienate a +number of his Radical supporters by proposing a renewal of that Act, or +to invite a catastrophe in Ireland by attempting to rule that country +under “the ordinary law.”</p> + +<p>He elected to escape from the dilemma by inviting a defeat in Parliament +on a secondary question of the Budget. He went out of power on the 9th +of June 1885, leaving Lord Salisbury to send the Earl of Carnarvon as +Viceroy to Ireland, and the Irish party in Parliament to darken the air +on both sides of the Atlantic with portentous intimations of a +mysterious compact, under which they were to <a name="pagel" id="pagel"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg l] +</span> +secure Home Rule for +Ireland by establishing the Conservatives in their places at the general +election in November. <a id="footnotetag7" + name="footnotetag7"></a><a href="#footnote7"><sup>7</sup></a></p> + +<p>What came of all this I may briefly rehearse. Going out to America in +November 1885, and returning to England in January 1886, I remained in +London long enough to assure myself, and to publish in America my +conviction of the utter hopelessness of Mr. Gladstone’s “Home Rule” +measure, the success of which would have made his government the ally +and the instrument of Mr. Parnell in carrying out the plans of Mr. +Davitt, Mr. Henry George, and the active Irish organisations of the +United States. All this is matter of history.</p> + +<p>The effect of Mr. Gladstone’s speech of April 8, 1886, introducing his +Home Rule Bill, upon the Irish in America was simply intoxicating. They +saw him, as in a vision, repeating for the benefit of Ireland at Dublin, +on a grander scale, the impressive scene of his surrender in 1858 at +Corfu of the Protectorate of the Ionian Islands to Greece.</p> + +<p>Upon thousands also of Americans, interested more or less intelligently +in British affairs, but neither familiar, nor caring to be, with the +details of the political situation in Great Britain, this appearance of +the British Premier, as the champion of Home Rule for Ireland, +denouncing the “base<a name="pageli" id="pageli"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg li] +</span> +ness and blackguardism” of Pitt and his +accomplices, the framers of the Union of 1800, naturally produced a very +profound impression. What might be almost called a “tidal wave” of +sympathy with the Irish National League, and with him as its ally, made +itself felt throughout the United States. Had I witnessed the drama from +the far-off auditorium in New York, I might doubtless have shared the +conviction of so many of my countrymen that we were about to behold the +consummation tunefully anticipated so many years ago by John Quincy +Adams, and—</p> + +<p class="i4"> +“Proud of herself, victorious over fate,<br /> +See Erin rise, an independent state.” +</p> + +<p>The moment seemed propitious for a resolute forward move in America of +Mr. Henry George, and the other American believers in the doctrine of +“the land for the people.” It would have been more propitious had not +the political managers of the Irish party, misapprehending to the last +moment the drift of things in the British Parliament, and counting +firmly upon a victory for Mr. Gladstone, either at Westminster or at the +polls, insisted upon holding a great convention of the Irish in America +at Chicago in August 1886. A proposition to do this had been made in the +spring of 1885, and put off, in judicious deference to the disgust which +many independent Americans of both parties then <a name="pagelii" id="pagelii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lii] +</span> +felt at the course +pursued by Mr. Parnell’s friends, Mr. Egan and Mr. Sullivan in 1884, +when these leaders openly led the Irish with drums beating and green +flags flying out of the Democratic into the Republican camp.</p> + +<p>As it was, however, Mr. Gladstone having gone out of power a second +time, on the second day of June in 1886, the non-parliamentary and real +leader in Ireland of the Irish revolutionary movement, Mr. Davitt, came +overtly to the front, and crossed the Atlantic to ride the whirlwind and +direct the storm at the Convention appointed to be held in Chicago on +the 18th of August.</p> + +<p>In New York he found Mr. Henry George quietly preparing to put the +emotions of the moment to profit at the municipal election which was to +occur in that city in November, and Dr. M‘Glynn more enamoured than ever +of the doctrine of “the land for the people,” and more defiant than ever +of the Propaganda and of his ecclesiastical superiors. It was resolved +that Mr. George should come forward as a candidate for the mayoralty in +November, and Dr. M‘Glynn determined to take the field in support of +him.</p> + + +<h3><a name="pageliii" id="pageliii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg liii] +</span> +VI.</h3> + +<p>We now come to close quarters.</p> + +<p>Dr. Corrigan, as I have said, had become the Archbishop of New York in +October 1885. The Irish-American Convention met at Chicago, Mr. Davitt +dominating its proceedings by his courageous and outspoken support of +his defeated Parliamentary allies in England. The candidacy of Mr. Henry +George had not yet been announced in New York. But Dr. M‘Glynn resumed +his practice of addressing public meetings in support of the doctrines +of Mr. Davitt and of Henry George. The Archbishop’s duty was plain. It +was not pleasant. A Catholic prelate of Irish blood living in New York +might have been pardoned for avoiding, if he could, an open intervention +at such a moment, to prevent an able and popular priest from disobeying +his ecclesiastical superiors in his zeal for a doctrine hostile to +“landlordism,” and cordially approved by the most influential of the +Irish leaders.</p> + +<p>But on the 21st August 1886, while all the Irishmen in New York were +wild with excitement over the proceedings at Chicago, Archbishop +Corrigan did his duty, and admonished Dr. M‘Glynn to restrain his +political ardour. The admonition was thrown away. A month later, the +canvass of Mr. Henry George being then fully opened, Dr. M‘Glynn <a name="pageliv" id="pageliv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg liv] +</span> +sent +Mr. George himself to wait upon the Archbishop with a note of +introduction as his “very dear and valued friend,” in the hope of +inducing the Archbishop to withdraw his inhibition and allow him to +speak at a great meeting, then about to be held, of the supporters of +Mr. George.</p> + +<p>The Archbishop replied in a firm but friendly note, forbidding Dr. +M‘Glynn “in the most positive manner” to attend the meeting referred to, +or “any other political meeting whatever.”</p> + +<p>Dr. M‘Glynn deliberately disobeyed this order, attended the meeting, and +threw himself with ever increasing heat into the war against +landlordism. On the 2d of October 1886, therefore, he was formally +“suspended” from his priestly functions—nor has he ever since been +permitted to resume them. Another priest presides over the great church +of St. Stephen, of which he was the rector. More than once the door of +repentance and return has been opened to him; but, I believe, he is +still waging war in his own way, and beyond the precincts of the +priesthood, both upon the right of private property in land and upon the +Pope.</p> + +<p>He is a man of vigorous intellect; and he has defined the issue between +himself and the Church in language so terse and clear that I reproduce +it here. It defines also the real issue of to-day between the Church +speaking through the Papal Decree of <a name="pagelv" id="pagelv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lv] +</span> +April 20, 1888, and the National +League of Ireland acting through the “Plan of Campaign.”</p> + +<p>No heed having been paid by Dr. M‘Glynn to several successive +intimations summoning him to go to Rome and explain his attitude, he +finally, on the 20th of December 1886, wrote a letter in which, with a +single skilful turn of his wrist, he took out the core of Henry George’s +doctrine as to land, which really is the core also of the Irish Plan of +Campaign, and thus laid it before the Archbishop of New York:—</p> + +<p>“My doctrine about land has been made clear in speeches, in reports of +interviews, and in published articles, and I repeat it here. I have +taught, and I shall continue to teach in speeches and writings, as long +as I live, that land is rightfully the property of the people in common, +and that private ownership of land is against natural justice, no matter +by what civil or ecclesiastical laws it may be sanctioned; and I would +bring about instantly, if I could, such change of laws all over the +world as would confiscate private property in land without one penny of +compensation to the miscalled owners.”</p> + +<p>There is no shuffling here. With logical precision Dr. M‘Glynn strips +Mr. George’s doctrine of its technical disguise as a form of taxation, +and presents it to the world as a simple Confiscation of Rents. Many +acute critics of <i>Progress and Poverty</i> have <a name="pagelvi" id="pagelvi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lvi] +</span> +failed to see that when +Mr. George calls upon the State to take over to itself, and to its own +uses, the whole annual rental value of the bare land of a country, the +land, that is, irrespectively of improvements put upon it by man, he +proposes not “a single tax upon land” at all, but an actual confiscation +of the rental of the land—which for practical purposes is the land—to +the uses of the State, without a levy, and without compensation to “the +miscalled owners.”</p> + +<p>When a tax is levied, the need by the State levying it of a certain sum +of money must first be ascertained by competent authority, legislative +or executive, as the case may be, and the law-making power must then, +according to a prescribed form, enact that to raise such a sum a certain +tax shall be levied on designated property or occupations. If the +exigencies of the State are held to require it, a tax may be levied upon +property of more than its value, as in the case, for example, of the +customs duty which was imposed in one of our “tariff revisions” upon +plate glass imported into the United States by way of “protecting” a +single plate-glass factory then existing in the United States. This was +an abominable abuse of a constitutional power, but it was not +“confiscation.” What Henry George proposes is confiscation, as Dr. +M‘Glynn plainly sees and courageously says. What <a name="pagelvii" id="pagelvii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lvii] +</span> +he proposes is that +the State shall compel the annual rental value of all land to be paid +into the public treasury, without regard to the question whether the +State does or does not need such a sum of money. That is confiscation +pure and simple, the State, in the assumed interest of the State, +proceeding against the private owners of land, or the “miscalled +owners,” to use Dr. M‘Glynn’s significant phrase, precisely as under the +feudal system the State proceeded against the private property of rebels +and traitors. No good reason can be shown why the process should not be +applied to personalty and to debts as well as to land.</p> + +<p>This was the doctrine indorsed at the polls in New York in November 1886 +by 68,000 voters. Nor can there be much doubt that it would have been +indorsed by the few thousand more votes needed to defeat Mr. Hewitt, the +actual Mayor of New York, and to put Mr. Henry George into the Chief +Magistracy of the first city of the New World, had not its teachers and +preachers been confronted by the quiet, cool, and determined prelate who +met it as plainly as it was put. “Your letter,” said the Archbishop, +“has brought the painful intelligence that you decline to go to Rome, +and that you have taught, and will continue to teach, the injustice of +private ownership of land, no matter by what laws of Church or State it +may be sanctioned. In view <a name="pagelviii" id="pagelviii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lviii] +</span> +of such declarations, to permit you to +exercise the holy ministry would be manifestly wrong.”</p> + +<p>In these few words of the Archbishop of New York, we have plainly +affirmed in 1886 the principle underlying the Papal Decree of 1888 +against the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting in Ireland. There is no +question of parties or of politics in the one case or in the other. When +Dr. M‘Glynn talked about the private ownership of land in New York as +“against natural justice,” he flung himself not only against the Eighth +Commandment and the teachings of the Catholic Church, touching the +rights of property, but against the constitutions of the State of New +York and of the United States. That “private property shall not be taken +for public uses without just compensation” is a fundamental provision of +the Constitution of the United States, which is itself a part of the +Constitution of every State of the Union; and the right of private +ownership in land is defined and protected beyond doubt or cavil in New +York under the State Constitution. An Act passed in 1830 provides and +declares that all lands within the State “are allodial, so that, subject +only to the liability to escheat, the entire and absolute property is +vested in the owners according to the nature of their respective +estates.”</p> + +<p>By this Act “all feudal tenures of every description, with all their +incidents,” were “abolished.” <a name="pagelix" id="pagelix"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lix] +</span> +Most of the “feudal incidents” of the +socage tenure had been previously abolished by an Act passed in 1787, +under the first Constitution of the State, adopted at Kingston in 1777, +a year after the Declaration of American Independence; and socage tenure +by fixed and determinate service, not military or variable by the lord +at his will, had been adopted long before by an Act of the first +Assembly of the Province of New York held in 1691 under the first Royal +Governor, after the reconquest of the province from Holland, and in the +reign of William and Mary. This Act provided that all lands should “be +held in free and common socage according to the tenure of East Greenwich +in England.” It is an interesting circumstance that the right of private +ownership in land, thus rooted in our history, should have been defended +against a threatening revolutionary movement in New York by the courage +and loyalty to the Constitution of his country as well as to his Church +of a Catholic Archbishop. For this same Assembly of the Province of New +York in 1693, in an Act “to maintain Protestant ministers and churches,” +enacted that “every Jesuit and popish priest” found in the Province +after a certain day named, should be put into “perpetual imprisonment,” +with the proviso that if he escaped and was retaken he should suffer +death. And even in the Constitution of 1777 the <a name="pagelx" id="pagelx"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lx] +</span> +Protestantism of New +York expressed its hostility to the Catholic Church by exacting +subjection “in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil.”</p> + +<p>The position of the Archbishop, both as a churchman and as a citizen, +was impregnable. When Dr. M‘Glynn advocated the plan of Henry George, he +advocated at one and the same time the immoral seizure and confiscation +of the whole income of many persons within the protection of the +Constitution of New York, and the overthrow of the Constitution of that +State and of the United States. It may be within the competency of the +British Parliament to enact such a confiscation of rent without a +revolution, there being not only no allodial tenure of land in Great +Britain, but, it would appear, no limit to the power of a British +Parliament over the lives, liberties, and property of British subjects, +but the will of its members. But it is not within the competency of the +Congress of the United States, or of the Assembly of New York, to do +such a thing, the powers of these bodies being controlled and denned by +written Constitutions, which can only be altered or amended in a +prescribed manner and through prescribed and elaborate forms.</p> + + +<h3><a name="pagelxi" id="pagelxi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lxi] +</span> +VII.</h3> + +<p>By the middle of October 1886 it became clear that Mr. George, whose +candidacy had at first been regarded with indifference by the party +managers, both Democratic and Republican, in New York, would command a +vote certainly larger than that of one of these parties, and possibly +larger than that of either of them. To put him at the head of a poll of +three parties would elect him. This was so apparent that he and his +friends, including Dr. M‘Glynn and Mr. Davitt, were warranted in +expecting a victory.</p> + +<p>It was hardly therefore by a mere coincidence that this precise time was +selected for opening the war in Ireland against Rent. It is quite +possible that if Mr. Dillon and his Parliamentary friends had been in +less of a hurry to open this war before the return of Mr. Davitt from +America, it might have been opened in a manner less “politically +stupid,” if not less “morally wrong.” But, of course, if Mr. Henry +George had been elected Mayor of New York, as he came so near to being +in November 1886, and Mr. Davitt had returned to Ireland with the +prestige of contributing to place him in the municipal chair of the most +important city in the New World, Mr. Dillon and his Parliamentary +friends would pro<a name="pagelxii" id="pagelxii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lxii] +</span> +bably have found it necessary to accept a much less +conspicuous part in the conduct of the campaign.</p> + +<p>It was on the 17th of October 1886 that Mr. John Dillon, M.P., first +promulgated the “Plan of Campaign” at Portumna, in a speech which was +promptly flashed under the Atlantic to New York, there to feed the +flame, already fanned by the eloquence of Dr. M‘Glynn, into a blaze of +enthusiasm for the apostle of the New Gospel of Confiscation.</p> + +<p>Had the “Plan of Campaign” then been met by the highest local authority +of the Catholic Church in Ireland, as Henry George’s doctrine of +Confiscation was met in New York by Archbishop Corrigan, it might never +have been necessary to issue the Papal Decree of April 1888. But while +the Bishop of Limerick unhesitatingly denounced the “Plan of Campaign” +as “politically stupid and morally wrong,” the Archbishop of Dublin +bestowed upon it what may be called a left-handed benediction. Admitting +that it empowered one of the parties to a contract to “fix the terms on +which that contract should continue in force,” the Archbishop actually +condoned the claim of this immoral power by the tenant, on the ground +that the same immoral power had been theretofore exercised by the +landlord! Peter having robbed Paul from January to July, that is, Paul +should be encouraged by his spiritual guides to rob Peter from July to +January!</p> + +<p><a name="pagelxiii" id="pagelxiii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lxiii] +</span> +That the Catholic Church should even seem for a time to speak with two +voices on such a point as the moral quality of political machinery, or +that speaking with one voice upon such a point in America, it should +even seem to speak with another voice in Ireland, would clearly be a +disaster to the Church and to civilisation. From the moment therefore, +in 1886, when the issue between Dr. M‘Glynn and the Archbishop of New +York was defined, as I have shown, and the Irish National League, with a +quasi-indorsement from the Archbishop of Dublin, had arrayed itself +practically and openly on the side of Dr. M‘Glynn and against the +Archbishop of New York, interests far transcending those of any +political party in Ireland, in Great Britain, or in the United States, +were involved. Unfortunately for the immediate and decisive settlement +by Rome of the issue between Dr. M‘Glynn and the Archbishop of New York, +a certain vague but therefore more vexatious measure of countenance had +been given, before that issue was raised, to the theories of Mr. Henry +George by another American prelate, the Cardinal Archbishop of +Baltimore, and by more than one eminent ecclesiastic in Europe. Of +course this would have been impossible had these ecclesiastics +penetrated, like Dr. M‘Glynn, to the heart of Mr. George’s contention, +or discerned with the acumen of the <a name="pagelxiv" id="pagelxiv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lxiv] +</span> +Archbishop of New York the +fundamental difference between any imaginable exercise of the power of +taxation by a Constitutional Government, and Mr. George’s doctrine of +the Confiscation of Rent. But this having occurred, it was inevitable +that Rome, which has to deal with a world-wide and complex system of the +most varied and delicate human affairs, should proceed in the matter +with infinite patience and care. In January 1887 the Propaganda +accordingly cabled thus to the Archbishop of New York,—Dr. M‘Glynn +persisting in his refusal to go to Rome—“for prudential reasons +Propaganda has heretofore postponed action in the case of Dr. M‘Glynn. +The Sovereign Pontiff has now taken the matter into his own hands.”</p> + +<p>In the hands of his Holiness the matter was safe; and in the Papal +Decree of April 20, 1888, we have at once the most conclusive +vindication of the wisdom and courage shown by the Archbishop of New +York in 1886, and the most emphatic condemnation of the attitude assumed +in 1886 by the Archbishop of Dublin.</p> + + +<h3>VIII.</h3> +<p>It must not be assumed that Mr. George has been finally defeated in +America. On the contrary, he was never more active. A legacy left <a name="pagelxv" id="pagelxv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lxv] +</span> +to +him by an Irish-American for the propagation of his doctrines has just +been declared by the Vice-Chancellor of New Jersey, to be invalid on the +ground that George’s doctrines are “in opposition to the laws”; and this +decision has bred an uproar in the press which is reviving popular +attention all over the country to the doctrines and to their author. He +is astute, persevering, as much in earnest as Mr. Davitt, and as +familiar with the weak points in the political machinery of the United +States as is Mr. Davitt with the weak points in the political machinery +of Great Britain. This is a Presidential year. The election of 1888 will +be decided, as was the election of 1884, in New York. The Democratic +party go into the contest with a New York candidate, President +Cleveland, who was presented to the Convention at St. Louis for +nomination, not by an Irishman from New York, but by an Irishman from +the hopelessly Republican State of Pennsylvania, and whose renomination, +distasteful to the Democratic Governor of the State, was also openly +opposed by the Democratic Mayor of the city of New York, Mr. Hewitt, Mr. +George’s successful competitor in the Municipal election of 1886. +Leaving Dr. M‘Glynn to uphold the Confiscation of Land against the Pope +in New York, as Mr. Davitt, Mr. Dillon, and a certain number of Irish +priests uphold the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting against the <a name="pagelxvi" id="pagelxvi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lxvi] +</span> +Pope in +Ireland, Mr. George supports President Cleveland, and in so doing +cleverly makes a flank movement towards his “exclusive taxation of +land,” by promoting, under the cover of “Revenue Reform,” an attack on +the indirect taxation from which the Federal Revenues are now mainly +derived. Meanwhile the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore, who is also a +political supporter of President Cleveland, has not yet been confronted +by the supreme authority at Rome with such a final sentence upon the +true nature of Mr. George’s “exclusive taxation of land,” as the +clear-sighted Archbishop of New York is said to be seeking to obtain +from the Holy Office. What the end will be I have little doubt. But for +the moment, it will be seen, the situation in America is only less +confused and troublesome than the situation in Ireland. It is confused +and troubled too, as I have tried in this prologue to show, by forces +identical in character with those which confuse and trouble the +situation in Ireland.</p> + +<p>Of the social conditions amid and against which those forces are working +in America, I believe myself to have some knowledge.</p> + +<p>To get an actual touch and living sense of the social conditions amid +and against which they are working in Ireland was my object, I repeat, +in making the visits, of which this book is a record. More than this I +could not hope, in the time at my <a name="pagelxvii" id="pagelxvii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lxvii] +</span> +disposal, to do. With very much less +than this, it appears to me, many persons, whose views of Irish affairs +I had been inclined, before making these visits, to regard with respect, +must have found it possible to rest content.</p> + + + +<h2><a name="page1" id="page1"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 1] +</span> +CHAPTER I.</h2> + + +<p><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Monday, Jan. 30, 1888.</i></span>—I left London last night. The train +was full of people going to attend levees and drawing-rooms about to be +held at Dublin Castle.</p> + +<p>Near Watford we lost half an hour by the breaking of a connecting-rod: +but the London and North-Western is a model railway, and we ran +alongside the pier at Holyhead exactly “on time.” There is no such +railway travelling in America, excepting on the Pennsylvania Central; +and the North-Western sleeping-carriages, if less monumental and +elaborate than ours, are better ventilated, and certainly not less +comfortable.</p> + +<p>I had expected to come upon unusual things and people in Ireland, but I +had not expected to travel thither in company with an Irish Jacobite. +Two of my fellow-passengers, chatting as they <a name="page2" id="page2"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 2] +</span> +smoked their cigarettes +in the little vestibule between the cabins of the carriage, had much to +say about Lord Ashburnham, and the “Order of the White Rose,” and the +Grand Mass to be celebrated to-morrow morning at the Church of the +Carmelites in London, in memory of Charles Edward Stuart, who died at +Rome in 1788, and now lies buried as Charles III., King of Great Britain +and Ireland, in the vaults of the Vatican, together with his father +“James III.,” and his brother “Henry IX.” One of the two was as hot and +earnest about the “Divine Right of Kings” as the parson who, less than +forty years ago, preached a sermon to prove that the great cholera +visitation of 1849 was a direct chastisement of the impiety of the Royal +Mint in dropping the letters D.G. from the first florins of Queen +Victoria issued in that year. He bewailed his sad fate in being called +over to Ireland by family affairs at such a moment, and evidently did +not know that the Mass in question had been countermanded by the +Cardinal Archbishop.</p> + +<p>The incident, odd enough in itself, interested me the more that +yesterday, as it happens, the Cardinal had spoken with me of this +curious affair.</p> + +<p>He heard of it for the first time on Saturday, and, sending at once for +the priest in charge of the <a name="page3" id="page3"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 3] +</span> +Carmelite Church, forbade the celebration. +Later on in the evening, two strangers came to the Archbishop’s house, +and in great agitation besought him to allow the arrangements for the +Mass to go on. He declined to do this, and sent them away impaled on a +dilemma. “What you propose,” said the Cardinal, “is either a piece of +theatrical tomfoolery, in which case it is unfit to be performed in a +church, or it is flat treason, in which case you should be sent to the +Tower!”</p> + +<p>They went away, like the Senatus of Augsburg from the presence of +Napoleon—“<i>très mortifiés et peu contents</i>.” After they had gone, the +Cardinal remembered that for some time past queer documents had reached +him through the post-office, setting forth the doctrine of Divine Right, +and the story of the Stuarts. One of these, which with the rest he had +thrown into the fire, was an elaborate genealogical chart, designed to +show that the crowns of Great Britain and Ireland ought rightfully to be +worn by a certain princess in Bavaria!</p> + +<p>If there is anything more in all this than a new variety of the “blue +China craze,” may it not be taken as a symptom of that vague but clearly +growing dissatisfaction with the nineteenth century doctrine of +government by mere majorities, which <a name="page4" id="page4"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 4] +</span> +is by no means confined to Europe? +This feeling underlies the “National Association” for getting a preamble +put into the Constitution of the United States, “recognising Almighty +God as the source of all authority and power in Civil Government.” There +was such a recognition in the Articles of Confederation of 1781. +Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia should have mentioned to His Holiness +the existence of this Association, when he presented to Leo XIII., the +other day at Rome, President Cleveland’s curious Jubilee gift of an +emblazoned copy of what a Monsignore of my acquaintance calls “the +godless American Constitution.” <a id="footnotetag8" + name="footnotetag8"></a><a href="#footnote8"><sup>8</sup></a></p> + +<p>We made a quick quiet passage to Kingstown. These boats—certainly the +best appointed of their sort afloat—are owned, I find, in Dublin, and +managed exclusively by their Irish owners, to whom the credit therefore +belongs of making the mail service between Holyhead and Kingstown as +admirable, in <a name="page5" id="page5"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 5] +</span> +all respects, as the mail services between Dover and the +Continental ports are not.</p> + +<p>I landed at Kingstown with Lord Ernest Hamilton, M.P. for North Tyrone, +with whom I have arranged an expedition to Gweedore in Donegal, one of +the most ill-famed of the “congested districts” of Ireland, and just now +made a point of special interest by the arrest of Father M‘Fadden, the +parish priest of the place, for “criminally conspiring to compel and +induce certain tenants not to fulfil their legal obligations.”</p> + +<p>I could understand such a prosecution as this in America, where the +Constitution makes it impossible even for Congress to pass laws +“impairing the validity of contracts.” But as the British Parliament has +been passing such laws for Ireland ever since Mr. Butt in 1870 raised +the standard of Irish Land Reform under the name of Home Rule, it seems +a little absurd, not to say Hibernian, of the British authorities to +prosecute Father M‘Fadden merely for bettering their own instruction in +his own way. I could better understand a prosecution of Father M‘Fadden +on such grounds by the authorities of his own Church.</p> + +<p>A step from the boat at Kingstown puts you into the train for Dublin. +Before we got into <a name="page6" id="page6"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 6] +</span> +motion, a weird shape as of one just escaped from +the Wild West show of Buffalo Bill peered in at the window, inviting us +to buy the morning papers, or a copy of “the greatest book ever +published, ‘Paddy at Home!’” This proved to be a translation of M. de +Mandat Grancey’s lively volume, <i>Chez Paddy</i>. The vendor, “Davy,” is one +of the “chartered libertines” of Dublin. He is supposed to be, and I +dare say is, a warm Nationalist, but he has a keen eye to business, and +alertly suits his cries to his customers. Recognising the Conservative +member for North Tyrone, he promptly recommended us to buy the <i>Irish +Times</i> and the <i>Express</i> as “the two best papers in all Ireland.” But he +smiled approval when I asked for the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i> also, in which +I found a report of a speech delivered yesterday by Mr. Davitt at +Rathkeale, chiefly remarkable for a sensible protest against the +ridiculous and rantipole abuse lavished upon Mr. Balfour by the +Nationalist orators and newspapers. I am not surprised to see this. Mr. +Davitt has the stuff in him of a serious revolutionary leader, and no +such man can stomach the frothy and foolish vituperation to which +parliamentary agitators are addicted, not in Ireland only. Unlike Mr. +Parnell, who is forced to have <a name="page7" id="page7"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 7] +</span> +one voice for New York and Cincinnati, +and another voice for Westminster, Mr. Davitt is free to be always +avowedly bent on bringing about a thorough Democratic revolution in +Ireland. I believe him to be too able a man to imagine, as some of the +Irish agitators do, that this can be done without the consent of +Democratic England, and he has lived too much in England, and knows the +English democracy too well, I suspect, not to know that to abuse an +executive officer for determination and vigour is the surest way to make +him popular. Calling Mr. Forster “Buckshot” Forster did him no harm. On +the contrary, the epithet might have helped him to success had not Mr. +Gladstone given way behind him at the most critical moment of his +grapple with the revolutionary organisation in Ireland. We hear a great +deal about resistance to tyrants being obedience to God, but I fear that +obedience to God is not the strongest natural passion of the human +heart, and I doubt whether resistance to tyrants can often be promoted +by putting about a general conviction that the tyrant has a thumping big +stick in his hand, and may be relied upon to use it. Even Tom Paine had +the wit to see that it was his “good heart” which brought Louis XVI. to +the scaffold.</p> + +<p>Nobody who had not learned from the speeches <a name="page8" id="page8"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 8] +</span> +made in England, and the +cable despatches sent to America, that freedom of speech and of the +press has been brutally trampled under foot in Ireland by a “Coercion” +Government would ever suspect it from reading the Dublin papers which I +this morning bought.</p> + +<p>As a Democratic journalist I had some practical knowledge of a true +“Coercion” government in America a quarter of a century ago. The +American editor who had ventured in 1862 to publish in a New York or +Philadelphia newspaper a letter from Washington, speaking of the +Unionist Government by President Lincoln, as the letter from London +published to-day in the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i> speaks of the Unionist +Government of Lord Salisbury, would have found himself in one of the +casemates of Fort Lafayette within twenty-four hours. Our Republican +rulers acted upon the maxim laid down by Mr. Tilden’s friend, Montgomery +Blair, <a id="footnotetag9" + name="footnotetag9"></a><a href="#footnote9"><sup>9</sup></a> that “to await the results of slow judicial prosecution is to +allow crime to be consummated, with the expectation of subsequent +punishment, instead of preventing its accomplishment by prompt and +direct interference.” Perhaps Americans take their Government more +<a name="page9" id="page9"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 9] +</span> +seriously than Englishmen do. Certainly we stand by it more sternly in +bad weather. Even so good a Constitutionalist as Professor Parsons at +Harvard, I remember, when a student asked him if he would not suspend +the <i>Habeas Corpus</i> in the case of a man caught hauling down the +American flag, promptly replied, “I would not suspend the <i>Habeas +Corpus</i>; I would suspend the <i>Corpus</i>.”</p> + +<p>We found no “hansoms” at the Dublin Station, only “outside cars,” and +cabs much neater than the London four-wheelers. One of these brought us +at a good pace to Maple’s Hotel in Kildare Street, a large, +old-fashioned but clean and comfortable house. My windows look down upon +a stately edifice of stone erecting on Kildare Street for all sorts of +educational and “exhibitional” purposes, with the help of an Imperial +grant, I am told, and to be called the Leinster Hall. The style is +decidedly composite, with colonnades and loggie and domes and porticos, +and recalls the ancient Roman buildings depicted in that fresco of a +belated slave-girl knocking at her mistress’s door which with its +companion pieces is fast fading away upon the walls of the “House of +Livia” on the Palatine.</p> + +<p>At one end of this street is the fashionable and hospitable Kildare +Street Club; at the other <a name="page10" id="page10"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 10] +</span> +the Shelburne Hotel, known to all Americans. +This seems to have been “furbished-up” since I last saw it. There, for +the last time as it proved, I saw and had speech of my friend of many +years, the prince of all preachers in our time, Father Burke of Tallaght +and of San Clemente.</p> + +<p>I had telegraphed to him from London that I should halt in Dublin for a +day, on my way to America, to see him. He came betimes, to find me +almost as badly-off as St. Lawrence upon his gridiron. The surgeon whom +the hotel people had hastily summoned to relieve me from a sudden attack +of that endemic Irish ecstasy, the lumbago, had applied what he called +the “heroic treatment” on my telling him that I had no time to be ill, +but must spend that day with Father Burke, dine that night with Mr. +Irving and Mr. Toole, and go on the next day to America.</p> + +<p>“What has this Inquisitor done to you?” queried Father Tom.</p> + +<p>“Cauterised me with chloroform.”</p> + +<p>“Oh! that’s a modern improvement! Let me see—” and, scrutinising the +results, he said, with a merry twinkle in his deep, dark eyes—“I see +how it is! They brought you a veterinary!”</p> + +<p><a name="page11" id="page11"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 11] +</span> +This was in 1878. On that too brief, delightful morning, we talked of +all things—supralunar, lunar, and sublunary. Much of Wales, I remember, +where he had been making a visit. “A glorious country,” he said, “and +the Welsh would have been Irish, only they lost the faith.” Full of love +for Ireland as he was, he was beginning then to be troubled by symptoms +in the Nationalist movement, which could not be regarded with composure +by one who, in his youth at Rome, had seen, with me, the devil of +extremes drive Italy down a steep place into the sea.</p> + +<p>Five years afterwards I landed at Queenstown, in July 1883, intending to +visit him at Tallaght. But when the letter which I sent to announce my +coming reached the monastery, the staunchest Soldier of the Church in +Ireland lay there literally “dead on the field of honour.” Chatham, in +the House of Lords, John Quincy Adams, in the House of Representatives, +fell in harness, but neither death so speaks to the heart as the simple +and sublime self-sacrifice of the great Dominican, dragging himself from +his dying bed into Dublin to spend the last splendour of his genius and +his life for the starving children of the poor in Donegal.</p> + +<p><a name="page12" id="page12"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 12] +</span> +What would I not give for an hour with him now!</p> + +<p>After breakfast I went out to find Mr. Davitt, hoping he might suggest +some way of seeing the Nationalist meeting on Wednesday night without +undergoing the dismal penance of sitting out all the speeches. I wished +also to ask him why at Rathkeale he talked about the Dunravens as +“absentees.” He was born in Lord Lucan’s country, and may know little of +Limerick, but he surely ought to know that Adare Manor was built of +Irish materials, and by Irish workmen, under the eye of Lord Dunraven, +all the finest ornamental work, both in wood and in stone, of the +mansion, being done by local mechanics; and also that the present owners +of Adare spend a large part of every year in the country, and are +deservedly popular. He was not to be found at the National League +headquarters, nor yet at the Imperial Hotel, which is his usual resort, +as Morrison’s is the resort of Mr. Parnell. So I sent him a note through +the Post-Office.</p> + +<p>“You had better seal it with wax,” said a friend, in whose chambers I +wrote it.</p> + +<p>“Pray, why?”</p> + +<p><a name="page13" id="page13"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 13] +</span> +“Oh! all the letters to well-known people that are not opened by the +police are opened by the Nationalist clerks in the Post-Offices. ’Tis a +way we’ve always had with us in Ireland!”</p> + +<p>I had some difficulty in finding the local habitation of the “National +League.” I had been told it was in O’Connell Street, and sharing the +usual and foolish aversion of my sex to asking questions on the highway, +I perambulated a good many streets and squares before I discovered that +it has pleased the local authorities to unbaptize Sackville Street, “the +finest thoroughfare in Europe,” and convert it into “O’Connell Street.” +But they have failed so ignominiously that the National League finds +itself obliged to put up a huge sign over its doorways, notifying all +the world that the offices are not where they appear to be in Upper +Sackville Street at all, but in “O’Connell Street.” The effect is as +ludicrous as it is instructive. Oddly enough, they have not attempted to +change the name of another thoroughfare which keeps green the “pious and +immortal memory” of William III., dear to all who in England or America +go in fear and horror of the scarlet woman that sitteth upon the seven +hills! There is <a name="page14" id="page14"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 14] +</span> +a fashion, too, in Dublin of putting images of little +white horses into the fanlights over the doorways, which seems to smack +of an undue reverence for the Protestant Succession and the House of +Hanover.</p> + +<p>What you expect is the thing you never find in Ireland. I had rather +thoughtlessly taken it for granted the city would be agog with the great +Morley reception which is to come off on Wednesday night. There is a +good deal about it in the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i> to-day, but chiefly +touching a sixpenny quarrel which has sprung up between the Reception +Committee and the Trades Council over the alleged making of contracts by +the Committee with “houses not employing members of the regular trades.”</p> + +<p>For this the typos and others propose to “boycott” the Committee and the +Reception and the Liberators from over the sea. From casual +conversations I gather that there is much more popular interest in the +release, on Wednesday, of Mr. T.D. Sullivan, ex-Lord Mayor, champion +swimmer, M.P., poet, and patriot. A Nationalist acquaintance of mine +tells me that in Tullamore Mr. Sullivan has been most prolific of +poetry. He has composed <a name="page15" id="page15"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 15] +</span> +a song which I am afraid will hardly please my +Irish Nationalist friends in America:</p> + +<p class="poem">“We are sons of Sister Isles,<br /> + Englishmen and Irishmen,<br /> + On our friendship Heaven smiles;<br /> + Tyrant’s schemes and Tory wiles<br /> + Ne’er shall make us foes again.”<br /> +</p> + +<p>There is to be a Drawing-Room, too, at the Castle on Wednesday night. +One would not unnaturally gather from the “tall talk” in Parliament and +the press that this conjuncture of a great popular demonstration in +favour of Irish nationality, with a display of Dublin fashion doing +homage to the alien despot, might be ominous of “bloody noses and +cracked crowns.” Not a bit of it! I asked my jarvey, for instance, on an +outside car this afternoon, whether he expected a row to result from +these counter currents of the classes and the masses. “A row!” he +replied, looking around at me in amazement. “A row is it? and what for +would there be? Shure they’ll be through with the procession in time to +see the carriages!”</p> + +<p>Obviously he saw nothing in either show to offend anybody; though he +could clearly understand that an intelligent citizen might be vexed <a name="page16" id="page16"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 16] +</span> +if +he found himself obliged to sacrifice one of them in order to fully +enjoy the other.</p> + +<p>Lady Londonderry, it seems, is not yet well enough to cross the Channel; +but the Duchess of Marlborough, who is staying here with her nephew the +Lord-Lieutenant, has volunteered to assist him in holding the +Drawing-Room, whereupon a grave question has arisen in Court circles as +to whether the full meed of honours due to a Vice-Queen regnant ought to +be paid also to an ex-Vice-Queen. This is debated by the Dublin dames as +hotly as official women in Washington fight over the eternal question of +the relative precedence due to the wives of Senators and “Cabinet +Ministers.” It will be a dark day for the democracy when women get the +suffrage—and use it.</p> + +<p>At luncheon to-day I met the Attorney-General, Mr. O’Brien, who, with +prompt Irish hospitality, asked me to dine with him to-morrow night, and +Mr. Wilson of the London <i>Times</i>, an able writer on Irish questions from +the English point of view. Mr. Balfour, who was expected, did not +appear, being detained by guests at his own residence in the Park.</p> + +<p>I went to see him in the afternoon at the Castle, <a name="page17" id="page17"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 17] +</span> +and found him in +excellent spirits; certainly the mildest-mannered and most sensible +despot who ever trampled in the dust the liberties of a free people. He +was quite delightful about the abuse which is now daily heaped upon him +in speeches and in the press, and talked about it in a casual dreamy way +which reminded me irresistibly of President Lincoln, whom, if in nothing +else, he resembles alike in longanimity and in length of limb. He had +seen Davitt’s <i>caveat</i>, filed at Rathkeale, against the foolishness of +trying to frighten him out of his line of country by calling him bad +names. “Davitt is quite right,” he said, “the thing must be getting to +be a bore to the people, who are not such fools as the speakers take +them to be. One of the stenographers told me the other day that they had +to invent a special sign for the phrase ‘bloody and brutal Balfour,’ it +is used so often in the speeches.” About the prosecution of Father +M‘Fadden of Gweedore, he knew nothing beyond the evidence on which it +had been ordered. This he showed me. If the first duty of a government +is to govern, which is the American if not the English way of looking at +it, Father M‘Fadden must have meant to get himself into trouble when <a name="page18" id="page18"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 18] +</span> +he +used such language as this to his people: “I am the law in Gweedore; I +despise the recent Coercion Act; if I got a summons to-morrow, I would +not obey it.” From language like this to the attitude of Father M‘Glynn +in New York, openly flouting the authority of the Holy See itself, is +but an easy and an inevitable step.</p> + +<p>Neither “Home Rule” nor any other “Rule” can exist in a country in which +men whose words carry any weight are suffered to take up such an +attitude. It is just the attitude of the “Comeouters” in New England +during my college days at Harvard, when Parker Pillsbury and Stephen +Foster used to saw wood and blow horns on the steps of the +meeting-houses during service, in order to free their consciences “and +protest against the Sabbatarian laws.”</p> + +<p>To see a Catholic priest assume this attitude is almost as amazing as to +see an educated Englishman like Mr. Wilfrid Blunt trying to persuade +Irishmen that Mr. Balfour made him the confidant of a grisly scheme for +doing sundry Irish leaders to death by maltreating them in prison.</p> + +<p>I see with pleasure that the masculine instincts of Mr. Davitt led him +to allude to this nonsense <a name="page19" id="page19"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 19] +</span> +yesterday at Rathkeale in a half +contemptuous way. Mr. Balfour spoke of it to-day with generosity and +good feeling. “When I first heard of it,” he said, “I resented it, of +course, as an outrageous imputation on Mr. Blunt’s character, and +denounced it accordingly. What I have since learned leads me to fear +that he really may have said something capable of being construed in +this absurd sense, but if he did, it must have been under the +exasperation produced by finding himself locked up.”</p> + +<p>I heard the story of Mr. Balfour’s meeting with Mr. Blunt very plainly +and vigorously told, while I was staying the other day at Knoyle House, +in the immediate neighbourhood of Clouds, where the two were guests +under conditions which should be at least as sacred in the eyes of +Britons as of Bedouins. In Wiltshire nobody seemed for a moment to +suppose it possible that Mr. Blunt can have really deceived himself as +to the true nature of any conversation he may have had with Mr. Balfour. +This is paying a compliment to Mr. Blunt’s common sense at the expense +of his imagination. In any view of the case, to lie in wait at the lips +of a fellow guest in the house of a common friend, for the counts of a +political indictment <a name="page20" id="page20"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 20] +</span> +against him, is certainly a proceeding, as Davitt +said yesterday of Mr. Blunts tale of horror, quite “open to question.” +But, as Mr. Blunt himself has sung, “’Tis conscience makes us sinners, +not our sin,” and I have no doubt the author of the <i>Poems of Proteus</i> +really persuaded himself that he was playing lawn tennis and smoking +cigarettes in Wiltshire with a modern Alva, cynically vain of his own +dark and bloody designs. Now that he finds himself struck down by the +iron hand of this remorseless tyrant, why should he not cry aloud and +warn, not Ireland alone, but humanity, against the appalling crimes +meditated, not this time in the name of “Liberty,” but in the name of +Order?</p> + +<p>What especially struck me in talking with Mr. Balfour to-day was his +obviously unaffected interest in Ireland as a country rather than in +Ireland as a cock-pit. It is the condition of Ireland, and not the +gabble of parties at Westminster about the condition of Ireland, which +is uppermost in his thoughts. This, I should say, is the best guarantee +of his eventual success.</p> + +<p>The weakest point of the modern English system of government by Cabinets +surely is the evanescent <a name="page21" id="page21"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 21] +</span> +tenure by which every Minister holds his +place. Not only has the Cabinet itself no fixed term of office, being in +truth but a Committee of the Legislature clothed with executive +authority, but any member of the Cabinet may be forced by events or by +intrigues to leave it. In this way Mr. Forster, when he filled the place +now held by Mr. Balfour, found himself driven into resigning it by Mr. +Gladstone’s indisposition or inability to resist the peremptory pressure +put upon the British Premier at a critical moment by our own Government +in the spring of 1882. Mr. Balfour is in no such peril, perhaps. He is +more sure, I take it, of the support of Lord Salisbury and his +colleagues than Mr. Forster ever was of the support of Mr. Gladstone; +and the “Coercion” law which it is his duty to administer contains no +such sweeping and despotic clause as that provision in Mr. Gladstone’s +“Coercion Act” of 1881, under which persons claiming American +citizenship were arrested and indefinitely locked up on “suspicion,” +until it became necessary for our Government, even at the risk of war, +to demand their trial or release.</p> + +<p>But if Mr. Balfour were Chief Secretary for Ire<a name="page22" id="page22"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 22] +</span> +land “on the American +plan”; if he held his office, that is, for a fixed term of years, and +cared nothing for a renewal of the lease, he could not be more +pre-occupied than he seems to be with simply getting his executive duty +done, or less pre-occupied than he seems to be with what may be thought +of his way of getting it done. If all executive officers were of this +strain, Parliamentary government might stand in the dock into which +Prince Albert put it with more composure, and await the verdict with +more confidence. Surely if Ireland is ever to govern herself, she must +learn precisely the lesson which Mr. Balfour, I believe, is trying to +teach her—that the duty of executive officers to execute the laws is +not a thing debateable, like the laws themselves, nor yet determinable, +like the enactment of laws, by taking the yeas and the nays. How well +this lesson shall be taught must depend, of course, very much upon the +quality of the men who make up the machine of Government in Ireland. +That the Irish have almost as great a passion for office-holding as the +Spanish, we long ago learned in New York, where the percentage of Irish +office-holders considerably exceeds the percentage of Irish citizens. +And as all the witnesses agree that the Irish Government <a name="page23" id="page23"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 23] +</span> +has for years +been to an inordinate degree a Government by patronage, there must +doubtless be some reasonable ground for the very general impression that +“the Castle” needs overhauling. It is not true, however, I find, +although I have often heard it asserted in England, that the Irish +Government is officered by Englishmen and Scotchmen exclusively. The +murdered Mr. Burke certainly was not an Englishman; and there is an +apparent predominance of Irishmen in the places of trust and power. That +things at the Castle cannot be nearly so bad, moreover, as we in America +are asked to believe, would seem to be demonstrated by the affectionate +admiration with which Lord Spencer is now regarded by men like Mr. +O’Brien, M.P., who only the other day seemed to regard him as an unfit +survival of the Cities of the Plain. If what these men then said of him, +and of the Castle generally, was even very partially true—or if being +wholly false, these men believed it to be true—every man of them who +now touches Lord Spencer’s hand is defiled, or defiles him.</p> + +<p>But that concerns them. Their present attitude makes Lord Spencer a good +witness when he declares that the Civil servants of the Crown in +<a name="page24" id="page24"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 24] +</span> +Ireland, called “the Castle,” are “diligent, desire to do their duty +with impartiality, and to hold an even balance between opposing +interests in Ireland,” and maintains that they “will act with +impartiality and vigour if led by men who know their own minds, and +desire to be firm in the Government of the country.” All this being +true, Mr. Balfour ought to make his Government a success.</p> + +<p>Mr. Balfour introduced me to Sir West Ridgway, the successor of Sir +Redvers Buller, who has been rewarded for the great services he did his +country in Asia, by being flung into this seething Irish stew. He takes +it very composedly, though the climate does not suit him, he says; and +has a quiet workmanlike way with him, which impresses one favourably at +once.</p> + +<p>All the disorderly part of Ireland (for disorder is far from being +universal in Ireland) comes under his direct administration, being +divided into five divisions on the lines originally laid down in 1881 by +Mr. Forster. Over each of these divisions presides a functionary styled +a “Divisional Magistrate.” The title is not happily chosen, the powers +of these officers being rather like those confided to a French Prefect +than like those which are associated in <a name="page25" id="page25"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 25] +</span> +England and America with the +title of a “magistrate.” They have no judicial power, and nothing to do +with the trial of offenders. Their business is to protect life and +property, and to detect and bring to justice offenders against the law. +They can only be called Magistrates as the Executive of the United +States is sometimes called the “Chief Magistrate.”</p> + +<p>One of the most conspicuous and trusted of these Divisional Magistrates, +I find, is Colonel Turner, who was Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, +under Lord Aberdeen. He is now denounced by the Irish Nationalists as a +ruthless tyrant. He was then denounced by the Irish Tories as a +sympathiser with Home Rule. It is probable, therefore, that he must be a +conscientious and loyal executive officer, who understands and acts upon +the plain lines of his executive duty.</p> + +<p>I dined to-night at the Castle, not in the great hall or banqueting-room +of St. Patrick, which was designed by that connoisseur in magnificence, +the famous Lord Chesterfield, during his Viceroyalty, but in a very +handsome room of more moderate dimensions. Much of the semi-regal state +observed at the Castle in the days of the Georges has been put down with +the Battle-Axe Guards of the Lord-<a name="page26" id="page26"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 26] +</span> +Lieutenant, and with the +basset-tables of the “Lady-Lieutenant,” as the Vice-queen used to be +called. At dinner the Viceroy no longer drinks to the pious and immortal +memory of William III., or to the “1st of July 1690.” No more does the +band play “Lillibullero,” and no longer is the pleasant custom +maintained, after a dinner to the city authorities of Dublin, of a +“loving cup” passed around the table, into which each guest, as it +passed, dropped a gold piece for the good of the household. Only so much +ceremonial is now observed as suffices to distinguish the residence of +the Queen’s personal representative from that of a great officer of +State, or an opulent subject of high rank.</p> + +<p>Dublin Castle indeed is no more of a palace than it is of a castle. Its +claim to the latter title rests mainly on the fine old “Bermingham” +tower of the time of King John; its claim to the former on the Throne +Room, the Council Chamber, and the Hall of St. Patrick already +mentioned. This last is a very stately and sumptuous apartment. Just +twenty years ago the most brilliant banquet modern Dublin has seen was +given in this hall by the late Duke of Abercorn to the Prince and +Princess of Wales, to celebrate the installation of the Prince as a +Knight <a name="page27" id="page27"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 27] +</span> +of St. Patrick. It is a significant fact, testified to by all +the most candid Irishmen I have ever known, that upon the occasion of +this visit to Ireland in 1868 the Prince and Princess were received with +unbounded enthusiasm by the people of all classes. Yet only the year +before, in 1867, the explosion of some gunpowder at Clerkenwell by a +band of desperadoes, to the death and wounding of many innocent people, +had brought the question of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, in +the mind of Mr. Gladstone, within the domain of “practical politics”! By +parity of reasoning, one would think, the reception of the heir-apparent +and his wife in Ireland ought to have taken that question out of the +domain of “practical politics.”</p> + +<p>The Prince of Wales, it is known, brought away from this visit an +impression that the establishment of a prince of the blood in Ireland, +or a series of royal visits to Ireland, would go far towards pacifying +the relations between the two Islands. Mr. Gladstone thought his +Disestablishment would quite do the work. Events have shown that Mr. +Gladstone made a sad mistake as to the effect of his measure. The pains +which, I am told, were taken by Mr. Deasy, M.P., and others to organise +hostile demonstrations <a name="page28" id="page28"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 28] +</span> +at one or two points in the south of Ireland, +during a subsequent visit of the Prince and Princess, would seem to show +that in the opinion of the Nationalists themselves, the impression of +the Prince was more accurate than were the inferences of the Premier.</p> + +<p>There is nothing froward or formidable in the aspect of Dublin Castle. +It has neither a portcullis nor a drawbridge. People go in and out of it +as freely as through the City Hall in New York. There is a show of +sentries at the main entrance, and in one of the courts this morning the +picturesque band of a Scotch regiment was playing to the delectation of +a small but select audience of urchins and little girls. A Dublin mob, +never so little in earnest and led by a dozen really determined men, +ought to be able to make as short work of it as the hordes of the +Faubourgs in Paris made of the Bastille, with its handful of invalids, +on that memorable 14th of July, about which so many lies have passed +into history, and so much effervescent nonsense is still annually talked +and printed.</p> + +<p>The greater part of the Castle as it existed when the Irish Parliaments +sat there under Elizabeth, and just before the last Catholic Viceroy +made Protestantism penal, and planned the transformation of <a name="page29" id="page29"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 29] +</span> +Ireland +into a French province, was burned in the time of James II. The Earl of +Arran then reported to his father that “the king had lost nothing but +six barrels of gunpowder, and the worst castle in the worst situation in +Christendom.”</p> + +<p>Here, as at Ottawa, a viceregal dinner-table is set off by the neat +uniforms and skyblue facings of the aides-de-camp and secretaries. For +some mysterious reason Lord Spencer put these officers into chocolate +coats with white facings. But the new order soon gave place to the old +again.</p> + +<p>At the dinner to-night was Lord Ormonde, who is returning to London, but +kindly promised to make arrangements for showing me at Kilkenny Castle +the muniment room of the Butlers, which contains one of the most +valuable private collections of charters and State papers in the realm.</p> + +<p><span class="diary"><i>Tuesday, Jan. 31.</i></span>—I lunched to-day with Sir Michael Morris, the Lord +Chief Justice of Ireland, whom I had last seen in Rome at the Jubilee +Mass of His Holiness. Sir Michael is one of the recognised lights of +social life and of the law in Dublin. While he was in Rome some one +highly commended him in the presence of that staunch Nationalist the +Archbishop of Dublin, who assented so far as to say, <a name="page30" id="page30"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 30] +</span> +“Yes, yes, there +are worse fellows in Dublin than that Morris!” It would be hard to find +a more typical Irishman of the better sort than Sir Michael, a man more +sure, in the words of Sheridan, to “carry his honour and his brogue +unstained to the grave.”</p> + +<p>The brogue of Sir Michael, it is said, made his fortune in the House of +Commons. It has hardly the glow which made the brogue of Father Burke a +memory as of music in the ears of all who heard it, and differs from +that miraculous gift of the tongue as a ripe wine of Bordeaux differs +from a ripe wine of Burgundy. But to the ordinary brogue of the street +and the stage, it is as is a Brane Mouton Rothschild of 1868 to the +casual Médoc of a Parisian restaurant. “Do you know Father Healy?” said +one of the company to whom I spoke of it; “he was at a wedding with Sir +Michael. As the happy pair drove off under the usual shower of rice and +old slippers, Sir Michael said to the Father, ‘How I wish I had +something to throw after her!’ ‘Ah, throw your brogue after her,’ +replied the Father.”</p> + +<p>This brogue comes to Sir Michael lawfully enough. He belongs to one of +the fourteen tribes of Galway. His father, Mr. Martin Morris, was High +Sheriff of the County of Galway City in 1841, <a name="page31" id="page31"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 31] +</span> +being the first Catholic +who had served that office since the time of Tyrconnel. His mother was a +Blake of Galway, and the family seat, Spiddal, came to them through a +Fitzpatrick. “Remember these things,” said one of the guests to me, a +Catholic from the south of Ireland, “and remember that Sir Michael, like +myself, and, so far as I know, like every Irish Catholic in this room +to-day, is a thoroughgoing Unionist, who would think it midsummer +madness to hand Ireland over to the ‘Home Rule’ of the ‘uncrowned king,’ +Mr. Parnell, who hasn’t a drop, I believe, of Irish blood in his veins, +and who, whatever else he may be, is certainly not a Catholic. Didn’t +Parnell vote at first against religion and in favour of Bradlaugh? and +didn’t he do this to force the bargain for the clerical franchise at the +Parliamentary conventions?”</p> + +<p>“But there are some good Catholics, are there not,” I answered, “and +some good Christians, and of Irish blood too, among the associates of +Mr. Parnell?”</p> + +<p>“Associates!” he exclaimed; “if you know anything of Mr. Parnell, you +must know that he has no associates. He has followers, and he has +instruments, but he has no associates. The only Irish<a name="page32" id="page32"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 32] +</span> +men whom he has +really taken counsel with, or treated, I was about to say, with ordinary +civility, were Egan and Brennan. His manner with them was always +conspicuously different from his cold and almost contemptuous bearing +towards the men whom he commands in Parliament, and Egan, who directs +his forces in your country, rewards him by calling him ‘the great and +gifted leader of <i>our</i> race!’ ‘Our race’ indeed! Parnell comes of the +conquering race in Ireland, and he never forgets it, or lets his +subordinates forget it. I was in Galway when he came over there suddenly +to quell the revolt organised by Healy. The rebels were at white-heat +before he came. But he strode in among them like a huntsman among the +hounds—marched Healy off into a little room, and brought him out again +in ten minutes, cowed and submissive, but filled, as anybody can see, +ever since, with a dull smouldering hate which will break out one of +these days, if a good and safe opportunity offers.”</p> + +<p>“How do you account, then,” I asked, “for the support which all these +men give Mr. Parnell?”</p> + +<p>“For the support which they give him!” exclaimed my new acquaintance, +“for the support they give him! Bless your heart, my dear sir, it is <a name="page33" id="page33"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 33] +</span> +he +gives them the support! Barring Biggar, who, to do him justice, is as +free with his pocket as he is with his tongue—and no man can say more +for anybody than that—barring Biggar and M‘Kenna and M‘Carthy, and +perhaps a dozen more, all these men are nominated by Mr. Parnell, and +draw salaries from the body he controls; they are paid members, like the +working-men members. Support indeed!”</p> + +<p>“But the constituencies,” I urged, “surely the voters must know and care +something about their representatives?”</p> + +<p>The gentleman from the south of Ireland laughed aloud. “Very clear it +is,” he said, “that you have made your acquaintance with my dear +countrymen in America, or in England perhaps—not in Ireland. Look at +Thurles, in January ’85! The voters selected O’Ryan; Parnell ordered him +off, and made them take O’Connor! The voters take their members to-day +from the League—that is, from Mr. Parnell, just as they used to take +them from the landlords. What Lord Clanricarde said in Galway, when he +made all those fagot votes by cutting up his farms, that he could return +his grey mare to Parliament if he liked, Mr. Parnell can say with just +as much truth to-day of any Nationalist <a name="page34" id="page34"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 34] +</span> +seat in the country. I tell +you, the secret of his power is that he understands the Irish people, +and how to ride them. He is a Protestant-ascendency man by blood, and he +is fighting the unlucky devils of landlords to-day by the old ‘landlord’ +methods that came to him with his mother’s milk—that is rightly +speaking, I should say, with his father’s,” and here he burst out +laughing at his own bull—“for his mother, poor lady, she was an +American.”</p> + +<p>“Thank you,” I said.</p> + +<p>“Oh, no harm at all! But did you ever know her? An odd woman she was, +and is.”</p> + +<p>“Her father,” I replied, “was a gallant American sailor of Scottish +blood.”</p> + +<p>“Oh yes, and is it true that he got a great hatred of England from being +captured in the <i>Chesapeake</i> by the English Captain Broke? I always +heard that.”</p> + +<p>I explained that there were historical difficulties in the way of +accepting this legend, and that Commodore Stewart’s experiences, during +the war of 1812, had been those of a captor, not of a captive.</p> + +<p>“Well, a clever woman she is, only very odd. She was a great terror, I +remember, to a worthy Protestant parson, near Avondale; she used to come +at him quite unexpectedly with such a power of <a name="page35" id="page35"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 35] +</span> +theological discussion, +and put him beside himself with questions he couldn’t answer.”</p> + +<p>“Very likely,” I replied, “but she has transferred her interest to +politics now; and she had the good sense, at the Chicago Convention in +1886, to warn the physical-force men against showing their hand too +plainly in support of her son.”</p> + +<p>A curious conversation, as showing the personal bitterness of politics +here. It reminded me of Dr. Duche’s description in his famous letter to +Washington of the party which carried the Declaration of Independence +through the Continental Congress. But it had a special interest for me +as confirming the inferences I have often drawn as to Mr. Parnell’s +relations with his party, from his singular and complete isolation among +them. I remember the profound astonishment of my young friend Mr. D——, +of New York, who, as the son of, perhaps, the most conspicuous and +influential American advocate of Home Rule, had confidently counted upon +seeing Mr. Parnell in London, when he found that the most important +member of the Irish Parliamentary party, in point of position, was +utterly unable to get at Mr. Parnell for him, or even to ascertain where +Mr. Parnell could be reached by letter.</p> + +<p><a name="page36" id="page36"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 36] +</span> +Though a staunch Unionist, Sir Michael is no blind admirer of things as +they are, nor even a thick-and-thin partisan of English rule in Ireland. +“If you will have the Irish difficulty in a nutshell,” he is reported to +have said to a prosy British politician, “here it is: It is simply a +very dull people trying to govern a very bright people.”</p> + +<p>He has quick and wide intellectual sympathies, or, as he put it to a +lawyer who was kindly enlightening him about some matters of scientific +notoriety, “I don’t live in a cupboard myself.” His own terse summing up +of the Irish difficulty could hardly be better illustrated than by the +current story of the discomfiture of an English Treasury official, who +came into his official chambers to complain of the expenditure for fuel +in the Court over which he presides. The Lord Chief-Justice looked at +him quietly while he set forth his errand, and then, ringing a bell on +his table, said to the servant who responded: “Tell Mary the man has +come about the coals.”</p> + +<p>At Sir Michael’s I had some conversation also with Mr. Justice Murphy, +who won a great reputation in connection with those murders in the +Phoenix Park, which went near to breaking the heart and hope of poor +Father Burke, and with <a name="page37" id="page37"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 37] +</span> +Lord and Lady Ashbourne, whom I had not seen +since I met them some years ago under the hospitable roof of Lord +Houghton. Lord Ashbourne was then Mr. Gibson, Q.C. He is now the Lord +Chancellor of Ireland, and the author of the Land Purchase Act of 1885, +which many well-informed and sensible men regard as the Magna Charta of +peace in Ireland, while others of equal authority assure me that by +reversing the principle of the Bright clauses in the Act of 1871 it has +encouraged the tenants to expect an eventual concession of the +land-ownership to them on merely nominal terms.</p> + +<p>Naturally enough, he is carped at and reviled almost as much by his +political friends as by his political foes. In the time of Sir Michael +Hicks Beach I remember hearing Lord Ashbourne denounced most bitterly by +a leading Tory light as “a Home Ruler in disguise, who had bedevilled +the Irish Question by undertaking to placate the country if it could be +left to be managed by him and by Lord Carnarvon.”</p> + +<p>The disguise appears to me quite impenetrable, and after my talk with +him, I remembered a characteristic remark about him made to me by Lord +Houghton after he had gone away: “A very <a name="page38" id="page38"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 38] +</span> +clever man with a very clever +wife. He ought to be on our side, but he has everything the Tories lack, +so they have stolen him, and will make much of him, and keep him. But +one of these days he will do them some great service, and then they’ll +never forgive him!”</p> + +<p>Lord Ashbourne went off early to look up some fine old wooden +mantelpieces and wainscotings in the “slums” of Dublin. A brisk trade it +seems has for some time been driven in such relics of the departed +splendour of the Irish capital. In the last century, when Dublin was +further from London than London now is from New York, the Irish +landlords were more fond of living in Dublin than a good many of the +Irish Nationalists I know now are. In this way the Iron Duke came to be +born in Dublin, where his father and mother had a handsome town house, +whereas when they went up to London they used to lodge, according to old +Lady Cork, “over a pastry-cook’s in Oxford Street.” In those days there +must have been a good many fine solidly built and well decorated +mansions in Dublin, of a type not unlike that of the ample rather +stately and periwigged houses, all British brick without, and all Santo +Domingo mahogany <a name="page39" id="page39"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 39] +</span> +within, which, in my schoolboy days, used to give such +a dignified old-world air to Third and Fourth Streets in Philadelphia. +It is among such of these as are still standing, and have come to vile +uses, that the foragers from London now find their harvest.</p> + +<p>From the Chief-Justice’s I went with Lord Ernest Hamilton to a meeting +of the Irish Unionists. Admission was by tickets, and the meeting +evidently “meant business.” I suppose Presbyterian Ulster was largely +represented: but Mr. Smith Barry of Fota Island, near Cork, one of the +kindest and fairest, as well as one of the most determined and resolute, +of the southern Irish landlords, was there, and the most interesting +speech I heard was made by a Catholic lawyer of Dublin, Mr. Quill, Q.C., +who grappled with the question of distress among the Irish tenants, and +produced some startling evidence to show that this distress is by no +means so great or so general as it is commonly assumed to be. <a id="footnotetag10" + name="footnotetag10"></a><a href="#footnote10"><sup>10</sup></a> Able +speeches were also made by Mr. T.W. Russell, M.P. for Tyrone, and by +Colonel Saunderson, the champion of Ulster at Westminster. Both of these +members, and especially <a name="page40" id="page40"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 40] +</span> +Colonel Saunderson, “went for” their +Nationalist colleagues with an unparliamentary plainness of speech which +commanded the cordial sympathy of their audience. “Is it possible,” +asked Colonel Saunderson, “that you should ever consent, on any terms, +to be governed by such—, well, by such wretches as these?” to which the +audience gave back an unanimous “Never,” neither thundered nor shouted, +but growled, like Browning’s “growl at the gates of Ghent,”—a low deep +growl like the final notice served by a bull-dog, which I had not heard +since the meetings which, at the North, followed the first serious +fighting of the Civil War. I was much struck, too, by the prevalence +among the audience of what may be called the Old Middle State type of +American face and head. A majority of these men might have come straight +from those slopes of the Alleghany which, from Pennsylvania down to the +Carolinas, were planted so largely by the only considerable Irish +emigrations known to our history, before the great year of famine, 1847, +the Irish emigrations which followed the wars against the woollen +industries in the seventeenth century, and the linen industries in the +eighteenth. A staunch, doggedly Protestant people, loving the New +England <a name="page41" id="page41"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 41] +</span> +Puritans and the Anglicans of Eastern Virginia little better +than the Maryland Catholics, but contributing more than their full share +of traditional antipathy to that extreme dislike and dread of the Roman +Church which showed itself half-a-century ago in the burning of +convents, and thirty years ago gave life and fire to the Know-Nothing +movement. Even so late as at the time of Father Burke’s grand and most +successful mission to America, I remember how much astonished and +impressed he was by the vigour and the virulence of these feelings. One +of the bishops, he told me, in a great diocese tried (though of course +in vain) to dissuade him on this account from wearing his Dominican +dress. These anti-Catholic passions are much stronger in America to-day +than it always suits our politicians to remember, though to forget it +may some day be found very dangerous. Even now two of the ablest +prelates of the most liberal of the Protestant American bodies, Bishop +Cleveland Coxe of Western New York, and Bishop Beckwith of Georgia, the +latter of whom I met the other day in Rome on his return from Palestine, +are promoting what looks very much like a crusade against the plan for +establishing a Catholic University at Washington. <a name="page42" id="page42"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 42] +</span> +Bishop Cleveland +Coxe’s denunciations of what he calls “the alien Church,” point straight +to a revival of the “Native American” movement; and I fear that +President Cleveland’s gift of a copy of the Constitution to Leo XIII. +will hardly make American Catholics forget either the hereditary +anti-Catholic feeling which led him, when Governor of New York, to +imperil the success of the Democratic party by his dogged resistance to +the Catholic demand for the endowment of Catholic schools and +protectories, or the scandalous persecution (it can be called by no +other name) of Catholics in Alaska, which was carried on in the name and +under the patronage of his sister, Miss Cleveland, by a local missionary +of the Presbyterian Church, to the point of the removal by the President +of a Federal judge, who dared to award a Catholic native woman from +Vancouver the custody of her own child.</p> + +<p>It is hard to imagine a greater misfortune for the Church in Ireland, +and for both the Church and the Irish race in America, than the +identification of the Home Rule movement with the Church, and its +triumph, after being so identified, and with the help of British +sympathisers and professional politicians, over the resistance of +Protestant Ireland. <a name="page43" id="page43"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 43] +</span> +This dilemma of the Church in Ireland, plainly seen +at Rome, as I know, to-day, was forcibly presented in the speech of +Colonel Saunderson.</p> + +<p>The chair at this Loyalist meeting was filled by the Provost of Trinity, +Dr. Jellett, a man of winning and venerable aspect, a kind of “angelic +doctor,” indeed, whose musical and slightly tremulous voice gave a +singular pathos and interest to his brief but very earnest speech. <a id="footnotetag11" + name="footnotetag11"></a><a href="#footnote11"><sup>11</sup></a></p> + +<p>To-night I dined with the Attorney-General, Mr. O’Brien. Among the +company were the Chief-Baron Palles, whose appointment dates back to Mr. +Gladstone’s Administration of 1873, but who is now an outspoken opponent +of Home Rule; Judge O’Brien, an extremely able man, with the face of an +eagle; Mr. Carson, Q.C.; and other notabilities of the bench and bar. My +neighbours at table were a charming and agreeable bencher of the King’s +Inn, Mr. Atkinson, Q.C., a leader of the Irish bar, and Mr. T.W. +Russell, M.P., who told me some amusing things of one of his colleagues, +an ideal Orangeman, who writes blood-curdling romances in the vein of La +Tosca, and goes in fear of the <a name="page44" id="page44"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 44] +</span> +re-establishment of the Holy Office in +Dublin and London. In view of the clamours about the severity of the +bench in Ireland, it was edifying to find an Irish Judge astonished by +the drastic decisions of our Courts in regard to the anarchists who were +hanged at Chicago, after a thorough and protracted review of the law in +their cases. He thought no Court in Great Britain or Ireland could have +dealt with them thus stringently, it being understood that the charge of +murder against them rested on their connection, solely as provocative +instigators to violence, with the actual throwing of the bombs among the +police.</p> + +<p>Some good stories were told by the lawyers; one of a descendant of the +Irish Kings, a lawyer more remarkable for his mental gifts than for his +physical graces.</p> + +<p>A peasant looking him carefully over at Cork whispered to a neighbour, +“And is he really of the ould blood of the Irish kings now, indeed?”</p> + +<p>“He is indeed!”</p> + +<p>“Well, then, I don’t wonder the Saxons conquered the Island!”</p> + +<p>Of the Home Rule movement one of the lawyers said to me, “The whole +thing is a business opera<a name="page45" id="page45"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 45] +</span> +tion mainly—a business operation with the +people who see in it the hope of appeasing their land hunger—and a +business operation for the agitators who live by it. Its main strength, +outside of the priests, who for one reason or another countenance or +foment it, is in the small country solicitors. The five hundred thousand +odd Irish tenants are the most litigious creatures alive. They are +always after the local lawyer with half-a-crown to fight this, that, or +the other question with some neighbour or kinsman, usually a kinsman. So +the solicitors know the whole country.”</p> + +<p>“When the League has chosen a spot in which to work the ‘Plan of +Campaign,’ the local attorney whips up the tenants to join it. The +poorer tenants are the most easily pushed into the plan, having least to +lose by it. But the lawyer takes the well-to-do tenants in hand, and +promises them that if they yield to the patriotic pressure of the +League, and come to grief by so doing, the landlord will at all events +have to pay the costs of the proceedings. It is this promise which +finally brings down most of them. To enjoy the luxury of a litigation +without paying for it tempts them almost as strongly as the prospect of +getting the land without paying for <a name="page46" id="page46"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 46] +</span> +it. You will find that the League +always insists, when things come to a settlement, that the landlord +shall pay the costs. If the landlord through poverty of spirit or of +purse succumbs to this demand, the League scores a victory. If the +landlord resists, it is a bad job for the League. The local lawyer is +discredited in the eyes of his clients, and if he is to get any fees he +must come down upon his clients for them. Naturally his clients resent +this. If Mr. Balfour keys up the landlords to stand out manfully against +paying for all the trouble and loss they are continually put to, he will +take the life of the League so far as Ireland is concerned. As things +now stand, it is almost the only thriving industry in Ireland!”</p> + +<p><span class="diary"><i>Wednesday, Feb. 1.</i></span>—This morning I called with Lord Ernest Hamilton +upon Sir Bernard Burke, the Ulster King-at-Arms, and the editor or +author of many other well-known publications, and especially of the +“Peerage,” sometimes irreverently spoken of as the “British Bible.”</p> + +<p>Sir Bernard’s offices are in the picturesque old “Bermingham” tower of +the castle. There we found him wearing his years and his lore as lightly +as a flower, and busy in an ancient chamber, converted <a name="page47" id="page47"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 47] +</span> +by him into a +most cosy modern study. He received us with the most cordial courtesy, +and was good enough to conduct us personally through his domain.</p> + +<p>Many of the State papers formerly kept here have been removed to the +Four Courts building. But Sir Bernard’s tower is still filled with +documents of the greatest historical interest, all admirably docketed +and arranged on the system adopted at the Hôtel Soubise, now the Palace +of the Archives in Paris.</p> + +<p>These documents, like the tower itself, take us back to the early days +when Dublin was the stronghold of the Englishry in Ireland, and its +citizens went in constant peril of an attack from the wild and “mere +Irish” in the hills. The masonry of the tower is most interesting. The +circular stone floors made up of slabs held together without cement, +like the courses in the towers of Sillustani, by their exact adjustment, +are particularly noteworthy. High up in the tower Sir Bernard showed us +a most uncomfortable sort of cupboard fashioned in the huge wall of the +tower, and with a loophole for a window. In this cell the Red Hugh +O’Donnell of Tyrconnel was kept as a prisoner for several years under +Elizabeth. He was young and lithe, however, and after his friends had +tried in vain to buy him out, a happy thought <a name="page48" id="page48"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 48] +</span> +one day struck him. He +squeezed himself through the loophole, and, dropping unhurt to the +ground, escaped to the mountains. There for a long time he made head +against the English power. In 1597 he drove Sir Conyers Clifford from +before the castle of Ballyshannon, with great loss to the English, and +when he could no longer keep the field, he sought refuge in Spain. He +was with the Spanish, as Prince of Tyrconnel, at the crushing defeat of +Kinsale in 1601. Escaping again, he died, poisoned, at Simancas the next +year.</p> + +<p>Sir Bernard showed us, among other curious manuscripts, a correspondence +between one Higgins, a trained informer, and the Castle authorities in +1798. This correspondence shows that the revolutionary plans of the +Nationalists of 1798 were systematically laid before the Government.</p> + +<p>When one thinks how very much abler were the leaders of the Irish +rebellion in 1798 than are the present heads of the Irish party in +Parliament, how much greater the provocations to rebellion given the +Irish people then were than they are now even alleged to be—how little +the Irish people in general have now to gain by rebellion, and how much +to lose, it is hard to resist a suspicion that <a name="page49" id="page49"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 49] +</span> +it must be even easier +now than it was in 1798 for the Government to tap the secrets of the +organisations opposed to it.</p> + +<p>Sir Bernard showed us also a curious letter written by Henry Grattan to +the founder of the great Guinness breweries, which have carried the fame +of Dublin porter into the uttermost parts of the earth. The Guinnesses +are now among the wealthiest people of the kingdom, and Ireland +certainly owes a great deal to them as “captains of industry,” but they +are not Home Rulers.</p> + +<p>At the Kildare Street Club in the afternoon I talked with two Irish +landlords from the north of Ireland, who had come up to take their +womenkind to the Drawing-Room.</p> + +<p>I was struck by their indifference to the political excitements of the +day. One of them had forgotten that the Ripon and Morley reception was +to take place to-night. The other called it “the love-feast of Voltaire +and the Vatican.” Both were much more fluent about hunting and farming. +I asked if the hunting still went on in their part of the island.</p> + +<p>“It has never stopped for a moment,” he replied.</p> + +<p>“No,” added the other, “nor ever a dog poisoned. <a name="page50" id="page50"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 50] +</span> +They were poisoned, +whole packs of them, in the papers, but not a dog really. The stories +were printed just to keep up the agitation, and the farmers winked at it +so as not to be ‘bothered.’”</p> + +<p>Both averred that they got their rents “fairly well,” but both also said +that they farmed much of their own land. One, a wiry, energetic, elderly +man, of a brisk presence and ruddy complexion, said he constantly went +over to the markets in England. “I go to Norwich,” he said, “not to +Liverpool. Liverpool is only a meat-market, and overdone at that. +Norwich is better for meat and for stores.” Both agreed this was a great +year for the potatoes, and said Ireland was actually exporting potatoes +to America. One mentioned a case of two cargoes of potatoes just taken +from Dundrum for America, the vessel which took them having brought over +six hundred tons of hay from America.</p> + +<p>They were breezy, out-of-door men, both of them. One amused us with a +tale of espying, the other day, two hounds, a collie dog, a terrier, and +eighteen cats all amicably running together across a farmyard, with +their tails erect, after a dairymaid who was to feed them. The other +capped this with a story of a pig on his own place, which follows one of +his <a name="page51" id="page51"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 51] +</span> +farm lads about like a dog,—“the only pig,” he said, “I ever saw +show any human feeling!” The gentleman who goes to Norwich thought the +English landlords were in many cases worse off than the Irish. “Ah, no!” +interfered the other, “not quite; for if the English can’t get their +rents, at least they keep their land, but we can neither get our rents +nor keep our land!” They both admitted that there had been much bad +management of the land in Ireland, and that the agents had done the +owners as well as the tenants a great deal of harm in the past, but they +both maintained stoutly that the legislation of late years had been +one-sided and short-sighted. “The tenants haven’t got real good from +it,” said one, “because the claims of the landlord no longer check their +extravagance, and they run more in debt than ever to the shopkeepers and +traders, who show them little mercy.” Both also strenuously insisted on +the gross injustice of leaving the landlords unrelieved of any of the +charges fixed upon their estates, while their means of meeting those +charges were cut down by legislation.</p> + +<p>“You have no landlords in America,” said one, “but if you had, how would +you like to be saddled with heavy tithe charges for a Disestablished +Church <a name="page52" id="page52"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 52] +</span> +at the same time that your tenants were relieved of their dues +to you?”</p> + +<p>I explained to him that so far from our having no landlords in America, +the tenant-farmer class is increasing rapidly in the United States, +while it is decreasing in the Old World, while the land laws, especially +in some of our older Western States, give the landlords such absolute +control of their tenants that there is a serious battle brewing at this +moment in Illinois <a id="footnotetag12" + name="footnotetag12"></a><a href="#footnote12"><sup>12</sup></a> between a small army of tenants and their +absentee landlord, an alien and an Irishman, who holds nearly a hundred +thousand acres in the heart of the State, lives in England, and grants +no leases, except on the condition that he shall receive from his +tenants, in addition to the rent, the full amount of all taxes and +levies whatsoever made upon the lands they occupy.</p> + +<p>“God bless my soul!” exclaimed the gentleman who goes to Norwich, “if +that is the kind of laws your American Irish will give us with Home +Rule, I’ll go in for it to-morrow with all my heart!”</p> + +<p><a name="page53" id="page53"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 53] +</span> +After an early dinner, I set out with Lord Ernest to see the +Morley-Ripon procession. It was a good night for a torchlight +parade—the weather not too chill, and the night dark. The streets were +well filled, but there was no crowding—no misconduct, and not much +excitement. The people obviously were out for a holiday, not for a +“demonstration.” It was Paris swarming out to the Grand Prix, not Paris +on the eve of the barricades; very much such a crowd as one sees in the +streets and squares of New York on a Fourth of July night, when the city +fathers celebrate that auspicious anniversary with fireworks at the City +Hall, and not in the least such a crowd as I saw in the streets of New +York on the 12th of July 1871, when, thanks to General Shaler and the +redoubtable Colonel “Jim Fiske,” a great Orange demonstration led to +something very like a massacre by chance medley.</p> + +<p>Small boys went about making night hideous with tom-toms, extemporised +out of empty fig-drums, and tooting terribly upon tin trumpets. There +was no general illumination, but here and there houses were bright with +garlands of lamps, and rockets ever and anon went up from the +house-tops.</p> + +<p><a name="page54" id="page54"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 54] +</span> +We made our way to the front of a mass of people near one of the great +bridges, over which the procession was to pass on its long march from +Kingstown to the house of Mr. Walker, Q.C., in Rutland Square, where the +distinguished visitors were to meet the liberated Lord Mayor, with Mr. +Dwyer Gray, and other local celebrities. A friendly citizen let us perch +on his outside car.</p> + +<p>The procession presently came in sight, and a grand show it made—not of +the strictly popular and political sort, for it was made up of guilds +and other organised bodies on foot and on horseback, marching in +companies—but imposing by reason of its numbers, and of the flaring +torches. Of these there were not so many as there should have been to do +justice to the procession. The crowd cheered from time to time, with +that curious Irish cheer which it is often difficult to distinguish from +groaning, but the only explosive and uproarious greeting given to the +visitors in our neighbourhood came from a member of “the devout female +sex,” a young lady who stood up between two friends on the top of a car +very near us, and imperilled both her equilibrium and theirs by wildly +waving her hand-kerchief in the air, and crying out at the top of a +<a name="page55" id="page55"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 55] +</span> +somewhat husky voice, “Three cheers for Mecklenburg Street! Three +cheers for Mecklenburg Street!”</p> + +<p>This made the crowd very hilarious, but as Lord Ernest’s local knowledge +did not enable him to enlighten me as to the connection between +Mecklenburg Street and the liberation of Ireland, I must leave the +mystery of their mirth unsolved till a more convenient season.</p> + +<p>At Rutland Square the crowd was tightly packed, but perfectly +well-behaved, and the guests were enthusiastically cheered. But even +before they had entered the house of Mr. Walker it began to break up, +and long files of people wended their way to see “the carriages” +hastening with their lovely freight to the Castle. Thither Lord Ernest +has just gone, arrayed in a captivating Court costume of black velvet, +with cut-steel buttons, sword, and buckles—just the dress in which +Washington used to receive his guests at the White House, and in which +Senator Seward, I remember, insisted in 1860 on getting himself +presented by Mr. Dallas to Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace. +</p> + + + +<h2><a name="page56" id="page56"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 56] +</span> +CHAPTER II.</h2> + + +<p><span class="diary">SION HOUSE, COUNTY TYRONE, <i>Feb. 3d.</i></span>—Hearing nothing from Mr. Davitt +yesterday, I gave up the idea of attending the Ripon-Morley meeting last +night. As I have come to Ireland to hear what people living in Ireland +have to say about Irish affairs, I see no particular advantage in +listening to imported eloquence on the subject, even from so clever a +man as his books prove Mr. Morley to be, and from so conscientious a man +as an acquaintance, going back to the days when he sat with Kingsley at +the feet of Maurice, makes me believe Lord Ripon to be. How much either +of them knows about Ireland is another matter. A sarcastic Nationalist +acquaintance of mine, with whom I conversed about the visitors +yesterday, assured me it had been arranged that Lord Ripon should wear +the Star of the Garter, “so the people might know him from Morley.” When +I observed <a name="page57" id="page57"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 57] +</span> +that Dublin must have a short memory to forget so soon the +face of a Chief Secretary, he replied: “Forget his face? Why, they never +saw his face! It’s little enough he was here, and indoors he kept when +here he was. He shook hands last night with more Irishmen than ever he +spoke to while he was Chief Secretary; for he used to say then, I am +told, in the Reform Club, that the only way to get along with the Irish +was to have nothing to do with them!”</p> + +<p>There was a sharp discussion, I was told, in the private councils of the +Committee yesterday as to whether the Queen should be “boycotted,” and +the loyal sentiments usual in connection with her Majesty’s name dropped +from the proceedings. I believe it was finally settled that this might +put the guests into an awkward position, both of them having worn her +Majesty’s uniform of State as public servants of the Crown.</p> + +<p>During the day I walked through many of the worst quarters of Dublin. I +met fewer beggars in proportion than one encounters in such parts of +London as South Kensington and other residential regions not +over-frequented by the perambulating policemen; but I was struck by the +number of <a name="page58" id="page58"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 58] +</span> +persons—and particularly of women—who wore that most +pathetic of all the liveries of distress, “the look of having seen +better days.” In the most wretched streets I traversed there was more +squalor than suffering—the dirtiest and most ragged people in them +showing no signs of starvation, or even of insufficient rations; and +certainly in the most dismal alleys and by-streets, I came upon nothing +so revolting as the hives of crowded misery which make certain of the +tenement house quarters of New York more gruesome than the Cour des +Miracles itself used to be.</p> + +<p>This morning at 7.25 A.M. I left Dublin with Lord Ernest Hamilton for +Strabane. My attention was distracted from the reports of the great +meeting by the varied and picturesque beauty of the landscape, through +which we ran at a very respectable rate in a very comfortable carriage. +We passed Dundalk, where Edward Bruce got himself crowned king of +Ireland, after his brother Robert had won a throne in Scotland.</p> + +<p>These masterful Normans, all over Europe from Apulia to Britain, worked +out the problem of “satisfied nationalities” much more successfully and +simply than Napoleon III. in our own day. If <a name="page59" id="page59"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 59] +</span> +Edward Bruce broke down +where Robert succeeded, the causes of his failure may perhaps be worth +considering even now by people who have set themselves the task in our +times of establishing “an Irish nationality.” Leaving out the +Cromwellian English of Tipperary and the South, and the Scotch who have +done for Ulster, what he aimed at for all Ireland, they have very much +the same materials to deal with as those which he dismally failed to +fashion.</p> + +<p>Drogheda stands beautifully in a deep valley through which flows the +Boyne Water, spanned by one of the finest viaducts in Europe. Here, two +years after the discovery of America, Poyning’s Parliament enacted that +all laws passed in Ireland must be subject to approval by the English +Privy Council. I wonder nobody has proposed a modification of this form +of Home Rule for Ireland now. Earl Grey’s recent suggestion that +Parliamentary government be suspended for ten years in Ireland, which I +heard warmly applauded by some able lawyers and business men in Dublin, +involves like this an elimination of the Westminster debates from the +problem of government in Ireland. As we passed Drogheda, Father Burke’s +magnificent <a name="page60" id="page60"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 60] +</span> +presence and thrilling voice came back to me out of the +mist of years, describing with an indignant pathos, never to be +forgotten, the fearful scenes which followed the surrender of Sir Arthur +Ashton’s garrison, when “for the glory of God,” and “to prevent the +further effusion of blood,” Oliver ordered all the officers to be +knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed, and the +rest shipped as slaves to the Barbadoes. But how different was the +spirit in which the great Dominican recalled these events from that in +which the “popular orators,” scattering firebrands and death, delight to +dwell upon them!</p> + +<p>At Strabane station we found a handsome outside car waiting on us, and +drove off briskly for this charming place, the home of one of the most +active and prosperous manufacturers in Ireland. A little more than half +way between the station and Sion House, Mr. Herdman met us afoot. We +jumped off and walked up with him. Sion House, built for him by his +brother, an accomplished architect, is a handsome Queen Anne mansion. It +stands on a fine knoll, commanding lovely views on all sides. Below it, +and beyond a little stream, rise the extensive flax-mills which are the +life of the place, <a name="page61" id="page61"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 61] +</span> +under the eye and within touch of the hand of the +master. These works were established here by Mr. Herdman’s father, after +he had made a vain attempt to establish them at Ballyshannon in Donegal, +half a century ago. As all salmon fishers know, the water-power is +admirable at Ballyshannon, where the Erne pours in torrents down a +thirty feet fall. But the ignorance and indolence of the people made +Ballyshannon quite impossible, with this result, that while the Erne +still flows unvexed to the sea, and the people of Ballyshannon live very +much as they lived in 1835, here at Sion the Mourne enables 1100 Irish +operatives to work up £90,000 worth of Irish flax every year into yarn +for the Continent, and to divide among themselves some £20,000 a year in +wages.</p> + +<p>After luncheon we walked with Mr. Herdman through the mills and the +model village which has grown up around them. Everywhere we found order, +neatness, and thrift. The operatives are almost all people of the +country, Catholics and Protestants in almost equal numbers. “I find it +wise,” said Mr. Herdman, “to give neither religion a preponderance, and +to hold my people of both religions to a common standard of fidelity and +<a name="page62" id="page62"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 62] +</span> +efficiency.” The greatest difficulty he has had to contend with is the +ineradicable objection of some of the peasantry to continuous industry. +He told us of a strapping lass of eighteen who came to the mills, but +very soon gave up and went back to the parental shebeen in the mountains +rather than get up early in the morning to earn fourteen shillings a +week.</p> + +<p>Three weeks of her work would have paid the year’s rent of the paternal +holding.</p> + +<p>In the village, which is regularly laid out, is a reading-room for the +workpeople. There are cricket clubs, and one of the mill buildings (just +now crammed with bales of flax) has been fitted up by Mr. Herdman as a +theatre. There is a drop-curtain representing the Lake of Como, and the +flies are flanked by life-size copies in plaster of the Apollo Belvidere +and the Medicean Venus. This is a development I had hardly looked to see +in Ulster.</p> + +<p>After we had gone over the works thoroughly, Mr. Herdman took us back, +on a transparent pretext of enlightened curiosity touching certain +qualities of spun flax, to give us a glimpse of the “beauty of Sion”—a +well-grown graceful girl of fifteen or <a name="page63" id="page63"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 63] +</span> +sixteen summers. She +concentrated her attention, as soon as we appeared, upon certain +mysterious bobbins and spindles, with an exaggerated determination which +proved how completely she saw through our futile and frivolous devices. +Mr. Herdman told us, as we came away discomfited, a droll story of the +ugliest girl ever employed here—a girl so preternaturally ugly that one +of his best blacksmiths having been entrapped into offering to marry +her, lost heart of grace on the eve of the sacrifice, and, taking ship +at Derry for America, fled from Sion for ever.</p> + +<p>In the evening came, with other guests, Dr. Webb, Q.C., Regius Professor +of Laws and Public Orator of Trinity at Dublin, well known both as a +Grecian capable of composing “skits” as clever as the verses yclept +Homerstotle—in which the <i>Saturday Review</i> served up the Donnelly +nonsense about Bacon and Shakespeare—and as a translator of <i>Faust</i>. He +was abused by the Loyalists at Dublin, in 1884, for his defence of P.N. +Fitzgerald, the leader who beat Parnell and Archbishop Croke so badly at +Thurles the other day; and he is in a fair way now to be denounced with +equal fervour by the Nationalists as a County Court <a name="page64" id="page64"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 64] +</span> +judge in Donegal. +He finds this post no sinecure. “I do as much work in five days,” he +said to-night, “as the Superior Judges do in five weeks.”</p> + +<p>He is a staunch Unionist, and laughs at the notion that the Irish people +care one straw for a Parliament in Dublin. “Why should they?” he said. +“What did any Parliament in Dublin ever do to gratify the one real +passion of the Irish peasant—his hunger for a bit of land? So far as +the Irish people are concerned, Home Rule means simply agrarian reform. +Would they get that from a Parliament in Dublin? If the British +Parliament evicts the landlords and makes the tenants lords of the land, +they will be face to face with Davitt’s demand for the nationalising of +the land. Do you suppose they will like to see the lawyers and the +politicians organising a labour agitation against the ‘strong farmers’? +The last thing they want is a Parliament in Dublin. Lord Ashbourne’s Act +carries in its principle the death-warrant of the ‘National League.’”</p> + +<p>Some excellent stories were told in the picturesque smoking-room after +dinner, one of a clever and humorous, sensible and non-political priest, +who, being taken to task by some of his brethren <a name="page65" id="page65"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 65] +</span> +for giving the cold +shoulder to the Nationalist movement, excused himself by saying, “I +should like to be a patriot; but I can’t be. It’s all along of the +rheumatism which prevents me from lying out at nights in a ditch with a +rifle.” The same priest being reproached by others of the cloth with a +fondness for the company of some of the resident landlords in his +neighbourhood, replied, “It’s in the blood, you see. My poor mother, God +rest her soul! she always had a liking for the quality. As for my dear +father, he was just a blundering peasant like the rest of ye!”</p> + +<p><span class="diary">GWEEDORE, <i>Saturday, 4th Feb.</i></span>—A good day’s work to-day!</p> + +<p>We left our hospitable friends at Sion House early in the morning. The +sun was shining brightly; the air so soft and bland that the thrushes +were singing like mad creatures in the trees and the shrubbery; and the +sky was more blue than Italy. “A foine day it is, sorr,” said our jarvey +as we took our seats on the car. There is some point in the old Irish +sarcasm that English travellers in Ireland only see one side of the +country, because they travel through it on the outside car. But to make +this point tell, <a name="page66" id="page66"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 66] +</span> +four people must travel on the car. In that case they +must sit two on a side, each pair facing one side only of the landscape. +It is a very different business when you travel on an outside car alone, +with the driver sitting on one side of it, or with one companion only, +when the driver occupies the little perch in front between the sides of +the car. When you travel thus, the outside car is the best thing in the +world, after a good roadster, for taking you rapidly over a country, and +enabling you to command all points of the horizon. Double up one leg on +the seat, let the other dangle freely, using the step as a stirrup, and +you go rattling along almost as if you were on horseback.</p> + +<p>We drove through a long suburb of Strabane into the busiest quarter of +the busy little place. The names on the shops were predominantly +Scotch—Maxwells, Stewarts, Hamiltons, Elliotts. I saw but one Celtic +name, M‘Ilhenny, and one German, Straub. I changed gold for enormous +Bank of Ireland notes at a neat local bank, and the cheery landlord of +the Abercorn Arms gave us a fresh car to take us on to Letterkenny, a +drive of some twenty miles.</p> + +<p>The car came up like a small blizzard, flying <a name="page67" id="page67"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 67] +</span> +about at the heels of an +uncanny little grey mare. Lord Ernest knew the beast well, and said she +was twenty-five years old. She behaved like an unbroken filly at first, +but soon striking her pace, turned out a capital goer, and took us on +without turning a hair till her work was done. The weather continued to +be good, but clouds rolled up around the horizon.</p> + +<p>“It’ll always be bad weather,” said our saturnine jarvey, “when the +Judges come to hold court, and never be good again till they rise.”</p> + +<p>Here is a consequence of alien rule in Ireland, never, so far as I know, +brought to the notice of Parliament.</p> + +<p>“Why is this?” I asked; “is it because of the time of the year they +select?”</p> + +<p>“The time of year, sorr?” he replied, glancing compassionately at me. +“No, not at all; it’s because of the oaths!”</p> + +<p>We reached Letterkenny in time for a very good luncheon at “Hegarty’s,” +one of the neatest little inns I have ever found in a place of the size. +It stands on the long main street which is really the town. At one end +of this street is a very pretty row of picturesque ivy-clad brick +cottages, built <a name="page68" id="page68"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 68] +</span> +by a landlord whose property and handsome park bound +the town on the west; and the street winds alongside the slope of a hill +rising from the bank of the Swilly river. A fair was going on. The +little market-place was alive with bustling, chattering, and chaffering +country-folk. Smartly-dressed young damsels tripped in and out of the +neat well-filled shops, and in front of a row of semidetached villas, +like a suburban London terrace, on the hill opposite “Hegarty’s,” a +German band smote the air with discordant fury. Decidedly a lively, +prosperous little town is Letterkenny, nor was I surprised to learn from +a communicative gentleman, nursing his cane near the inn-door, that +advantage would be taken of the presence of the Hussars sent to keep +order at Dunfanaghy, to “give a ball.”</p> + +<p>“But I thought all the country was in arms about the trials at +Dunfanaghy,” I said.</p> + +<p>“In arms about the trials at Dunfanaghy? Oh no; they’ll never be locked +up, Father M‘Fadden and Mr. Blane. And the people here at Letterkenny, +they’ve more sinse than at Dunfanaghy. Have you heard of the champagne?”</p> + +<p>Upon this he proceeded to tell me, as a grand <a name="page69" id="page69"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 69] +</span> +joke, that Father +M‘Fadden and Mr. Blane, M.P., having declined to accept the tea offered +them by the authorities during their detention, they had been permitted +to order what they liked from the local hotel-keeper. After the trial +was over, and they were released on bail to prosecute their appeal, the +hotel-keeper demanded of the authorities payment of his bill, including +two bottles of champagne ordered to refresh the member for Armagh!</p> + +<p>A conspicuous, smart, spick-and-span house on the main street, built of +brick and wood, with a verandah, and picked out in bright colours, was +pointed out to me by this amiable citizen as the residence of a +“returned American.” This was a man, he said, who had made some money in +America, but got tired of living there, and had come back to end his +days in his native place He was a good man, my informant added, “only he +puts on too many airs.”</p> + +<p>A remarkably handsome, rosy-faced young groom, a model of manhood in +vigour and grace, presently brought us up a wagonette with a pair of +stout nags, and a driver in a suit of dark-brown frieze, whose head +seemed to have been driven down be<a name="page70" id="page70"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 70] +</span> +tween his shoulders. He never lifted +it up all the way to Gweedore, but he proved to be a capital jarvey +notwithstanding, and knew the country as well as his horses.</p> + +<p>Not long after leaving the town by a road which passes the huge County +Asylum (now literally crammed, I am told, with lunatics), we passed a +ruined church on the banks of a stream. Here the country people, it +seems, halt and wash their feet before entering Letterkenny, failing +which ceremony they may expect a quarrel with somebody before they get +back to their homes. This wholesome superstition doubtless was +established ages ago by some good priest, when priests thought it their +duty to be the preachers and makers of peace.</p> + +<p>We soon left the wooded country of the Swilly and began to climb into +the grand and melancholy Highlands of Donegal. The road was as fine as +any in the Scottish Highlands, and despite the keen chill wind, the +glorious and ever-changing panoramas of mountain and strath through +which we drove were a constant delight, until, just as we came within +full range of Muckish, the giant of Donegal, the weather finally broke +down into driving mists and blinding rain.</p> + +<p><a name="page71" id="page71"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 71] +</span> +We pulled up near a picturesque little shebeen, to water the horses and +get our Highland wraps well about us. Out came a hardy, cheery old +farmer. He swept the heavens with the eye of a mountaineer, and +exclaimed:—“Ah! it’s a coorse day intirely, it is.” “A coorse day +intirely” from that moment it continued to be.</p> + +<p>Happily the curtain had not fallen before we caught a grand passing +glimpse of the romantic gorge of Glen Veagh, closed and commanded in the +shadowy distance by the modern castle of Glenveagh, the mountain home of +my charming country-woman, Mrs. Adair.</p> + +<p>Thanks to its irregular serpentine outline, and to the desolate majesty +of the hills which environ it, Lough Veagh, though not a large sheet of +water, may well be what it is reputed to be, a rival of the finest lochs +in Scotland. No traces are now discernible on its shores of the too +celebrated evictions of Glen Veagh. But from the wild and rugged aspect +of the surrounding country it is probable enough that these evictions +were to the evicted a blessing in disguise, and that their descendants +are now enjoying, beyond the Atlantic, a measure of prosperity and of +happiness which neither their <a name="page72" id="page72"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 72] +</span> +own labour nor the most liberal +legislation could ever have won for them here. We caught sight, as we +drove through Mrs. Adair’s wide and rocky domain, of wire fences, and I +believe it is her intention to create here a small deer forest. This +ought to be as good a stalking country as the Scottish Highlands, +provided the people can be got to like “stalking” stags better than +landlords and agents.</p> + +<p>Long before we reached Glen Veagh we had bidden farewell, not only to +the hedges and walls of Tyrone and Eastern Donegal, but to the +“ditches,” which anywhere but in Ireland would be called “embankments,” +and entered upon great stone-strewn wastes of land seemingly unreclaimed +and irreclaimable. Huge boulders lay tossed and tumbled about as if they +had been whirled through the air by the cyclones of some prehistoric +age, and dropped at random when the wild winds wearied of the fun. The +last landmark we made out through the gathering storm was the pinnacled +crest of Errigal. Of Dunlewy, esteemed the loveliest of the Donegal +lakes, we could see little or nothing as we hurried along the highway, +which follows its course down to the Clady, the river of Gweedore; and +we blessed the memory of Lord George Hill <a name="page73" id="page73"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 73] +</span> +when suddenly turning from +the wind and the rain into what seemed to be a mediaeval courtyard +flanked by trees, we pulled up in the bright warm light of an open +doorway, shook ourselves like Newfoundland dogs, and were welcomed by a +frank, good-looking Scottish host to a glowing peat fire in this really +comfortable little hotel, the central pivot of a most interesting +experiment in civilisation.</p> + + +<p><span class="diary">GWEEDORE, <i>Sunday, Feb. 5th.</i></span>—A morning as soft and bright almost as +April succeeded the stormy night. Errigal lifted his bold irregular +outlines royally against an azure sky. The sunshine glinted merrily on +the swift waters of the Clady, which flows almost beneath our windows +from Dunlewy Lough to the sea. The birds were singing in the trees, +which all about our hotel make what in the West would be called an +“opening” in the wide and woodless expanse of hill and bog.</p> + +<p>This hotel was for many years the home of Lord George Hill, who built it +in the hope of making Gweedore, what in England or Scotland it would +long ago have become, a prosperous watering-place. Now that a +battle-royal is going on between Lord <a name="page74" id="page74"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 74] +</span> +George’s son and heir and the +tenants on the estate, organised by Father M‘Fadden under the “Plan of +Campaign,” it is important to know something of the history of the +place.</p> + +<p>Is this a case of the sons of the soil expropriated by an alien and +confiscating Government to enrich a ruthless invader? I was told by a +Nationalist acquaintance in Dublin that the owner of Gweedore is a near +kinsman of the Marquis of Londonderry, and that the property came to him +by inheritance under an ancient confiscation of the estates of the +O’Dounels of Tyrconnel. All of this I find is embroidery.</p> + +<p>The “Carlisle” room, which our landlord has assigned to us, contains a +number of books, the property of the late Lord George, and ample +materials are here for making out the annals of Gweedore. Lord George, +it seems, was a posthumous son of the fourth Marquis of Downshire, and a +nephew of that Marchioness of Salisbury who was burned to death with the +west wing of Hatfield House half a century ago. He inherited nothing in +Donegal, nor was any provision made for him under his father’s will. His +elder brothers made up and settled upon him a sum of twenty thousand +pounds. <a name="page75" id="page75"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 75] +</span> +He entered the Army, and being quartered for a time at +Letterkenny, shot and fished all about Donegal. He found the people here +kindly and friendly, but in a deplorable state of ignorance and of +destitution. Their holdings under sundry small proprietors were entirely +unimproved, and as their families increased, these holdings were cut up +by themselves into even smaller strips under the system known as +“rundale,”—each son as he grew up taking off a slice of the paternal +holding, putting up a hut with mud, and scratching the soil after his +own rude fashion. This custom, necessarily fatal to civilisation, +doubtless came down from the traditional times when the lands of a sept +were held in common by the sept, before the native chieftains had +converted themselves into landlords, and defeated Sir John Davies’s +attempt to convert their tribal kinsmen into peasant proprietors.</p> + +<p>Whatever its origin, it had reduced Gweedore, or “Tullaghobegly,” fifty +years ago to barbarism. Nearly nine thousand people then dwelt here with +never a landlord among them. There was no “Coercion” in Gweedore, +neither was there a coach nor a car to be found in the whole district. +The nominal owners of the small properties into which <a name="page76" id="page76"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 76] +</span> +the district was +divided knew little and cared less about them. The rents were usually +“made by the tenants,”—a step in advance, it will be seen, of the +system which the collective wisdom of Great Britain has for the last +twenty years been trying to establish in Ireland. But they were only +paid when it was convenient. An agent of one of these properties who +travelled fourteen miles one day to collect some rents gave it up and +drove back again, because the “day was too bad” for him to wander about +in the mountains on the chance of finding the tenants at home and +disposed to give him a trifle on account. On most of the properties +there were arrears of eight, ten, and twenty years’ standing.</p> + +<p>There was one priest in the district, and one National School, the +schoolmaster, with a family of nine persons, receiving the munificent +stipend of eight pounds a year. These nine thousand people, depending +absolutely upon tillage and pasture, owned among them all one cart and +one plough, eight saddles, two pillions, eleven bridles, and thirty-two +rakes! They had no means of harrowing their lands but with meadow rakes, +and the farms were so small that from four to ten farms could be +harrowed in a day with one rake.</p> + +<p><a name="page77" id="page77"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 77] +</span> +Their beds were of straw, mountain grass, or green and dried rushes. +Among the nine thousand people there were but two feather-beds, and but +eight beds stuffed with chaff. There were but two stables and six +cow-houses in the whole district. None of the women owned more than one +shift, nor was there a single bonnet among them all, nor a looking-glass +costing more than threepence.</p> + +<p>The climate and the scenery took the fancy of Lord George. He made up +his mind to see what could be done with this forgotten corner of the +world, and to that end bought up as he could the small and scattered +properties, till he had invested the greater part of his small fortune, +and acquired about twenty thousand acres of land. Of this, little was +fit for cultivation, even with the help of capital and civilised +management. There was not a road in the district, nor a drain.</p> + +<p>Lord George came and established himself here. He went to work +systematically to improve the country, reclaiming bog-lands, building +roads, and laying out the property into regular farms. He went about +among the people himself, trying to get their confidence, and to let +them know what he wanted to do for them, and with their help.</p> + +<p><a name="page78" id="page78"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 78] +</span> +For a long time they wouldn’t believe him to be a lord at all, “because +he spoke Irish”; and the breaking up of the rundale system, under which +they had lived in higgledy-piggledy laziness, exasperated them greatly. +Of the first man who took a fenced and well-defined farm from Lord +George, and went to work on it, the others observed that he would come +to no good by it, because he would “have to keep a maid just to talk to +his wife.” Men could not be got for any wages to work at draining, or at +making the “ditches” or embankments to delineate the new holdings; and +when Lord George found adventurous “tramps” willing to earn a few +shillings by honest work of the kind, conspiracies were formed to undo +by night what was done by day. However, Lord George persevered.</p> + +<p>There was not a shop, nor a dispensary, nor a doctor, nor a warehouse, +nor a quay for landing goods in this whole populous and sea-washed +region. He put up storehouses, built a little harbour at Bunbeg, +established a dispensary, got a doctor to settle in the district, and +finally put up the hotel in which we are. He advanced money to tenants +disposed to improve their holdings. Finding the women, as <a name="page79" id="page79"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 79] +</span> +usual, more +thrifty and industrious than the men, and gifted with a natural aptitude +for the loom and the spindle, he introduced the weaving of woollen yarn +into stout frieze stuffs and foot-gear for both sexes. This was in 1840, +and in 1854 Gweedore hand-knit socks and stockings were sold to the +amount of £500, being just about the annual estimated rents of all the +properties bought by Lord George at the time when he bought them in +1838! But with this difference: The owners from whom Lord George bought +the properties got their £500 very irregularly, when they got it at all; +whereas the wives and daughters of the tenants, who made the socks and +stockings, were paid their £500 in cash.</p> + +<p>Clearly in Gweedore I have a case not of the children of the soil +despoiled and trampled upon by the stranger, but of the honest +investment of alien capital in Irish land, and of the administration by +the proprietor himself of the Irish property so acquired for the benefit +alike of the owner and of the occupiers of the land.</p> + +<p>That the deplorable state in which he found the people was mainly due to +their own improvidence and gregarious incapacity is also tolerably +clear. <a name="page80" id="page80"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 80] +</span> +On the west coast of Norway, dear to the heart of the +salmon-fisher, you find people living under conditions certainly no more +favourable than here exist. North of the Hardanger Fjord, the spring +opens only in June. The farmers grow only oats and barley; but they have +no market except for the barley, and live chiefly by the pasturage. It +is as rocky a region as Donegal. But the Norsemen never try to make the +land do more than it is capable of doing. With them the oldest son takes +the farm and works it. The juniors are welcome to work on the farm if +they like for their brother, but they are not allowed to cut it up. +There is no rundale in Norway; and when the cadets see that there is no +room for them they quietly “pull up stakes,” and go forth to seek a new +home, no matter where.</p> + +<p>For fourteen years Lord George Hill spent on Gweedore all the rents he +received from it, and a great deal more. During that time the relations +between the people and their new landlord seem to have been, in the +main, most friendly, notwithstanding his constant efforts to break up +their old habits, or, to use their own language, to “bother them.” But +there were no “evictions”; rents were not raised <a name="page81" id="page81"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 81] +</span> +even where the tenants +were visibly able to pay better rents; prizes were given annually for +the best and neatest cottages, for the best crops of turnips (neither +turnips, parsnips, nor carrots were there at Gweedore when Lord George +bought the estate), for the best pigs (there was not a pig in Gweedore +in 1838!), for calves and colts, for the best fences, the best ordered +tillage farms, the best labourers’ cottages, the best beds and bedding, +the best butter, the best woollen goods made on the estate. The old +rundale plan of dividing up the land among the children was put a stop +to, and every tenant was encouraged not to make his holding smaller, but +to add to and enlarge it. A corn-mill, saw-mill, and flax-mill were +established. In 1838 there was not a baker within ten miles. In 1852 the +local baker was driving a good business in good bread. The tenant’s +wife, for whom in 1838 a single shift was a social superiority, in 1852 +went shopping at Bunbeg for the latest fashions from Derry or Dublin.</p> + +<p>Whatever “landlordism” may mean elsewhere in Ireland, it is plain enough +that in the history of Gweedore it has meant the difference between +savage squalor and civilisation.</p> + +<p>Lord George Hill died in 1879, the year in which <a name="page82" id="page82"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 82] +</span> +the Land League began +its operations. He bequeathed this property to his son, Captain Hill, by +whom the management of it has been left to agents. After Lord George’s +death two tracts of mountain pasture, reserved by him to feed imported +sheep, were let to the tenants, who by that time had come to own quite a +considerable number, some thousands, of live stock, cattle, horses, and +sheep.</p> + +<p>Concurrently with this concession to the tenants the provisions made by +Lord George against the subdivision of holdings began to give way. +Father M‘Fadden, combining the position of President of the National +League with that of parish priest, seems to have favoured this tendency, +and to have encouraged the putting up of new houses on reduced holdings +to accommodate an increasing population. A flood which in August 1880 +damaged the chapel and caused the death of five persons gave him an +opportunity of bringing before the British public the condition of the +people in a letter to the London <i>Times</i>, which elicited a very generous +response, several hundred pounds, it is said, having been sent to him +from London alone. Large contributions of relief were also made to +Gweedore from the Duchess <a name="page83" id="page83"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 83] +</span> +of Marlborough’s Fund, and Gweedore became a +standing butt of British benevolence. Two results seem to have followed, +naturally enough,—a growing indisposition on the part of the tenants to +pay rent, and a rapid rise in the value of tenant rights. With the +National League standing between them and the landlord, with the British +Parliament legislating year after year in favour of the Irish tenant and +against the Irish landlord, and with the philanthropic public ready to +respond to any appeal for help made on their behalf, the tenants at +Gweedore naturally became a privileged class. In no other way at least +can I explain the extraordinary fact that tenant rights at Gweedore have +been sold, according to Lord Cowper’s Blue-book of 1886, during the +period of the greatest alleged distress and congestion in this district, +at prices representing from forty to a hundred-and-thirty years’ +purchase of the landlord’s rent!</p> + +<p>In this Blue-book the Rev. Father M‘Fadden appears as receiving no less +than £115 sterling for the tenant-right sold by him of ground, the head +rent of which is £1, 2s. 6d. a year. The worst enemy of Father M‘Fadden +will hardly suspect him, I hope, of taking such a sum as this from <a name="page84" id="page84"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 84] +</span> +a +tenant farmer for the right to starve to death by inches. <a id="footnotetag13" + name="footnotetag13"></a><a href="#footnote13"><sup>13</sup></a></p> + +<p>A shrewd Galway man, now here, who seems to know the region well, and +likes both the scenery and the people, tells me that the troubles which +have now culminated in the arrest of Father M‘Fadden have been +aggravated by the vacillation of Captain Hill, and by the foibles of his +agent, Colonel Dopping, who not long ago brought down Mr. Gladstone with +his unloaded rifle. That the tenants as a body have been, or now are, +unable to pay their rent he does not believe. On the contrary, he thinks +them, as a body, rather well off. Certainly I have seen and spoken with +none of them about the roads to-day who were not hearty-looking men, and +in very good case. Colonel Dopping, according to my Galwegian, is not an +Englishman, but a Longford Irishman of good family, who got his +training in India as an official of the Woods and Forests in Bengal. “He +is not a bad-hearted man, nor <a name="page85" id="page85"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 85] +</span> +unkind,” said my Galwegian, “but he is +too much of a Bengal tiger in his manner. He went into the cottages +personally and lectured the people, and that they never will stand. They +don’t require or expect you to believe what they say—in fact they have +little respect for you if you do—but they like to have the agent +pretend that he believes them, and then go on and show that he don’t. +But he must never lose his temper about it. Colonel Dopping, I have +heard, argued with an old woman one day who was telling him more yarns +than were ever spun into cloth in Gweedore, till she picked up her cup +of tea and threw it in his face. He flounced out of the cottage, and +ordered the police to arrest her. That did him more harm than if he had +shot a dozen boys.” “What with the temper of Colonel Dopping and the +vacillation of Captain Hill, who is always of the mind of the last man +that speaks to him, Father M‘Fadden has had it all his own way. Captain +Hill’s claim was for £1800 of arrears, long arrears too, and £400 of +costs. How much the people paid in under the Plan of Campaign nobody +knows but Father M‘Fadden. But he is a clever <i>padre</i>, and he played +Captain Hill till he finally gave up the costs, and settled for £1450.”</p> + +<p><a name="page86" id="page86"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 86] +</span> +“And this sum represents what?”</p> + +<p>“It represents in round numbers about two years’ income from an estate +in which Captain Hill’s father must have invested, first and last, more +nearly £40,000 than £20,000 of money that never came out of it.”</p> + +<p>“That doesn’t sound like a very good operation. But isn’t the question, +Whether the tenants have earned this sum, such as it is, out of the land +let to them by Captain Hill?”</p> + +<p>“No, not exactly, I think. You must remember there are some twelve +hundred families living here on land bought with Lord George’s money, +and enjoying all the advantages which the place owes to his investment +and his management, much more than to any labour or skill of theirs. You +must look at their rents as accommodation rents. Suppose they earn the +rent in Scotland, or England, or Tyrone, or wherever you like, the +question is, What do they get for it from Captain Hill? They get a +holding with land enough to grow potatoes on, and with as much free fuel +as ever they like, and with free pasture for their beasts, and all this +they get on the average, mind you, for no more than ten shillings a +year! Why, there was a time, I can <a name="page87" id="page87"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 87] +</span> +assure you, when the women here +earned the value of all the Hill rents by knitting stockings and making +woollen stuffs. You see the stuffs lying here in this window that they +make even now, and good stuffs too. But before the League boycotted the +agency here, the agency ten years ago used to pay out £900 in a year, +where it pays less than £100 to the women for their work.”</p> + +<p>“Why did the League do this?”</p> + +<p>“Why? Why, because it wanted to control the work itself, and to know +just what it brings into the place. You must remember Father M‘Fadden is +the President of the League, and the people will do anything for him. I +have heard of one old woman who sat up of nights last year knitting +socks to send up to London, to pay the Christmas dues to the +Father,—six shillings’ worth.”</p> + +<p>“And are these stuffs here in the hotel made for the agency you speak +of?”</p> + +<p>“Oh no; these are just made by women that know the hotel, and Mr. +Robinson here, he kindly takes in the stuffs. You see the name of every +woman on every one of them that made it, and the price. If a stranger +buys some, he pays the money to Mr. Robinson, and so it goes to the +women, and no commission charged.”</p> + +<p><a name="page88" id="page88"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 88] +</span> +The “stuffs” are certainly excellent, very evenly woven; and the +patterns, all devised, I am told, by the women themselves, very simple +and tasteful. The only dyes used are got by the women also from the +sea-weeds and the kelp, which must be counted among the resources of the +place. The browns and ochres thus produced are both soft and vivid; +while nothing can be better than a peculiar warm grey, produced by a +skilful mingling of the undyed wools.</p> + +<p>“What, then, causes the distress for which the name of Gweedore is a +synonym?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“It doesn’t exist,” responded my Galwegian; “that is, there is no such +distress in Gweedore as you find in Connemara, for instance; <a id="footnotetag14" + name="footnotetag14"></a><a href="#footnote14"><sup>14</sup></a> but +what distress there is in Gweedore is due much more to the habits the +people have been getting into of late years, and to the idleness of +them, than to any pressure of the rents you hear about, or <a name="page89" id="page89"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 89] +</span> +even to the +poverty of the soil. Go down to the store at Bunbeg, and see what they +buy and go in debt for! You won’t find in any such place as Bunbeg in +England such things. And even this don’t measure it; for, you see, +two-thirds of them are not free to deal at Bunbeg.”</p> + +<p>“Why not? Is Bunbeg ‘boycotted’?”</p> + +<p>“No, not at all. But they are on the books of the ‘Gombeen man’—Sweeney +of Dungloe and Burtonport. They’re always in debt to him for the meal; +and then he backs the travelling tea-pedlars, and the bakers that carry +around cakes, and all these run up the accounts all the time. Tot up +what these people lay out for tea at four shillings a pound—and they +won’t have cheap tea—and what they pay for meal, and what they pay for +interest, and the ‘testimonials,’—they paid for the monument here to +O’Donnell, the Donegal man that murdered Carey,—and the dues to the +priest, and you’ll find the £700 or so they don’t pay the landlord going +in other directions three and four times over.”</p> + +<p>“Then they are falling back into all the old laziness, the men +sauntering about, or sitting and smoking, while the women do all the +work.”</p> + +<p><a name="page90" id="page90"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 90] +</span> +The maid having told us Mass would be performed at noon, I walked with +Lord Ernest a mile or so up the road to Derrybeg, to see the people +thronging down from the hills; the women in their picturesque fashion +wearing their bright shawls drawn over their heads. But the maid had +deceived us. The Mass was fixed for eleven, and I suspect her of being a +Protestant in disguise.</p> + +<p>On the way back we met Mr. Burke, the resident magistrate. He has a neat +house here, with a garden, and had come over from Dunfanaghy to see his +wife. He meant to return before dark. The country was quiet enough, he +said; but there were some troublesome fellows about, keeping up the +excitement over the arrest at Father M‘Fadden’s trial of Father +Stephens—a young priest recently from Liverpool, who has become the +curate of quite another Father M‘Fadden—the parish priest of +Falcarragh, and is giving his local superior a great deal of trouble by +his activity in connection with the “Plan of Campaign.” Mr. Wybrants +Olphert of Ballyconnell, the chief landlord of Falcarragh, has been +“boycotted,” on suspicion of promoting the arrest of the two priests. +Five policemen have been put into his house. At <a name="page91" id="page91"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 91] +</span> +Falcarragh, where six +policemen are usually stationed, there are now forty. Mr. Burke +evidently thinks, though he did not say so, that Father Stephens has +been spoiled of his sleep by the laurels of Father M‘Fadden of Gweedore. +He is to be tried at Dunfanaghy on Tuesday, and there are now 150 troops +quartered there—Rifles and Hussars.</p> + +<p>“Are they not boycotted?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“No. The people rather enjoy the bustle and the show, not to speak of +the money the soldiers spend.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ernest, who knows Mr. Olphert, sent him over a message by Mr. Burke +that we would drive over to-morrow, and pay our respects to him at +Ballyconnell. From this Mr. Burke tried to dissuade us, but what he told +us naturally increased our wish to go.</p> + +<p>After luncheon I ordered a car, and drove to Derrybeg, to call there on +Father M‘Fadden, Lord Ernest, who has already seen him, agreeing to call +there for me on his return from a walk. We passed much reclaimed +bogland, mostly now in grass, and looking fairly well; many piles of +turf and clusters of cottages, well-built, but not very <a name="page92" id="page92"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 92] +</span> +neatly kept. +From each, as we passed, the inevitable cur rushed out and barked +himself hoarse. Then came a waste of bog and boulders, and then a long, +neat stone wall, well coped with unhewn stone, which announced the +vicinity of Father M‘Fadden’s house, quite the best structure in the +place after the chapel and the hotel. It is of stone, with a neat side +porch, in which, as I drove up, I descried Father M‘Fadden, in his trim +well-fitting clerical costume, standing and talking with an elderly +lady. I passed through a handsome iron wicket, and introduced myself to +him. He received me with much courtesy, and asked me to walk into his +well-furnished comfortable study, where a lady, his sister, to whom he +presented me, sat reading by the fire.</p> + +<p>I told Father M‘Fadden I had come to get his view of methods and things +at Gweedore, and he gave it to me with great freedom and fluency. He is +a typical Celt in appearance, a M‘Fadden Roe, sanguine by temperament, +with an expression at once shrewd and enthusiastic, a most flexible +persuasive voice. All the trouble at Gweedore, he thought, came of the +agents. “Agents had been the curse both of Ireland and of the landlord. +<a name="page93" id="page93"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 93] +</span> +The custom being to pay them by commissions on the sums collected, and +not a regular salary, the more they can screw either out of the soil, or +out of any other resources of the tenants, the better it is for them. At +Gweedore the people earn what they can, not out of the soil, but out of +their labour exported to Scotland, or England, or America. Only +yesterday,” he continued, turning to his neat mahogany desk and taking +up a letter, “I received this with a remittance from America to pay the +rent of one of my people.”</p> + +<p>“This was in connection,” I asked, “with the ‘Plan of Campaign’ and your +contest here?”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” he replied; “and a girl of my parish went over to Scotland +herself and got the money due there for another family, and brought it +back to me here. You see they make me a kind of savings-bank, and have +done so for a long time, long before the ‘Plan of Campaign’ was talked +about as it is now.”</p> + +<p>This was interesting, as I had heard it said by a Nationalist in Dublin +that the “Plan of Campaign” was originally suggested by Father M‘Fadden. +He made no such claim himself, however, and I made no allusion to this +aspect of the matter. “I <a name="page94" id="page94"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 94] +</span> +have been living here for fifteen years, and +they listen to me as to nobody else.”</p> + +<p>In these affairs with the agents, he had always told his people that +“whenever a settlement came to be made, cash alone in the hand of the +person representing them could make it properly.” “Cash I must have,” he +said, “and hold the cash ready for the moment. When I had worked out a +settlement with Captain Hill, I had a good part of the money in my hand +ready to pay down. £1450 was the sum total agreed upon, and after the +further collection, necessitated by the settlement, there was a deficit +of about £200. I wrote to Professor Stuart,” he added, after a pause, +“that I wanted about £200 of the sum-total. But more has come in since +then. This remittance, from America yesterday, for example.”</p> + +<p>“Do they send such remittances without being asked for them?” I +inquired.</p> + +<p>“Yes; they are now and again sending money, and some of them don’t send, +but bring it. Some of them go out to America now as they used to go to +England—just to work and earn some money, and come back.</p> + +<p>“If they get on tolerably well they stay for a <a name="page95" id="page95"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 95] +</span> +while, but they find +America is more expensive than Ireland, and if, for any cause, they get +out of work there, they come back to Ireland to spend what they have. +Naturally, you see,” said Father M‘Fadden, “they find a certain pleasure +to be seen by their old friends in the old place, after borrowing the +four pounds perhaps to take them to America, coming back with the money +jingling in their pockets, and in good clothes, and with a watch and a +chain—and a high hat. And there is in the heart of the Irishman an +eternal longing for his native land constantly luring him back to +Ireland. All do not succeed, though, in your country,” he said. “We hear +of two out of ten perhaps who do very well. They take care we hear of +that. The rest disappear, and are never heard of again.”</p> + +<p>“Then you do not encourage emigration?” I, asked, “even although the +people cannot earn their living from the soil?”</p> + +<p>Father M‘Fadden hesitated a moment, and then replied, “No, for things +should be so arranged that they may earn their living, not out of the +country, but on the soil at home. It is to that I want to bring the +condition of the district.”</p> + +<p>At this point Lord Ernest Hamilton came up <a name="page96" id="page96"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 96] +</span> +and knocked at the door. He +was most courteously received by Father M‘Fadden. To my query why the +Courts could not intervene to save the priests from taking all this +trouble on themselves between the owners and the occupiers of the land, +Father M‘Fadden at first replied that the Courts had no power to +intervene where, as in many cases in Gweedore, the holdings are +subdivided.</p> + +<p>“The Courts,” he said, “may not be, and I do not think they are, all +that could be desired, though they undoubtedly do supply a more or less +impartial arbitrator between the landlord and the tenant. It is an +improvement on the past when the landlords fixed the rents for +themselves.”</p> + +<p>I did not remind him of what Lord George Hill tells us, that in the +olden time at Gweedore the tenants fixed their own rents—and then did +not pay them—but I asked him how this could be said when the tenant +clearly must have accepted the rent, no matter who fixed it. “Oh!” said +Father M‘Fadden, “that may be so, but the tenant was not free, he was +coerced. With all his life and labour represented in the holding and its +improvements, he could not go and give up his holding. It’s a +stand-and-deliver business with him—the landlord puts a pistol to his +head!”</p> + +<p><a name="page97" id="page97"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 97] +</span> +“But is it not true,” I said, “that under the new Land Bill the Land +Commissioner’s Court has power to fix the rents judicially without +regard to landlord or tenant during fifteen years?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, that is so,” said Father M‘Fadden. “Under Mr. Gladstone’s Act of +81, and under the later Act of the present Government, the rents so +fixed from ’81 to ’86 inclusive are subject to revision for three years; +but the people have no confidence in the constitution of the Courts, +and, as a matter of fact, the improvements of the tenants are +confiscated under the Act of ’81, and the reductions allowed under the +Act of ’87 are incommensurate with the fall in prices by 100 per cent. +And there still remains the burden of arrears. I feel that I must stand +between my people and obligations which they are unable to meet. To that +end I take their money, and stand ready to use it to relieve them when +the occasion offers. That is my idea of my work under the ‘Plan of +Campaign’; and, furthermore, I think that by doing it I have secured +money for the landlord which he couldn’t possibly have got in any other +way.”</p> + +<p>This struck me as a very remarkable statement, nor can I see how it can +be interpreted otherwise <a name="page98" id="page98"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 98] +</span> +than as an admission that if the people had +the money to pay their rents, they couldn’t be trusted to use it for +that purpose, unless they put it into the control of the priest or of +some other trustee.</p> + +<p>Reverting to what he had said of the necessity for some change in the +conditions of life and labour here, I asked if, in his opinion, the +people could live out of the land if they got the ownership of it.</p> + +<p>In existing circumstances he thought they could not.</p> + +<p>Was he in favour, then, of Mr. Davitt’s plan of Land Nationalisation?</p> + +<p>“Well, I have not considered the question of Nationalisation of the +land.”</p> + +<p>To my further question, What remedies he would himself propose for a +state of things in which it was impossible for the people to live out of +the land either as occupiers or as owners—emigration being barred, +Father M‘Fadden, without looking at Lord Ernest, replied, “Oh, I think +abler men who draw up Parliamentary Acts and live in public life ought +to devise remedies, and that is a matter which would be best settled by +a Home Government.”</p> + +<p><a name="page99" id="page99"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 99] +</span> +The glove was well delivered, but Lord Ernest did not lift it.</p> + +<p>“But, Father M‘Fadden,” I said, “I am told you are a practical +agriculturist and engineer, and that you have contrived to get excellent +work done by the people here, dividing them off into working squads, and +assigning so many perches to so many—surely then you must understand +better than a dozen members of Parliament what they can be got to do?”</p> + +<p>He smiled at this, and finally admitted that he had a plan of his own. +It was that the Government should advance sums for reclaiming the land. +“The people could live on part of their earnings while thus employed, +and invest the surplus in sheep to be fed on the hill pastures. When the +reclamation was effected the families could be scattered out, and the +holdings increased. In this district alone there are 350 holdings of +reclaimable land of 20 acres each, the reclamation of which, according +to a competent surveyor, ”would pay well.“ And the district could be +improved by creating employment on the spot, establishing factories, +developing fisheries, giving technical education, and encouraging +cottage industries, which are so vigor<a name="page100" id="page100"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 100] +</span> +ously reviving in this district +owing to the benevolent efforts of the Donegal Industrial Fund.”</p> + +<p>Father M‘Fadden spoke freely and without undue heat of his trial, and +gave us a piquant account of his arrest.</p> + +<p>This was effected at Armagh, just as he was getting into an early +morning train. A sergeant of police walked up as the train was about to +start, and asked—</p> + +<p>“Are you not Father M‘Fadden of Gweedore?”</p> + +<p>“What interest have you in my identity?” responded the priest.</p> + +<p>“Only this, sir,” said the officer, politely exhibiting a warrant.</p> + +<p>“I had been in Armagh the previous day,” said Father M‘Fadden, +“attending the month’s memory of the late deceased Primate of All +Ireland, Dr. M‘Gettigan, and stayed at a private residence, that of +Surgeon-Major Lavery, not suspecting that while enjoying the genial +hospitality of the Surgeon-Major my steps were dogged by a detective, +and that gentleman’s house watched by police.”</p> + +<p>Of the trial Father M‘Fadden spoke with more bitterness. His eyes glowed +as he exclaimed, “Can you imagine that they refused me bail, when bail +<a name="page101" id="page101"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 101] +</span> +had been allowed to such a felon as Arthur Orton? Why should I have +been locked up over two Sundays, for ten days, when I offered to pledge +my honour to appear?” He made no other complaint of the magistrate, and +none of the prosecutor, Mr. Ross. He praised his own lawyer, too, but he +strongly denounced the stenographer who took down his speech, or the +parts of it which I told him I had seen in Dublin.</p> + +<p>“Why, just think of it,” he exclaimed; “it took the clerk just eight +minutes to read the report given by that stenographer of a speech which +it took me an hour and twenty minutes to deliver! I do not speak from +the lips, I speak from the heart, and consequently rather rapidly; and a +stenographer who can take down 190 words a minute has told me I run +ahead of him!”</p> + +<p>I suggested that the report, without pretending even to be a full +summary of his speech, might be accurate as to phrases and sentences +pronounced by him.</p> + +<p>“Yes, as to phrases,” he answered, “that might be; but the phrases may +be taken out of their true connection, and strung together in an +untruthful, yet telling way. Even my words were not fully <a name="page102" id="page102"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 102] +</span> +set down,” he +said, with some heat. “I was made to call a man ‘level,’ when I said in +the American way that he was ‘level-headed.’” <i>A propos</i> of this, I am +told that the American word “spree” has become Hibernian, and is used to +describe meetings of the National League and “other political +entertainments.”</p> + +<p>When I told Father M‘Fadden I had just come from Rome, where, as I had +reason to believe, the Vatican was anxious to get evidence from others +than Archbishop Walsh and Monsignore Kirby, of the Irish College, as to +the attitude of the priests in Ireland towards the laws of the United +Kingdom, he said he knew that “some Italian prelates neither understood +nor approved the ‘Plan of Campaign,’ nor is the Irish Land question +understood at Rome;” but this did not seem to disturb him much, as he +was quite sure that in the end the “Plan of Campaign” would be legalised +by the British Government. “I think I see plainly,” he said, “that Lord +Ernest’s government is fast going to pieces, though I can’t expect him +to admit it!” Lord Ernest laughed good-naturedly, and said that Father +M‘Fadden saw more in Donegal than he (Lord Ernest) was able to see <a name="page103" id="page103"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 103] +</span> +in +Westminster. Upon my asking him whether the “Plan of Campaign” did not +in effect abrogate the moral duty of a man to meet the legal obligations +he had voluntarily incurred, Father M‘Fadden advanced his own theory of +the subject, which was that, “if a man can pay a fair year’s rent out of +the produce of his holding, he is bound to pay it. But if the rent be a +rack-rent, imposed on the tenant against his will, or if the holding +does not produce the rent, then I don’t think that is a strict +obligation in conscience.”</p> + +<p>In America, the courts, I fear, would make short work of this theory of +Father M‘Fadden. If a tenant there cannot pay his first quarter’s rent +(they don’t let him darken his soul by a year’s liabilities) they +promptly and mercilessly put him out.</p> + +<p>Interesting as was our conversation with the parish priest of Gweedore, +I felt that we might be trespassing too far upon his kindness and his +time. So we rose to go. He insisted upon our going into the dining-room, +where, as he told us, he had hospitably entertained sundry visiting +statesmen from England, and there offered us a glass of the excellent +wine of the country. He excused <a name="page104" id="page104"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 104] +</span> +himself from joining us as being +“almost a teetotaller.”</p> + +<p>On our return to the hotel I met the Galwegian strolling about. When I +told him of Father M‘Fadden’s courteous hospitality, he said, “I am very +glad you took that glass he offered. I really believe his quarrel with +Captain Hill dates back to Hill’s declining that same courtesy under +Father M‘Fadden’s roof.”</p> + + +<p><span class="diary">GWEEDORE, <i>Monday, Feb. 6.</i></span>—Another very beautiful morning—as a farmer +said with whom I chatted on my morning stroll, “A grand day, sorr!” +Errigal, which in this mountain atmosphere seems almost to hang over our +hotel, but is in reality three or four miles away, stood out superbly +against a clear azure sky, wreaths of soft luminous mist floating like a +divine girdle half way up his bare volcanic peak.</p> + +<p>I walked up to the Bunbeg road with Lord Ernest to call upon some +peasants whom he knows. In one stone cabin, very well built and +plastered, standing sidewise to the road, with doors on either side, we +found the house apparently in charge of a little girl of nine or ten +years, a weird but pretty <a name="page105" id="page105"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 105] +</span> +child with very delicate well-cut features, +who lay couchant upon her doubled-up arm on a low bed in a corner of the +main room, and peered at us over her elbow with sparkling inquisitive +eyes.</p> + +<p>By her side sat a man with his cap on, who might have been the “young +Pretender,” or the “old Kaiser,” so far as his looks went towards +indicating his age. He never rose or welcomed us, being, as we +afterwards found out, only a visitor like ourselves, and a kinsman of +Mrs. M‘Donnell, the head of the house. “Mrs. M‘Donnell,” he said, “is +gone to the store at Bunbeg.”</p> + +<p>This main room rose perhaps ten feet in height to the open roof. It had +one large and well-glazed window. When Lord George Hill came here there +were not ten square feet of window-glass in the whole parish outside of +the Church, the national school, and the residence of the chief +police-officer.</p> + +<p>Windows when there were any were closed with dried sheepskins, through +which the cats ran in and out as freely as through the curious tunnel +which the kindly Master of Blantyre has constructed at Sheba’s Cross for +their special benefit.</p> + +<p>There were two beds in the main room; rather high than low, one of +rushes, on which lay the <a name="page106" id="page106"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 106] +</span> +child of whom I have spoken, and one of +greater pretensions vacant in another corner.</p> + +<p>The door stood wide open, but the cabin was warm and comfortable, and a +peat fire smouldered, sending up, to me, most agreeable odours. An inner +room seemed to be a sort of granary, full of hay and straw. There the +cow is kept at night. “It’s handy if you want a drink of milk,” said the +visitor. In comparison with the dwellings of small farmers in Eastern +France or in Southern Italy this Donegal cabin was not only clean but +attractive. It was more squalid perhaps, but less dreary than the +extemporised and flimsy dwellings of settlers in the extreme Far West of +the United States, and I should say decidedly a more wholesome +habitation than the hermetically sealed and dismal wooden houses of +hundreds of struggling farmers in the older Eastern States. I am sure my +old friend Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, who made the only thorough surveys +of agricultural life in the United States before the Civil War, would +have pronounced it in all respects superior, so far as health and +comfort go, to the average home of the average “poor buccra,” between +the Chesapeake and the Sabine. I am afraid a great deal of not wholly +innocuous non<a name="page107" id="page107"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 107] +</span> +sense has been written and spoken about this part of the +United Kingdom by well-meaning philanthropists who have gauged the +condition of the people here by their own standards of comfort and +enjoyment. Most things in this life of ours are relative. I well +remember hearing an American millionaire, who began life in New York as +the patentee of a mouse-trap, express his profound compassion for a +judge of the Supreme Court condemned to live “upon a pittance of eight +thousand dollars a year.”</p> + +<p>These dwellers in the cabins of Donegal are millionaires, so far as +those essentials of life are concerned, which we call room and air and +freedom to move and breathe, in comparison with hundreds and thousands +of their own race in the slums of New York and Chicago and Liverpool and +London.</p> + +<p>Mrs. M‘Donnell’s cousin, however, took dark views of things. The times +“were no good at all.”</p> + +<p>The potatoes, I had heard, were doing well this year.</p> + +<p>“No! they wouldn’t keep the people; indeed, they wouldn’t. There would +have to be relief.”</p> + +<p>“Why not manure the land?”</p> + +<p><a name="page108" id="page108"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 108] +</span> +“Manure? oh yes, the sea-stuff was good manure, but the people couldn’t +get it. They had no boats; and it cost eighteenpence a load to haul it +from Bunbeg. No! they couldn’t get it off the rocks. At the Rosses they +might; the Rosses were not so badly off as Derrybeg or Gweedore, for all +they might say.”</p> + +<p>“But Father M‘Fadden had urged me,” I said, “to see the Rosses, because +the people there were worse off than any of the people.”</p> + +<p>“Well, Father M‘Fadden was a good man; he was a friend of the people; +and they were bad indeed at the Rosses, but they could get the sea-stuff +there, and hadn’t to pay for cartage. And indeed, if you put the +sea-stuff on the bogland, the land was better in among the rocks’ at the +Rosses than was the bogland, it was indeed: the stuff did no good at all +the first year. The second and the third it gave good crops—but then +you must burn it—and by the fourth year and the fifth it was all ashes, +and no good at all! This was God’s truth, it was; and there must be +relief.”</p> + +<p>“But could the people earn nothing in Scotland or in Tyrone?”</p> + +<p>“Oh no, they could earn nothing at all. They could pay no rent.”</p> + +<p><a name="page109" id="page109"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 109] +</span> +So he sat there, a Jeremiah among the potsherds, quite contented and +miserable—well and hearty in a ragged frieze coat, with his hat over +his eyes.</p> + +<p>While we talked, a tall lusty young beggar-girl wandered in and out +unnoticed. Chickens pecked and fluttered about, and at intervals the +inevitable small dog suddenly barked and yelped.</p> + +<p>On our way back we met the elder daughter of Mrs. M‘Donnell, a girl of +sixteen, the “beauty of Gweedore.” A beauty she certainly is, and of a +type hardly to have been looked for here.</p> + +<p>Her lithe graceful figure, her fine, small, chiselled features, her +shapely little head rather defiantly set on her sloping shoulders, her +fair complexion and clear hazel eyes, her brown golden hair gathered up +behind into a kind of tress, all these were Saxon rather than Celtic. +Her trim neat ankles were bare, after the mountain fashion, but she was +prettily dressed in a well-fitting dark blue gown, wore a smartly +trimmed muslin apron, with lace about her throat, and carried over her +arm a new woollen shawl, very tasteful and quiet in colour. She greeted +us with a self-possessed smile.</p> + +<p>“No,” she had not, been shopping with her <a name="page110" id="page110"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 110] +</span> +mother. The shawl was a +present from one of her cousins. Did we not think it very pretty? She +was only out for a walk, and had no notion where her mother might be. A +stalwart red-bearded man who lounged and loitered behind her on the road +was “only a friend,” she said, “not a relation at all!” Nor did she +show, I am sorry to say, any compassion for the evident uneasiness with +which, from a distance, he regarded her long and affable parley with two +strangers.</p> + +<p>We asked her whether she expected and wished to live in Gweedore, or +would like to follow elsewhere some calling or trade. “Oh yes,” she +unhesitatingly replied, “I should like to be a dress-maker in Deny; +but,” she added pensively, “it’s no use my thinking about it, for I know +I shouldn’t be let!”</p> + +<p>“Wouldn’t you like Dublin as well?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“Perhaps; but I shouldn’t be let go to Dublin either!”</p> + +<p>Would she like to go to America?</p> + +<p>“No!” she didn’t think much of “the Americans who came back,” and +America must be “a very hard country for work, and very cold in the +winter.”</p> + +<p>Now this was a widow’s daughter, living in such <a name="page111" id="page111"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 111] +</span> +a cabin as I have +described, and upon a small holding in a parish reputed to be the most +“distressful” in Donegal! <a id="footnotetag15" + name="footnotetag15"></a><a href="#footnote15"><sup>15</sup></a></p> + +<p>Returning to the hotel we found our car ready for Falcarragh. Our driver +was a quiet, sensible fellow, who did not seem to care sixpence about +the great Nationality question, though he knew the country very well.</p> + +<p>Iron was visible in the rocks as we drove along, and we passed some +abandoned mining works, “lead and silver mines;” he said, “they were +given up long before his time.” We got many fine views of the mountains +Errigal, Aghla More, and Muckish. Lough Altan, a wild tarn, lies between +Errigal and Aghla More.</p> + +<p>The peasants we met stared at us curiously, but, were very civil, even +at a place bearing the ominous name of Bedlam, against which Mr. Burke +had warned us as the most troublesome on the way. All the countryside +was there attending a fair, and we drove through throngs of red-shawled, +barelegged women, ponies, horses, cattle, and sheep. <a name="page112" id="page112"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 112] +</span> +Of Tory Island, +with its famous tower, dating back to the fabled “Fomorians,” we had +some grand glimpses. The white surf, flashing and leaping high in the +air on the nearer islets accented and gave life to the landscape.</p> + +<p>In one glorious landlocked bay, we saw not a single boat riding. Our +driver said, “The fishermen all live on Tory Island, and send their fish +to Sligo. The people on the mainland don’t like going out in the boats.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ernest tells me there is a movement to have a telegraph station set +up on Tory Island, to announce the Canadian steamers coming into Moville +for Deny.</p> + +<p>We found Falcarragh, or “Cross-Roads,” a large clean-looking village, +consisting of one long and broad street, through which horses and cattle +were wandering in numbers, apparently at their own sweet will.</p> + +<p>Ballyconnell House, the seat of Mr. Wybrants Olphert, is the manor house +of the place. As we drew near, no signs appeared of the dreadful +“Boycott.” The great gates of the park stood hospitably open, and we +drove in unchallenged past a pretty ivy-clad lodge, and through low, but +<a name="page113" id="page113"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 113] +</span> +thickly planted groves. A huge boulder, ruddy with iron ore, bears the +uncanny and unspellable name of the “Clockchinnfhaelaidh,” or “Stone of +Kinfaele.” Upon this stone, tradition tells us, Balor, a giant of Tory +Island, chopped off the head of an unreasonable person named +Mackinfeale, for complaining that Balor, under some prehistoric “Plan of +Campaign,” had driven away his favourite cow, Glasgavlan.</p> + +<p>Ballyconnell House, a substantial mansion of the Georgian era, stands +extremely well. Over a fine sloping lawn in front, you have a glorious +view of the sea, and of a very fine headland, known as “the Duke’s +Head,” from the really remarkable resemblance it bears to the profile of +Wellington. The winds have such power here that there are but few +well-grown trees, and those near the house. About them paraded many +game-hens, spirited birds, looking like pheasants. These, as we learned, +never sleep save in the trees.</p> + +<p>The “boycotted” lord of the manor came out to greet us—a handsome, +stalwart man of some seventy years, with a kindly face, and most +charming manners. His family, presumably of Dutch origin, has been +established here since Charles II. <a name="page114" id="page114"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 114] +</span> +He himself holds 18,133 acres here, +valued at £1802 a year; and he is a resident landlord in the fullest +sense of the term. For fifty years he has lived here, during all which +time, as he told us to-day, he has “never slept for a week out of the +country.” His furthest excursions of late years have been to Raphoe, +where he has a married daughter. “Absenteeism” clearly has nothing to do +with the quarrel between Mr. Olphert and his tenants, or with the +“boycotting” of Ballyconnell.</p> + +<p>The dragoons from Dunfanaghy had just ridden away as we came up. They +had come over in full fig to show themselves, and to encourage the +respectable Catholics of Falcarragh, who side with their parish priest, +Father M‘Fadden of Glena, and object to the vehement measures, promoted +by his young curate, Father Stephens, recently of Liverpool. The people +had received them with much satisfaction. “They had never seen the +cavalry before, and were much delighted!”</p> + +<p>Before we sat down to luncheon young Mr. Olphert came in. It was curious +to see this quiet, well-bred young gentleman throw down his belt and his +revolver on the hall table, like his gloves and his umbrella. “Quite +like the Far <a name="page115" id="page115"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 115] +</span> +West,” I said. “And we are as far in the West as we can +get,” he replied laughingly.</p> + +<p>Our luncheon was excellent—so good, in fact, that we felt a kind of +remorse as if we had selfishly quartered ourselves upon a beleaguered +garrison. But Mr. Olphert said he had no fear of being starved out. +Personally he was, and always had been, on the best terms with the +people of Falcarragh. The older tenants, even now, if he met them +walking in the fields when no one was in sight, would come up and salute +him, and say how “disgusted” they were with what was going on. It was +the younger generation who were troublesome—more troublesome, he added, +to their own parish priest than they were to him. Three or four years +ago a returned American Irishman, an avowed unbeliever, but an active +Nationalist and one of Mr. Forster’s “suspects,” had come into the +neighbourhood and done his worst to break up the parish. He used to come +to Falcarragh on a Sunday, and get up on a stone outside the chapel +while Father M‘Fadden was saying Mass or preaching, and harangue such +people as would listen to him, and caricature the priest and the sermon +going on within sound of his own voice. “I am myself <a name="page116" id="page116"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 116] +</span> +a Protestant,” +said Mr. Olphert, “but I have a great respect for priests who do their +duty; and the conduct of Father M‘Fadden of Gweedore, in countenancing +this man, who tried to overthrow the authority of Father M‘Fadden of +Glena, excited my indignation. As to what is going on now,” said Mr. +Olphert, “it is to Father M‘Fadden of Gweedore, and to Father Stephens +here, that the trouble is chiefly to be charged.” This tallies with what +I heard at Gweedore from my Galwegian acquaintance. He thought Mr. +Olphert, and Mr. Hewson, the agent, ought to have made peace on the +terms which Father Stephens said he was willing to accept for the +tenants, these being a reduction of 3s. 4d. in the pound, if Mr. Olphert +would extend the reduction to the whole year. My Galwegian thought this +reasonable, because in this region the rent, it appears, is only +collected once a year. With this impartial temper, my Galwegian still +maintained that but for the two priests—the parish priest of Gweedore +and the curate of Falcarragh—there need have been no trouble at +Falcarragh. There had been no “evictions.” When the tenants first went +to Mr. Olphert they asked a reduction of 4s. in the pound on the +non-judicial rents, and this Mr. <a name="page117" id="page117"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 117] +</span> +Olphert at once agreed to give them. +The tenants had regularly paid their rents for ten years before. That +they are not going down in the world would appear from the fact that the +P.O. Savings Banks’ deposits at Falcarragh, which stood at £62, 15s. +10d. in 1880, rose in 1887 to £494, 10s. 8d. A small number of them had +gone into Court and had judicial rents fixed; and it was on the +contention promoted by the two priests, through these judicial tenants, +he said, that all the difficulty hinged. Father M‘Fadden of Glena, who +thought the quarrel unjustifiable and silly, had an interview with Mr. +Blane, M.P., and with Father Stephens, and tried to arrange it all. He +would have succeeded, my Galwegian thought, had not the agent, Mr. +Hewson, obstinately fought with the obstinate curate, Father Stephens, +over the suggestion made by the latter, that the terms granted on the +fine neighbouring estate of Mr. Stuart of Ards—a man of wealth, who +lives mainly at Brighton, though Ards is one of the loveliest places in +Ireland—should be extended by Mr. Olphert for a whole year to his own +people, who had never asked for anything of the kind!</p> + +<p>Mr. Olphert said he knew Gweedore well. He <a name="page118" id="page118"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 118] +</span> +owns a “townland” <a id="footnotetag16" + name="footnotetag16"></a><a href="#footnote16"><sup>16</sup></a> there, +on which he has thirty-five tenants, none of them on a holding at more +more than £4 a year. Father M‘Fadden of Gweedore, he said, finding that +the people on Mr. Olphert’s townland were going back to the “Rundale” +practices, tried to induce Mr. Olphert to return all these subdivisions +as “tenancies.” This he refused to do. As to the resources of the +peasantry, he thought them greater than they appeared to be. “This comes +to light,” said Mr. Olphert, “whenever there is a tenant-right for sale. +There is never any lack of money to buy it, and at a round good price.” +The people also, he thinks, spend a great deal on what they regard as +luxuries, <a name="page119" id="page119"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 119] +</span> +and particularly on tea. “A cup of tea could not be got for +love or money in Gweedore, when Lord George Hill came there. You might +as well have asked for a glass of Tokay.”</p> + +<p>Now they use and abuse it in the most deleterious way imaginable. They +buy the tea at exorbitant rates, often at five shillings a pound, and +usually on credit, paying a part of one bill on running up another, put +it into a saucepan or an iron pot, and boil, or rather stew, it over the +fire, till they brew a kind of hell-broth, which they imbibe at odd +moments all day long! Oddly enough, this is the way in which they +prepare tea in Cashmere and other parts of India, with this essential +difference, though, that the Orientals mitigate the astringency of the +herb with milk and almonds and divers ingredients, tending to make a +sort of “compote” of it. Taken as it is taken here, it must have a +tremendous effect on the nerves. Mr. Olphert thinks it has had much to +do with the increase of lunacy in Ireland of late years. From his +official connection with the asylum at Letterkenny, he knows that while +it used to accommodate the lunatics of three counties, it is now hardly +adequate to the needs of Donegal alone.</p> + +<p><a name="page120" id="page120"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 120] +</span> +Everything about Ballyconnell House is out of key with the actual +military conditions of life here. It is essentially what Tennyson calls +“an ancient home of ordered peace.” In the ample hall hang old portraits +and trophies of the chase. The large and handsome library, panelled in +rich dark wood, is filled full of well-bound books. Prints, busts, the +thousand and one things of “bigotry and virtue” which mark the +dwelling-place of educated and thoughtful people are to be seen on every +side. Mr. Olphert showed us a cabinet full of bronzes, picked up on the +strand of the sea. Among these were brooches, pins, clasps, buckles, two +very fine bronze swords, and a pair of bronze links engraved with +distinctly Masonic emblems, such as the level, the square, and the +compasses. When were these things made, and by what people?</p> + +<p>So far as I know, Masonry in the British Islands cannot be historically +traced back much, if at all, beyond the Revolution of 1688.</p> + +<p>Mr. Olphert and his son walked about the place with us. They have no +fears of an attack, but think it wise to keep a force of police on the +premises. The only demonstration yet made of any kind against the house +was the march from <a name="page121" id="page121"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 121] +</span> +Falcarragh some time ago of a mob of young men, who +promptly withdrew on catching sight of half-a-dozen policemen within the +park gates. As to getting his work done, some of his people had steadily +refused to acknowledge the “boycott,” and they were now strengthened by +the attitude of those who had surrendered to the pressure, and were now +sullen and angry with the League which had given them nothing to do, and +no supplies.</p> + +<p>At Falcarragh we met a person who knew much about the late Lord Leitrim, +who was murdered in this neighbourhood on the highway some years ago. He +spoke freely of the murderer by name, as if it were matter of common +notoriety. Of the murdered man, he said that he had made himself +extremely unpopular and odious, not so much by certain immoralities +freely alleged at the time of his death, as by vexatious meddling with +the prejudices and whims of his tenants. “He used to go into the houses +and pull down cartoons and placards, if he saw them put up on the +walls.” “No! he had no party feeling in the matter; he used to pull down +William III. and the Pope with an equal hand.” It seems that in this +region, too, a local legend has grown up of the birth at a place called +Cashelmore of a “Queen of France.” The case is worth noting <a name="page122" id="page122"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 122] +</span> +as throwing +light on the genesis and accuracy of local traditions. The “Queen of +France” referred to proves, on inquiry, to have been Miss Patterson, who +married Jerome Bonaparte, brother of the first Emperor, afterwards +created by him King of Westphalia! This Avas the lady so well known in +America as Mrs. Patterson Bonaparte of Baltimore, who died at a great +age only a few years ago. I have no reason to suppose that she was born +at Cashelmore at all or in Ireland. But her father, reputed in the time +of Washington to be the richest man in the United States, who came from +the North of Ireland and settled in Baltimore as a merchant, may very +well have been born there.</p> + +<p>To my great regret Father M‘Fadden of Glena, or Falcarragh, was absent +from home. As we drove homeward we met on the way a young lady on a +smart jaunting-car, with a servant in livery. This was the daughter, our +driver told us, of Mr. Griffiths, the Protestant clergyman, past whose +residence our road lay. His church stands high upon a commanding cliff, +and is a feature in the landscape. We met the parson himself also, +walking with a friend. The road from Bedlam to Derrybeg goes by a region +of the “Rosses,” reputed the <a name="page123" id="page123"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 123] +</span> +most woe-begone part of the Gweedore +district. This is the scene of a curious tale told about Father M‘Fadden +of Gweedore, by his ill-wishers in these parts, to the effect that he +advises English Members of Parliament and other “sympathising” visitors +who come here to make a pilgrimage to “the Bosses,” where, no matter at +what time of day they appear, they invariably find sundry of the people +sitting in their huts and eating stewed seaweed out of iron pots. I +cannot vouch for this tale, but certainly I have seen no people here of +either sex, or of any age, who look as if they lived on stewed seaweed. +Another person at Falcarragh told us, as an illustration of the +influence exerted by Father M‘Fadden of Gweedore, in this parish, over +which he has no proper authority, that, in obedience to an intimation +from him, the persons whose seats in the chapel had been occupied on two +successive Sundays by the policemen now stationed here, yesterday +refused to allow the policemen to occupy them, the only exception being +in the case of a man who had been arrested at the same time with Father +Stephens, and who had been so well treated by the police, that he felt +bound to repay their courtesy by offering one of them his seat. +</p> + + + +<h2><a name="page124" id="page124"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 124] +</span> +CHAPTER III.</h2> + + +<p><span class="diary">DUNGLOE, <i>Tuesday, Feb. 7.</i></span>—We rose early this morning at Gweedore; the +sun shining so brightly that we were forced to drop the window-shades at +breakfast, while I read my letter from Rome, telling me of the bitter +cold there, and of a slight snow-fall last week. Here the birds were +singing, and the air was as soft and exhilarating as that of an April +morning in the Highlands of Mexico or Costa Rica.</p> + +<p>Our host gave us a capital car, with a staunch nag and a wide-awake +jarvey, thanks to all which I found the thirteen miles drive to this +place too short. No doubt it will be a great thing for Donegal when +“light railways” are laid down here. But I pity the traveller of the +future here, if he is never to know the delight of traversing these wild +and picturesque wastes in such weather as we have had to-day, on a car, +well-balanced by a single <a name="page125" id="page125"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 125] +</span> +pleasant companion, drinking, as he goes, +deep draughts of the Atlantic air! Truly on a jaunting-car “two are +company and three are none.” You have almost the free companionship of a +South American journey in the saddle, jumping off to walk, when you +like, more freely still.</p> + +<p>We drove near the house of the “beauty of Gweedore,” but she was not +visible, though we met her mother (by no means a <i>pulchra mater</i>) as we +crossed the Clady at Bryan’s Bridge.</p> + +<p>We soon passed from the bogland into a wilderness of granite. Our +jarvey, however, maintained that there was “better land among the stones +than any bogland could be.” He was a shrewd fellow, and summed up the +economical situation, I thought, better than some of his betters, when +he said of the whole region that “it will fatten four, feed five, and +starve six.”</p> + +<p>It may well fatten six, though, I should say, if the natural wealth of +this vast granite range can be properly turned to account. On every side +of us lay vast blocks of granite of all hues and grades, all absolutely +unworked, but surely not unworkable. We stopped and picked up many +specimens, some of them almost as rich in colour as porphyry. Of <a name="page126" id="page126"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 126] +</span> +lakes +and lakelets supplying water-power the name too, is legion.</p> + +<p>Beyond Annagary we caught a glimpse of the Isle of Arran, the scene, a +few years ago, of so much suffering, and that of a kind I should think +as much beyond the control of legislation as the misery and destruction +which have overtaken successive attempts to establish settlements on +Anticosti in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.</p> + +<p>This town of Dungloe sprawls along the shore of the sea. It is reputed +the most ill-favoured town in Donegal, and it certainly is not a dream +of beauty. But it blooms all over with evidences of the prosperity of +that interesting type of Irish civilisation, the “Gombeen man,” of whom +I had heard so much at Gweedore. Over the doorways of most of the shops +appear the names of various members of the family of Sweeney, all of +them, I am told, brought here and established within a few years past by +the head of the sept, who is not only the great “Gombeen man” of the +region, but a leading local member of the National League, and Her +Majesty’s Postmaster. The Sweeneys, in fact, commercially speaking, +dominate Dungloe, their, only visible rivals being a returned Irish +<a name="page127" id="page127"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 127] +</span> +American, who has built himself a neat two-story house and shop just at +the entrance of the village, and our own host, Mr. Maurice Boyle, whose +extremely neat little inn just faces a large shop, the stronghold of the +Chief of the Sweeneys. I am sorry to find that this important citizen of +Dungloe is not now here. We went into his chief establishment to make +some purchases, and found it full of customers, chiefly women, neatly +dressed after the Donegal fashion, and busily chaffering with the +shopgirls and shopmen, who had their hands full, exhibiting goods such +as certainly would not be found in any New York or New England village +of this sort. When we secured the attention of the chief shopman, a +nattily dressed, dark-haired young man who would not have discredited +the largest “store” in Grand Street or the Bowery of New York, we asked +him to show us some of the home-made woollen goods of the country. +These, he assured us, had no sale in Dungloe, and he did not keep them. +But he showed us piles of handsome Scottish tweeds at much higher +prices. Now as this is an exclusively agricultural region, it is evident +that the tenants must be able to make it worth a trader’s while to keep +on hand such goods <a name="page128" id="page128"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 128] +</span> +as we here found, and therefore that they cannot be +exactly on “the ragged edge” of things.</p> + +<p>Mr. Sweeney is also the proprietor of the chief “hotel” of Dungloe; our +host, Mr. Boyle, being in fact supposed to be “boycotted” for +entertaining officers of the police. This “boycott,” however, has +entailed no practical inconvenience upon us; and Mr. Boyle’s pretty and +plucky daughters, who manage his house for him, laughed scornfully at +the notion of being “bothered” by it.</p> + +<p>After luncheon we took a car and drove out to Burtonport, on the Roads +of Arranmore, to visit the parish priest there, Father Walker, and Mr. +Hammond, the agent of the Conyngham estates.</p> + +<p>We passed near a large inland lake, Lough Meela, and the seaward views +along the coast were very fine. With peace and order this corner of +Ireland might easily become the chosen site of the most delightful +seaside homes in the United Kingdom. The Recorder of Cork has discovered +this, and passes a great part of the year here. This Donegal coast is no +further from the great centres of British wealth and population than are +Mount Desert and the other summer resorts of Maine and New Hampshire +from New York and Philadelphia; and the <a name="page129" id="page129"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 129] +</span> +islands which break the great +roll of the Atlantic here cannot well be more nearly in “a state of +nature” than were the Isles of Shoals, for example, in my college days, +long after Mr. Lowell first wandered there with the transcendental +Thaxters to celebrate the thunders of the surf at Appledore.</p> + +<p>The wonderful granitic formations we had seen on the way from Gweedore +stretch all along the coast to the Roads of Arranmore. At Burtonport +they lie on the very water’s edge. At a place called Lickeena, masses of +beautiful salmon-and rose-coloured granite actually trend into the +tidewater, and at Burtonport proper is a promontory of that +richly-mottled granite which I had supposed to be the peculiar heritage +of Peterhead, and which is now largely exported from Scotland to the +United States. Why should not this Irish granite be shipped directly +from Donegal to America, there to be built up into cathedrals, and +shaped into monuments for the Exiles of Erin? All these formations which +we have seen present themselves in great cubical blocks, so jointed that +they may be detached without blasting, with great comparative ease, and +with little of the waste which results from the squaring of shapeless +masses. At the same <a name="page130" id="page130"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 130] +</span> +time, as we saw while coming from Gweedore, the +many lakes of this region offer all the water-power necessary for +polishing-works, columnar lathes, and the general machinery used in +developing such quarries. Without being an expert in granites, I have +seen enough of the granite works at home to feel quite sure that a +moderate and judiciously managed investment here ought to return a +handsome result. If the National League is as well off as it is reputed +to be, it might go into this business open a new and remunerative +industry to the people of a “congested” district, and earn dividends +large enough to enable it to pay the expenses of the war against England +at Westminster, without drawing on the savings of the servant-girls in +America, The only person likely to suffer would be the “Gombeen man,” if +the peasantry earned enough to pay off their debts to him, and stop the +flow of interest into his coffers.</p> + +<p>At Burtonport we found the “Gombeen man,” of Dungloe, represented by a +very large “store.” He runs steamers between this place and various +ports on the Scottish and Irish coasts, bringing in goods and taking out +the crops which his debtors turn over to him.</p> + +<p><a name="page131" id="page131"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 131] +</span> +This Burtonport “store” towers high above the modest home of the parish +priest, Father Walker. To our great regret he was absent on parochial +duty, but his niece very kindly welcomed us into his modest study, where +we left a note begging him to honour us with his company at dinner in +Dungloe.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hammond, too, was absent, so after paying our respects to his wife, +we drove back to Dungloe, and walked about the village till dark, +chatting with the good-natured, civil people. The local sensation here +they tell us is not the trial of the priests at Dunfanaghy, but a “row” +breeding between the chief of the Sweeneys and one of his brethren over +the possession of Her Majesty’s Post-office. It seems there is an +official regulation or custom that the post-office once established in a +particular building shall not be moved thence without positive cause +shown. The head of the Sweeneys, having completed his new and grand +establishment, wishes to move the post-office thither; but the brother +to whom he confided the office in the older building, where he left it +while making the change of his own business, now desires to keep the +office where it is, and, I suppose, to become postmaster him<a name="page132" id="page132"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 132] +</span> +self! <a id="footnotetag17" + name="footnotetag17"></a><a href="#footnote17"><sup>17</sup></a> A +trivial matter enough, but not without edification for students of the +actual situation in this most curious country.</p> + +<p>About seven o’clock Father Walker made his appearance—a fine-looking, +dignified, most amiable man. He is a teetotaller, which we esteemed a +stroke of good fortune, a bottle of port wine which we obtained, despite +the “boycott,” from the Gombeen shop, proving to be of such a quality +that it might have been concocted in the last century, expressly to +discredit the Methuen treaty.</p> + +<p>Father Walker is the President of the National League branch.</p> + +<p>Like Father M‘Fadden at Gweedore, he speaks of the landlords in this +part of Donegal as really owning, not so much farms as residential +grounds for tenants who export their thews and sinews to Scotland and +other countries, and live by that traffic mainly. It is a common +practice here, he tells me, for the children, who are very sharp and +bright, to be taken by their parents into Tyrone <a name="page133" id="page133"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 133] +</span> +and other parts of the +North, and put out to live with the people there, who prize them, and +pay very good wages. I asked him if he thought the official estimate I +had seen of the proportion of these “migratory labourers” to the whole +population of Ulster, as about one-tenth of one per cent., an +under-statement. He thought it was an under-statement for this part of +the county of Donegal, but to be explained, perhaps, by the fact that so +much of the migration is merely from one county into another, and not +out of the kingdom. He agreed that the practice goes on upon a much more +extensive scale in the County Mayo, where more than thirteen per cent, +of all the adult male population are said to belong to the category of +migratory labourers. The Irish population of England seems to be +recruited at regular seasons in this way, very much as is the Albanian +population of Constantinople.</p> + +<p>Father Walker was full of information about the granite quarries, and +much interested in the prospect of their development. He told us that a +practical engineer from Liverpool had, not long ago, been here seeking a +lease of the quarries—or, in other words, of the quarrying rights over +sixty or <a name="page134" id="page134"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 134] +</span> +seventy miles of Donegal—from the agent of Lord Conyngham. +This engineer had come to Donegal on a sporting expedition last year, +and gone back full of the capabilities of the granite region. Father +Walker had been told by him that similar quarries also exist in the +County Mayo at Belmullet, where preparations are now making, he thinks, +to develop them, though on a smaller scale than would be both +practicable and desirable here.</p> + +<p>In Mayo, as in Donegal, labour must be plentiful enough, and the +comparatively unskilled labour required in such quarries would be +particularly abundant here. It would be a great thing, Father Walker +thought, to introduce here the custom of a regular pay-day, and with it +gradually habits of exactness and economy, not easily developed without +it.</p> + +<p>He gave me also, at my request, some valuable information as to the +stipends of the Catholic clergy, and the sources from which they are +derived. This subject has been agitated in the local press of this part +of Ireland in connection with estimates of Father M‘Fadden’s income at +Gweedore, which Father M‘Fadden declares, I believe, to be greatly +exaggerated. Father Walker has been parish priest <a name="page135" id="page135"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 135] +</span> +at Burtonport for +about nine years. In all that time the highest sum reached in one year +by the stipend has been £560; this sum having to be divided between the +parish priest, who received £280, and two curates receiving £140 each. +The annual stipend, however, has more than once fallen below £480, and +Father Walker thinks £520 a fair average, giving £260 to the parish +priest, and £130 each to his curates. Where there are only two priests +in a parish, as is the case, for example, in each of the parishes of +Gweedore and Falcarragh, the parish priest receives two-thirds, and the +curate one-third of the stipend.</p> + +<p>The sources of this stipend are various, and in speaking upon this point +Father Walker desired me to note that he could only speak positively of +the rules of this particular diocese, as they do not cover in their +entirety the usages of other provinces, or even of other dioceses in +this province of Ireland. One general and invariable rule indeed exists +throughout Ireland, which is that every parish priest is bound to offer +the Holy Sacrifice, <i>pro populo</i>, for the whole people, without fee or +reward, on all Sundays and Holy Days, making in all some eighty-seven +times a year.</p> + +<p><a name="page136" id="page136"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 136] +</span> +In the diocese of Raphoe, to which Burtonport belongs, there are four +recognised methods by which the revenues of the priests are raised. The +first is an annual fixed stipend of four shillings for each household or +family. “Sometimes,” said Father Walker, “but rarely, the better-off +families give more than this; and not unfrequently the poorer families +fail to give anything under this head.” The second is a fixed stipend of +one pound upon the occasion of a marriage. “Sometimes, but not often, +this sum is exceeded by generous and prosperous parishioners.” The third +is a standard stipend of two shillings for a baptism. “This also +suffers, but on rare occasions,” said the good priest, “a favourable +exception. I mention the exceptions as well as the rules,” said the good +Father, “in order to make grateful allusion to the donors.”</p> + +<p>The fourth and last consists of the offerings at interments. “These vary +very much indeed, but they constitute an important, and, I may say, a +necessary item in the incomes of the clergy.”</p> + +<p>Besides these four forms of stipend, the priests derive a revenue from +“those who ask them to offer the Holy Sacrifice ‘for their special +intention.’” In such cases it is customary to offer a sum, usually of +<a name="page137" id="page137"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 137] +</span> +two shillings, but sometimes of half-a-crown, which is intended both as +a remuneration for the priest, and to cover the cost of altar +requisites.</p> + +<p>Father Walker estimates the families in his own parish in round numbers +at about thirteen hundred, and in Gweedore and Falcarragh at about nine +hundred each. We had some conversation about the great fisheries, which +one would think ought to exist, but do not exist, on this coast, such +fishing as is done here by the natives being on a very limited scale. +Father Walker tells me that formerly £80,000 worth of herring were taken +on this coast, though he is not sure that Donegal fishermen took them. +But of late years he thinks the herring have deserted these waters. He +admits, however, that the people have no liking for the sea. “Going over +once,” he said, “to Arranmore from the mainland in a boat with a priest +of the country, the water was a little rough, and the poor man nearly +pinched a piece out of my arm holding on to me!” Father Walker himself +thought the trip across the “sound” to Tory Island rather a ticklish +piece of business. Yet the natives make it sometimes in their little +corraghs or canvas boats, which would seem to show that some of them +must be capable of seamanship. Most of these <a name="page138" id="page138"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 138] +</span> +islands, notably +Arranmore, Father Walker thought quite incapable of supporting the +people who dwell on them, without constant help from the mainland. Is it +not an open question whether an age which countenances the condemnation +of private property in houses declared unfit for human habitation ought +to hesitate at dealing in the same spirit with nurseries of chronic +penury and intermittent famine? On one of these islands, known as Scull +Island, Father Walker tells me great quantities of human bones are found +in circular graves or trenches, very shallow, and going all around the +island. There are legends of great battles fought on the little island, +and of pestilences, to account for these. But it is likely enough that +the island was simply used as a cemetery by the dwellers on the shore at +some early date. Father Walker when he was last, there had brought away +some of these relics. One he showed us, the beautifully formed jawbone +of a young child, apparently ten or twelve years old, with exquisite +pearly teeth. The chin was not in the least prognathous, but very well +formed. In this district of Dungloe, too, the women weave and knit as +well as at Gweedore; and Father Walker, before he left us for his home, +after a most agreeable evening, promised <a name="page139" id="page139"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 139] +</span> +to send me some specimens of +their handiwork. He is sure that with a proper organisation this +industry might be so developed as to materially relieve the people here +from the pressure of their debts to the dealers of all kinds, a pressure +much more severe than that of the rent. According to the dealers +themselves, no tenant really in debt to them can now expect to work +himself free of the burden under four or five years. It is obvious how +much power, political as well as social, is thus lodged in the hands of +the dealers, and especially of the “Gombeen men.”</p> + + +<p><span class="diary">BARON’S COURT, <i>Wednesday, Feb. 8.</i></span>—Since last night I have travelled +from one extreme to the other of Irish life—from the desolation of the +Rosses of Donegal to the grandly wooded, picturesque, and beautiful +demesne of Baron’s Court. We made an early start from Dungloe on a +capital car for Letterkenny, where we were to strike the railway for +Strabane and Newtown-Stewart. The morning was clear, but cold. On +leaving Dungloe we drove directly into a region of reclaimed land, where +improvements of various kinds seemed to be going on. <a name="page140" id="page140"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 140] +</span> +All this our +jarvey informed us, with a knowing look, belonged to Mr. Sweeney.</p> + +<p>“Was he a squire of this country?” I asked innocently.</p> + +<p>“A squire of this country, sorr? He is just Mr. Sweeney, the Gombeen +man; he and his brothers, they all came here from where I don’t know.”</p> + +<p>An energetic man, certainly, Mr. Sweeney, and not likely, I should +think, to allow the National League, to push matters here to the point +of nationalising the land of Donegal, if he can prevent it. In the +highway we met, two or three miles out of Dungloe, a very trim dainty +little lady, in a long, well-fitting London waterproof ulster, with a +natty little umbrella in her hand, walking merrily towards the town. How +weatherwise she was soon appeared, the rain coming up suddenly, and +coming down sharply, in the whirling way it has among the hills +everywhere. The scenery was desolate, but grand. Countless little lochs +give sparkle and life to it. Everywhere the granite. About Doocharry, a +romantic little spot, where Lord Cloncurry has a fishing-box in the +heart of a glorious landscape, masses crop out of a rich red granite, +finer in colour than any we had previously seen. In that <a name="page141" id="page141"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 141] +</span> +neighbourhood +the wastes of Donegal take on an aspect which recalls, though upon quite +a different key in colour, the inimitable beauty of those treeless +North-western highlands of Scotland, upon which Nature has lavished all +the wealth of her palette. Vast spaces of brown and red and gold shimmer +away under the softly luminous mountain atmosphere to the dark blues and +purples of the hills. We passed Glen Veagh again, but from quite a +different point of view, which gave us a beautiful picture of Lough +Veagh in its length, and of the smiling pastoral landscape upon its +further shore.</p> + +<p>As we drew near the eastern boundary of Donegal, hedges and civilised +agriculture reappeared. With these we came upon mud cottages, such as I +had not seen in Donegal, being the huts provided for their labourers by +the tenant-farmers, whose comfortable stone-houses and out-buildings +stood well back under the long ranges of the hills.</p> + +<p>We passed through much striking scenery, perhaps the finest point being +a magnificent Gap in the hills, guarded and defined by three colossal +headlands, one of them a vast long rampart, the other two gigantic +counterscarps. The immediate approach to Letterkenny, too, from the west +is charming, <a name="page142" id="page142"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 142] +</span> +passing in full view of the extensive and beautiful park +and the large mansion of Colonel Stewart of the Guards, and skirting the +well-kept estate of Mr. Boyd, the owner of the ivy-clad cottages which +so took my fancy the other day.</p> + +<p>In the Ulster settlement under King James I. a patent for Letterkenny +was issued to one of the Crawfords. Then, as the records tell us, “Sir +George Marburie dwelt there, and there were forty houses all inhabited +by British tenants. A great market town, and standeth well for the +King’s service.”</p> + +<p>Again we found a fair going on—this time attended by swarms of peddlers +vending old clothes and all sorts of small wares, bread-cartmen, and +tea-vendors. These latter aver that it is easier to sell tea in the +“congested” districts at 4s. 6d. than at 2s. 6d. The people have no test +of its quality but its price!</p> + +<p>The town was gay with soldiers and police—whose advent had created such +a demand for bread and meat, a man told us, that all the butchers and +bakers in Letterkenny and Dunfanaghy were at their wits’ ends to meet +it. “But they don’t complain of that!” We reached Newtown-Stewart by +railway after dark. As we <a name="page143" id="page143"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 143] +</span> +passed Sion the mills were all lighted up, +giving it the look of an English or New England town. A New England +snow-storm, too, awaited us at our journey’s end; and, after a wild +drive of several miles through the whirling white mists, it was a +delectable thing to find ourselves welcomed in a hall full of light and +warmth and flowers by merry children and lively dogs, the guard of +honour of the most gracious and charming of hostesses.</p> + + +<p><span class="diary">BARON’S COURT, <i>Thursday, Feb. 9.</i></span>—Among a batch of letters received +this morning I find one from a most estimable and accomplished priest in +the West of Ireland, to whom I wrote from Dublin announcing my intention +of visiting the counties of Clare and Kerry. “I shall be very glad,” he +says, “to learn that no evil hath befallen you during your visit to that +solitary plague-spot, where dwell the disgraceful and degraded +‘Moonlighters.’ Would not ‘martial law,’ if applied to that particular +spot, suffice to stamp out, these-insensate pests of society?” This +language, strong, but not too strong in view of the hideous murder last +week near Lixnaw of a farmer in the presence of his daughter for the +<a name="page144" id="page144"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 144] +</span> +atrocious crime of taking a farm “boycotted” by the National League, +shows that the open alliance between this organisation and the criminal +classes in certain parts of Ireland is beginning (not a day too soon) to +arouse the better order of priests in Ireland to the peril of playing +with edged tools. For my correspondent is not only a priest, but a +Nationalist. I have sent him in reply a letter received by me, also +to-day, touching the conduct in connection with the Lixnaw murder of a +priest, a curate, I think, comparatively new to the place, who, +standing by the corpse of the murdered man, endeavoured, so my informant +states, to make his unfortunate daughter give up the names of the +murderers, the effect of which would have been to put them on their +guard, and “under the protection of that public conspiracy of silence, +which is the shield of all such criminals in these parts!” Baron’s Court +is a very large, stately mansion, lacking elevation perhaps like +Blenheim, but imposing by its mass and the area it covers. It was +rebuilt almost entirely by the late Duke of Abercorn, who also made +immense plantations here which cover the country for miles around. His +grandfather, the handsome Marquis of the days of <a name="page145" id="page145"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 145] +</span> +the Prince Regent, +came here a great deal towards the end of his life, but did little +towards making the mansion worthy of its site. Two very good portraits +of him here show that he deserved his reputation as the finest-looking +man of his day, a reputation attested by a diamond ring, the history of +which is still preserved in the family. A fine though irregular pearl +given by Philip of Spain to his hapless spouse, Mary Tudor, is another +of the heirlooms of Baron’s Court; but the ring and the note left by +Mary Stuart to Claud Hamilton, Lord Paisley, mysteriously disappeared +during the long minority of the late Duke under the trusteeship of the +fourth Earl of Aberdeen, and have since, it is said, come into the +possession of the Duke of Hamilton.</p> + +<p>Of the three castles given to Lord Claud Hamilton by James I., to enable +him to hold this country, one which stood at Strabaue has disappeared, +the memory of it surviving only in the name of Castle Street in that +town. The ivy-clad ruins of another adorn a height in this beautiful +park. They are “bosomed high in tufted trees,” and overlook one of three +most lovely lakes, stretching in a shining chain through the length of +the demesne.</p> + +<p><a name="page146" id="page146"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 146] +</span> +Another ruined tower of the time of King John stands on an island in +one of these lakes. When the Ulster settlement was made, these lands +with all the countryside were held by the O’Kanes. With the other Celtic +and Catholic inhabitants, they were driven by the masterful invaders +into the mountains and bogs. There still remain their descendants, still +Celtic and still Catholic, and still dreaming of the day when they shall +descend into the low country and drive the Protestant Scotch and English +from the “fat lands” which they occupy. In this way the racial and +religious animosities are kept alive, which have died out in Tipperary +and Waterford, for example, where the Cromwellian English have become +more Irish and often more Catholic than the Irish themselves.</p> + +<p>I took a long drive and walk with Lord Ernest this afternoon through the +park, which rivals Curraghmore in extent. It is nowhere divided from the +lands of the adjoining tenants, and with great liberality is thrown open +to the people, not only of Newtown-Stewart and Strabane, but of all the +country. Parties, sometimes of seven hundred people, from Belfast come +down to pass the day in these sylvan solitudes, and it is to be recorded +to <a name="page147" id="page147"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 147] +</span> +the praise of Ireland that these visitors always behave with perfect +good sense and good feeling.</p> + +<p>The “terrible trippers” of the English midlands, as I once heard an old +verger in a northern Cathedral call them, who chip off relics from +monuments, pull up flowers by the roots, and scatter sandwich papers and +empty gingerbeer bottles broadcast over well-rolled lawns, are not +known, Lord Ernest tells me, in this island. As he neatly puts it, the +Irishman, no matter what his station in life may be, or how great a +blackguard he may really be, always instinctively knows when he ought to +behave like a gentleman, and knows how to do so. In the lakes were +hundreds of wild fowl. The sky was a sky of Constable—silvery-white +clouds, floating athwart a dome of clear Italian blue. The soil here +must be extraordinarily fertile. The woods and groves are dense beyond +belief. Cut down what you like, the growth soon overtakes you, as lush +almost as in the tropics.</p> + +<p>There was a great cyclone here a year or two ago, which prostrated in a +night over a hundred thousand trees. You see the dentated gaps left by +this disaster in the great circle of firs and birches on the surrounding +hills, but they make hardly a serious <a name="page148" id="page148"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 148] +</span> +break in the thoroughly sylvan +character of the landscape. We visited the centre of the devastation, +where I found myself in what seemed to be a backwoods clearing in +America. An enterprising Scot, Kirkpatrick by name, has taken a contract +under the Duke, built himself a neat wooden cabin and stables, set up a +small saw-mill driven by steam, and is hard at work turning the fallen +trees into timber, and making a very good thing of it, both for the Duke +and for himself. He has one or two of his own people with him, but +employs the labour of the country, and has no fear of disturbance. He +thinks, however, that he must get “a good wicked dog” to frighten away +the tramps, who sometimes stray into his woodland, and put the +enterprise in peril by smoking and drowsing under haystacks.</p> + +<p>Near this clearing is a model village, the houses scrupulously neat, +with trees and flowers, and here we met the Duchess with her devoted dog +walking briskly along to visit one of her people, a wonderful old man, +bearing the ancient name of the O’Kanes, and five years older than the +Kaiser William. Until six months ago this veteran was an active +carpenter, coming and going, about his work at ninety-six like a man in +middle age. Then he went <a name="page149" id="page149"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 149] +</span> +to bed with a bad cold, and will probably +never rise again. In all his life he never has touched meat or soup, and +when they are now offered him rejects them angrily. He has lived, and +preferred to live, entirely on oatmeal in the form of cakes and +porridge, and on potatoes; so I make a present of him as a glorious +example to the vegetarians. As in so many other cases, his memory of +recent events is dim and clouded—of events long past, clear and +photographic: the negatives taken in youth quite perfect, the lenses +which now take, dimmed and fractured.</p> + +<p>He perfectly recollects, for example, the assembling here of the +recruits going out to the Continent before the battle of Waterloo, and +can give the names and describe the peculiarities of stalwart lads long +since crumbled into dust around Mont St. Jean. With the curious +unconcern about death which marks his people, this expectant emigrant +into the unknown world chats about his departure as if it were for +Dublin, and his kinsfolk chat with him.</p> + +<p>“Ye’ll be going soon!”</p> + +<p>“Oh yes, I shan’t trouble ye more than an hour or two more.”</p> + +<p>In quite another part of the domain we came <a name="page150" id="page150"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 150] +</span> +upon a Covenanter—a true, +authentic Covenanter, who might have walked out of <i>Old Mortality</i>; the +name of him, Keyes. He greeted Lord Ernest cheerily enough, nodded to me +in a not unfriendly way, and at once broke into exhortation: “It’s a +very short life we live; man that is born of woman is of few days, and +full of trouble. Well for them that are the children of light—if seeing +the light they sin not against it”; and so on with amazing volubility.</p> + +<p>There are eighty-five of these Covenanters here. They touch not nor have +touched the accursed thing. To them all parties and all governments are +alike evil. The Whigs persecuted the Solemn League and Covenant—so did +the Tories. Nationalists and Unionists are to them alike abominable, +sold under sin. Withal they are shrewd, canny, successful farmers—and, +as I inferred from sundry incidents, before Lord Ernest confided the +fact to me, not averse from a “right gude williewaught” now and then.</p> + +<p>Mr. Keyes, I thought, was not a blue-ribbon man, nor a ribbon-man of any +kind.</p> + +<p>The Duchess told me afterwards she had vainly endeavoured more than once +to get these people to vote at elections.</p> + +<p><a name="page151" id="page151"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 151] +</span> +We had a sprinkling of such people, and very good people in quiet times +they were, in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War, to whom +Federals and Confederates were alike anathema.</p> + +<p>We wound up our drive to-day just beyond “the Duke’s seat,” a little +rustic bench put up by the late Duke on a hill range which commands a +magnificent view over the whole domain of hill and forest and lakes, and +far away to the mountains of Munterlony. There, in the bogs and woods +James Hamilton, “lord baron of Strabane,” with “other rebels, unknown, +in his company,” hid himself till, after the fall of Charlemont in +August 1650, he was captured by a party of the Commonwealth’s +men—whereby, as the record here runs, “all and singular his manors, +towns, lands, and so forth were forfeited to the Commonwealth of +England.” Under this pressure he sought “protection,” and got it a +fortnight later from Cromwell’s General, Sir Charles Coote, whose +descendants still nourish in Wicklow. But on the 31st of December 1650 +he “broke the said protection, and joined himself with Sir Phelim +O’Neill, being then in rebellion.”</p> + +<p>Troublous times those, and a “lord baron of Strabane” needed almost the +alacrity in turning <a name="page152" id="page152"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 152] +</span> +his coat of a harlequin or a modern politician! It +is a comfort to know that at last, on the 16th of June 1655, he found +rest, dying at Ballyfathen, “a Roman Catholic and a papist recusant.” As +we came back into the gardens and grounds, Lord Ernest showed me, +imbedded in the earth, a huge anchor presented to the present Duke by +the Corporation of Waterford, as having belonged to the French 28-gun +frigate, on which in 1689 James II. and Lord Abercorn sailed away from +Ireland for Prance. I believe that because of its weight the present +First Lord of the Admiralty avers that it is no anchor at all, but a +buoy fixture. It might have been ten times as heavy, and yet not have +availed to keep James from getting to sea at that particular time.</p> + + +<p><span class="diary">BARON’S COURT, <i>Friday, Feb. 10.</i></span>—Here also, in County Tyrone, the +Irish women show their skill in women’s work. Mrs. Dixon, the English +wife of the house-steward of Baron’s Court, has charge of a woollen +industry founded here, after a discourse on thrift, delivered at a +temperance meeting of the people by the then Marquis of Hamilton, had +stirred the country up to consider whether the peasant women might not +possibly find some better and more profitable way of passing their +winter even<a name="page153" id="page153"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 153] +</span> +ings than in sitting huddled around a peat fire with their +elbows on their knees, gossiping about their neighbours. Lord Hamilton +cited the women of Gweedore as proofs that such a way might by searching +be found.</p> + +<p>The Duke and Duchess found the funds, the stewardess invested them in +buying the necessary yarn and knitting-needles, and the Marchioness of +Hamilton acted as corresponding clerk and business agent of the new +industry. The clothing department of the British army lent a listening +ear to the business proposals made to it, and the work began. From that +time on it has been the main substantial resource against suffering and +starvation of the families of some three hundred labourers in the hill +country near Baron’s Court.</p> + +<p>These labourers work for the small farmers from April to November; and +between the autumn and the spring their wives and daughters knit, and by +the Baron’s Court machinery are enabled to dispose of, nearly twenty +thousand pairs of woollen socks. The yarns are brought from Edinburgh to +the store-house at Baron’s Court. Thither every Wednesday come the +knitters. Mrs. Dixon weighs the hanks of yarn, and gives them out.</p> + +<p><a name="page154" id="page154"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 154] +</span> +On the following Wednesday the knitters reappear, each with her bale of +stockings or socks. These are again weighed, and the knitters receive +their pay according to the weight, quality, and size of the goods. In +some families there are four, five, or six knitters. All these people, +with four or five exceptions, are small cottars living on wretched +little mountain farms, not on the Duke of Abercorn’s property; and but +for this industry they would be absolutely without employment all the +winter through.</p> + +<p>Some of them come from a distance of twelve or fourteen miles, and but +for this resource would literally starve. They are nearly all of them +Catholics, and the Protestants here being Unionists, they are probably +Nationalists. About three hundred knitters in all are employed. In the +year 1886-87 the orders given for Baron’s Court work enabled Mrs. Dixon +to pay out regularly about five pounds a week, not including casual +private orders. For the current year the orders have been much larger, +and the expenditure proportionally greater. Mrs. Dixon’s storehouse was +full of goods to-day. The long knickerbocker stockings which she showed +us were remarkably good, some in “cross-gartered” <a name="page155" id="page155"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 155] +</span> +patterns, handsomer, +I thought, than similar goods in the Scottish Highlands—and all of them +staunch and well-proportioned.</p> + +<p>For socks such as are supplied to the volunteers and the troops the War +Office pays 8-3/4d. a pair.</p> + +<p>It was pleasant to learn from Mrs. Dixon that these people thoroughly +appreciate the spirit which prompted and still directs this enterprise. +Last spring when the Duchess was thought for a time to be hopelessly +ill, a young girl came down to Baron’s Court weeping bitterly. On her +arm was a basket, in which were two young chanticleers crowing lustily. +The poor girl said these were all she had, and she had brought them “to +make soup for the Duchess, for she heard that was what the great people +lived on, and it might save her life.”</p> + +<p>This afternoon I went over by the railway to Derry with Lord Ernest to +attend a meeting there. The “Maiden City” stands picturesquely on the +Foyle, and has a fine, though not large, cathedral of St. Colomb, +restored only last year, of which it may be noteD that the work never +was undertaken while the Protestant Church of Ireland was established by +law, and has been successfully carried out since the disendowment of +that Church. <a name="page156" id="page156"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 156] +</span> +The streets were white with snow, but the meeting in the +old Town Hall was largely attended. It was, in fact, a sort of Orange +symposium—tea being served at long tables, and the platform decorated +with a pianoforte. The Mayor of the city presided, and between the +speeches, songs, mostly in the Pyramus or condoling vein, were sung by a +local tenor of renown. It was very like an American tea-fight in the +country, and the audience were unquestionably enthusiastic. They quite +cheered themselves hoarse when Lord Ernest Hamilton reminded them that +he had made his first political speech in that hall on a “memorable +occasion,” when, being an as yet unfledged Parliamentarian, he had taken +a hand in a successful attempt to prevent the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr. +Dawson, from making a speech in Derry. One of my neighbours, a merchant +in the city, told me that a project is afoot for tearing down the old +hall in which we met “to enlarge the street,” but he added that “the +people of Derry were too proud of their history to allow it!”</p> + +<p>I understood him to say it is one of the very few buildings in Derry +which witnessed the famous siege, and the breaking of the boom.</p> + +<p><a name="page157" id="page157"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 157] +</span> +We left the “revel” early, caught a fast train to Newtown-Stewart, and +returned here an hour ago through a driving snowstorm, most dramatically +arranged to enhance the glow and genial charm of our welcome.</p> + + +<p><span class="diary">BARON’S COURT, <i>Saturday, Feb. 11th.</i></span>—All the world was white with snow +this morning. Alas! for the deluded birds we have been listening to for +days past; thrushes, larks, and as, I believe, blackbirds, though there +is a tradition in these parts that no man ever heard the blackbird sing +before the 15th of February. I suspect it grew out of the date of St. +Valentine’s Day. We had some lovely music, however, within doors this +morning; and, in spite of the snow and the chill wind, a little fairy of +a girl, with her groom, went off like mad across country on her pony, +“Guinea Pig,” to fetch the mails from Newtown-Stewart.</p> + +<p>Not long after breakfast came in from Letterkenny Sergeant Mahony of the +constabulary, on whose testimony Father M‘Fadden was convicted. We had +heard at Letterkenny that he was now on leave at Belfast, and Lord +Ernest had kindly <a name="page158" id="page158"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 158] +</span> +arranged matters so that he should come here and +tell us his story of Gweedore.</p> + +<p>An admirable specimen he is of a most admirable body of men. He is as +thoroughly Celtic in aspect as he is by name—a dark Celt, with a quiet +resolute face, and a wiry well-built frame.</p> + +<p>Nothing could be better than his manner and bearing, at once respectful +and self-respectful: that manner of a natural gentleman one so often +sees in the Irish peasant. He is a devout Catholic, but no admirer of +Father M‘Fadden.</p> + +<p>As to his evidence, he explains very clearly that he was not sent to +report Father M‘Fadden’s speech at all, but to note and take down and +report language used in the speech of a sort to excite the people +against the law. He was selected for this duty for three reasons: he is +a Donegal man who has lived at Gweedore for sixteen years; he is a fair +stenographer; and he speaks Irish, in which language Father M‘Fadden +made his speech.</p> + +<p>“I speak Irish quite as well as he does,” said the Sergeant quietly, +“and he knows I do. What I did was to put down in English words what I +heard said in Irish. This I had to do because I have no stenographic +signs for the Irish words.” He tells me he taught himself stenography.</p> + +<p><a name="page159" id="page159"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 159] +</span> +“As for Father M‘Fadden,” he said, “he told the people that’ he was the +law in Gweedore, and they should heed no other.’ He spoke the truth, +too, for he makes himself the law in Gweedore. He dislikes me because I +am a living proof that he is not the only law in Gweedore!” Of the +business shrewdness and ability of Father M‘Fadden, Sergeant Mahony +expressed a very high opinion, though hardly in terms which would have +gratified such an ecclesiastic as the late Cardinal Barnabo. Possibly +Cardinal Cullen might have relished them no better. “Certainly he has +the finest house in Gweedore, sir, and what’s more he made it the finest +himself.”</p> + +<p>“Do you mean that he built it?”</p> + +<p>“He did, indeed; and did you not notice the beautiful stone fences he is +putting up all about it, and the four farms he has?”</p> + +<p>“Then he is certainly a man of substance?”</p> + +<p>“And of good substance, sir! The Government, they gave him a hundred +pounds towards the house. But it was the flood that was the blessed +thing for him and made a great man of him!”</p> + +<p>“The flood?” I asked, with some natural astonishment; “the flood? What +flood?”</p> + +<p><a name="page160" id="page160"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 160] +</span> +“And did you never hear of the great flood of Gweedore? It was in +August 1880. You will mind the water that comes down behind the chapel? +Well, there was a flood, and it swelled, and it swelled, and it burst +the small pipe there behind the chapel: too small it was entirely for +carrying off the great water, and nobody took notice of it, or that +there was anything wrong, and so the water was piled up behind the +chapel, and at Mass on the Sunday, while the chapel was full, the walls +gave way, and the water rushed in, and was nine feet deep. There were +five people that couldn’t get out in time, and were drowned—two old +people and three children, young people. It was a great flood. And +Father M‘Fadden wrote about it—oh, he is a clever priest with the +pen—and they made a great subscription in London for the poor people +and the chapel. I can’t rightly say how much, but it was in the papers, +a matter of seven hundred pounds, I have heard say. And it was all sent +to Father M‘Fadden.”</p> + +<p>“And it was spent, of course,” I said, “on the repairs of the chapel, or +given to the relatives of the poor people who were drowned.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, no doubt; very likely it was, sir! But the repairs of the +chapel—there isn’t a mason <a name="page161" id="page161"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 161] +</span> +in Donegal but will tell you a hundred +pounds would not be wanted to make the chapel as good as it ever was. +And for the people that were drowned—two of them were old people, as I +said to you, sir, that had no kith or kin to be relieved, and for the +others they were of well-to-do people that would not wish to take +anything from the parish.”</p> + +<p>“What was done with it, then?”</p> + +<p>“Oh! that I can’t tell ye. It was spent for the people some way. You +must ask Father M‘Fadden. He is the fund in Gweedore, just as he is the +law in Gweedore. Oh! they came from all parts to see the great ruin of +the flood at Gweedore. They did, indeed. And some of them, it was poor +sight they had; they couldn’t see the big rift in the walls, when Father +M‘Fadden pointed it out to them. ‘Whisht! there it is!’ he would say, +pointing with his finger. Then they saw it!”</p> + +<p>I asked him at what figure he put the income of Father M‘Fadden from his +parish. Without a moment’s hesitation he answered, “It’s over a thousand +pounds a year, sir, and nearer twelve hundred than eleven.” I expressed +my surprise at this, the whole rental of Captain Hill, the landlord, +falling, as I had understood, below rather than above £700 <a name="page162" id="page162"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 162] +</span> +a year; and +Gweedore, as Father Walker had told me, containing fewer houses than +Burtonport.</p> + +<p>“Fewer houses, mayhap,” said the sergeant, “though I’m not sure of that; +but if fewer they pay more. There’s but one curate—poor man, he does +all the parish work, barring the high masses, and a good man he is, but +he gets £400 a year, and that is but a third of the income!”</p> + +<p>I asked by what special stipends the priest’s income at Gweedore could +be thus enhanced. “Oh, it’s mainly the funeral-money that helps it up,” +he replied. “You see, sir, since Father M‘Fadden came to Gweedore it’s +come to be the fashion.”</p> + +<p>“The fashion?” I said.</p> + +<p>“Yes, sir, the fashion. This is the way it is, you see. When a poor +creature comes to be buried—no matter who it is, a pauper, or a tenant, +or any one—the people all go to the chapel; and every man he walks up +and lays his offering for the priest on the coffin; and the others, they +watch him. And, you see, if a man that thinks a good deal of himself +walks up and puts down five shillings, why, another man that thinks less +of him, and more of himself, he’ll go up and make it a gold ten-shilling +piece, or perhaps even a sovereign! I’ve known Father <a name="page163" id="page163"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 163] +</span> +M‘Fadden, sir, to +take in as much as £15 in a week in that way.”</p> + +<p>Sergeant Mahony told us a curious tale, too, of the way in which Father +M‘Fadden dealt with the people of the neighbouring parish of Falcarragh. +He would go down to the parish boundary, if he wanted to address the +people of Falcarragh, and stand over the line, with one foot in each +parish!</p> + +<p>At our request Sergeant Mahony made some remarks in Irish; very wooing +and winning they were in sound. Before he left Baron’s Court he promised +to make out and send me a schedule of the parochial income at Gweedore, +under the separate heads of the sources whence it is derived.</p> + +<p>Obviously Sergeant Mahony would make a good “devil’s advocate” at the +canonization of Father M‘Fadden. But, all allowances made for this, one +thing would seem to be tolerably clear. Of the three personages who take +tribute of the people of Gweedore, the law intervenes in their behalf +with only one—the landlord. The priest and the “Gombeen man” deal with +them on the old principle of “freedom of contract.” But it is by no +means so clear which of the three exacts and receives the greatest +tribute.</p> + +<p>We leave Baron’s Court in an hour for Dublin, whence I go on alone +to-night into Queen’s County. +</p> + + + +<h2><a name="page164" id="page164"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 164] +</span> +CHAPTER IV.</h2> + + +<p><span class="diary">ABBEYLEIX, <i>Sunday, Feb. 12.</i></span>—Newtown-Stewart, through which I drove +yesterday afternoon with Lord Ernest to the train, is a prettily +situated town, with the ruins of a castle in which James II. slept for a +night on his flight to France. He was cordially received, and by way of +showing his satisfaction left the little town in flames when he +departed. Here appears to be a case, not of rack-renting, but of +absenteeism. The town belongs to a landlord who lives in Paris, and +rarely, if ever, comes here. There are no improvements—no +sanitation—but the inhabitants make no complaint. “Absenteeism” has its +compensations as well as its disadvantages. They pay low rents, and are +little troubled; the landlord drawing, perhaps, £400 a year from the +whole place. The houses are small, though neat enough in appearance, but +the town has a sleepy, inert look. On the railway between Dundalk and +Newry, we passed a spot known by the ominous <a name="page165" id="page165"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 165] +</span> +name of “The Hill of the +Seven Murders,” seven agents having been murdered there since 1840! I +suppose this must be set down to the force of habit. At Newry a cavalry +officer whom Lord Ernest knew got into our carriage. He was full of +hunting, and mentioned a place to which he was going as a “very fine +country.”</p> + +<p>“From the point of view of the picturesque?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“Oh no! from the point of view of falling off your horse!”</p> + +<p>At Maple’s Hotel I found a most hospitable telegram, insisting that I +should give up my intention of spending the night at Maryborough, and +come on to this lovely place in my host’s carriage, which would be sent +to meet me at that station. I left Kingsbridge Station in Dublin about 7 +P.M. We had rather a long train, and I observed a number of people +talking together about one of the carriages before we started; but there +was no crowd at all, and nothing to attract special attention. As we +moved out of the station, some lads at the end of the platform set up a +cheer. We ran on quietly till we reached Kildare. There quite a +gathering awaited our arrival on the platform, and <a name="page166" id="page166"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 166] +</span> +as we slowed up, a +cry went up from among them of, “Hurrah for Mooney! hurrah for Mooney!” +The train stopped just as this cry swelled most loudly, when to my +surprise a tall man in the gathering caught one or two of the people by +the shoulder, shaking them, and called out loudly, “Hurrah for +Gilhooly—you fools, hurrah for Gilhooly!”</p> + +<p>This morning I learned that I had the honour, unwittingly, of travelling +from Dublin to Maryborough with Mr. Gilhooly, M.P., who appears to have +been arrested in London on Friday, brought over yesterday by the day +train, and sent on at once from Dublin to his destined dungeon.</p> + +<p>An hour’s drive through a rolling country, showing white and weird under +its blanket of snow in the night, brought us to this large, rambling, +delightful house, the residence of Viscount de Vesci. Mr. Gladstone came +here from Lord Meath’s on his one visit to Ireland some years ago. I +find the house full of agreeable and interesting people; and the chill +of the drive soon vanished under the genial influences of a light +supper, and of pleasant chat in the smoking-room. A good story was told +there, by the way, of Archbishop Walsh, who being <a name="page167" id="page167"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 167] +</span> +rather indiscreetly +importuned to put his autograph on a fan of a certain Conservative lady +well known in London, and not a little addicted to lion-hunting, +peremptorily refused, saying, “no, nor any of the likes of her!” And +another of Father Nolan, a well-known priest, who died at the age of +ninety-seven. When someone remonstrated with him on his association with +an avowed unbeliever in Christianity, like Mr. Morley, Father Nolan +replied, “Oh, faith will come with time!” The same excellent priest, +when he came to call on Mr. Gladstone, here at Abbeyleix, on his arrival +from the Earl of Meath’s, pathetically and patriarchally adjured him, on +his next visit to Ireland, “not to go from one lord’s house to another, +but to stay with the people.” This was better than the Irish journal +which, finding itself obliged to chronicle the fact that Mr. Gladstone, +with his wife and daughter, was visiting Abbeyleix, gracefully observed +that he “had been entrapped into going there!” Some one lamenting the +lack of Irish humour and spirit in the present Nationalist movement, as +compared with the earlier movements, Lord de Vesci cited as a solitary +but refreshing instance of it, the incident which occurred the other day +at an eviction in <a name="page168" id="page168"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 168] +</span> +Kerry, <a id="footnotetag18" + name="footnotetag18"></a><a href="#footnote18"><sup>18</sup></a> of a patriotic priest who chained himself +to a door, and put it across the entrance of the cabin to keep out the +bailiffs!</p> + +<p>It is discouraging to know that this delightful act was bitterly +denounced by some worthy and well-meaning Tory in Parliament as an +“outrage”!</p> + +<p>Despite the snow the air this morning, in this beautiful region, is soft +and almost warm, and all the birds are singing again. The park borders +upon and opens into the pretty town of Abbeyleix, the broad and +picturesque main thoroughfare of which, rather a rural road than a +street, is adorned with a fountain and cross, erected in memory of the +late Lord de Vesci. There is a good Catholic chapel here (the ancient +abbey which gave the place its name stood in the grounds of the present +mansion), and a very handsome Protestant Church.</p> + +<p>It is a curious fact that two of the men implicated in the Phoenix Park +murders had been employed, one, I believe, as a mason, and one as a +carver, in the construction of this church. Both the chapel and the +church to-day were well attended. I am told there has been little real +trouble here, nor has the Plan of Campaign been adopted here. Sometimes +<a name="page169" id="page169"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 169] +</span> +Lord de Vesci finds threatening images of coffins and guns scratched in +the soil, with portraits indicating his agent or himself; but these mean +little or nothing. Lady de Vesci, who loves her Irish home, and has done +and is doing a good deal for the people here, tells me, as an amusing +illustration of the sort of terrorism formerly established by the local +organisations, that when she met two of the labourers on the place +together, they used to pretend to be very busy and not to see her. But +if she met one alone, he greeted her just as respectfully as ever.</p> + +<p>The women here do a great deal of embroidery and lace work, in which she +encourages them, but this industry has suffered what can only be a +temporary check, from the change of fashion in regard to the wearing of +laces. Why the loveliest of all fabrics made for the adornment of women +should ever go “out of fashion” would be amazing if anything in the +vagaries of that occult and omnipotent influence could be. The Irish +ladies ought to circulate Madame de Piavigny’s exquisite <i>Lime +d’Heures</i>, with its incomparable illustrations by Carot and Meaulle, +drawn from the lace work of all ages and countries, as a tonic against +despair in respect to this industry. In one of <a name="page170" id="page170"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 170] +</span> +the large rooms of her +own house, Lady de Vesci has established and superintends a school of +carving for the children of poor tenants. It has proved a school of +civilisation also. The lads show a remarkable aptitude for the arts of +design, and of their own accord make themselves neat and trim as soon as +they begin to understand what it is they are doing. They are always busy +at home with their drawings and their blocks, and some of them are +already beginning to earn money by their work.</p> + +<p>What I have seen at Adare Manor near Limerick, where the late Earl of +Dunraven educated all the workmen employed on that mansion as +stone-cutters and carvers, suffices to show that the people of this +country have not lost the aptitudes of which we see so many proofs in +the relics of early Irish art.</p> + +<p>Among the guests in the house is a distinguished officer, Colonel +Talbot, who saw hard service in Egypt, and in the advance on Khartoum, +with camels across the desert—a marvellous piece of military work. I +find that he was in America in 1864-65, with Meade and Hunt and Grant +before Petersburg, being in fact the only foreign officer then present. +He there formed what seem to me very sound and <a name="page171" id="page171"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 171] +</span> +just views as to the +ability of the Federal commanders in that closing campaign of the Civil +War, and spoke of Hunt particularly with much admiration. Of General +Grant he told me a story so illustrative of the simplicity and modesty +which were a keynote in his character that I must note it. The day +before the evacuation of Petersburg by the Con federates, Grant was +urged to order an attack upon the Confederate positions. He refused to +do so. The next day the Confederates were seen hastily abandoning them. +Grant watched them quietly for a while, and then putting down his glass, +said to one of the officers who had urged the assault, “You were right, +and I was wrong. I ought to have attacked them.”</p> + +<p>It is provoking to know that the notes taken by this British officer at +that time, being sent through the Post Office by him some years ago to +Edinburgh for publication, were lost in the transmission, and have never +been recovered. Curiously enough, however, he thinks he has now and then +discerned indications in articles upon the American War, published in a +newspaper which he named, going to show that his manuscripts are in +existence somewhere.</p> + +<p><a name="page172" id="page172"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 172] +</span> +<span class="diary">ABBEYLEIX, <i>Monday, Feb. 13.</i></span>—To-day, in company with Lord de Vesci +and a lady, I went over to Kilkenny. We left and arrived in a snowstorm, +but the trip was most interesting. Kilkenny, chiefly known in America, I +fear, as the city of the cats, is a very picturesque place, thanks to +its turrets and towers. It has two cathedrals, a Bound Tower (one of +these in Dublin was demolished in the last century!), a Town Hall with a +belfry, and looming square and high above the town, the Norman keep of +its castle. The snow enlivened rather than diminished the scenic effect +of the place. Bits of old architecture here and there give character to +the otherwise commonplace streets. Notable on the way to the castle is a +bit of mediaeval wall with Gothic windows, and fretted with the +scutcheon in stone of the O’Sheas. The connection of a gentleman of this +family with the secret as well as the public story of the Parnellite +movement may one day make what Horace Greeley used to call “mighty +interestin’ reading.” A dealer in spirits now occupies what is left of +the old Parliament House of Kilkenny, in which the rival partisans of +Preston and O’Neill outfought the legendary cats, to the final ruin of +the cause of the <a name="page173" id="page173"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 173] +</span> +Irish confederates, and the despair of the loyal +legate of Pope Innocent.</p> + +<p>Of Kilkenny Castle, founded by Strongbow, but two or three towers +remain. The great quadrangle was rebuilt in 1825, and much of it again +so late as in 1860. There is little, therefore, to recall the image of +the great Marquis who, if Rinuccini read him aright, played so +resolutely here two centuries and a half ago for the stakes which Edward +Bruce won and lost at Dundalk. The castle of the Butlers is now really a +great modern house.</p> + +<p>The town crowds too closely upon it, but the position is superb. The +castle windows look clown upon the Nore, spanned by a narrow ancient +bridge, and command, not only all that is worth seeing in the town, but +a wide and glorious prospect over a region which is even now beautiful, +and in summer must be charming.</p> + +<p>Over the ancient bridge the enterprise of a modern brewer last week +brought a huge iron vat, so menacingly ponderous that the authorities +made him insure the bridge for a day.</p> + +<p>Within the castle, near the main entrance, are displayed some +tapestries, which are hardly shown to due advantage in that position. +They were made <a name="page174" id="page174"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 174] +</span> +here at Kilkenny in a factory established by Piers +Butler, Earl of Ormonde, in the sixteenth century, and they ought to be +sent to the Irish Exhibition of this year in London, as proving what +Irish art and industry well directed could then achieve. They are +equally bold in design and rich in colour. The blues are especially +fine.</p> + +<p>The grand gallery of the castle, the finest in the kingdom, though a +trifle narrow for its length, is hung with pictures and family +portraits. One of the most interesting of these is a portrait of the +black Earl of Ormon’de, a handsome swarthy man, evidently careful of his +person, who was led by that political flirt, Queen Elizabeth, to believe +that she meant to make him a visit in Ireland, and, perhaps, to honour +him with her hand. He went to great expenses thereupon. At a parley with +his kinsman, the Irish chieftain O’Moore of Abbeyleix, this black earl +was traitorously captured, and an ancient drawing representing this +event hangs beneath his portrait.</p> + +<p>The muniment room, where, thanks to Lord Ormonde’s courtesy, we found +everything prepared to receive us, is a large, airy, and fire-proof +chamber, with well-arranged shelves and tables for consult<a name="page175" id="page175"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 175] +</span> +ing the +records. These go back to the early Norrnan days, long before Edward +III. made James Butler Earl of Ormonde, upon his marriage with Alianore +of England, granddaughter of Edward I. The Butlers came into Ireland +with Henry II., and John gave them estates, the charters of some of +which, with the seals annexed, are here preserved. There are fine +specimens of the great seals also of Henry III., and of his sons Edward +I. and Edmund Crouchback, and of the Tudor sovereigns, as well as many +private seals of great interest. The wax of the early seals was +obviously stronger and better than the wax since used. Of Elizabeth, who +came of the Butler blood through her mother, one large seal in yellow +wax, attached to a charter dated Oct. 24, 1565, is remarkable for the +beauty of the die. The Queen sits on the obverse under a canopy; on the +reverse she rides in state on a pacing steed as in her effigy at the +Tower of London. The seals of James I. follow the design of this die. +Two of these are particularly fine. At the Restoration something +disappears of the old stateliness. A seal of Charles II., of 1660, very +large and florid in style, shows the monarch sitting very much at his +ease, with one knee thrown negligently over the other. <a name="page176" id="page176"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 176] +</span> +Many of the +private letters and papers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth +centuries, during which Kilkenny, as it had been often before, was a +great centre of Irish politics and intrigues, have been bound up in +volumes, and the collection has been freely drawn upon by historians. +But it would obviously bear and reward a more thorough co-ordination and +examination than it has ever yet received.</p> + +<p>There is a curious Table Book here preserved of Charles I. while at +Oxford in 1644, from which it appears that while the colleges were +melting up their plate for the King, his Majesty fared better than might +have been expected. His table was served with sixty pounds of mutton a +day; and he wound up his dinner regularly with “sparaguss” so long as it +lasted, and after it went out with artichokes.</p> + +<p>An Expense Book, too, of the great Marquis, after he became the first +Duke of Ormonde, Colonel Blood’s Duke, kept at Kilkenny in 1668 throws +some interesting light on the cost of living and the customs of great +houses at that time. The Duke, who was in some respects the greatest +personage in the realm, kept up his state here at a weekly cost of +<a name="page177" id="page177"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 177] +</span> +about £50, a good deal less—allowing for the fall in the power of the +pound sterling—than it would now cost him to live at a fashionable +London hotel. He paid £9, 10s. a week for the keep of nineteen horses, +18 shillings board wages for three laundry-maids, and £1, 17s. 4d. for +seven dozen of tallow-candles. The wines served at the ducal table were +Burgundy, Bordeaux, “Shampane,” Canary, “Renish,” and Portaport, the +last named at a shilling a bottle, while he paid no more than £3, 18s. +for six dozen bottles of Bordeaux, and £1, 1s. for a dozen and a half of +“Shampane.” This of course was not the sparkling beverage which in our +times is the only contribution of Champagne to the wine markets of the +world, for the <i>Ay Mousseux</i> first appears in history at the beginning +of the eighteenth century. It was the red wine of Champagne, which so +long contested the palm with the vintages of Burgundy. St. Evremond, who +with the Comte d’Olonne and the great <i>gourmets</i> of the seventeenth +century thought Champagne the best, as the Faculty of Paris also +pronounced it the most wholesome of wines, doubtless introduced his own +religion on the subject into England—but the entry in the Duke’s +Expense Book of 1668 is an interesting proof that <a name="page178" id="page178"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 178] +</span> +the duel of the +vintages was even then going as it finally went in favour of Burgundy. +While the Duke got his Champagne for 1s. 2d. a bottle, he had to pay +twenty shillings a dozen, or 1s. 8d. a bottle, for five dozen of +Burgundy. He got his wines from Dublin, which then, as long before, was +the most noteD wine mart of Britain. The English princes drew their best +supplies thence in the time of Richard II.</p> + +<p>From the castle we drove through the snow to the Cathedral of St. +Canice, a grand and simple Norman edifice of the twelfth century, now +the Church of the Protestant bishop. An ancient Round Tower of much +earlier date stands beside it like a campanile, nearly a hundred feet in +height.</p> + +<p>There is a legend that Rinuccini wanted to buy and carry away one of the +great windows of this Cathedral, in which mass was celebrated while he +was here. The Cathedral contains some interesting monuments of the +Butlers, and there are many curiously channelled burial slabs in the +floor, like some still preserved in the ruins of Abbeyleix. Lord de +Vesci pointed out to me several tombs of families of English origin once +powerful here, but now sunk into the farmer class. <a name="page179" id="page179"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 179] +</span> +On one of these I +think it was that we saw a remarkably well-preserved effigy of a lady, +wearing a plaited cap under a “Waterford cloak”—one of the neatest +varieties of the Irish women’s cloak—garment so picturesque at once, +and so well adapted to the climate, that I am not surprised to learn +from Lady de Vesci that it is very fast going out of fashion. This +morning before we left Abbeyleix she showed us two such cloaks, types +from two different provinces, each in its way admirable. Put on and worn +about the room by two singularly stately and graceful ladies, they fell +into lines and folds which recalled the most exquisitely beautiful +statuettes of Tanagra; and all allowance made for the glamour lent them +by these two “daughters of the gods, divinely tall,” it was impossible +not to see that no woman could possibly look commonplace and +insignificant in such a garment. Yet Lady de Vesci says that more than +once she has known peasant women, to whom such cloaks had been +presented, cut off the characteristic and useful hood, and trim the +mangled robe with tawdry lace. So it is all over the world! Women who +are models for an artist when they wear some garment indigenous to their +country and appropriate <a name="page180" id="page180"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 180] +</span> +to its conditions, prefer to make guys of +themselves in grotesque travesties of the latest “styles” from London +and Paris and Dublin!</p> + +<p>Kilkenny boasts that its streets are paved with marble. It is in fact +limestone, but none the worse for that. The snow did not improve them. +So without going on a pilgrimage to the Kilkenny College, at which +Swift, Congreve, and Farquhar,—an odd concatenation of +celebrities—were more or less educated, we made our way to the Imperial +Hotel for luncheon. The waiter was a delightful Celt. Upon my asking him +whether the house could furnish anything distantly resembling good Irish +whisky, he produced a bottle of alleged Scotch whisky, which he put upon +the table with a decisive air, exclaiming, “And this, yer honour, is the +most excellent whisky in the whole world, or I’m not an Irishman!”</p> + +<p>Urged by the cold we tempered it with hot water and tasted it. It shut +us up at once to believe the waiter a Calmuck or a Portuguese—anything, +in short, but an Irishman. It is an extraordinary fact that, so far, the +whisky I have found at Irish hotels has been uniformly quite execrable. +I am almost tempted to think that the priests <a name="page181" id="page181"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 181] +</span> +sequestrate all the good +whisky in order to discourage the public abuse of it, for the “wine of +the country” which they offer one is as uniformly excellent.</p> + +<p>Kilkenny ought to be and long was a prosperous town. In 1702, the second +Duke of Ormonde made grants (at almost nominal ground-rents) of the +ground upon which a large portion of the city of Kilkenny was then +standing, or upon which houses have since been built.</p> + +<p>These grants have passed from hand to hand, and form the “root of title” +of very many owners of house property in Kilkenny. The city is the +centre of an extensive agricultural region, famous, according to an +ancient ditty, for “fire without smoke, air without fog, water without +mud, and land without bog”; but of late it has been undeniably +declining. For this there are many reasons. The railways and the +parcel-post diminish its importance as a local emporium. The almost +complete disappearance of the woollen manufacture, the agricultural +depression which has made the banks and wholesale houses “come down” +upon the small dealers, and the “agitation,” bankrupting or exiling the +local gentry, have all conspired to the same result.</p> + +<p><a name="page182" id="page182"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 182] +</span> +From Abbeyleix station we walked back to the house through the park +under trees beautifully silvered with the snow. At dinner the party was +joined by several residents of the county. One of them gave me his views +of the working of the “Plan of Campaign.” It is a plan, he maintains, +not of defence as against unjust and exacting landlords, but of offence +against “landlordism,” not really promoted, as it appears to be, in the +interest of the tenants to whose cupidity it appeals, but worked from +Dublin as a battering engine against law and order in Ireland. Every +case in which it is applied needs, he thinks, to be looked into on its +own merits. It will then be found precisely why this or that spot has +bees selected by the League for attack. At Luggacurren, for instance, +the “Plan of Campaign” has been imposed upon the tenants because the +property belongs to the Marquis of Lansdowne, who happens to be +Governor-General of Canada, so that to attack him is to attack the +Government. The rents of the Lansdowne property at Luggacurren, this +gentleman offers to prove to me, are not and never have been excessive; +and Lord Lansdowne has expended very large sums on improving the +property, and for the benefit of <a name="page183" id="page183"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 183] +</span> +the tenants. Two of the largest +tenants having got into difficulties through reckless racing and other +forms of extravagance found it convenient to invite the league into +Luggacurren, and compel other tenants in less embarrassed circumstances +to sacrifice their holdings by refusing to pay rents which they knew to +be fair, and were abundantly able and eager to pay. At Mitchelstown the +“Plan of Campaign” was aimed again, not at the Countess of Kingston, the +owner, but at the Disestablished Protestant Church of Ireland, the +trustees of which hold a mortgage of a quarter of a million sterling on +the estates. On the Clanricarde property in Galway the “Plan of +Campaign” has been introduced, my informant says, because Lord +Clanricarde happens to be personally unpopular. “Go down to Portumna and +Woodford,” he said, “and look into the matter for yourself. You will +find that the rents on the Clanricarde estates are in the main +exceptionally fair, and even low. The present Marquis has almost never +visited Ireland, I believe, and he is not much known even in London. +People who dislike him for one reason or another readily believe +anything that is said to his disadvantage as a landlord. Most people who +don’t like the cut of <a name="page184" id="page184"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 184] +</span> +Dr. Fell’s whiskers, or the way in which he takes +soup, are quite disposed to listen to you if you tell them he beats his +wife or plays cards too well. The campaigners are shrewd fellows, and +they know this, so they start the ‘Plan of Campaign’ on the Portumna +properties, and get a lot of English windbags to come there and hobnob +with some of the most mischievous and pestilent parish priests in all +Ireland—and then you have the dreadful story of the ‘evictions,’ and +all the rest of it. Lord Clanricarde, or his agent, or both of them, +getting out of temper, will sit down and do some hasty or crabbed or +injudicious thing, or write a provoking letter, and forthwith it is +enough to say ‘Clanricarde,’ and all common sense goes out of the +question, to the great damage, not so much of Lord Clanricarde—for he +lives in London, and is a rich man, and, I suppose, don’t mind the +row—but of landlords all over Ireland, and therefore, in the long-run, +of the tenants of Ireland as well.”</p> + +<p>At Luggacurren, this gentleman thinks, the League is beaten. There are +eighty-two tenants there, evicted and living dismally in what is called +the Land League village, a set of huts erected near the roadside, while +their farms are carried on for <a name="page185" id="page185"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 185] +</span> +the owner by the Land Corporation. As +they were most of them unwilling to accept the Plan, and were +intimidated into it for the benefit of the League, and of the two chief +tenants, Mr. Dunn and Mr. Kilbride, men of substance who had squandered +their resources, the majority of the evicted are sore and angry.</p> + +<p>“At first each man was allowed £3 a month by the League for himself and +his family. But they found that Mr. Kilbride, who has been put into +Parliament by Mr. Parnell for Kerry, a county with which he has no more +to do than I have with the Isle of Skye, was getting £5 a week, and so +they revolted, and threatened to bolt if their subsidy was not raised to +£4 a month.”</p> + +<p>“And this they get now? Out of what funds?”</p> + +<p>“Out of the League funds, or, in other words, out of their own and other +people’s money, foolishly put by the tenants into the keeping of the +League to ‘protect’ it! They give it the kind of ‘protection’ that +Oliver gave the liberties of England: once they get hold of it, they +never let go!”</p> + +<p>I submitted that at Gweedore Father M‘Fadden had paid over to Captain +Hill the funds confided to him.</p> + +<p><a name="page186" id="page186"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 186] +</span> +“No doubt; but there the landlord gave in, and the more fool he!”</p> + +<p>With another guest I had an interesting conversation about the Ulster +tenant-right, which got itself more or less enacted into British law +only in 1870, and of which Mr. Froude tells me he sought in vain to +discover the definite origin. “The best lawyers in Ireland” could give +him no light on this point. He could only find that it did not exist +apparently in 1770, but did exist apparently twenty years later. The +gentleman with whom I talked to-night tells me that the custom of Ulster +was really once general throughout Ireland, and is called the “Ulster” +custom, only because it survived there after disappearing elsewhere. +There is a tradition too, he says, in Ulster that the recognition of +this tenant-right as a binding custom there is really due to Lord +Castlereagh. It would be a curious thing, could this be verified, to +find Lord Castlereagh, whose name has been execrated in Ireland for +fourscore years, recommending and securing a century ago that +recognition of the interest of the Irish tenant in his holding, which, +in our time, Mr. Gladstone, just now the object of Irish adulation, was, +with much difficulty and <a name="page187" id="page187"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 187] +</span> +reluctance, brought to accord in the +Compensation for Disturbances clause of his Act of 1870!</p> + +<p>Of this clause, too, I am told to-night that the scale of compensation +fixed for the awards of the Court in the third section of it was devised +(though Mr. Gladstone did not know this) by an Irish member in the +interest of the “strong farmers,” who wish to root out the small +farmers. There is an apparent confirmation of this story in the fact +that under this section the small farmers, under £10, may be awarded +against the landlord seven years’ rent as compensation for disturbance, +while the number of years to be accounted for in the award diminishes as +the rental increases, a discrimination not unlikely to strengthen the +preference of the landlords for the large farm system.</p> + + + +<h2><a name="page188" id="page188"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 188] +</span> +CHAPTER V.</h2> + +<p><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Tuesday, Feb. 14th.</i></span>—I left Abbeyleix this morning for Dublin, +in company with Mr. and Mrs. Henry Doyle. Mr. Doyle, C.B., a brother of +that inimitable master of the pencil, and most delightful of men, +Richard Doyle, is the Director of the Irish National Gallery. He was +kind enough to come and lunch with me at Maple’s, after which we went +together to the Gallery. It occupies the upper floors of a stately and +handsome building in Merrion Square, in front of which stands a statue +of the founder, Mr. William Dargan, who defrayed all the expenses of the +Dublin Exhibition in 1853, and declined all the honours offered to him +in recognition of his public spirited liberality, save a visit paid to +his wife by Queen Victoria. The collection now under Mr. Doyle’s charge +was begun only in 1864, and the Government makes it an annual grant of +no more than £2500, or about one-half the current <a name="page189" id="page189"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 189] +</span> +price, in these days, +of a fine Gainsborough or Sir Joshua! “They manage these things better +in France,” was evidently the impression of a recent French tourist in +Ireland, M. Daryl, whose book I picked up the other day in Paris, for +after mentioning three or four of the pictures, and gravely affirming +that the existence here of a gallery of Irish portraits proves the +passionate devotion of Dublin to Home Rule, he dismisses the collection +with the verdict that “<i>ce ne vaut pas le diable</i>.” Nevertheless it +already contains more really good pictures than the Musée either of +Lyons or of Marseilles, both of them much larger and wealthier cities +than Dublin. Leaving out the Three Maries of Perugino at Marseilles, and +at Lyons the Ascension, which was once the glory of San Pietro di +Perugia, the Moses of Paul Veronese, and Palma Giovanni’s Flagellation, +these two galleries put together cannot match Dublin with its Jan Steen, +most characteristic without being coarse, its Terburg, a life-size +portrait of the painter’s favourite model, a young Flemish gentleman, +presented to him as a token of regard, its portrait of a Venetian +personage by Giorgione, with a companion portrait by Gian Bellini, its +beautiful Italian landscape by <a name="page190" id="page190"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 190] +</span> +Jan Both, its flower-wreathed head of a +white bull by Paul Potter, its exquisitely finished “Vocalists” by +Cornells Begyn, its admirable portrait of a Dutch gentleman by Murillo, +and its two excellent Jacob Ruysdaels. A good collection is making, too, +of original drawings, and engravings, and a special room is devoted to +modern Irish art. I wish the Corcoran Gallery (founded, too, by an +Irishman!) were half as worthy of Washington, or the Metropolitan Museum +one-tenth part as worthy of New York!</p> + +<p>The National Gallery in London has loaned some pictures to Dublin, and +Mr. Doyle is getting together, from private owners, a most interesting +gallery of portraits of men and women famous in connection with Irish +history. The beautiful Gunnings of the last century, the not less +beautiful and much more brilliant Sheridans of our own, Burke, Grattan, +Tom Moore, Wellington, Curran, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, O’Connell, Peg +Woffington, Canning, and Castlereagh, Dean Swift, Laurence Sterne are +all here—wits and statesmen, soldiers and belles, rebels and royalists, +orators and poets. Two things strike one in this gallery of the “glories +of Ireland.” The great majority of the faces are of the <a name="page191" id="page191"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 191] +</span> +Anglo-Irish or +Scoto-Irish type; and the collection owes its existence to an +accomplished public officer, who bears an Irish name, who is a devout +Catholic, and who is also an outspoken opponent of the Home Rule +contention as now carried on.</p> + +<p>The gallery is open on liberal conditions to students. Mr. Doyle tells +me that a young sister of Mr. Parnell was at one time an assiduous +student here. He used to stop and chat with her about her work as he +passed through the gallery. One day he met her coming out. “Mr. Doyle,” +she said, “are you a Home Ruler?” “Certainly not,” he replied +good-naturedly. Whereupon, with an air of melancholy resignation, the +young lady said, “Then we can never more be friends!” and therewith +flitted forth.</p> + +<p>A small room contains some admirable bits of the work of Richard Doyle, +among other things a weird and grotesque, but charming cartoon of an +elfish procession passing through a quaint and picturesque mediaeval +city. It is a <i>conte fantastique</i> in colour—a marvel of affluent fancy +and masterly skill.</p> + +<p>I found here this morning letters calling me over to Paris for a short +time, and one also from Mr. Davitt, in London, explaining that my note +to him <a name="page192" id="page192"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 192] +</span> +through the National League had never reached him, and that he +had gone to London on his woollen business. I have written asking him to +meet me to-morrow in London, and I shall cross over to-night.</p> + + +<p><span class="diary">LONDON, <i>Wednesday, Feb. 15th.</i></span>—Mr. Davitt spent an hour with me +to-day, and we had a most interesting conversation. His mind is just now +full of the woollen enterprise he is managing, which promises, he +thinks, in spite of our tariff, to open the American markets to the +excellent woollen goods of Ireland. He has gone into it with all his +usual earnestness and ability. This is not a matter of politics with +him, but of patriotism and of business. He tells me he has already +secured very large orders from the United States. I hope he is not +surprised, as I certainly am not, to find that the Parliamentarian Irish +party give but a half-hearted and lukewarm support to such enterprises +as this. Perhaps he has forgotten, as I have not, the efforts which a +certain member of that party made in 1886 to persuade an Irish gentleman +from St. Louis, who had brought over a considerable sum of money for the +relief of the distress in North-Western Ireland, into turning <a name="page193" id="page193"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 193] +</span> +it over +to the League, on the express ground that the more the people were made +to feel the pinch of the existing order of things, the better it would +be for the revolutionary movement.</p> + +<p>The Irish Woollen Company will, nevertheless, be a success, I believe, +and a success of considerably more value to Ireland than the election of +Mr. Wilfrid Blunt as M.P. for Deptford would be.</p> + +<p>As to this election, Mr. Davitt seems to feel no great confidence. He +has spoken in support of Mr. Blunt’s candidacy, and is hard at work now +to promote it. But he is not sanguine as to the result, as on all +questions, save Home Rule for Ireland, Mr. Blunt’s views and ideas, he +thinks, antagonise the record of Mr. Evelyn and the local feeling at +Deptford. I was almost astonished to learn from Mr. Davitt that Mr. +Blunt, by the way, had told him at Ballybrack, long before he was locked +up, how Mr. Balfour meant to lock up and kill four men, the “pivots” of +the Irish movement, to wit, Mr. O’Brien, Mr. Harrington, Mr. Dillon, and +Mr. Davitt himself. But I was not at all astonished to learn that Mr. +Blunt told him all this most seriously, and evidently believed it.</p> + +<p>“How did you take it?” I asked.</p> + +<p><a name="page194" id="page194"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 194] +</span> +“Oh, I only laughed,” said Mr. Davitt, “and told him it would take more +than Mr. Balfour to kill me, at any rate by putting me in prison. As for +being locked up, I prefer Cuninghame Graham’s way of taking it, that he +meant ‘to beat the record on oakum!’”</p> + +<p>If all the Irish “leaders” were made of the same stuff with Mr. Davitt, +the day of a great Democratic revolution, not in Ireland only, but in +Great Britain, might be a good deal nearer than anything in the signs of +the times now shows it to be. Mr. Parnell and the National League are +really nothing but the mask of Mr. Davitt and the Land League. Mr. +Forster knew what he was about when he proclaimed the Land League in +October 1881, six months or more after he had arrested and locked up Mr. +Davitt in Portland prison. This was shown by the foolish No-Rent +manifesto which Mr. Parnell and his associates issued from Kilmainham +shortly after their incarceration, and without the counsel or consent at +that time of Mr. Davitt—a manifesto which the Archbishop of Cashel, +despite his early sympathies and connection with the agrarian agitation +of 1848, found it expedient promptly to disavow. It would have been +still more clearly shown had not Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Forster parted +company under <a name="page195" id="page195"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 195] +</span> +the restiveness of Mr. Gladstone’s Radical followers, and +the pressure of the United States Government in the spring of 1882. But +after the withdrawal of Mr. Forster, and the release of Mr. Davitt, the +English lawyers and politicians who led Lord Spencer and Sir George +Trevelyan into allowing the Land League to be revived under the +transparent alias of the National League, gave Mr. Davitt an +opportunity, of which he promptly availed himself, to regain the ground +lost by the blundering of the men of Kilmainham. From that time forth I +have always regarded him as the soul of the Irish agitation, of the war +against “landlordism” (which is incidentally, of course, a war against +the English influence in Ireland), and of the movement towards Irish +independence. Whether the agitation, the war, and the movement have gone +entirely in accordance with his views and wishes is quite another +matter.</p> + +<p>I have too good an opinion of his capacity to believe that they have; +and when the secret history of the Chicago Convention comes to be +written, I expect to find such confirmation therein of my notions on +this subject as I could neither ask nor, if I asked, could expect to get +from him.</p> + +<p><a name="page196" id="page196"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 196] +</span> +Meanwhile the manliness and courage of the man must always command for +him the respect, not to say the admiration, even of those who most +sternly condemn his course and oppose his policy.</p> + +<p>Born the child of an evicted tenant, in the times when an eviction meant +such misery and suffering as are seldom, if ever, now caused by the +process—bred and maimed for life in an English factory—captured when +hardly more than a lad in Captain M‘Cafferty’s daring attempt to seize +Chester Castle, and sent for fifteen years by Lord Chief-Justice +Cockburn into penal servitude of the most rigorous kind, Michael Davitt +might have been expected to be an apostle of hate not against the +English Government of Ireland alone, but against England and the English +people. The truculent talk of too many of his countrymen presents +Ireland to the minds of thoughtful men as a flagrant illustration of the +truth so admirably put by Aubrey de Vere that “worse than wasted weal is +wasted woe.” But woe has not been wasted upon Michael Davitt, in this, +that, so far as I know (and I have watched his course now with lively +personal interest ever since I made his acquaintance on his first visit +to America), he has never made revenge and retaliation upon Eng<a name="page197" id="page197"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 197] +</span> +land +either the inspiration or the aim of his revolutionary policy. I have +never heard him utter, and never heard of his uttering, in America, such +malignant misrepresentations of the conduct of the English people and +their sovereign during the great famine of 1847, for example, as those +which earned for Mr. Parnell in 1880 the pretty unanimous condemnation +of the American press. How far he went with Mr. Parnell on the lines of +that speech at New Ross, in which murder was delicately mentioned as “an +unnecessary and prejudicial measure of procedure” in certain +circumstances, I do not know. But he can hardly have gone further than +certain persons calling themselves English Liberals went when the +assassins of Napoleon III. escaped to England. And he has a capacity of +being just to opponents, which certainly all his associates do not +possess. I was much struck to-day by the candour and respect with which +he spoke of John Bright, whose name came incidentally into our +conversation. He seemed to feel personally annoyed and hurt as an +Irishman, that Irishmen should permit themselves to revile and abuse Mr. +Bright because he will not go with them on the question of Home Rule, in +utter oblivion of the great services <a name="page198" id="page198"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 198] +</span> +rendered by him to the cause of +the Irish people “years before many of those whose tongues now wag +against him had tongues to wag.” I was tempted to remind him that not +with Irishmen only is gratitude a lively sense of favours to come.</p> + +<p>I find Mr. Davitt quite awake to the great importance of the granite +quarries of Donegal. He is bestirring himself in connection with some +men of Manchester, in behalf of the quarries at Belmullet in Mayo, +which, if I am not mistaken, is his native county. This bent of his mind +towards the material improvement of the condition of the Irish people, +and the development of the resources of Ireland, is not only a mark of +his superiority to the rank and file of the Irish politicians—it goes +far to explain the stronger hold which he undoubtedly has on the people +in Ireland. “Home Rule,” as now urged by the Irish politicians, +certainly excites much more attention and emotion in America and England +than it seems to do in Ireland. It seems so simple and elementary to +John Bull and Brother Jonathan that people should be suffered to manage +their own affairs! Yet the North would not suffer the South to do +this—and what would become of India if England turned it over in +fragments to the native races? The Land <a name="page199" id="page199"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 199] +</span> +Question, on the contrary, +touches the “business and bosom” of every Irishman in Ireland, while it +is so complicated with historical conditions and incidents as to be +troublesome and therefore uninteresting to people not immediately +affected by it. If I am right in my impressions the collapse of the +National League will hardly weaken the hold of Mr. Davitt on the Irish +people in Ireland, and it may even strengthen his hold on the agrarian +movement in Wales, England, and Scotland, unless he identifies himself +too completely in that collapse with his Parliamentary instruments. On +the other hand, the triumph of the National League on its present lines +of action would diminish the value for good or evil of any man’s hold +upon the Irish people, for the obvious reason that by driving out of +Ireland, and ruining, the class of “landlords” and capitalists, it would +leave the country reduced to a dead level of peasant-holdings, saddled +with a system of poor-rates beyond the ability of the peasant-holders to +carry, and at the mercy, therefore, of the first bad year. The “war +against the landlords,” as conducted by the National League, would end +where the Irish difficulty began, in a general surrender of the people +to “poverty and potatoes.”</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page200" id="page200"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 200] +</span> +CHAPTER VI.</h2> + + +<p><span class="diary">ENNIS, <i>Saturday, Feb. 18.</i></span>—I found it unnecessary to go on to Paris, +and so returned to Ireland on Thursday night; we had a passage as over a +lake. In the train I met a lively Nationalist friend, whose acquaintance +I made in America. He is a man of substance, but not overburdened with +respect for the public men, either of his own party or of the Unionist +side. When I asked him whether he still thought it would be safe to turn +over Ireland to a Parliament made up of the Westminster members, of whom +he gave me such an amusing but by no means complimentary account, he +looked at me with astonishment:—</p> + +<p>“Do you suppose for a moment we would send these fellows to a Parliament +in Dublin?”</p> + +<p>He told me some very entertaining tales of the methods used by certain +well-meaning occupants of the Castle in former days to capture Irish +popularity, <a name="page201" id="page201"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 201] +</span> +as, for example, one of a Vice-Queen who gave a fancy dress +ball for the children of the local Dublin people of importance, and had +a beautiful supper of tea and comfits, and cakes served to them, after +which she made her appearance, followed by servants bearing huge bowls +of steaming hot Irish potatoes, which she pressed upon the horrified and +overstuffed infants as “the true food of the country,” setting them +herself the example of eating one with much apparent gusto, and a pinch +of salt!</p> + +<p>“Now, fancy that!” he exclaimed; “for the Dublin aristocracy who think +the praties only fit for the peasants!”</p> + +<p>Of a well-known and popular personage in politics, he told me that he +once went with him on a canvassing tour. It was in a county the +candidate had never before visited. “When we came to a place, and the +people were all out crying and cheering, he would whisper to me, ‘Now +what is the name of this confounded hole?’ And I would whisper back, +‘Ballylahnich,’ or whatever it was. Then he would draw himself up to the +height of a round tower, and begin, ‘Men of Ballylahnich, I rejoice to +meet you! Often has the great Liberator said to me, with tears in his +voice, ‘Oh <a name="page202" id="page202"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 202] +</span> +would I might find myself face to face with the noble men of +Ballylahnich!’’”</p> + +<p>“A great man he is, a great man!</p> + +<p>“Did you ever hear how he courted the heiress? He walked up and down in +front of her house, and threatened to fight every man that came to call, +till he drove them all away!”</p> + +<p>A good story of more recent date, I must also note, of a well-known +priest in Dublin, who being asked by Mr. Balfour one day whether the +people under his charge took for gospel all the rawhead and bloody-bones +tales about himself, replied, “Indeed, I wish they only feared and hated +the devil half as much as they do you!”</p> + +<p>In a more serious vein my Nationalist friend explained to me that for +him “Home Rule” really meant an opportunity of developing the resources +of Ireland under “the American system of Protection.” About this he was +quite in earnest, and recalled to me the impassioned protests made by +the then Mayor of Chicago, Mr. Carter Harrison, against the Revenue +Reform doctrines which I had thought it right to set forth at the great +meeting of the Iroquois Club in that city in 1883. “Of course,” he +said, “you know that Mr. Harrison was then <a name="page203" id="page203"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 203] +</span> +speaking not only for +himself, but for the whole Irish vote of Chicago which was solidly +behind him? And not of Chicago only! All our people on your side of the +water moved against your party in 1884, and will move against it again, +only much more generally, this year, because they know that the real +hope of Ireland lies in our shaking ourselves free of the British Free +Trade that has been fastened upon us, and is taking our life.” I could +only say that this was a more respectable, if not a more reasonable, +explanation of Mr. Alexander Sullivan’s devotion to Mr. Blaine and the +Republicans, and of the Irish defection from the Democratic party than +had ever been given to me in America, but I firmly refused to spend the +night between London and Dublin in debating the question whether Meath +could be made as prosperous as Massachusetts by levying forty per cent. +duties on Manchester goods imported into Ireland.</p> + +<p>He had seen the reception of Mr. Sullivan, M.P., in London. “I believe, +on my soul,” he said, “the people were angry with him because he didn’t +come in a Lord Mayor’s coach!”</p> + +<p>When I told him I meant to visit Luggacurren, he said, a little to my +surprise, “That is a bad job <a name="page204" id="page204"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 204] +</span> +for us, and all because of William +O’Brien’s foolishness! He always thinks everybody takes note of whatever +he says, and that ruins any man! He made a silly threat at Luggacurren, +that he would go and take Lansdowne by the throat in Canada, and then he +was weak enough to suppose that he was bound to carry it out. He +couldn’t be prevented! And what was the upshot of it? But for the +Orangemen in Canada, that were bigger fools than he is, he would have +been just ruined completely! It was the Orangemen saved him!”</p> + +<p>I left Dublin this morning at 7.40 A.M. The day was fine, and the +railway journey most interesting. Before reaching Limerick we passed +through so much really beautiful country that I could not help +expressing my admiration of it to my only fellow-traveller, a most +courteous and lively gentleman, who, but for a very positive brogue, +might have been taken for an English guardsman.</p> + +<p>“Yes, it is a beautiful country,” he said, “or would be if they would +let it alone!”</p> + +<p>I asked him what he specially objected to in the recent action of +Parliament as respects Ireland?</p> + +<p>“Object?” he responded; “I object to everything. The only thing that +will do Ireland any <a name="page205" id="page205"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 205] +</span> +good will be to shut up that talking-mill at +Westminster for a good long while!”</p> + +<p>This, I told him, was the remedy proposed by Earl Grey in his recent +volume on Ireland.</p> + +<p>“Is it indeed? I shall read the book. But what’s the use? ‘For judgment +it is fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.’”</p> + +<p>This he said most cheerily, as if it really didn’t matter much; and, +bidding me good-bye, disappeared at Limerick, where several friends met +him. In his place came a good-natured optimistic squire, who thinks +“things are settling down.” There is a rise in the price of cattle. +“Beasts I gave £8 for three mouths ago,” he said, “I have just sold for +£12. I call that a healthy state of things.” And with this he also left +me at Ardsollus, the station nearest the famous old monastery of Quin.</p> + +<p>At Ennis I was met by Colonel Turner, to whom I had written, enclosing a +note of introduction to him. With him were Mr. Roche, one of the local +magistrates, and Mr. Richard Stacpoole, a gentleman of position and +estate near Ennis, about whom, through no provocation of his, a great +deal has been said and written of late years. Mr. Stacpoole at once +insisted that I <a name="page206" id="page206"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 206] +</span> +should let him take me out to stay at his house at +Edenvale, which is, so to speak, at the gates of Ennis. Certainly the +fame of Irish hospitality is well-founded! Meanwhile my traps were +deposited at the County Club, and I went about the town. I walked up to +the Court-house with. Mr. Roche, in the hope of hearing a case set down +for trial to-day, in which a publican named Harding, at Ennis—an +Englishman, by the way—is prosecuted for boycotting. The parties were +in Court; and the defendant’s counsel, a keen-looking Irish lawyer, Mr. +Leamy, once a Nationalist member, was ready for action; but for some +technical reason the hearing was postponed. There were few people in +Court, and little interest seemed to be felt in the matter. The +Court-house is a good building, not unlike the White House at Washington +in style. This is natural enough, the White House having been built, I +believe, by an Irish architect, who must have had the Duke of Leinster’s +house of Carton, in Kildare, in his mind when he planned it. Carton was +thought a model mansion at the beginning of this century; and Mr. +Whetstone, a local architect of repute, built the Ennis Court-house some +fifty years ago. It is of white lime<a name="page207" id="page207"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 207] +</span> +stone from quarries belonging to +Mr. Stacpoole, and cost when built about £12,000. To build it now would +cost nearly three times as much. In fact, a recent and smaller +Court-house at Carlow has actually cost £36,000 within the last few +years.</p> + +<p>I was struck by the extraordinary number of public-houses in Ennis. A +sergeant of police said to me, “It is so all over the country.” Mr. +Roche sent for the statistics, from which it appears that Ennis, with a +population of 6307, rejoices in no fewer than 100 “publics”; Ennistymon, +with a population of 1331, has 25; and Milltown Malbay, with a +population of 1400, has 36. At Castle Island the proportion is still +more astounding—51 public-houses in a population of 800. In Kiltimagh +every second house is a public-house! These houses are perhaps a legacy +of the old days of political jobbery. <a id="footnotetag19" + name="footnotetag19"></a><a href="#footnote19"><sup>19</sup></a> No matter when or why granted, +the licence appears to be regarded as a hereditary “right” not lightly +to be tampered with; and of course the publicans are persons of +consequence in their neighbourhood, no matter how <a name="page208" id="page208"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 208] +</span> +wretched it may be, +or how trifling their legitimate business. Three police convictions are +required to make the resident magistrates refuse the usual yearly +renewal of a licence; and if an application is made against such a +renewal, cause must be shown. The “publics” are naturally centres of +local agitation, and the publicans are sharp enough to see the advantage +to them of this. The sergeant told me of a publican here in Ennis, into +whose public came three Nationalists, bent not upon drinking, but upon +talking. The publican said nothing for a while, but finally, in a +careless way, mentioned “a letter he had just received from Mr. Parnell +on a very private matter.” Instantly the politicians were eager to see +it. The publican hesitated. The politicians immediately called for +drinks, which were served, and after this operation had been three times +repeated, the publican produced the letter, began with a line or two, +and then said, “Ah, no! it can’t be done. It would be a betrayal of +confidence; and you know you wouldn’t have that! But it’s a very +important letter you have seen!” So they went away tipsy and happy.</p> + +<p>Only yesterday no fewer than twenty-three of these publicans from +Milltown Malbay appeared <a name="page209" id="page209"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 209] +</span> +at Ennis here to be tried for “boycotting” the +police. One of them was acquitted; another, a woman, was discharged. Ten +of them signed, in open court, a guarantee not further to conspire, and +were thereupon discharged upon their own recognisances, after having +been sentenced with their companions to a month’s imprisonment with hard +labour. The magistrate tells me that when the ten who signed (and who +were the most prosperous of the publicans) were preparing to sign, the +only representative of the press who was present, a reporter for <i>United +Ireland</i>, approached them in a threatening manner, with such an obvious +purpose of intimidation, that he was ordered out of the court-room by +the police. The eleven who refused to sign the guarantee (and who were +the poorest of the publicans, with least to lose) were sent to gaol.</p> + +<p>An important feature of this case is the conduct of Father White, the +parish priest of Milltown Malbay. In the open court, Colonel Turner +tells me, Father White admitted that he was the moving spirit of all +this local “boycott.” While the court was sitting yesterday all the +shops in Milltown Malbay were closed, Father White having publicly +ordered the people to make the town “as a city of the <a name="page210" id="page210"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 210] +</span> +dead.” After the +trial was over, and the eleven who elected to be locked up had left in +the train, Father White visited all their houses to encourage the +families, which, from his point of view, was no doubt proper enough; but +one of the sergeants reports that the Father went by mistake into the +house of one of the ten who had signed the guarantee, and immediately +reappeared, using rather unclerical language. All this to an American +resembles a tempest in a tea-pot. But it is a serious matter to see a +priest of the Church assisting laymen to put their fellow-men under a +social interdict, which is obviously a parody on one of the gravest +steps the Church itself can take to maintain the doctrine and the +discipline of the Faith. What Catholics, if honest, must think of this +whole business, I saw curiously illustrated by some marginal notes +pencilled in a copy of Sir Francis Head’s <i>Fortnight in Ireland</i>, at the +hotel in Gweedore. The author of the <i>Bubbles from the Brunnen</i> +published this book in 1852. At page 152 he tells a story, apparently on +hearsay, of “boycotting” long before Boycott. It is to the effect that, +in order to check the proselyting of Catholics by a combination of +Protestant missionary zeal with Protestant <a name="page211" id="page211"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 211] +</span> +donations of “meal,” certain +priests and sisters in the south of Ireland personally instructed the +people to avoid all intercourse of any sort with any Roman Catholic who +“listened to a Protestant clergyman or a Scripture Reader”; and Sir +Francis cites an instance—still apparently on hearsay—of a “shoemaker +at Westport,” who, having seceded from the Church, found that not a +single “journeyman dared work for him”; that only “one person would sell +him leather”; and, “in short, lost his custom, and rapidly came to a +state of starvation.”</p> + +<p>On the margin of the pages which record these statements, certain +indignant Catholics have pencilled comments, the mildest of which is to +the effect that Sir Francis was “a most damnable liar.” It is certainly +most unlikely that Catholics should have arrogated to themselves the +Church’s function of combating heresy and schism in the fashion +described by Sir Francis. But without mooting that question, these +expressions are noteworthy as showing how just such proceedings, as are +involved in the political “boycottings” of the present day, must be +regarded by all honest and clear-headed people who call themselves +Catholics; and it is a serious scandal that a parish priest should lay +him<a name="page212" id="page212"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 212] +</span> +self open to the imputation of acting in concert with any political +body whatever, on any pretext whatever, to encourage such proceedings.</p> + +<p>I asked one of the sergeants how the publicans who had signed the +guarantee would probably be treated by their townspeople. He replied, +there was some talk of their being “boycotted” in their turn by the +butchers and bakers. “But it’s all nonsense,” he said, “they are the +snuggest (the most prosperous) publicans in this part of the country, +and nobody will want to vex them. They have many friends, and the best +friend they have is that they can afford to give credit to the country +people. There’ll be no trouble with them at all at all!”</p> + +<p>Walking about the town, I saw many placards calling for subscriptions in +aid of a newsvendor who has been impounded for selling <i>United Ireland</i>. +“It’ll be a good thing for him,” said a cynical citizen, to whom I spoke +of it, “a good deal better than he’d be by selling the papers.” And, in +fact, it is noticeable all over Ireland how small the sales of the +papers appear to be. The people about the streets in Ennis, however, +seemed to me much more effervescent and hot in tone than the <a name="page213" id="page213"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 213] +</span> +Dublin +people are—and this on both sides of the question. One very decent and +substantial-looking man, when I told him I was an American, assured me +that “if it was not for the soldiers, the people of Ennis would clear +the police out of the place.” He told me, too, that not long ago the +soldiers of an Irish regiment here cheered for Home Rule in the +Court-house, “but they were soon sent away for that same.” On the other +hand, a Protestant man of business, of whom I made some inquiries about +the transmission of an important paper to the United States in time to +catch to-morrow’s steamer from Queenstown, spoke of the Home Rulers +almost with ferocity, and thought the “Coercion” Government at Dublin +ought to be called the “Concession” Government. He was quite indignant +that the Morley and Ripon procession through the streets of Dublin +should not have been “forbidden.”</p> + +<p>There are some considerable shops in Ennis, but the proprietor of one of +the best of them says all this agitation has “killed the trade of the +place.” I am not surprised to learn that the farmers and their families +are beginning seriously to demand that the “reduction screw” shall be +applied to other things besides rent. “A very decent farmer,” <a name="page214" id="page214"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 214] +</span> +he says, +“only last week stood up in the shop and said it was ‘a shame the +shopkeepers were not made to reduce the tenpence muslin goods to +sixpence!’”</p> + +<p>This shopkeeper finds some dreary consolation for the present state of +things in standing at his deserted shop-door and watching the doors of +his brethren. He finds them equally deserted. In his own he has had to +dismiss a number of his attendants. “When a man finds he is taking in +ten shillings a day, and laying out three pounds ten, what can he do but +pull up pretty short?” As with the shopkeepers, so it is with the +mechanics. “They are losing custom all the time. You see the tenants are +expecting to come into the properties, so they spend nothing now on +painting or improvements. The money goes into the bank. It don’t go to +the landlords, or to the shopkeepers, or the mechanics; and then we that +have been selling on credit, and long credit too, where are we? +Formerly, from one place, Dromoland, Lord Inchiquin’s house, we used +regularly to make a bill of a hundred pounds at Christmas, for blankets +and other things given away. Now the house is shut up and we make +nothing!”</p> + +<p>It is a short but very pleasant drive from Ennis <a name="page215" id="page215"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 215] +</span> +to Edenvale—and +Edenvale itself is not ill-named. The park is a true park, with fine +wide spaces and views, and beautiful clumps of trees. A swift river +flows beyond the lawn in front of the spacious goodly house—a river +alive with wild fowl, and overhung by lofty trees, in which many pairs +of herons build. A famous heronry has existed here for many years, and +the birds are held now by Mr. and Mrs. Stacpoole as sacred as are the +storks in Holland. Where the river widens to a lake, fine terraced +gardens and espalier walls, on which nectarines, apricots, and peaches +ripen in the sun, stretch along the shore. Deer come down to the further +bank to drink, and in every direction the eye is charmed and the mind is +soothed by the loveliest imaginable sylvan landscapes.</p> + + +<p><span class="diary">EDENVALE, <i>Sunday, Feb. 19.</i></span>—I was awakened at dawn by the clamour of +countless wild ducks, to a day of sunshine as brilliant and almost as +warm as one sees at this season in the south of France. Mrs. Stacpoole +speaks of this place with a kind of passion, and I can quite understand +it. Clearly this, again, is not a case of the absentee landlord draining +the lifeblood of the land to lavish it upon an alien <a name="page216" id="page216"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 216] +</span> +soil! The demesne +is a sylvan sanctuary for the wild creatures of the air and the wood, +and they congregate here almost as they did at Walton Hall in the days +of that most delightful of naturalists and travellers, whose adventurous +gallop on the back of a cayman was the delight of all English-reading +children forty years ago, or as they do now at Gosford. Yet the crack of +the gun, forbidden in the precincts of Walton Hall, is here by no means +unknown—the whole family being noteD as dead shots. I asked Mr. +Stacpoole this morning whether the park had been invaded by trespassers +since the local Nationalists declared war upon him. He said that his +only experience of anything like an attack befell not very long ago, +when his people came to the house on a Sunday afternoon and told him +that a crowd of men from Ennis, with dogs, were coming towards the park +with a loudly proclaimed intent to enter it, and go hunting upon the +property.</p> + +<p>Upon this Mr. Stacpoole left the house with his brother and another +person, and walked down to the park entrance. Presently the men of Ennis +made their appearance on the highway. A very brief parley followed. The +men of Ennis announced <a name="page217" id="page217"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 217] +</span> +their intention of marching across the park, and +occupying it.</p> + +<p>“I think not,” the proprietor responded quietly. “I think you will go +back the way you came. For you may be sure of one thing: the first man +who crosses that park wall, or enters that gate, is a dead man.”</p> + +<p>There was no show of weapons, but the revolvers were there, and this the +men of Ennis knew. They also knew that it rested with themselves to +create the right and the occasion to use the revolvers, and that if the +revolvers were used they would be used to some purpose. To their credit, +be it said, as men of sense, they suddenly experienced an almost +Caledonian respect for the “Sabbath-day,” and after expressing their +discontent with Mr. Stacpoole’s inhospitable reception, turned about and +went back whence they had come.</p> + +<p>This morning an orderly from Ennis brought out news of the arrest +yesterday, at the Clare Road, of Mr. Lloyd, a Labour delegate from +London, on his return from an agitation meeting at Kildysart. Harding, +the Englishman I saw awaiting his trial yesterday, became bail for +Lloyd.</p> + +<p>In the afternoon we took a delightful walk to <a name="page218" id="page218"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 218] +</span> +Killone Abbey, a pile of +monastic ruins on a lovely site near a very picturesque lake. The ruins +have been used as a quarry by all the country, and are now by no means +extensive. But the precincts are used as a graveyard, not only by the +people of Ennis, but by the farmers and villagers for many miles around. +Nothing can be imagined more painful than the appearance of these +precincts. The graves are, for the most part, shallow, and closely +huddled together. The cemetery, in truth, is a ghastly slum, a +“tenement-house” of the dead. The dead of to-day literally elbow the +dead of yesterday out of their resting-places, to be in their turn +displaced by the dead of to-morrow. Instead of the crosses and the fresh +garlands, and the inscriptions full of loving thoughtfulness, which lend +a pathetic charm to the German “courts of peace”—instead of the +carefully tended hillocks and flower-studded turf which make the +churchyard of a typical old English village beautiful,—all here is +confusion, squalor, and neglect. Fragments of coffins and bones lie +scattered among the sunken and shattered stones. We picked up a skull +lying quite apart in a corner of the enclosure. A clean round bullet +hole in the very centre of the frontal <a name="page219" id="page219"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 219] +</span> +bone was dumbly and grimly +eloquent. Was it the skull of a patriot or of a policeman? of a +“White-boy” or of a “landlord”?</p> + +<p>One thing only was apparent from the conformation of the grisly relic. +It was the skull of a Celt. Probably, therefore, not of a land agent, +shot to repress his fiduciary zeal, but perhaps of some peasant +selfishly and recklessly bent on paying his rent.</p> + +<p>While we wandered amid the ruins we came suddenly upon a woman wearing a +long Irish cloak, and accompanied by two well-dressed men. One of the +men started upon catching sight of Colonel Turner, who was of our party, +grew quite red for a moment, and then very civilly exchanged salutations +with him. The party walked quietly away on a lower road leading to +Ennis. When they had gone Colonel Turner told us that the man who had +spoken to him was a local Nationalist of repute and influence in Ennis. +“He would never have ventured to be civil to me in the town,” he said. A +discussion arose as to the probable object of the party in visiting +these ruins. A gentleman who was with us half-laughingly suggested that +they might have been putting away dynamite bombs for an <a name="page220" id="page220"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 220] +</span> +attack on +Edenvale. Colonel Turner’s more practical and probable theory was that +they were looking about for a site for the grave of the Fenian veteran, +Stephen J. Meany, who died in America not long ago. He was a native, I +believe, of Ennis, and his remains are now on their way across the +Atlantic for interment in his birth-place. “Would a processional funeral +be allowed for him?” I asked. Colonel Turner could see no reason why it +should not be.</p> + +<p>One exception I noteD to the general slovenliness of the graves. A new +and handsome monument had just been set up by a man of Ennis, living in +Australia, to the memory of his father and mother, buried here twenty +years ago. But this touching symbol of a heart untravelled, fondly +turning to its home, had been so placed, either by accident or by +design, as to block the entrance way to the vault of a family living, or +rather owning property, in this neighbourhood. Until within a year or +two past this family had occupied a very handsome mansion in a park +adjoining the park of Edenvale. But the heir, worn out with local +hostilities, and reduced in fortune by the pressure of the times and of +the League, has now thrown up the sponge. His <a name="page221" id="page221"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 221] +</span> +ancestral acres have been +turned over for cultivation to Mr. Stacpoole. His house, a large fine +building, apparently of the time of James II., containing, I am told, +some good pictures and old furniture, is shut up, as are the model +stables, ample enough for a great stud; and so another centre of local +industry and activity is made sterile.</p> + +<p>Near the ruins of Killone is a curious ancient shrine of St. John, +beside a spring known as the Holy Well. All about the rude little altar +in the open air simple votive offerings were displayed, and Mrs. +Stacpoole tells me pilgrims come here from Galway and Connemara to climb +the hill upon their knees, and drink of the water. Last year for the +first time within the memory of man the well went dry. Such was the +distress caused in Ennis by this news, that on the eve of St. John +certain pious persons came out from the town, drew water from the lake, +and poured it into the well!</p> + +<p>As we walked away one of the party pointed to a rabbit fleeing swiftly +into a hole in one of the graves. “I was on this hill,” he said, “one +day not very long ago when a funeral train came out from Ennis. As it +entered the precincts a rabbit ran rapidly across the grounds. Instantly +the proces<a name="page222" id="page222"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 222] +</span> +sion broke up; the coffin was literally dropped to the +ground, and the bearers, the mourners, and the whole company united in a +hot and general chase of bunny. Of course, I need not say,” he added, +“that there was no priest with them. The fixed charge of the priest for +a burial is twenty shillings, but there is usually no service at the +grave whatever.”</p> + +<p>This may possibly be a trace of the practices which grew up under the +Penal Laws against Catholics. When Rinuccini came to Ireland in the time +of the Civil War, he found the observances of the Church all fallen into +degradation through these laws. The Holy Sacrifice was celebrated in the +cabins, and not unfrequently on tables which had been covered +half-an-hour before with the remains of the last night’s supper, and +would be cleared half-an-hour afterwards for the midday meal, and +perhaps for a game of cards.</p> + +<p>Several guests joined us at dinner. One gentleman, a magistrate familiar +with Gweedore, told me he believed the statements of Sergeant Mahony as +to the income of Father M‘Fadden to fall within the truth. While he +believes that many people in that region live, as he put it, “constantly +within a hair’s-breadth of famine,” he thinks that the great body of +<a name="page223" id="page223"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 223] +</span> +the peasants there are in a position, “with industry and thrift, not +only to make both ends meet, but to make them overlap.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Stacpoole told us some of his own experiences nearer home. Not long +ago he was informed that the National League had ordered some decent +people, who hold the demesne lands of his neighbour, Mr. Macdonald +(already alluded to) at a very low rental, to make a demand for a +reduction, which would have left Mr. Macdonald without a penny of +income. To counter this Mr. Stacpoole offered to take the lands over for +pasture at the existing rental, whereupon the tenants promptly made up +their minds to keep their holdings in defiance of the League.</p> + +<p>Last year a man, whom Mr. Stacpoole had regarded as a “good” tenant, +came to him, bringing the money to pay his rent. “I have the rint, +sorr,” the man said, “but it is God’s truth I dare not pay it to ye!” +Other tenants were waiting outside. “Are you such a coward that you +don’t dare be honest?” said Mr. Stacpoole. The man turned rather red, +went and looked out of all the windows, one after another, lifted up the +heavy cloth of the large table in the room, and peeped under it +nervously, and finally walked up to Mr. Stacpoole and <a name="page224" id="page224"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 224] +</span> +paid the money. +The receipt being handed to him, he put it back with his hand, eyed it +askance as if it were a bomb, and finally took it, and carefully put it +into the lining of his hat, after which, opening the door with a great +noise, he exclaimed as he went out, “I’m very, very sorry, master, that +I can’t meet you about it!” This man is now as loud in protestation of +his “inability” to pay his rent as any of the “Campaigners.” Mr. +Stacpoole thinks one great danger of the actual situation is that men +who were originally “coerced” by intimidation into dishonestly refusing +to pay just rents, which they were abundantly able to pay, are beginning +now to think that they will be, and ought to be, relieved by the law of +the land from any obligation to pay these rents.</p> + +<p>It seems to be his impression that things look better, however, of late +for law and order. On Monday of last week at Ennis an example was made +of a local official, which, he thinks, will do good. This was a Poor-Law +Guardian named Grogan. He was bound over on Monday last to keep the +peace for twelve months towards one George Pilkington. Pilkington, it +appears, in contempt of the League, took and occupied, in 1886, a +certain farm in Tarmon <a name="page225" id="page225"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 225] +</span> +West. For this he was “boycotted” from that time +forth. In December last he was summoned, with others, before the Board +of Guardians at Kilrush, to fix the rents of certain labourers’ +cottages. While he sat in the room awaiting the action of the Board, +Grogan, one of its members, rose up, and, looking at Pilkington, said in +a loud voice, “There’s an obnoxious person here present that should not +be here, a land-grabber named Pilkington.” There was a stir in the room, +and Pilkington, standing up, said, “I am here because I have had notice +from the Guardians. If I am asked to leave the place, I shall not come +back.” The Chairman of the Board upon this declared that “while the +ordinary business of the Board was transacting, Mr. Pilkington would be +there only by the courtesy of the Board;” and treating the allusions of +Grogan to Pilkington as a part of the business of the Board, he said, “A +motion is before the Board, does any one second it?” Another guardian, +Collins, got up, and said “I do.” Thereupon the Chairman put it to the +vote whether Pilkington should be requested to leave. The ayes had it, +and the Chairman of the Board thereupon invited Pilkington to leave the +meeting which the Board had invited him to attend!</p> + +<p><a name="page226" id="page226"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 226] +</span> +Grogan has now been prosecuted for the offence of “wrongfully, and +without legal authority, using violence and intimidation to and towards +George Pilkington of Tarmon West, with a view to cause the said +Pilkington to abstain from doing an act which he had a legal right to +do, namely, to hold, occupy, and work on a certain farm of land at +Tarmon West.”</p> + +<p>Plainly this case is one of a grapple between the two Governments which +have been and are now contending for the control of Ireland: the +Government of the Queen of Ireland, which authorises Pilkington to take +and farm a piece of land, and the Government of the National League, +which forbids him to do this. Is it possible to doubt which of the two +is the government of Liberty, as well as the government of Law?</p> + +<p>It illustrates the demoralising influence upon society in Ireland of the +protracted toleration of such a contest as has been waging between the +authority of the Law and the authority of the League, that, when this +case came up for consideration ten days ago, an official here actually +thought it ought to be put off. Colonel Turner insisted it should be +dealt with at once; and so <a name="page227" id="page227"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 227] +</span> +Mr. Grogan was proceeded against, with the +result I have stated.</p> + +<p>The trees on this demesne are the finest I have so far seen in Ireland, +beautiful and vigorous pencil-cedars, ilexes, Scotch firs, and Irish +yews. There is one noble cedar of Lebanon here worth a special trip to +see. In conversation about the country to-night, Mr. Stacpoole mentioned +that tobacco was grown here, strong and of good quality, and he was much +interested, as I remember were also the charming châtelaine of Newtown +Anner and Mr. Le Poer of Gurteen four or five years ago, to learn how +immensely successful has been the tobacco-culture introduced into +Pennsylvania only a quarter of a century ago, as a consequence of the +Civil War. The climatic conditions here are certainly not more +unfavourable to such an experiment in agriculture than they were at +first supposed to be in the Pennsylvanian counties of York and +Lancaster. Of course the Imperial excise would deal with it as harshly +as it is now dealing with a similar experiment in England. But the Irish +tobacco-growers would not now have to fear such hostile legislation as +ruined the Irish linen industries in the last century. The +“Moonlighters” of 1888 lineally represent, if they <a name="page228" id="page228"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 228] +</span> +do not simply +reproduce, the “Whiteboys” of 1760; and the domination of the “uncrowned +king” constantly reminds one of Froude’s vivid and vigorous sketch of +the sway wielded by “Captain Dwyer” and “Joanna Maskell” from Mallow to +Westmeath, between the years 1762 and 1765. On that side of the quarrel +there seems to be nothing very new under the sun in Ireland. But the +spirit and the forms of the Imperial authority over the country have +unquestionably undergone a great change for the better, not only since +the last century, but since the accession of Queen Victoria.</p> + +<p>Upon the question of land improvements, Mr. Stacpoole told me, to-night, +that he borrowed £1000 of the Government for drainage improvements on +his property here, the object of which was to better the holdings of +tenants. Of this sum he had to leave £400 undrawn, as he could not get +the men to work at the improvements, even for their own good. They all +wanted to be gangers or chiefs. It reminded me of Berlioz’s reply to the +bourgeois who wanted his son to be made a “great composer.” “Let him go +into the army,” said Berlioz, “and join the only regiment he is fit +for.” “What regiment is that?” “The regiment of colonels.”</p> + +<p><a name="page229" id="page229"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 229] +</span> +In the course of the evening a report was brought out from Ennis to +Colonel Turner. He read it, and then handed it to me, with an +accompanying document. The latter, at my request, he allowed me to keep, +and I must reproduce it here. It tells its own tale.</p> + +<p>A peasant came to the authorities and complained that he was “tormented” +to make a subscription to a “testimonial” for one Austen Mackay of +Kilshanny, in the County Clare, producing at the same time a copy of the +circular which had been sent about to the people. It is a +cheaply-printed leaflet, not unlike a penny ballad in appearance, and +thus it runs:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<p class="center">“<i>Testimonial to</i> Mr. AUSTEN MACKAY,<br /> <i>Kilshanny</i>, <i>County Clare</i>.</p> + +<p>“We, the Nationalists and friends of Mr. Austen Mackay, at a meeting +held in March 1887, agreed and resolved on presenting the long-tried and +trusted friend—the persecuted widow’s son—with a testimonial worthy of +the fearless hero who on several occasions had to hide his head in the +caves and caverns of the mountains, with a price set on his body. First, +for firing at and wounding a spy <a name="page230" id="page230"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 230] +</span> +in his neighbourhood, as was alleged +in ’65, for which he had to stand his trial at Clare Assizes. Again, for +firing at and wounding his mother’s agent and under-strapper while in +the act of evicting his widowed mother in the broad daylight of Heaven, +thus saved his mother’s home from being wrecked by the robber agent, the +shock of which saved other hearths from being quenched; but the noble +widow’s son was chased to the mountains, where he had to seek shelter +from a thousand bloodhounds.</p> + +<p>“The same true widow’s son nobly guarded his mother’s homestead and that +of others from the foul hands of the exterminators. This is the same +widow’s son who bravely reinstated the evicted, and helped to rebuild +the levelled houses of many; for this he was persecuted and convicted at +Cork Assizes, and flung into prison to sleep on the cold plank beds of +Cork and Limerick gaols. Many other manly and noble services did he +which cannot be made known to the public. At that meeting you were +appointed collector with other Nationalists of Clare at home and abroad. +This is the widow’s son, Austen Mackay, whom we, the Committee to this +testimonial, hope and trust every Irishman in Clare will cheerfully +subscribe, that he may be <a name="page231" id="page231"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 231] +</span> +enabled in his present state of health to get +into some business under the protection of the Stars and Stripes, where +he is a citizen of.”</p> + +<p>“Subscriptions to be sent to Henry Higgins, Ennis.</p> + +<p>“Treasurers: Daniel O’Loghlen, Lisdoonvarna; James Kennedy, Ennistymon.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Then follow, with the name of the Society, the names of the committee.</p> + +<p>In behalf of the Stars and Stripes, “where he is a citizen of,” I thanked +Colonel Turner for this interesting contribution to the possible future +history of my country, there being nothing to prevent the election of +any heir of this illustrious “widow’s son,” born to him in America, to +the Presidency of the Republic. The use of this phrase, the “widow’s +son,” by the way, gives a semi-masonic character to this curious +circular.</p> + +<p>One officer says in his report upon this Committee: “All the persons +named are well known to their respective local police, and, except one, +have little or no following or influence in their respective localities. +They are all members of the National League.” The same officer subjoins +this instructive observation: “I beg to add that I find <a name="page232" id="page232"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 232] +</span> +no matter how +popular a man may be in Clare, start a testimonial for him, and from +that time forth his influence is gone.”</p> + +<p>Can it be possible that the “testimonial,” which, as the papers tell me, +is getting up all over Ireland for Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, can have been +“started” with a sinister eye to this effect, by local patriots jealous +of any alien intrusion into their bailiwick? I am almost tempted to +suspect this, remembering that a Nationalist with whom I talked about +Mr. Blunt in Dublin, after lavishing much praise upon his disinterested +devotion to the cause of Ireland, moodily remarked, “For all that, I +don’t believe he will do us any good, for he comes of the blood of +Mountjoy, I am told!”</p> + + + +<p><span class="diary">EDENVALE, <i>Monday, Feb. 20.</i></span>—This morning Colonel Turner called my +attention to the report in the papers of a colloquy between the Chief +Secretary for Ireland and Mr. J. Redmond, M.P., in the House, on the +subject of last week’s trials at Ennis. In speaking of the boycotting at +Milltown Malbay of a certain Mrs. Connell, Mr. Balfour described the +case as one of barbarous inhumanity shown to a helpless old woman. Mr. +Redmond denying this, <a name="page233" id="page233"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 233] +</span> +asserted that he had seen the woman Connell a +fortnight ago in Court, and that so far from her being a decrepit old +woman, she was only fifty years of age, hale and hearty, but +disreputable and given to drink; he also said she was drunk at the +trial, so drunk that the Crown prosecutor, Mr. Otter, was obliged to +order her down from the table.</p> + +<p>“What are the facts?” I asked. “Mr. Balfour speaks from report and +belief, Mr. Redmond asserts that he speaks from actual observation.”</p> + +<p>“The facts,” said Colonel Turner quietly, “are that Mr. Balfour’s +statement is accurate, and that Mr. Redmond, speaking from actual +observation, asserts the thing that is not.”</p> + +<p>“Where is this old woman?” I asked. “Would it be possible for me to see +her?”</p> + +<p>“Certainly; she is at no great distance, and I will with pleasure send a +car with an officer to bring her here this afternoon!”</p> + +<p>“Meanwhile, how came the old woman into Court? and what is her +connection with the cases of boycotting last week tried?”</p> + +<p>“Those cases arose out of her case,“ said Colonel Turner; ”the publicans +last week arraigned, ‘boy<a name="page234" id="page234"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 234] +</span> +cotted’ a fortnight ago the police and +soldiers who were called in to keep the peace during the trial of the +dealers who ‘boycotted’ her.</p> + +<p>“Her case was first publicly made known by a letter which appeared in +the Dublin <i>Express</i> on the 28th of January. That day a line was sent to +me from Dublin ordering an inquiry into it. I endorsed upon the order, +‘Please report. I imagine this is greatly exaggerated.’ This was on +January 30th. The next day, January 31st, I received a full report from +Milltown Malbay. Here it is,”—taking a document from a portfolio and +handing it to me—“and you may make what use you like of it.”</p> + +<p>It is worth giving at length:—</p> + +<blockquote><p> “James Connell, ex-soldier, and his mother, Hannah Connell, of + Fintamore, in this sub-district are boycotted, and have been since + July last. James Connell held a farm and a garden from one Michael + Carroll, a farmer, who was evicted from his holding for non-payment + of three years’ rent, July 14, 1886. After the period of + redemption, six months, had passed, the agent made Connell a tenant + for his house and garden, giving him in addition about half an acre + (Irish) of the evicted farm which adjoins his house. In consequence + Connell was regarded by the National League here as a + ‘land-grabber.’ About the same time the agent also appointed him a + rent-warner.</p> + +<p> “On the 22d June last Connell received a letter through the + Post-Office threatening him if he did not give up his place as a + rent-warner. I have no doubt the letter was written by (here a + resident was named). On the 10th, and again on the 17th, of July, + Connell was brought before indoor meetings of the <a name="page235" id="page235"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 235] +</span> +National League + here for having taken the half acre of land, when he through fear + declared he had not done it.</p> + +<p> “At the first meeting the Rev. J.S. White, P.P., suggested that in + order to test whether Connell had taken the land, Carroll, the + evicted tenant, should go and cut the meadowing on it, which he + did, when Connell interfered and prevented him. At the next meeting + Carroll brought this under notice, and Connell was thereupon + boycotted. Immediately afterwards the men who had been engaged + fishing for Connell refused to fish, saying that if they fished for + him the sale of the fish would be boycotted, which was true.</p> + +<p> “Since then Connell has been deprived of his means of livelihood, + and no one dare employ him. He, however, through his mother, was + able to procure the necessaries of life until about the 22d of + November last, when his mother was refused goods by the tradesmen + with whom she had dealt, owing to a resolution passed at a meeting + of the ‘suppressed’ branch of the League here, to the effect that + any person supplying her would be boycotted. December 23d she came + into Milltown Malbay for goods, and was refused. The police + accompanied her, but no person would supply her. On the 2d of + January she came again, when one trader supplied her with some + bread, but refused groceries. The police accompanied her to several + traders, who all refused. Ultimately she was supplied by the + post-mistress. On the 7th of January she came, and the police + accompanied her to several traders, all of whom refused her even + bread. Believing she wanted it badly, we, the police, supplied her + with some. On these three occasions she was followed by large + numbers of young people about the street, evidently to frighten and + intimidate her, and their demeanour was so hostile that we were + obliged to disperse them and protect her home. On a subsequent + occasion she stated that stones were thrown at her. Since then she + has not come here for goods, and, in my opinion, it would not be + safe for her to do so without protection. She and her son are now + getting goods from Mrs. Moroney’s shop at Spanish Point, which she + opened a few years ago to supply boycotted persons.</p> + +<p> <a name="page236" id="page236"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 236] +</span> +“The Connells find it hard to get turf, and are obliged to bring + it a distance in bags so that it may not be observed. As for milk, + the person who did supply them privately for a considerable time + declined some weeks ago to do so any longer. They are now really + destitute, as any little money Connell had saved is spent, and, + although willing and anxious to work, no person will employ him. + Summonses have been issued against the tradesmen for refusing to + supply Hannah Connell on the occasions already referred to. I have + only to add that I have from time to time reported fully the + foregoing facts with regard to the persecution of this poor man and + his aged mother; and I regret to say that boycotting and + intimidation never prevailed to a greater extent here than at + present. Connell’s safety is being looked after by patrols from + this and Spanish Point station.” </p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Three things seem to me specially noteworthy in this tale of cowardly +and malignant tyranny. The victims of this vulgar Vehmgericht are +neither landlords nor agents. They are a poor Irish labourer and his +aged mother. The “crime” for which these poor creatures are thus +persecuted is simply that one of them—the man—chose to obey the law of +the land in which he lives, and to work for his livelihood and that of +his mother. And the priest of the parish, instead of sheltering and +protecting these hunted creatures, is presented as joining in the hunt, +and actually devising a trap to catch the poor frightened man in a +falsehood.</p> + +<p>Upon this third point, a correspondence which <a name="page237" id="page237"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 237] +</span> +passed between Father +White and Colonel Turner, after the conviction of the boycotters of Mrs. +Connell, and copies of which the latter has handed to me at my request, +throws an instructive light.</p> + +<p>When the report of January 31st reached him, Colonel Turner ordered the +tradespeople implicated in the persecution to be proceeded against. Six +of them were put on their trials on the 3d and 4th of February. All the +shops in Milltown Malbay were closed, by order of the local League, +during the trial, and the police and the soldiers called in were refused +all supplies.</p> + +<p>On the 4th, one of the persons arraigned was bound over for +intimidation, and the five others were sentenced to three months’ +imprisonment with hard labour.</p> + +<p>A week later, February 11th, Colonel Turner addressed the following +letter to Father White, twenty-six publicans of Milltown Malbay having +meanwhile been prosecuted for boycotting the police and the soldiers:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<p> “DEAR SIR,—I write to you as a clergyman who possesses great + influence with the people in your part of the country, to put it to + you whether it would not be better for the interests of all + concerned if the contemptible system of petty persecution, called + boycotting, were put an end to in and about <a name="page238" id="page238"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 238] +</span> +Milltown Malbay, which + would enable me to drop prosecutions. If it is not put a stop to, I + am determined to stamp it out, and restore to all the ordinary + rights of citizenship.</p> + +<p> “But I should very greatly prefer that the people should stop it + themselves, and save me from taking strong measures, which I should + deplore. The story of a number of men combining to persecute a poor + old woman is one of the most pitiful I ever heard.—I am, sir, + yours truly,</p> + +<p class="signed">ALFRED TURNER.” </p> +</blockquote> +<p>As the cost of the extra policemen sent to Milltown Malbay at this time +falls upon the people there, this letter in effect offered the priest an +opportunity to relieve his parish of a burden as well as to redeem its +character.</p> + +<p class="i0">The next day Father White replied:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<p> “DEAR SIR,—No one living is more anxious for peace in this + district than I. During very exciting times I have done my best to + keep it free from outrage, and with success, except in one + mysterious instance. <a id="footnotetag20" + name="footnotetag20"></a><a href="#footnote20"><sup>20</sup></a> There is but one obstacle to it now. If + ever you can advise Mrs. Moroney to restore the evicted tenant, + whose rent you admitted was as high as Colonel O’Callaghan’s, I can + guarantee on the part of the people the return of good feelings; + or, failing that, if she and her employees are content with the + goods which she has of all kinds in her own shop, there need be no + further trouble.</p> + +<p>“I have a promise from the people that the police will be supplied + for the future. This being so, if you will kindly have + <a name="page239" id="page239"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 239] +</span> +prosecutions withdrawn, or even postponed for say a month, it will + very much strengthen me in the effort I am making to calm down the + feeling. Regarding Mrs. Connell, the head-constable was told by me + that she was to get goods, and she did get bread, till the police + went round with her. This upset my arrangements, as I had induced + the people to give her what she might really want. In fact she was + a convenience to Mrs. Moroney for obvious reasons, and her son is + now in her employment in place of Kelly, who has been dismissed + since his very inconvenient evidence. It is, and was, well known + they were not starving as they said, they having a full supply of + their accustomed food.—Thanking you for your great courtesy, I am, + dear sir, truly yours,</p> + +<p class="signed">“J. White.” </p> +</blockquote> + +<p class="i0">On the 14th Colonel Turner replied:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p> “My dear Sir,—We cannot adjourn the cases. But if those who are + prosecuted are prepared to make reparation by promising future good + conduct in Court, I can then see my way to interfere, and to + prevent them from suffering imprisonment.</p> + +<p> “These cases have nothing whatever to do with Mrs. Moroney. <a id="footnotetag21" + name="footnotetag21"></a><a href="#footnote21"><sup>21</sup></a> + They are simply between the defendants and the police and other + officials, who were at Milltown Malbay that day. I am greatly + pleased at your evident wish to co-operate with me in calming down + the ill-feeling which unfortunately exists, and I am satisfied that + success will attend our efforts.” </p> +</blockquote> +<p class="i0">On Thursday and Friday last, as I have recorded, the cases came on of +the twenty-six publicans charged. Between February 4th, when the +offences were committed, and the 17th of February, one of <a name="page240" id="page240"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 240] +</span> +these +publicans had died, one had fled to America, and there proved to be an +informality in the summons issued against a third. Twenty-three only +were put upon their trial. As I have stated, one was acquitted and the +others were found guilty, and sentenced to be imprisoned. In accordance +with his promise made to Father White, Colonel Turner offered to relieve +them all of the imprisonment if they would sign an undertaking in Court +not to repeat the offence. Ten, the most prosperous and substantial of +the accused, accepted this offer and signed, as has been already stated. +One, a woman, was discharged without being required to sign the +guarantee, the other eleven refused to sign, and were sent to prison. +Father White, whose own evidence given at the trial, as his letter to +Colonel Turner would lead one to expect, had gone far to prove the +existence of the conspiracy, encouraged the eleven in their attitude.</p> + +<p>This was his way of “co-operating” with Colonel Turner to “calm down the +ill-feeling which exists”!</p> + +<p>During the morning Mrs. Stacpoole sent for the clerk and manager of the +estate, and asked him to show me the books. He is a native of these +parts, by name Considine, and has lived at Edenvale for <a name="page241" id="page241"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 241] +</span> +eighteen years. +In his youth he went out to America, but there found out that he had a +“liver,” an unpleasant discovery, which led him to return to the land of +his birth, and to the service of Mr. Stacpoole. He is perfectly familiar +with the condition of the country here, and as the accounts of this +estate are kept minutely and carefully from week to week, he was able +this morning to show me the current prices of all kinds of farm produce +and of supplies in and about Ennis—not estimated prices, but prices +actually paid or received in actual transactions during the last ten +years. I am surprised to see how narrow has been the range of local +variations during that time; and I find Mr. Considine inclined to think +that the farmers here have suffered very little, if at all, from these +fluctuations, making up from time to time on their reduced expenses what +they have lost through lessened receipts. The expenses of the landlord +have however increased, while his receipts have fallen off. In 1881 +Edenvale paid out for labour £466, 0s. 1-1/2d., in 1887 £560, 6s. +3-1/2d., though less labour was employed in 1887 than in 1881. The wages +of servants, where any change appears, have risen. In 1881 a gardener +received £14 a year, in 1888 he <a name="page242" id="page242"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 242] +</span> +receives 15s. a week, or at the rate of +£39 a year. A housemaid receiving £12 a year in 1881, receives now £17 a +year. A butler receiving in 1881 £26 a year, now receives £40 a year. A +kitchen maid receiving in 1881 £6, now receives £10, 10s. a year. +Meanwhile, the Sub-Commissioners are at this moment cutting down the +Edenvale rents again by £190, 3s. 2d., after a walk over the property in +the winter. Yet in July 1883 Mr. Reeves, for the Sub-Commission, +“thought it right to say there was no estate in the County Clare so +fairly rented, to their knowledge, or where the tenants had less cause +for complaint.” In but one case was a reduction of any magnitude made by +the Commission of 1883, and in one case that Commission actually +increased the rent from £11, 10s. to £16. In January 1883 the rental of +this property was £4065, 5s. 1d. The net reduction made by the +Commissioners in July 1883 was £296, 14s. 0-1/2d.</p> + +<p>After luncheon a car came up to the mansion, bringing a stalwart, +good-natured-looking sergeant of police, and with him the boycotted old +woman Mrs. Connell and her son. The sergeant helped the old woman down +very tenderly, and supported her into the house. She came in with some +trepidation and uneasiness, glancing furtively all about <a name="page243" id="page243"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 243] +</span> +her, with the +look of a hunted creature in her eyes. Her son, who followed her, was +more at his ease, but he also had a worried and careworn look. Both were +warmly but very poorly clad, and both worn and weatherbeaten of aspect. +The old woman might have passed anywhere for a witch, so wizened and +weird she was, of small stature, and bent nearly double by years and +rheumatism. Her small hands were withered away into claws, and her head +was covered with a thick and tangled mat of hair, half dark, half grey, +which gave her the look almost of the Fuegian savages who come off from +the shore in their flat rafts and clamour to you for “rum” in the +Straits of Magellan. Her eyes were intensely bright, and shone like hot +coals in her dusky, wrinkled face. It was a raw day, and she came in +shivering with the cold. It was pathetic to see how she positively +gloated with extended palms over the bright warm, fire in the +drawing-room, and clutched at the cup of hot tea which my kind hostess +instantly ordered in for her.</p> + +<p>This was the woman of whom Mr. Redmond wrote to Mr. Parnell that she was +“an active strong dame of about fifty.” When Mr. Balfour, in Parliament, +described her truly as a “decrepit old woman of eighty,” Mr. Redmond +contradicted him, and <a name="page244" id="page244"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 244] +</span> +accused her of being “the worse for liquor” in a +public court.</p> + +<p>“How old is your mother?” I asked her son.</p> + +<p>“I am not rightly sure, sir,” he replied, “but she is more than eighty.”</p> + +<p>“The man himself is about fifty,” said the sergeant; “he volunteered to +go to the Crimean War, and that was more than thirty years ago!”</p> + +<p>“I did indeed, sir,” broke in the man, “and it was from Cork I went. And +I’d be a corpse now if it wasn’t for the mercy of God and the +protection. God bless the police, sir, that protected my old mother, +sir, and me. That Mr. Redmond, sir, they read me what he said, and sure +he should be ashamed of his shadow, to get up there in Parliament, and +tell those lies, sir, about my old mother!” I questioned Connell as to +his relations with Carroll, the man who brought him before the League. +He was a labourer holding a bit of ground under Carroll. Carroll refused +to pay his own rent to the landlord. But he compelled Connell to pay +rent to him. When Carroll was evicted, the landlord offered to let +Connell have half an acre more of land. He took it to better himself, +and “how did he injure Carroll by taking it?” How indeed, poor man! Was +he a rent-warner? Yes; he <a name="page245" id="page245"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 245] +</span> +earned something that way two or three times +a year; and for that he had to ask the protection of the police—“they +would kill him else.” What with worry and fright, and the loss of his +livelihood, this unfortunate labourer has evidently been broken down +morally and physically. It is impossible to come into contact with such +living proofs of the ineffable cowardice and brutality of this business +of “boycotting” without indignation and disgust.</p> + +<p>While Connell was telling his pitiful tale a happy thought occurred to +the charming daughter of the house. Mrs. Stacpoole is a clever amateur +in photography. “Why not photograph this ‘hale and hearty woman of +fifty,’ with her son of fifty-three?” Mrs. Stacpoole clapped her hands +at the idea, and went off at once to prepare her apparatus.</p> + +<p>While she was gone the sergeant gave me an account of the trial, which +Mr. Redmond, M.P., witnessed. He was painfully explicit. “Mr. Redmond +knew the woman was sober,” he said; “she was lifted up on the table at +Mr. Redmond’s express request, because she was so small and old, and +spoke in such a low voice that he could not hear what she said. Connell +had always been a decent, industrious fellow—a fisherman. But for the +lady, <a name="page246" id="page246"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 246] +</span> +Mrs. Moroney, he and his mother would have starved, and would +starve now. As for the priest, Father White, Connell went to him to ask +his intercession and help, but he could get neither.”</p> + +<p>The sergeant had heard Father White preach yesterday. “It was a curious +sermon. He counselled peace and forbearance to the people, because they +might be sure the wicked Tory Government would very soon fall!”</p> + +<p>Presently the sun came out with golden glow, and with the sun came out +Mrs. Stacpoole. It was a job to “pose” the subjects, the old woman +evidently suspecting some surgical or legal significance in the +machinery displayed, and her son finding some trouble in making her +understand what it meant. But finally we got the tall, personable +sergeant, with his frank, shrewd, sensible face, to put himself between +the two, in the attitude as of a guardian angel; the camera was nimbly +adjusted, and lo! the thing was done.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stacpoole thinks the operation promises a success. I suppose it +would hardly be civil to send a finished proof of the group to Mr. J. +Redmond, M.P.<a name="page248" id="page248"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 248] +</span> +<a name="page247" id="page247"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 247] +</span> +</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page249" id="page249"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 249] +</span> +APPENDIX.</h2> + + +<h3><a name="noteA" id="noteA" />NOTE A. +<br />MR. GLADSTONE AND THE AMERICAN WAR. +<br />(Prologue, p. <a href="#pagexxix">xxix</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>This statement as to the action of Lord Palmerston in connection with +Mr. Gladstone’s Newcastle speech of October 7th, 1862, made upon the +authority of a British public man whose years and position entitle him +to speak with confidence on such a subject, appeared to me of so much +interest, that after sending it to the printer I caused search to be +made for the speech referred to as made by Sir George Cornewall Lewis. +My informant’s statement was that Lord Palmerston insisted that Sir +George Lewis should find or make an immediate opportunity of covering +what Mr. Gladstone had said at Newcastle. He was angry about it, and his +anger was increased by an article which Mr. Delane printed in the +<i>Times</i>, intimating that Mr. Gladstone’s speech was considered by many +people to be a betrayal of Cabinet secrets. Sir George Lewis was far +from well (he died the next spring), and reluctant to do what his chief +wished; but he did it on the 17th of October 1862 in a speech at +Hereford. Mr. Milner-Gibson was also put forward to the same end, and +after <a name="page250" id="page250"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 250] +</span> +Parliament met, in February 1863, Mr. Disraeli gave the +Government a sharp lashing for sending one or two Ministers into the +country in the recess to announce that the Southern States would be +recognised, and then putting forward the President of the Board of Trade +(Milner-Gibson) to attack the Southern States and the pestilent +institution of slavery. Mr. Gladstone’s speech at Newcastle, coming as +it did from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, after the close of a +session during which everybody knew that the Emperor of the French had +been urging upon England the recognition of the Confederate States, and +that Mr. Mason had been in active correspondence on that subject with +Lord Russell, was taken at Newcastle, and throughout the country, to +mean that the recognition was imminent. Mr. Gladstone even went so far +as to say he rather rejoiced that the Confederates had not been able to +hold Maryland, as that might have made them aggressive, and so made a +settlement more difficult, it being, he said, as certain as anything in +the future could be that the South must succeed in separating itself +from the Union. This remark about Maryland distinctly indicated +consultation as to what limits and boundaries between the South and the +North should be recognised in the recognition, and on that account, it +seems, was particularly resented by Earl Russell as well as by Lord +Palmerston.</p> + +<p>Sir George Cornewall Lewis’s speech of October 17, 1862, was a most +skilful and masterly attempt to protect the Cabinet against the +consequences of what the <i>Times</i>, on the 9th of October, had treated as +the “indiscretion or treason” of his colleague. But it did not save the +Government from the scourge of Mr. Disraeli, or much mitigate the effect +in America of Mr. Gladstone’s performance at Newcastle, which was a much +more serious matter from the American point of view than any of the +speeches recently delivered <a name="page251" id="page251"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 251] +</span> +about “Home Rule” in the American Senate +can be fairly said to be from the British point of view.</p> + + + +<h3><a name="noteB" id="noteB" />NOTE B. + +<br />MR. PARNELL AND THE DYNAMITERS. +<br /> (Prologue, p. <a href="#pagexxxiii">xxxiii</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>The relation of Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates to what is +called the extreme and “criminal” section of the Irish American +Revolutionary Party can only be understood by those who understand that +it is the ultimate object of this party not to effect reforms in the +administration of Ireland as an integral part of the British Empire, but +to sever absolutely the political connection between Ireland and the +British Empire. Loyal British subjects necessarily consider this object +a “criminal” object, just as loyal Austrian subjects considered the +object of the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 to be a “criminal” object. +But the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 did not accept this view of their +object. On the contrary, they held their end to be so high and holy that +it more or less sanctified even assassination when planned as a means to +that end. Why should the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 be judged by one +standard and the Irish Revolutionists of 1888 by another?</p> + +<p>If Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates were to declare in +unequivocal terms their absolute loyalty to the British Crown, and their +determination to maintain in all circumstances the political connection +between Great Britain and Ireland, they might or might not retain their +hold upon Mr. Davitt and upon their constituents in Ireland, but they +would certainly <a name="page252" id="page252"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 252] +</span> +put themselves beyond the pale of support by the great +Irish American organisations. Nor do I believe they could retain the +confidence of those organisations if it were supposed that they really +regarded the most extreme and violent of the Irish Revolutionists, the +“Invincibles” and the “dynamiters” as “criminals,” in the sense in which +the “Invincibles” and the “dynamiters” are so regarded by the rest of +the civilised world. Can it, for example, be doubted that any English or +Scottish public man who co-operates with Mr. Parnell and his +Parliamentary associates would instantly hand over to the police any +“Invincible” or “dynamiter” who might come within his reach? And can it +for a moment be believed that Mr. Parnell, or any one of his +Parliamentary associates, would do this? There are thousands of Irish +citizens in the United States who felt all the horror and indignation +expressed by Mr. Parnell at the murders in the Phoenix Park, but I +should be very much surprised to learn that any one of them all ever +did, or ever would do, anything likely to bring any one of the authors +of these murders to the bar of justice. Mr. Parnell and his +Parliamentary associates are held and bound by the essential conditions +of their political existence to treat with complaisance the most extreme +and violent men of their party. Nor is this true of them alone.</p> + +<p>There is no more respectable body of men in the United States than the +Hibernian Society of Philadelphia. This society was instituted in 1771, +five years before the declaration of American Independence. It is a +charitable and social organisation only, with no political object or +colour. It is made up of men of character and substance. Its custom has +always been to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by a banquet, to which the +most distinguished men of the country have repeatedly been bidden. +Immediately after the inaugu<a name="page253" id="page253"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 253] +</span> +ration of Mr. Cleveland as President, on +the 4th of March 1885, Mr. Bayard, the new Secretary of State of the +United States, was invited by this Society to attend its one hundred and +fourteenth banquet. It will be remembered that, on the 30th of May 1884, +London had been startled and shocked by an explosion of dynamite in St. +James’s Square, which shattered many houses and inflicted cruel injuries +upon several innocent people. It was not so fatal to life as that +explosion at the Salford Barracks, which Mr. Parnell treated as a +“practical joke.” But it excited lively indignation on both sides of the +Atlantic, and Mr. Bayard, who at that time was a Senator of the United +States, sternly denounced it and its authors on the floor of the +American Senate. What he had said as a Senator he thought it right to +repeat as the Foreign Secretary of the United States in his reply to the +invitation of the Hibernian Society in March 1885. This reply ran as +follows:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p class="dateline">“WASHINGTON, D.C., <i>March</i> 9, 1885.</p> + +<p> “NICHOLAS J. GRIFFIN, Esq., <i>Secretary of the<br /> + Hibernian Society of Philadelphia.</i></p> + +<p> “Dear Sir,—I have your personal note accompanying the card of + invitation to dine with your ancient and honourable Society on + their one hundred and fourteenth anniversary, St. Patrick’s Day, + and I sincerely regret that I cannot accept it. The obvious and + many duties of my public office here speak for themselves, and to + none with more force than to American citizens of Irish blood or + birth who are honestly endeavouring to secure liberty by + maintaining a government of laws, and who realise the constant + attention that is needful.</p> + +<p> “In the midst of anarchical demonstrations which we witness in + other lands, and the echoes of which we can detect even here in our + own free country, where base and silly individuals seek to stain + the name of Ireland by associating the honest struggle for just + government with senseless and wicked crimes, there are none of our + citizens from whom honest reprobation can be more confidently + expected than from such as compose <a name="page254" id="page254"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 254] +</span> +your respected and benevolent + Society. Those who worthily celebrate the birthday of St. + Patrick will not forget that he drove out of Ireland the reptiles + that creep and sting.</p> + +<p> “The Hibernian Society can contain no member who will not resent + the implication that sympathy with assassins can dwell in a genuine + Irish heart, which will ever be opposed to cruelty and cowardice, + whatever form either may take.</p> + +<p> “Present to your Society my thanks for the kind remembrance, and + assure them of the good-will and respect with which I am—Your + obedient servant, </p> +<p class="signed"> T.F. BAYARD.“ </p> +</blockquote> +<p class="i0">What was the response of this Society, representing all the best +elements of the Irish American population of the United States, to this +letter of the Secretary of State, the highest executive officer of the +American Government after the President, upon whom under an existing law +the succession of the chief magistracy now devolves in the event of the +death or disability of the President and the Vice-President?</p> + +<p><i>The letter was not read at the banquet.</i></p> + +<p>But it was given to the press by the officers of the Society, and the +most influential Irish American newspaper in the United States did not +hesitate to describe it as an “insulting letter,” going to show that its +author was “an Englishman in spirit who will not allow any opportunity +to go by, however slight, without testifying his sympathy with the +British Empire and his antipathy for its foes.”</p> + +<p>This was capped by an American political journal which used the +following language: “Lord Granville himself would hardly strike a more +violent attitude against the dynamite section of the Irish people. When +Lord Wolseley, whom it is proposed to make Governor-General of the +Soudan, is offering a reward for the head of Ollivier Pain, it is hardly +in good taste <a name="page255" id="page255"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 255] +</span> +for an American Secretary of State to condemn so bitterly +a class of Irishmen which, while it includes bad men no doubt, also +includes men who are moved by as worthy motives as Lord Wolseley.”</p> + +<p>In the face of this testimony to the “solidarity” of all branches of the +Irish revolutionary movement in America, how can Mr. Parnell, or any +other Parliamentary Irishman who depends upon Irish American support, be +expected by men of sense to condemn in earnest “the dynamite section of +the Irish people”?</p> + + + +<h3><a name="noteC" id="noteC" />NOTE C. +<br />THE AMERICAN “SUSPECTS” OF 1881. +<br />(Prologue, p. <a href="#pagexlvii">xlvii</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>In his recently published and very interesting <i>Life of Mr. Forster</i>, +Mr. Wemyss Reid alludes to some action taken by the United States +Government in the spring of 1882 as one of the determining forces which +brought about the abandonment at that time by Mr. Gladstone of Mr. +Forster’s policy in Ireland. Without pretending to concern myself here +with what is an essentially British question as between Mr. Forster and +Mr. Gladstone, it may be both proper and useful for me to throw some +light, not, perhaps, in the possession of Mr. Reid, upon the part taken +in this matter by the American Government. Sir William Harcourt’s +“Coercion Bill” was passed on the 2d of March 1881, two days before the +inauguration of General Garfield as President of the United States. Mr. +Blaine, who was appointed by the new President to take charge of the +Foreign Relations of the American Government, received, on the 10th of +March, at Washington, a despatch written by Mr. Lowell, the American +Minister <a name="page256" id="page256"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 256] +</span> +in London, on the 26th of February, being the day after the +third reading in the Commons of the “Coercion Bill.” In this despatch +Mr. Lowell called the attention of the American State Department to a +letter from Mr. Parnell to the Irish National Land League, dated at +Paris, February 13, 1881, in which Mr. Parnell attempted to make what +Mr. Lowell accurately enough described as an “extraordinary” distinction +between “the American people” and “the Irish nation in America.”</p> + +<p>“This double nationality,” said Mr. Lowell, “is likely to be of great +practical inconvenience whenever the ‘Coercion Bill’ becomes law.” By +“this double nationality” in this passage, the American Minister, of +course, meant “this claim of a double nationality;” for neither by Great +Britain nor by the United States is any man permitted to consider +himself at one and the same time a citizen of the American republic and +a subject of the British monarchy. Nor was he quite right in +anticipating “great practical inconvenience” from this “claim,” upon +which neither the British nor the American Government for a moment +bestowed, or could bestow, the slightest attention.</p> + +<p>The “great practical inconvenience” which, first to the American +Legation in England, then to the United States Government at Washington, +and finally to the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone, did, however, arise from +the application of Sir William Harcourt’s Coercion Act of 1881 to +American citizens in Ireland, had its origin not in Mr. Parnell’s +preposterous idea of an Irish nationality existing in the United States, +but in the failure of the authorities of the United States to deal +promptly and firmly with the situation created for American citizens in +Ireland by the administration of Sir William Harcourt’s Act.</p> + +<p>As I have said, Sir William Harcourt’s Act became <a name="page257" id="page257"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 257] +</span> +law on the 2d of +March 1881, two days before the inauguration of President Garfield at +Washington. Without touching the question of the relations between Great +Britain and Ireland, and between the British Parliament and the Irish +National Land League, it was clearly incumbent upon the Secretary of +State of the United States, who entered upon his duties three days after +Sir William Harcourt’s Bill went into force in Ireland, to inform +himself minutely and exactly as to the possible effects of that Bill +upon the rights and interests of American citizens travelling or +sojourning in that country. This was due not only to his own Government +and to its citizens, but to the relations which ought to exist between +his own Government and the Government of Great Britain. It was no affair +of an American Secretary of State either to impede or to further the +execution of “Coercion Acts” in Ireland against British subjects. But it +was his affair to ascertain without delay the nature and the measure of +any new and unusual perils, or “inconveniences,” to which American +citizens in Ireland might be exposed in the execution there by the +British authorities of such Acts.</p> + +<p>And it is on record, under his own hand, in a despatch to the American +Minister in London, dated May 26, 1881, that Mr. Blaine had not so much +as seen a copy of Sir William Harcourt’s Coercion Act at that date, +three months after it had gone into effect; three months after many +persons claiming American citizenship had been arrested and imprisoned +under it; and two months after his own official attention had been +called by the American Minister in London, in an elaborate despatch, to +the arrest under it of one such person, a man of Irish birth, who based +his claim of American citizenship upon allegations of military service +during the Civil War, of residence and citizen<a name="page258" id="page258"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 258] +</span> +ship in New York, and of +the granting to him, by an American Secretary of State, of a citizen’s +passport. And when he did finally take the trouble to look at this Act, +Mr. Elaine seems to have examined it so cursorily, and with such slight +attention, that he overlooked a provision made in it, under which, had +its true force and meaning been perceived by him, the State Department +of the United States might, in the early summer of 1881, have secured +for American citizens in Ireland the consideration due to them as the +citizens of a friendly State. A curious despatch from Mr. Sackville +West, the British Minister at Washington, to Earl Granville, published +in a British Blue-book now in my possession, plainly intimates that in +the summer of 1881 the American Secretary of State had given the British +Minister to understand that no representations made to him or to his +Government by the Government of the United States touching +American-Irish “suspects” need be taken at all seriously. The whole +diplomatic correspondence on this subject which went on between the two +Governments while Mr. Blaine was Secretary of State, from the 4th of +March 1881 to the 20th of December 1881, was of a sort to lull the +British Government into the belief that “suspects” might be freely and +safely arrested and locked up all over Ireland, with no more question of +their nationality than of any evidence to establish their guilt or their +innocence. During the whole of that time the State Department at +Washington seems to have substantially remained content with the +declaration of Earl Granville, in a letter sent to the American Legation +on the 8th of July 1881, four months after the Coercion Act went into +effect, that “no distinction could be made in the circumstances between +foreigners and British subjects, and that in the case of British +subjects the only information given was that contained in the warrant.”</p> + +<p><a name="page259" id="page259"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 259] +</span> +No fault can be found with the British Government for standing by this +declaration so long as it thus seemed to command the assent of the +Government of the United States.</p> + +<p>But when Mr. Frelinghuysen was called into the State Department by +President Arthur in December 1881, to overhaul the condition into which +our foreign relations had been brought by his predecessor, he found that +in no single instance had Mr. Blaine succeeded in inducing the British +Government, either to release any American citizen arrested under a +general warrant without specific charges of criminal conduct, and on +“suspicion” in Ireland, or to order the examination of any such citizen. +The one case in which an American citizen arrested under the Coercion +Act in Ireland during Mr. Blaine’s tenure of office had been liberated +when Mr. Frelinghuysen took charge of the State Department, was that of +Mr. Joseph B. Walsh, arrested at Castlebar, in Mayo, March 8, 1881, and +discharged by order of the Lord-Lieutenant, October 21, 1881, not +because he was an American citizen, nor after any examination, but +expressly and solely on the ground of ill-health.</p> + +<p>When Mr. Frelinghuysen became Secretary of State in December 1881 the +Congress of the United States was in session. So numerous were the +American “suspects” then lying in prison in Ireland, some of whom had +been so confined for many months, that the doors of Congress were soon +besieged by angry demands for an inquiry into the subject. A resolution +in this sense was adopted by the House of Representatives, and +forwarded, through the American Legation in London, to the British +Foreign Office. Memorials touching particular cases were laid before +both Houses of the American Congress. On the 10th of February 1882, Mr. +Bancroft Davis, the Assistant-<a name="page260" id="page260"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 260] +</span> +Secretary of State, instructed the +American Minister at London to take action concerning one such case, and +to report upon it. The Minister not moving more rapidly than he had been +accustomed to do under Mr. Blaine, Mr. Davis grew impatient, and on the +2d of March 1882 (being the anniversary of the adoption of the Coercion +Act in England) the American Secretary of State cabled to the Minister +in London significantly enough, “Use all diligence in regard to the late +cases, especially of Hart and M‘Sweeney, and report by cable.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Lowell replied the next day, giving the views in regard to Hart of +the American Vice-Consul, and of the British Inspector of Police at +Queenstown, and adding an expression of his own opinion that neither +Hart nor M‘Sweeney was “more innocent than the majority of those under +arrest.”</p> + +<p>This was an unfortunate despatch. It roused the American Secretary of +State into responding instantly by cable in the following explicit and +emphatic terms: “Referring to the cases of O’Connor, Hart, M‘Sweeney, +M‘Enery, and D’Alton, American citizens imprisoned in Ireland, say to +Lord Granville that, without discussing whether the provisions of the +Force Act can be applied to American citizens, the President hopes that +the Lord-Lieutenant will be instructed to exercise the powers intrusted +to him by the first section to order early trials in these and all other +cases in which Americans may be arrested.”</p> + +<p>There was no mistaking the tone of this despatch. It was instantly +transmitted to the British Foreign Secretary, who replied the same day +that “the matter would receive the immediate attention of Her Majesty’s +Government.”</p> + +<p>The reference made to the Coercion Act by Mr. Frelinghuysen touched a +plain and precise provision, <a name="page261" id="page261"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 261] +</span> +that persons detained under the Act +“should not be discharged or tried by any court without the direction of +the Lord-Lieutenant.” Had the Coercion Act received from Mr. Blaine in +March 1881 the attention bestowed upon it in March 1882 by Mr. +Frelinghuysen, this provision might have been used to obviate the +dangerous accumulation of injustice to individuals, and of international +irritation, resulting from the application to possibly innocent foreign +citizens in Ireland of the despotic powers conferred by that Act upon +Mr. Gladstone’s Government, powers as nearly as possible analogous with +those which Mr. Gladstone himself, years before, had denounced in +unmeasured terms when they were claimed and exercised by the Government +of Naples in dealing with its own subjects.</p> + +<p>After the consideration by Her Majesty’s Government of this despatch of +the United States Government, it is understood in America that Mr. +Forster, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, was invited to communicate with +the Lord-Lieutenant, and request him to exercise his discretion in the +sense desired, and that Mr. Forster positively refused to do this.</p> + +<p>How this may be I do not pretend to say. But as no satisfactory reply +was made to the American despatch, and as public feeling in the United +States grew daily more and more determined that a stop should be put to +the unexplained arrest and the indefinite detention of American citizens +in Ireland, the American Secretary of State made up his mind towards the +end of the month of March to repeat his despatch of March 3d in a more +terse and peremptory form. As a final preliminary to this step, however, +Mr. Frelinghuysen was induced to avail himself of the unusual and +officious intervention of his most distinguished living predecessor in +the State Department, Mr. Hamilton Fish. After measuring the gravity of +<a name="page262" id="page262"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 262] +</span> +the situation, Mr. Fish at the end of March sent a despatch to an +eminent public man, well known on both sides of the Atlantic, and now +resident in London, with authority to show it personally to Mr. +Gladstone, to the effect that if any further delay occurred in complying +with the moderate and reasonable demand of the American Government for +the immediate release or the immediate trial of the American “suspects,” +the relations between Great Britain and the United States would be very +seriously “strained.”</p> + +<p>This despatch was at once communicated to Mr. Gladstone. Within the +week, the liberation was announced of six American “suspects.” Within a +fortnight, Mr. Parnell, Mr. O’Kelly, and Mr. Dillon, it is understood, +imprisoned members of Parliament, were offered their liberty if they +would consent to a sham exile on the Continent for a few weeks, or even +days; and within a month Mr. Forster, in his place in Parliament, was +imputing to his late chief and Premier the negotiation of that +celebrated “Treaty of Kilmainham,” which was repudiated with equal +warmth by the three Irish members already named, and by Mr. Gladstone.</p> + + + +<h3><a name="noteD" id="noteD" />NOTE D. + +<br />THE PARNELLITES AND THE ENGLISH PARTIES. + +<br />(Prologue, p. <a href="#pagel">l</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>As I am not writing a history of English parties, I need not discuss +here the truth or falsehood of this contention. But I cannot let it pass +without a word as to two cases which came under my own observation, and +which aggravate the inherent improbability of the tale. In November 1885 +I went to America, and on my way passed through Stockport, where my +friend, <a name="page263" id="page263"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 263] +</span> +Mr. Jennings, long my correspondent in England, was then +standing as a Conservative candidate. I attended one of his meetings and +heard him make an effective speech, much applauded, which turned +exclusively upon imperial and financial issues. That he had no +understanding whatever with the “managers” of the Irish vote in +Stockport, I have the best reason to believe. But he was assured by them +that the Irish intended to vote for him; and at a subsequent time he was +rashly assailed in the House of Commons by an Irish member with the +charge that he had broken faith with the Irish who elected him. It was +an unlucky assault for the assailant, as it gave Mr. Jennings an +opportunity, which he promptly improved, to show that he owed nothing to +the Irish voters of Stockport. Whether they voted for him in any number +in 1885 was more than doubtful; while in 1886 they voted solidly against +him, with the result of swelling his majority from 369 to 518 votes.</p> + +<p>In January 1886 I returned to Europe, and going on a visit into +Yorkshire, there met a prominent Irish Nationalist, who told me that he +had come into the north of England expressly to regiment the Irish +voters, and throw their votes for the Conservative candidates, on the +ground that it was necessary to make the Liberals fully understand their +power. He had fully expected in this way to elect a Conservative member +for the city of York. Great was his chagrin, therefore, when he found +the Liberal candidate returned. Upon investigation he discovered, as he +told me, that the catastrophe was due to the activity of a local Irish +priest, <i>who was a devoted Fenian</i>, utterly opposed to the Parliamentary +programme, and who had exerted his authority over the local Irish to +bring them to the polls for the Liberal candidate.</p> + +<p>Sir Frederick Milner, Bart., the defeated Conserva<a name="page264" id="page264"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 264] +</span> +tive candidate for +York, afterwards told me that the local priest referred to here was a +most excellent man, and that so far from playing the part thus ascribed +to him, he took the trouble, as a matter of fair dealing, to see his +parishioners on the morning of the election and warn them against +believing a pamphlet which was sedulously circulated among the Irish +voters on the night before the polling, with a message to the effect +that Sir Frederick despised the Irish, and wanted nothing to do with +them or their votes. Sir Frederick has no doubt, from his knowledge of +what occurred during the canvass, that direct instructions were sent by +Mr. Parnell or his agents to the Irish voters in York to throw their +votes against the Radical candidates. These latter brought down a Home +Rule lecturer to counteract the effect of these instructions, and the +pamphlet above referred to was an eleventh-hour blow in the same +interest. It was successful; the Irish votes, some 500 in number, being +polled early in the morning under the impression produced by it. The +moral of this incident would seem to be, not that there was any real +understanding in 1885 between the Parnellites and the English +Conservatives at all, but simply that the English Radical wirepullers +are more alert and active than either the Irish Parnellites or the +English Conservatives. It is interesting, too, as it illustrates the +deep dread and distrust of the “Fenians” in which the Parnellites +habitually go.</p> + + + +<h3><a name="noteE" id="noteE" />NOTE E. +<br />THE “BOYCOTT” AT MILTOWN-MALBAY.<br /> + +(Vol. i. p. <a href="#page209">209</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>Father White of Miltown-Malbay, taking exception to the statement made +by me, upon the authority of <a name="page265" id="page265"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 265] +</span> +Colonel Turner, that he was “the moving +spirit” of the local “boycott” of policemen and soldiers at that place, +addressed a note to Colonel Turner on the 5th of September, in which he +desired to know whether Colonel Turner, had given me grounds for making +this statement. To this note Colonel Turner tells me he returned at once +the following reply, which he kindly forwards to me for publication:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p class="dateline">“ENNIS, <i>6th September</i> 1888.</p> + +<p> “REV. SIR,—I am in receipt of your letter of yesterday, and in + reply thereto beg to state that I informed Mr. Hurlbert that you + said ‘in open court’ that you had directed (I believe from the + altar) that the town was to be ‘made as a city of the dead’ during + the trials of 23 publicans who were charged for conspiracy in + boycotting the forces of the Crown who had been employed in + preserving the peace on the occasion of a former trial—this you + said you did in the interests of peace. The magistrates, however, + took a different view, viz., that it was done with the object of + preventing the military and police from obtaining any supplies, + which they were unable to do; and that their view was the correct + one was proved by the fact that half of the accused pleaded guilty + to the offence, and on promise of future good behaviour were + allowed out on their own recognisances. That the people followed + your instructions on that day, coupled with the fact that in your + letter to the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i>, dated 17th March of this year, + you stated that you offered me peace all round on certain + conditions, thereby showing that at least you consider yourself + possessed of authority to bring about a state of peace or + otherwise, probably led Mr. Hurlbert, to whom I showed a copy of + this letter, to infer that you admitted that you were the moving + spirit of all this ‘local boycott,’ while you only did so in the + particular case above mentioned. Whether Mr. Hurlbert is correct in + drawing the inference he does as to your being the moving spirit, + and as to your conduct, may perhaps be gathered from the numerous + numbers of <i>United Ireland</i> and other papers which he saw giving + reports of illegal meetings of the suppressed branch of the + Miltown-Malbay National League, at which you were stated to have + presided, and at some of which condemnatory resolutions were + passed, and also from the fact that you are reported to have + presided at a meeting <a name="page266" id="page266"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 266] +</span> +on Sunday, April 8, which was held at + Miltown-Malbay in defiance of Government proclamation.—I am, dear + Sir, yours faithfully,</p> + +<p class="signed">ALFRED E. TURNER.</p> +<p class="i2"> “Rev. P. White, P.P.,<br /> + Miltown-Malbay.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p class="i0">On further investigation of his records, Colonel Turner found it +necessary to follow up this letter with another, a copy of which, +through his courtesy, I subjoin:—</p> + + + +<blockquote> +<p class="dateline">“ENNIS, <i>10th September</i> 1888.</p> +<p>“REV. SIR,—A slight inaccuracy has been pointed out to me in my + letter to you of the 6th inst., which I hasten to correct. It + occurred in transcribing my letter from the original draft. I + should have said that I told Mr. Hurlbert that you stated in open + court, at the trial of 23 publicans charged with boycotting the + forces of the Crown on the occasion of a former trial, that you had + told the people (I believe from the altar) that the town was to be + made as a city of the dead during the former trial; and that in + consequence the soldiers and police could get nothing to eat or + drink in Miltown that day.</p> + +<p> “I also told him that this boycotting of the police was by no means + new, since on the 13th March 1887, at a meeting of the + Miltown-Malbay branch of the League at which you are reported to + have presided, in <i>United Ireland</i> of 19/3/87, the following + resolution was unanimously adopted:—</p> + +<blockquote> “‘That from this day any person who supplies the police while + engaged in work which is opposed to the wishes of the people with + drink, food, or cars, be censured by this branch, and that no + further intercourse be held with them.’</blockquote> + + <p>“I regret that through inadvertence I have had to trouble you with + a second letter.—I am, Rev. Sir, yours faithfully,</p> + +<p class="signed">“ALFRED E. TURNER.</p> +<p class="i0"> “Rev. P. White, P.P.”</p> +</blockquote> + + + +<h2>FOOTNOTES:</h2> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote1" + name="footnote1"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 1:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag1">(return)</a><p> Vol. ii. p. 376.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote2" + name="footnote2"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 2:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag2">(return)</a><p> Vol. ii. p. 364-370.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote3" + name="footnote3"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 3:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag3">(return)</a><p> The exasperation of the local agitators under the cool and +determined treatment of Mr. Tener may be measured by the facts stated in +the following communication received by me from Mr. Tener on the 20th of +September. I leave them to speak for themselves:—</p> + + +<p class="dateline">“POLICE BARRACKS, WOODFORD,<br /> +<i>17th Sept.</i> 1888.</p> + +<p>“DEAR MR. HURLBERT,—I enclose you <i>a printed</i> placard found posted up +in Woodford district on Sunday morning the 9th inst. It alludes to +<i>tenants</i> who had paid me their rent,—and broken the ‘unwritten law of +the League.’ All the men named are now in great danger. The police force +of the district has been increased—for their protection; but the police +are very anxious about their safety!</p> + +<p>“I send you also a <i>pencil</i> copy taken from a more <i>perfect</i> placard +which the police preserve. John White or Whyte is the tenant whose name +I already have given you. He is the tall dark man whom you saw (with an +ex-bailiff) at Portumna. He was then an “Evicted Tenant.” He has since +been, on payment of his rent, restored to his farm by me. And now, as +you see in the placard, he is held up to the vengeance of the “League of +Hell,” as P.J. Smyth called it.—Yours, etc.</p> + +<p class="signed">“ED. TENER.</p> + +<p>“<i>P.S.</i>—The evictions were finished on the 1st of September, and on the +9th (<i>after</i> it became known that the men whose names are in the placard +had paid) the placard was issued.”</p> + + +<h4><i>(Placard.)</i></h4> +<div class="placard"> +<p>“IRISHMEN!—Need we say in the face of the desperate Battle the People +are making for their Hearths and Homes that the time has come for every +HONEST MAN, trader and otherwise, to extend a helping hand to the MEN in +the GAP. You may ask, How will that be done? The answer is plain.</p> + +<p>“Let those who have become traitors to their neighbours and their +Country be shunned as if they were possessed by a devil. Let no man buy +from them or sell to them, let no man work for them. Leave them to Tener +and his Emergency gang. The following are a few of the greatest traitors +and meanest creatures that ever walked—John Whyte, of Dooras; Fahey (of +the hill) of Dooras; big Anthony Hackett, of Rossmore; Tom Moran, of +Rossmore! Your Country calls on you to treat them as they deserve. Bravo +Woodford! Remember Tom Larkin!— ‘GOD SAVE IRELAND’” +</p> +</div> </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote4" + name="footnote4"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 4:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag4">(return)</a><p> Appendix, <a href="#noteA">Note A.</a></p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote5" + name="footnote5"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 5:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag5">(return)</a><p> Appendix, <a href="#noteB">Note B.</a></p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote6" + name="footnote6"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 6:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag6">(return)</a><p> Appendix, <a href="#noteC">Note C.</a></p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote7" + name="footnote7"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 7:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag7">(return)</a><p> Appendix, <a href="#noteD">Note D.</a></p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote8" + name="footnote8"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 8:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag8">(return)</a><p> Since this was written fifteen Catholic bishops in England, +headed by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, have united (April 12, +1888) in a public protest against the Optional Oaths Bill, in which they +say: “To efface the recognition of God in our public legislature is an +act which will surely bring evil consequences.” Yet how can the +recognition of God be more effectually “effaced” than by the unqualified +assertion that the will of the people, or of a majority, is the one +legitimate source of political authority?</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote9" + name="footnote9"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 9:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag9">(return)</a><p> Mr. Blair was then a member of the Lincoln Cabinet, and its +“fighting member.”</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote10" + name="footnote10"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 10:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag10">(return)</a><p> Mr. Quill stated that the Savings-Banks deposits increased +in Ireland during 1887 eight per cent. more than in thrifty Scotland, +and <i>forty per cent.</i> more than in England and Wales!</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote11" + name="footnote11"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 11:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag11">(return)</a><p> This was the Provost’s last appearance in public. He died +rather suddenly a few weeks afterwards.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote12" + name="footnote12"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 12:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag12">(return)</a><p> In the Census of 1880 it appears that of 255,741 farms in +Illinois, 59,624 were held on the métayer system, pronounced by Toubeau +the worst of systems, and 20,620 on a money rental.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote13" + name="footnote13"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 13:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag13">(return)</a><p> I have since learned that Father M‘Fadden sold another +holding, rental 6s. 8d., for £80. He has three more holdings from +Captain Hill, at 15s., 6s. 8d., and 11s. 2d., for which he was in +arrears for two years in April 1887, when ejectment decrees were +obtained against him. For his house holding he pays 2s. a year! So he +was really fighting his own battle as a tenant in the Plan of Campaign.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote14" + name="footnote14"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 14:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag14">(return)</a><p> Yet of Connemara, Cardinal Manning, in his letter to the +Archbishop of Armagh, August 31, 1873, cites the “trust-worthy” evidence +of “an Englishman who had raised himself from the plough’s tail,” and +who had gone “to see with his own eyes the material condition of the +peasantry in Ireland.” It was to the effect that in abundance and +quality of food, in rate of wages, and even if the comfort of their +dwellings, the working men of Connemara were better off than the +agricultural labourers of certain English counties.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote15" + name="footnote15"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 15:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag15">(return)</a><p> For this holding, of 10 Irish acres, I have since learned +the widow O’Donnell pays 10s. a year. She is in the receipt of outdoor +relief, there being fever in the house (May 1888).</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote16" + name="footnote16"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 16:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag16">(return)</a><p> This “townland” is a curious use of a Saxon term to +describe a Celtic fact. The territory of an Irish sept seems to have +been divided up into “townlands,” each townland consisting of four, or +in some cases six, groups of holdings, occupied by as many families of +the “sept.” The chief of the “sept” divided up each “townland” +periodically among these groups, while the common fields were cut up +among the families as they increased and multiplied according to the +system—against which Lord George Hill battled at Gweedore—known as +“rimdale” or “rundeal,” from the Celtic, “ruindioll,” a “partition” or +“man’s share.” This is quite unlike the Russian “mir” or collective +village, and not more like the South Slav “zadruga” which makes each +family a community, the land belonging to all, as, according to M. +Eugene Simon, it does in China. But it is as inconsistent with Henry +George’s State ownership of the land or the rents as either of those +systems.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote17" + name="footnote17"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 17:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag17">(return)</a><p> From a question just asked (July 12) in the House of +Commons, and answered by the Postmaster-General, I gather that this +“local question” has been further complicated by the removal of Mr. +Sweeney, the sub-postmaster, under an official regulation.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote18" + name="footnote18"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 18:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag18">(return)</a><p> The incident occurred in Clare. See p. <a href="#page45">45</a>.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote19" + name="footnote19"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 19:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag19">(return)</a><p> Or they may date back to the Parliament of Grattan, who +wrote to Mr. Guinness that he regarded the brewery of Ireland as “the +actual nurse of the people, and entitled to every encouragement, favour, +and exemption.”</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote20" + name="footnote20"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 20:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag20">(return)</a><p> This refers, I am told, to the murder, in open daylight, +in 1881, of an old man, Linnane, who acted as a “caretaker” for Mrs. +Moroney. It should gratify Father White to know that, as I am now +informed (May 21, 1888), a clue has just been found to the assassins, +who appear to have received the same price for doing their work that was +paid the murderers of Fitzmaurice.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote21" + name="footnote21"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 21:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag21">(return)</a><p> Mrs. Moroney, so often referred to here, is the widow of a +gentleman formerly High Sheriff and Deputy-Lieutenant for the County +Clare, who died in 1870. She lives at Milton House, and has fought the +local League steadily and successfully.</p> + </blockquote> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14510 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/14510-h/images/iucmap.png b/14510-h/images/iucmap.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..aa53a9c --- /dev/null +++ b/14510-h/images/iucmap.png diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9c9e8ed --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #14510 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14510) diff --git a/old/14510-8.txt b/old/14510-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..afa5e54 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14510-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7549 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) +(1888), by William Henry Hurlbert + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) + +Author: William Henry Hurlbert + +Release Date: December 29, 2004 [EBook #14510] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRELAND, VOL. 1 *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Robert Ledger and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + +[Illustration: MAP TO ILLUSTRATE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN.] + + + + +IRELAND UNDER COERCION + +THE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN + + +BY + +WILLIAM HENRY HURLBERT + + +VOL. I. + +_SECOND EDITION_. + +1888 + + +"Upon the future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire." +CARDINAL MANNING TO EARL GREY, 1868 + + + + +PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. + + +Although barely a month has elapsed since the publication of these +volumes, events of more or less general notoriety have so far confirmed +the views taken in them of the actual state and outlook of affairs in +Ireland, that I gladly comply with the request of my publisher for a +Preface to this Second Edition. + +Upon one most important point--the progressive demoralisation of the +Irish people by the methods of the so-called political combinations, +which are doing the work of the Agrarian and Anti-Social Revolution in +Ireland, some passages, from a remarkable sermon delivered in August in +the Cathedral of Waterford by the Catholic bishop of that diocese, will +be found to echo almost to the letter the statement given to me in June +by a strong Protestant Home Ruler, that "the Nationalists are stripping +Irishmen as bare of moral sense as the bushmen of South Africa." + +Speaking of what he had personally witnessed in one of the lanes of +Waterford, the Bishop says, in the report which I have seen of his +sermon, "the most barbarous tribes of Africa would justly feel ashamed +if they were guilty of what I saw, or approached to the guilt I +witnessed, on that occasion." As a faithful shepherd of his people, he +is not content with general denunciations of their misconduct, but goes +on to analyse the influences which are thus reducing a Christian people +to a level below that of the savages whom Cardinal Lavigerie is now +organising a great missionary crusade to rescue from their degradation. + +He agrees with Archbishop Croke in attributing much of this +demoralisation to the excessive and increasing use of strong drink, +striking evidences of which came under my own observation at more than +one point of my Irish journeys. But I fear Archbishop Croke would +scarcely agree with the Bishop of Waterford in his diagnosis of the +effects upon the popular character of what has now come to pass current +in many parts of Ireland as "patriotism." + +The Bishop says, "The women as well as the men were fighting, and when +we sought to bring them to order, one man threatened to take up a weapon +and drive bishop, priests, and police from the place! On the Quay, I +understand, it was one scene of riot and disorder, and what made matters +worse was that when the police went to discharge their duty for the +protection of the people, the moment they interfered the people turned +on them and maltreated them in a shocking way. I understand that some +police who were in coloured clothes were picked out for the worst +treatment--knocked down and kicked brutally. One police officer, I +learn, had his fingers broken. This is a state of things that nothing at +all would justify. It is not to be justified or excused on any principle +of reason or religion. What is still worse, sympathy was shown for those +who had obstructed and attacked the police. The only excuse I could find +that was urged for this shameful misconduct was that it was dignified +with the name of 'patriotism'! All I can say is, that if rowdyism like +this be an indication of the patriotism of the people, as far as I am +concerned, I say, better our poor country were for ever in political +slavery than attain to liberty by such means." + +This is the language of a good Catholic, of a good Irishman, and of a +faithful Bishop. Were it more often heard from the lips of the Irish +Episcopate the true friends of Ireland might look forward to her future +with more hope and confidence than many of the best and ablest of them +are now able to feel. As things actually are, not even the Papal Decree +has yet sufficed to restrain ecclesiastics, not always of the lowest +degree, from encouraging by their words and their conduct "patriotism" +of the type commemorated by the late Colonel Prentiss of Louisville, in +a story which he used to tell of a tipsy giant in butternut garments, +armed with a long rifle, who came upon him in his office on a certain +Fourth of July demanding the loan of a dollar on the ground that he felt +"so confoundedly patriotic!" + +The Colonel judiciously handed the man a dollar, and then asked, "Pray, +how do you feel when you feel confoundedly patriotic?" + +"I feel," responded the man gravely, "as if I should like to kill +somebody or steal something." + +It is "patriotism" of this sort which the Papal Decree was issued to +expel from within the pale of the Catholic Church. And it is really, in +the last analysis of the facts of the case, to the suppression of +"patriotism" of this sort that many well-intentioned, but certainly not +well-informed, "sympathisers" with what they suppose to be the cause of +Ireland, object, in my own country and in Great Britain, when they +denounce as "Coercion" the imprisonment of members of Parliament and +other rhetorical persons who go about encouraging or compelling ignorant +people to support "boycotting" and the "Plan of Campaign." + +Yet it would seem to be sufficiently obvious that "patriotism" of this +sort, once full-blown and flourishing on the soil of Ireland, must tend +to propagate itself far beyond the confines of that island, and to +diversify with its blood-red flowers and its explosive fruits the social +order of countries in which it has not yet been found necessary for the +Head of the Catholic Church to reaffirm the fundamental principles of +Law and of Liberty. + +Since these volumes were published, too, the Agrarian Revolution in +Ireland has been brought into open and defiant collision with the +Catholic Church by its leader, Mr. Davitt, the founder of the Land +League. In the face of Mr. Davitt's contemptuous and angry repudiation +of any binding force in the Papal Decree, it will be difficult even for +the Cardinal-Archbishop of Sydney to devise an understanding between the +Church and any organisation fashioned or led by him. It may be inferred +from Mr. Davitt's contemporaneous and not less angry intimation, that +the methods of the Parnellite party are inadequate to the liberation of +Ireland from the curse of landlordism, that he is prepared to go further +than Mr. George, who still clings in America to the shadowy countenance +given him by the Cardinal-Archbishop of Baltimore, and that the +Nationalisation of the Land will ere long be urged both in Ireland and +in Great Britain by organisations frankly Anti-Catholic as well as +Anti-Social. + +This is to be desired on many accounts. It will bring the clergy in +Ireland face to face with the situation, which will be a good thing +both for them and for the people; and it should result in making an end +of the pernicious influence upon the popular mind of such extraordinary +theological outgivings; for example, as the circular issued in 1881 to +the clergy and laity of Meath by the Bishop of that diocese, in which it +was laid down that "the land of every country is the common property of +the people of that country, because its real owner, the Creator who made +it, has transferred it as a voluntary gift to them." + +Language of this sort addressed to ignorant multitudes must do harm of +course whenever and by whomsoever used. It must tend to evil if +addressed by demagogues to the Congress of a Trade Union. But it must do +much more harm when uttered with the seeming sanction of the Church by a +mitred bishop to congregations already solicited to greed, cunning, and +dishonesty, by an unscrupulous and well-organised "agitation." + +Not less instructive than Mr. Davitt's outburst from the Church is his +almost furious denunciation of the Irish tenants who obeyed an instinct, +thought honourable to mankind in most ages and countries, by agreeing +together to present to their landlord, Earl Fitzwilliam, a token of +their respect and regard on the celebration of his golden wedding day. + +These tenants are denounced, not because they were paying homage to a +tyrannical or an unworthy landlord, though Mr. Davitt was so transported +beyond his ordinary and cooler self with rage at their action that he +actually stooped to something like an insinuation of disbelief in the +excellence of Lord Fitzwilliam's character. The true and avowed burden +of his diatribe was that no landlord could possibly deserve well of his +tenants. The better he is as a man, the more they ought to hate him as a +landlord. + +The ownership of land, in other words, is of itself in the eyes of Mr. +Davitt what the ownership of a slave was in the eyes of the earlier +Abolitionists--crime so monstrous as to be beyond pardon or endurance. +If this be true of Great Britain and Ireland, where no allodial tenure +exists, how much more true must it be of New York? And if true of the +man who owns a thousand acres, it must be equally true of the man who +owns an acre. There could not be a better illustration than Mr. Davitt +has given in his attack on the Fitzwilliam tenants of the precise +accuracy of what I have had occasion to say in these volumes of the +"irrepressible conflict" between his schemes and the establishment of a +peasant proprietorship in Ireland. It is more than this. It is a +distinct warning served upon the smallest tenants as well as upon the +greatest landlords in the United Kingdom that fixity of any form of +individual tenure is irreconcilable with the Agrarian agitations. + +I anticipated this demonstration, but I did not anticipate that it would +come so fully or so soon. + +I anticipated also abundant proof from my own side of the water of the +accuracy of my impressions as to the drift of the American-Irish towards +Protection and Republicanism in American politics. This, too, has come +earlier and not less fully than I had expected. Mr. Patrick Ford, the +most influential leader of the American-Irish, issued early in August a +statement of his views as to the impending Presidential election. "The +issue to-day," he says, "is the Tariff. It is the American system +_versus_ the British Colonial system. The Irish are instinctively +Protectionists." And why? Mr. Ford goes on to explain. "The fact," he +observes, "that the Lion and the Unicorn have taken the stump for +Cleveland and Thurnan is not calculated to hurt Harrison and Morton in +the estimation of the Irish, who will, I promise, give a good account of +themselves in the coming Presidential election." Hatred of England, in +other words, is an axiom in their Political Economy! + +Mr. Davitt's menacing allusion to Parnell as a landlord, and Mr. +O'Leary's scornful treatment in a letter to me of the small-fry English +Radicals,[1] when taken together, distinctly prefigure an imminent +rupture between the Parnellite party and the two wings--Agrarian and +Fenian--of the real revolutionary movement in Ireland. It is clear that +clerical agitators, high and low, must soon elect between following Mr. +George, Dr. M'Glynn, and Mr. Davitt, and obeying fully the Papal Decree. + +It is a most curious feature of the situation in Ireland that much more +discontent with the actual conditions of life in that country seems to +be felt by people who do not than by people who do live in Ireland. It +is the Irish in America and Australia, who neither sow nor reap in +Ireland, pay no taxes there, and bear no burdens, who find the alien +oppression most intolerable. This explains the extreme bitterness with +which Mr. Davitt in some recent speeches and letters denounces the +tameness of the Irish people, and rather amusingly berates the British +allies of his Parnellite associates for their failure to develop any +striking and sensational resistance to the administration of law in +Ireland. I have printed in this edition[2] an instructive account, +furnished to me by Mr. Tener, of some recent evictions on the +Clanricarde property in Galway, which shows how hard it is for the most +determined "agitators" to keep the Irish tenants up to that high concert +pitch of resistance to the law which alone would meet the wishes of the +true agrarian leaders; and how comparatively easy it is for a just and +resolute man, armed with the power of the law resolutely enforced, to +break up an illegal combination even in some of the most disturbed +regions of Ireland.[3] While this is encouraging to the friends of law +and order in Ireland, it must not be forgotten that it involves also a +certain peril for them. The more successfully the law is enforced in +Ireland, the greater perhaps is the danger that the British +constituencies, upon which, of course, the administrators of the law +depend for their authority, may lose sight and sense of the +Revolutionary forces at work there. History shows that this has more +than once happened in the past. Englishmen and Scotchmen will be better +able than I am to judge how far it is unlikely that it should happen +again in the future. + +As to one matter of great moment--the effect of Lord Ashbourne's Act--a +correspondent sends me a statement, which I reproduce here, as it gives +a very satisfactory account of the automatic financial machinery upon +which that Act must depend for success:-- + + "Out of £90,630 of instalments due last May, less than £4000 is + unpaid at the present moment, on transactions extending over three + years with all classes of tenants. The total amount which accrued, + due to the Land Commission in respect of instalments since the + passing of the Act to the 1st November 1887, was £50,910. Of this + there is only now unpaid £731, 17s. 9d. There accrued a further + amount to the 1st May 1888 of £39,720, in respect of which only + £4071, 16s. 11d. is now unpaid, making in all only £4803, 14s. 8d. + unpaid, out of a total sum of £90,630 due up to last gale day, some + of which by this time has been paid off." + +This would seem to be worth considering in connection with the objection +made to any serious extension of Lord Ashbourne's Act by Mr. Chamberlain +in his extremely clear and able preface to a programme of "Unionist +Policy for Ireland" just issued by the "National Radical Union." + +LONDON, _21st Sept_. 1888. + + + + +CONTENTS OF VOL. I. + + +CLUE MAP _Frontispiece_ +PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION v +PROLOGUE xxi-lxvii + +CHAPTER I. + London to Dublin, Jan. 20, 1888, 1 + Irish Jacobite, 1 + Proposed Mass in memory of Charles Edward, 2 + Cardinal Manning, 3 + President Cleveland's Jubilee Gift to Leo XIII, 4 + Arrival at Kingstown, 5 + Admirable Mail Service, 5 + "Davy," the newsvendor, 6 + Mr. Davitt, 7 + Coercion in America and Ireland, 8 + Montgomery Blair's maxim, 8 + Irish cars, 9 + Maple's Hotel, 9 + Father Burke of Tallaght, 10, 11 + Peculiarities of Post-offices, 12, 13 + National League Office, 13 + The Dublin National Reception, 14 + Mr. T.D. Sullivan, M.P., 14 + Dublin Castle, 15 + Mr. O'Brien, Attorney-General, 16 + The Chief-Secretary, Mr. Balfour, 17-24 + Fathers M'Fadden and M'Glynn, 18 + Come-outers of New England, 18 + Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, 19, 20 + Sir West Ridgway, 24 + Divisional Magistrates, 24 + Colonel Turner, 25 + The Castle Service, 25-29 + Visit of the Prince of Wales, 27 + Lord Chief-Justice Morris, 29-37 + An Irish Catholic on Mr. Parnell, 31-33 + Mr. Justice Murphy, 36 + Lord Ashbourne, 37, 38 + Unionist meeting, 39 + Old Middle State type of American-Irish Protestant, 39 + Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in America, 41 + Difficulties of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 43 + Dr. Jellett, 43 + Dinner at the Attorney-General's, 43-46 + Sir Bernard Burke, 46-49 + Irish Landlords at Kildare Street Club, 49-52 + The people and the procession, 53-55 + Ripon and Morley, 54, 55 + +CHAPTER II. + Dublin to Sion, Feb 3, 56 + Poor of the city, 57 + Strabane, 58-60 + Sion flax-mills, 60-62 + Dr. Webb, 63-65 + Gweedore, Feb 4, 65 + A good day's work, 65 + Strabane, 66 + Names of the people, 66 + Bad weather judges, 67 + Letterkenny, p 67, 68 + Picturesque cottages, 67 + Communicative gentleman, 68 + Donegal Highlands, 68-70 + Glen Veagh, 71 + Errigal, 72 + Dunlewy and the Clady, 72 + Gweedore, Feb 5, 73 + Lord George Hill, 74 + Gweedore 1838 to 1879, 75-81 + Gweedore 1879 to 1888, 81-91 + Father M'Fadden, 83-104 + A Galway man's opinions, 84-89 + Value of tenant-right, 83 + Condition of tenantry, 84 + Woollen stuffs, 87, 88 + Distress in Gweedore, 88, + Do. in Connemara, 88 + Mr Burke, 90 + Plan of Campaign, 93 + Emigration, 94, 95 + Settlement with Captain Hill, 94 + Landlord and tenant, 96-98 + Land Nationalisation, 98 + Father M'Fadden's plan, 98 + Gweedore, Feb 6, 104 + On the Bunbeg road, 104-110 + Falcarragh, 111-123 + Ballyconnell House, 112-123 + Townland and Rundale, 118 + Use and abuse of tea, 119 + Lord Leitrim, 121 + A "Queen of France," 121 + The Rosses, 123 + +CHAPTER III. + Dungloe, Feb. 7, 124 + From Gweedore, 124 + Irish "jaunting car," 125 + "It will fatten four, feed five, and starve six," 125 + Natural wealth of the country, 125 + Isle of Arran and Anticosti, p 12 + The Gombeen man, 126-130 + Dungloe, 126-131 + Burtonport, 129 + Lough Meela, 128 + Attractions of the Donegal coast, 128 + Compared with Isles of Shoals and Appledore, 129 + Wonderful granite formations, 129 + Material for a new industry, 129 + Father Walker, 131 + Migratory labourers, 133 + Granite quarries, 133 + Stipends of the Roman Catholic clergy, 134-137 + Herring Fisheries, 137 + Arranmore, 137 + Dungloe woollen work, 138 + Baron's Court, Feb 8, 139 + Dungloe to Letterkenny, 139-141 + Doocharry Red Granite, 140 + Fair at Letterkenny, 142 + Feb 9, 143 + On Clare and Kerry, 143 + A Priest's opinion on Moonlighters, 143 + The Lixnaw murder, 143 + Baron's Court, 144 + James I.'s three castles, 145 + Ulster Settlement, 146 + Descendants of the old Celtic stock, 146 + The park at Baron's Court, 146 + A nonogenarian O'Kane, 148 + Irish "Covenanters," 150 + Shenandoah Valley people, 151 + The murderers of Munterlony, 151 + A relic of 1689, 152 + Woollen industry, 152-155 + Londonderry Orange symposium, 156 + February 11, 157 + Sergeant Mahony on Father M'Fadden, 157-163 + +CHAPTER IV. + Abbeyleix, Feb. 12, 164 + Newtown-Stewart, 164 + An absentee landlord, 164 + "The hill of the seven murders," 165 + Newry, Dublin, Maple's Hotel, Maryborough, 165 + "Hurrah for Gilhooly," 166 + Abbeyleix town, chapel, and church, 168 + Embroidery and lace work, 169 + Wood-carving, 170 + General Grant, 171 + Kilkenny, 172 + Kilkenny Castle, 173 + Muniment-room, 174 + Table and Expense Books, 176 + Dublin once the most noted wine-mart of Britain, 177, 178 + Cathedral of St. Canice, 178 + The Waterford cloak, 179 + The College, 180 + Irish and Scotch whisky, 180 + Duke of Ormonde's grants, 181 + The Plan of Campaign, 182-186 + Ulster tenant-right, 186, 187 + +CHAPTER V. + Dublin, Feb. 14, 188 + The Irish National Gallery, 188-191 + Feb. 15, 192 + London: Mr. Davitt, 192 + Irish Woollen Company, 193 + Mr. Davitt and Mr. Blunt, 193 + Mr. Davitt's character and position, 192-199 + +CHAPTER VI. + Ennis, Feb. 18, 200 + Return to Ireland, 200 + Irish Nationalists, 200, 201 + Home Rule and Protection, 202 + Luggacurren and Mr. O'Brien, 204 + Dublin to Limerick and Ennis, 204, 205 + Colonel Turner, 205 + Architecture of Ennis Courthouse--Resemblance + to White House, Washington, 206 + Number of public-houses in Ennis, and in Ireland, 207, 208 + Innkeepers of Milltown Malbay, 208,209 + Father White (see Note E), 209 + Sir Francis Head, 210, 211 + Different opinions in Ennis, 212, 213 + State of trade in Ennis, 213, 214 + Edenvale, Heronry, 215 _seq._ + Feb. 19, 215 + The men of Ennis at Edenvale, 216 + Killone Abbey, 218-221 + Stephen J. Meany, 220 + "Holy Well" of St. John, 221 + Superstition as to rabbits, 222 + Religious practices under Penal Laws, 222 + Experiences under National League, 223, 224 + Case of George Pilkington, 224-226 + Trees at Edenvale, 227 + Moonlighters, a reproduction of Whiteboys, 227, 228 + Difficulty in getting men to work, 228 + A testimonial to Mr. Austen Mackay, 229-232 + Effect of testimonials, 232 + Feb. 20, 232 + The case of Mrs. Connell at Milltown Malbay, 232 _seq._ + Estate accounts and prices, 240 + A rent-warner, 245 + Mr. Redmond, M.P., 245 + Father White's Sermon, 246 + A photograph, 246 + +APPENDIX. + + NOTES-- + + A. Mr. Gladstone and the American War (Prologue xxix), 249 + B. Mr. Parnell and the Dynamiters (Prologue xxxiii), 251 + C. The American "Suspects" of 1881 (Prologue xlvii), 255 + D. The Parnellites and the English Parties (Prologue l.), 262 + E. The "Boycott" at Miltown-Malbay (p. 209) 264 + + + + +PROLOGUE. + + +I. + +This book is a record of things seen, and of conversations had, during a +series of visits to Ireland between January and June 1888. + +These visits were made in quest of light, not so much upon the +proceedings and the purposes of the Irish "Nationalists,"--with which, +on both sides of the Atlantic, I have been tolerably familiar for many +years past--as upon the social and economical results in Ireland of the +processes of political vivisection to which that country has been so +long subjected. + +As these results primarily concern Great Britain and British subjects, +and as a well-founded and reasonable jealousy exists in Great Britain of +American intromission in the affairs of Ireland, it is proper for me to +say at the outset, that the condition of Ireland interests me not +because I believe, with Cardinal Manning, that upon the future of +Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire, but because I know that +America is largely responsible for the actual condition of Ireland, and +because the future condition of Ireland, and of the British Empire, +must gravely influence the future of my own country. + +In common with the vast majority of my countrymen, who come with me of +what may now not improperly be called the old American stock--by which I +mean the three millions of English-speaking dwellers in the New World, +who righteously resented, and successfully resisted, a hundred years +ago, the attempt--not of the Crown under which the Colonies held their +lands, but of the British Parliament in which they were +unrepresented--to take their property without their consent, and apply +it to purposes not passed upon by them, I have always felt that the +claim of the Irish people to a proper control of matters exclusively +Irish was essentially just and reasonable. The measure of that proper +control is now, as it always has been, a question not for Americans, but +for the people of Great Britain and of Ireland. If Lord Edward +Fitzgerald and his associates had succeeded in expelling British +authority from Ireland, and in founding an Irish Republic, we should +probably have recognised that Republic. Yet an American minister at the +Court of St. James's saw no impropriety in advising our Government to +refuse a refuge in the United States to the defeated Irish exiles of +'98. + +It is undoubtedly the opinion of every Irish American who possesses any +real influence with the people of his own race in my country, that the +rights and liberties of Ireland can only be effectually secured by a +complete political separation from Great Britain. Nor can the right of +Irish American citizens, holding this opinion, to express their sympathy +with Irishmen striving in Ireland to bring about such a result, and with +Englishmen or Scotchmen contributing to it in Great Britain, be +questioned, any more than the right of Polish citizens of the French +Republic to express their sympathy with Poles labouring in Poland for +the restoration of Polish nationality. It is perhaps even less open to +question than the right of Americans not of Irish race, and of Frenchmen +not of Polish race, to express such sympathies; and certainly less open +to question than the right of Englishmen or Americans to express their +sympathy with Cubans bent on sundering the last link which binds Cuba to +Spain, or with Greeks bent on overthrowing the authority of the Sultan +in Crete. + +But for all American citizens of whatever race, the expression of such +sympathies ceases to be legitimate when it assumes the shape of action +transcending the limits set by local or by international law. It is of +the essence of American constitutionalism that one community shall not +lay hands upon the domestic affairs of another; and it is an undeniable +fact that the sympathy of the great body of the American people with +Irish efforts for self-government has been diminished, not increased, +since 1848, by the gradual transfer of the head-quarters and machinery +of those efforts from Ireland to the United States. The recent refusal +of the Mayor of New York, Mr. Hewitt, to allow what is called the "Irish +National flag" to be raised over the City Hall of New York is vastly +more significant of the true drift of American feeling on this subject +than any number of sympathetic resolutions adopted at party conventions +or in State legislatures by party managers, bent on harpooning Irish +voters. If Ireland had really made herself a "nation," with or without +the consent of Great Britain, a refusal to hoist the Irish flag on the +occasion of an Irish holiday would be not only churlish but foolish. But +thousands of Americans, who might view with equanimity the disruption of +the British Empire and the establishment of an Irish republic, regard, +not only with disapprobation, but with resentment, the growing +disposition of Irish agitators in and out of the British Parliament to +thrash out on American soil their schemes for bringing about these +results with the help of Irishmen who have assumed the duties by +acquiring the rights of American citizenship. It is not in accordance +with the American doctrine of "Home Rule" that "Home Rule" of any sort +for Ireland should be organised in New York or in Chicago by +expatriated Irishmen. + +No man had a keener or more accurate sense of this than the most +eloquent and illustrious Irishman whose voice was ever heard in America. + +In the autumn of 1871 Father Burke of Tallaght and San Clemente, with +whom I had formed at Rome in early manhood a friendship which ended only +with his life, came to America as the commissioned Visitor of the +Dominican Order. His mission there will live for ever in the Catholic +annals of the New World. But of one episode of that mission no man +living perhaps knows so much as I, and I make no excuse for this +allusion to it here, as it illustrates perfectly the limits between the +lawful and the unlawful in the agitation of Irish questions upon +American soil. + +While Father Burke was in New York Mr. Froude came there, having been +invited to deliver before a Protestant Literary Association a series of +lectures upon the history of Ireland. My personal relations with Mr. +Froude, I should say here, and my esteem for his rare abilities, go back +to the days of the _Nemesis of Faith_, and I did not affect to disguise +from him the regret with which I learned his errand to the New World. +That his lectures would be brilliant, impressive, and interesting, was +quite certain; but it was equally certain, I thought, that they would +do a world of mischief, by stirring up ancient issues of strife between +the Protestant and the Catholic populations of the United States. + +That they would be answered angrily, indiscreetly, and in a fashion to +aggravate prejudices which ought to be appeased on both sides of the +questions involved, was much more than probable. All this accordingly I +urged upon Father Burke, begging him to find or make time in the midst +of his engrossing duties for a systematic course of lectures in reply. +What other men would surely say in heat and with virulence would be said +by him, I knew, temperately, loftily, and wisely. Three strenuous +objections he made. One was that his work as a Catholic missionary +demanded all his thought and all his time; another that he was not +historically equipped to deal with so formidable an antagonist; and a +third that America ought not to be a battle-ground of Irish contentions. +It was upon the last that he dwelt most tenaciously; nor did he give way +until he had satisfied himself, after consulting with the highest +authorities of his Church, and with two or three of the coolest and most +judicious Irish citizens of New York, that I was right in believing that +his appearance in the arena as the champion of Ireland, would lift an +inevitable controversy high above the atmosphere of unworthy passion, +and put it beyond the reach of political mischief-makers. + +How nobly he did his work when he had become convinced that he ought to +do it, is now matter of history. But it is a hundredfold more needful +now than it was in 1871 and 1872, that the spirit in which he did it +should be known and published abroad. In the interval between the +delivery of two of his replies to Mr. Froude, Mr. Froude went to Boston. +A letter from Boston informed me that upon Mr. Froude's arrival there, +all the Irish servants of the friend with whom he was to stay had +suddenly left the house, refusing to their employer the right to invite +under his roof a guest not agreeable to them. I handed this letter, +without a word, to Father Burke a few hours before he was to speak in +the Academy of Music. He read it with a kind of humorous wrath; and when +the evening came, he prefaced his lecture with a few strong and stirring +words, in which he castigated with equal sense and severity the +misconduct of his country-people, anticipating thus by many a year the +spirit in which the supreme authority of his Church has just now dealt +with the social plague of "boycotting," whereof the strike of the +servant girls at Boston sixteen years ago was a precursory symptom. + +Father Burke understood that American citizenship imposes duties where +it confers rights. Nobody expects the European emigrant who abjures his +foreign allegiance to divest himself of his native sympathies or +antipathies. But American law, and the conditions of American liberty, +require him to divest himself of the notion that he retains any right +actively to interfere in the domestic affairs of the country of his +birth. For public and political purposes, the Irishman who becomes an +American ceases to be an Irishman. When Mr. Gladstone's Government in +1881 seized and locked up indefinitely, on "suspicion" of what they +might be about to do, American citizens of Irish birth, these "suspects" +clamoured, and had a right to clamour, for the intervention of the +American Government to protect them against being dealt with as if they +were Irishmen and British subjects. But by the abjuration of British +allegiance which gave them this right to clamour for American +protection, they had voluntarily made themselves absolute foreigners to +Ireland, with no more legal or moral right to interfere in the affairs +of that country than so many Chinamen or Peruvians. + +Having said this, I ought, in justice to my fellow-citizens of Irish +birth, to say that these elementary truths have too often been obscured +for them by the conduct of public bodies in America, and of American +public men. + +No American public man of reputation, holding an executive office in the +Federal Government, has ever thrust himself, it is true, so inexcusably +into the domestic affairs of Great Britain and Ireland as did Mr. +Gladstone into the domestic affairs of the United States when, speaking +at Newcastle in the very crisis of our great civil war, he gave all the +weight of his position as a Cabinet Minister to the assertion that Mr. +Jefferson Davis had created not only an army and a navy, but a nation, +and thereby compelled the Prime Minister of Great Britain to break the +effect of this declaration by insisting that another Cabinet Minister, +Sir George Cornewall Lewis, should instantly make a speech countering +it, and covering the neutrality of the British Government.[4] + +Nor has either House of the Congress of the United States ever been +guilty of the impertinence of adopting resolutions of sympathy with the +Home Rule, or any other movement affecting directly the domestic affairs +of the British Empire, though, within my own knowledge, very strong +pressure has been more than once put upon the Foreign Affairs Committees +of both Houses to bring this about. + +But such resolutions have been repeatedly adopted by State Legislatures, +and individual members, both of the Federal Senate and of the Federal +Lower House, have discredited themselves, and brought such discredit as +they could upon the Congress, by effusions of the same sort. The bad +citizenship of Irish-American citizens, however, is not the less bad +citizenship because they may have been led into it by the recklessness +of State Legislatures--which have no responsibility for our foreign +relations--or the sycophancy of public men. If it were proved to +demonstration that Home Rule would be the salvation of Ireland, no +American citizen would have any more right to take an active part in +furthering it than to take an active part in dethroning the Czar of all +the Russias. The lesson which Washington administered to Citizen Genet, +when that meddlesome minister of the French Republic undertook to "boom" +the rights of men by issuing letters of marque at Charleston, has +governed the foreign relations of the United States ever since, and it +is as binding upon every private citizen as upon every public servant of +the Republic. + +I must ask my readers, therefore, to bear it constantly in mind that all +my observations and comments have been made from an American, not from a +British or an Irish point of view. How or by whom Ireland shall be +governed concerns me only in so far as the government of Ireland may +affect the character and the tendencies of the Irish people, and +thereby, through the close, intimate, and increasing connection between +the Irish people and the people of the United States, may tend to affect +the future of my country. This being my point of view, it will be +apparent, I think, that I have at least laboured under no temptation to +see things otherwise than as they were, or to state things otherwise +than as I saw them. + +With Arthur Young, who more clearly than any other man of his time saw +the end from the beginning of the fatuous and featherheaded French +Revolution of 1789, I have always been inclined to think "the +application of theory to methods of government a surprising imbecility +in the human mind:" and it will be found that in this book I have done +little more than set down, as fully and clearly as I could, what I +actually saw and heard in Ireland. My method has been as simple as my +object. During each day as occasion served, and always at night, I made +stenographic notes of whatever had attracted my attention or engaged my +interest. As I had no case to make for or against any political party or +any theory of government in Ireland, I took things great and small, and +people high and low, as they came, putting myself in contact by +preference, wherever I could, with those classes of the Irish people of +whom we see least in America, and concerning myself, as to my notes, +only that they should be made under the vivid immediate impress of +whatever they were to record. These notes I have subsequently written +out in the spirit in which I made them, in all cases taking what pains +I could to verify statements of facts, and in many cases, where it +seemed desirable or necessary, submitting the proofs of the pages as +finally printed to the persons whom, after myself, they most concerned. + +I have been more annoyed by the delay than by the trouble thus entailed +upon me; but I shall be satisfied if those who may take the pains to +read the book shall as nearly as possible see what I saw, and hear what +I heard. + +I have no wish to impress my own conclusions upon others who may be +better able than I am accurately to interpret the facts from which these +conclusions have been drawn. Such as they are, I have put them into a +few pages at the end of the book. + +It will be found that I have touched only incidentally upon the subject +of Home Rule for Ireland. Until it shall be ascertained what "Home Rule +for Ireland" means, that subject seems to me to lie quite outside the +domain of my inquiries. "Home Rule for Ireland" is not now a plan--nor +so much as a proposition. It is merely a polemical phrase, of little +importance to persons really interested in the condition of Ireland, +however invaluable it may be to the makers of party platforms in my own +country, or to Parliamentary candidates on this side of the Atlantic. It +may mean anything or nothing, from Mr. Chamberlain's imperialist scheme +of four Provincial Councils--which recalls the outlines of a system +once established with success in New Zealand--to that absolute and +complete separation in all particulars of the government of Ireland from +the government of Great Britain, which has unquestionably been the aim +of every active Irish organisation in the United States for the last +twenty years, and which the accredited leader of the "Home Rule" party +in the British Parliament, Mr. Parnell, is understood in America to have +pledged himself that he will do anything to further and nothing to +impede. On this point, what I took to be conclusive documentary evidence +was submitted to me in New York several years ago by Mr. Sheridan, at a +time when the fever-heat of British indignation excited by those murders +in the Phoenix Park, for which I believe it is now admitted by the best +informed authorities that Mr. Sheridan had no responsibility, was +driving Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates into disavowals of +the extreme men of their connection, which, but for Mr. Sheridan's +coolness and consciousness of his well-assured domination over them, +might have led to extremely inconvenient consequences to all +concerned.[5] But whatever "Home Rule" may or may not mean, I went to +Ireland, not to find some achromatic meaning for a prismatic phrase, +which is flashed at you fifty times in England or America where you +encounter it once in Ireland, but to learn what I could of the social +and economical condition of the Irish people as affected by the +revolutionary forces which are now at work in that country. + +I have watched the development of these forces too long and too closely +to be under any illusion as to the real importance relatively with them +of the so-called "Parliamentary" action of the Irish Nationalists. + + +II. + +The visits to Ireland, of which this book is a record, were made on my +return from a sojourn in Rome during the celebration of the Jubilee of +His Holiness Leo XIII. What I then and there learned convinced me that +the Vatican was on the eve of grappling in Ireland with issues +substantially identical with those which were forced, in my own country, +two years ago, upon a most courageous and gifted member of the American +Catholic hierarchy, the Archbishop of New York, by the open adhesion of +an eminent Irish American ecclesiastic, the Rev. Dr. M'Glynn, to the +social revolution of which Mr. Henry George is the best-equipped and +most indefatigable apostle. Entertaining this conviction (which events +have since shown to have been well-founded), I was anxious to survey on +the spot the conditions under which the conflict so vigorously +encountered by the Archbishop in New York must be waged by the Vatican +in Ireland. + +To suppose that the Vatican, in dealing with this conflict, either in +Ireland or in America, is troubling itself about the balancing of +political acrobats, British or American, upon the tight-rope of "Home +Rule," is as absurd as it would have been to suppose that in 1885 the +Vatican concerned itself with the subterranean intrigues which there is +reason to believe the Irish Nationalists then sought to carry on with +the wire-pullers of the two great British political parties. To get a +correct perspective of the observations which I came from Rome this year +to make in Ireland, my readers, as I have already said, must allow me to +take them across the Atlantic, and must put aside as accessory and +incidental the forensic and polemic phenomena of Irish politics, with +which they are perhaps only too familiar. + +It is as easy to go too far back as it is not to go back far enough in +the study of such a revolutionary movement as that of which Ireland is +just now the arena. + +Many and sore are the historical grievances of the Irish people. That +they are historical and not actual grievances would seem to be admitted +by so sympathetic and minutely well-informed a writer as Dr. Sigerson, +when he gives it as his opinion, that after the passage of the Land Act +of 1870, "the concession in principle of the demands of the cultivators +as tenants" had "abolished the class war waged between landlords and +their tenantry." + +The class war between the tenantry and their landlords, therefore, which +is now undoubtedly waging in Ireland cannot be attributed to the +historical grievances of the Irish people. The tradition and the memory +of these historical grievances may indeed be used by designing or +hysterical traders in agitation to inflame the present war. But the war +itself is not the old war, nor can it be explained by recurring to the +causes of the old war. It has the characteristics no longer of a +defensive war, nor yet of a war of revenge absolutely, but of an +aggressive war, and of a war of conquest. In his able work on "The Land +Tenure and the Land Classes of Ireland," Dr. Sigerson, writing in 1871, +looked forward to the peaceful co-existence in Ireland of two systems of +land-holding, "whereby the country might enjoy the advantage of what is +good in the 'landlord,' or single middleman system, and in the peasant +proprietary or direct system." + +What we now see in Ireland, after nearly twenty years of legislation, +steadily tending to the triumph of equal rights, is an agitation +threatening not only the "co-existence" of these two systems, but the +very existence of each of these systems. + +To get at the origin and the meaning of this agitation we must be +content, I believe, to go no further back than ten years, and to look +for them, not in Ireland, but in America, not to Mr. Parnell and Mr. +Gladstone primarily, but to Mr. Davitt and Mr. Henry George. + + +III. + +In a very remarkable letter written to Earl Grey in 1868, after the +Clerkenwell explosions had brought the disestablishment of the Irish +Protestant Church into Mr. Gladstone's scheme of "practical politics," +the Archbishop of Westminster, not then a Cardinal, called the attention +of Englishmen to the fact, not yet I fear adequately apprehended by +them, that "the assimilating power of America upon the Irish people, if +seven days slower than that of England in reaching Ireland, is sevenfold +more penetrating and powerful upon the whole population." By this the +Archbishop meant, what was unquestionably true, that even in 1868, only +twenty years after the great Irish exodus to America began, the social +and political ideas of America were exerting a seven-fold stronger +influence upon the character and the tendencies of the Irish people than +the social and political ideas of England. Thanks to the development of +the cables and the telegraph since 1868, and to the enormous progress +of America since that time in wealth and population, this "assimilating +power" reaches Ireland much more rapidly, and exerts upon the Irish +people a very much more drastic influence than in 1868. This +establishes, of course, a return current westward, which is as necessary +to he watched, and is as much neglected by American as the original +eastward current is by British public men. + +In this letter of 1868 to Earl Grey, the Archbishop of Westminster +desiring, as an Englishman, to counteract, if possible, this influence +which was drawing Ireland away from the British monarchy, and towards +the American Republic, maintained that by two things the "heart of +Ireland" might be won, and her affections enlisted with her interests in +the support of the unity, solidity, and prosperity of the British +Empire. One of these two things was "perfect religious equality between +the Catholics and the Protestants of Ireland." The other was that the +Imperial Legislature should by statute make it impossible for any +landlord in Ireland to commit three wrongs,--"first, the wrong of +abusing his rights by arbitrary eviction; secondly, by exacting an +exorbitant rent; thirdly, by appropriating to his own use the +improvements effected by the industry of his tenants." + +Perfect religious equality has since been established between the +Catholics and the Protestants of Ireland. The three wrongs which the +Archbishop called upon the Imperial Legislature to make impossible to +Irish landlords have since been made impossible by Statute. + +Yet it is on all hands admitted that the "unity, solidity, and +prosperity" of the British Empire have never been so seriously +threatened in Ireland as during the last ten years. Was the Archbishop +wrong, therefore, in his estimate of the situation in 1868? Or has the +centripetal influence of remedial British legislation since 1868 failed +to check a centrifugal advance "by leaps and bounds," in the +"assimilating power" of America upon Ireland? + + +IV. + +Just ten years ago, in 1878, Mr. Michael Davitt and Mr. John Devoy (the +latter of whom had been commissioned in 1865 by the Fenian leader +Stephens, as "chief organiser of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the +British army"), being then together in America, promulgated, Mr. Davitt +in a speech at Boston, and Mr. Devoy in a letter sent to the _Freeman's +Journal_ in Dublin, the outlines of a scheme for overthrowing British +rule in Ireland by revolutionising the ownership of land in that +country. + +The basis of this scheme had been laid thirty years before, in 1848, by +Finton Lalor, John Mitchel, and the present Archbishop of Cashel, then a +simple curate. + +It was thus stated by Lalor in his paper, the _Irish Felon_:-- + +"The entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the sun and +down to the centre of the earth, is vested, as of right, in the people +of Ireland. The soil of the country belongs as of right to the entire +people of the country, not to any one class, but to the nation." + +This was a distinct denial of the right of private property in land. If +true of Ireland and the Irish people this proposition was true of all +lands and of all peoples. Lalor, though more of a patriot than of a +philosopher, saw this plainly; and in one of the three numbers of his +paper which appeared before it was suppressed by the British Government, +he said "the principle I propose goes to the foundations of Europe, and +sooner or later will cause Europe to uprise." Michael Davitt saw this as +clearly in 1878 as Finton Lalor thirty years before. He had matured his +plans in connection with this principle during the weary but not wasted +years of his imprisonment as a Fenian at Dartmoor, a place, the name of +which is connected in America with many odious memories of the second +war between England and the United States; and going out to America +almost immediately after his release on a ticket of leave, he there +found the ideas of Finton Lalor and his associates of 1848, ripened and +harvested in the mind of an American student of sociology, Henry George. +Nowhere in the world has what a shrewd English traveller calls "the +illegitimate development of private wealth" attained such proportions in +modern times as in America, and especially in California. Nowhere, too, +in the world is the ostentatious waste of the results of labour upon the +antics of a frivolous plutocracy a more crying peril of our times than +in America. Henry George, an American of the Eastern States, who went to +the Pacific coast as a lad, had grown up with and watched the progress +of this social disease in California; and when Davitt reached America in +1878, Henry George was preparing to publish his revolutionary book on +_Progress and Poverty_, which appeared in 1879. Dates are important from +this point, as they will trace for the reader the formation of the +strongest forces which, as I believe, are to-day at work to shape the +future of Ireland, and, if Cardinal Manning is right, with the future of +Ireland, the future of the British Empire. + +The year 1878 saw the "Home Rule" movement in Irish politics brought to +an almost ludicrous halt by the success of Mr. Parnell, then a young +member of Parliament for Meath, in unhorsing the leader of that +movement, Mr. Butt. As the Irish members then had no coherent purpose or +policy, Mr. Parnell had, without much trouble, dominated and brigaded +them to follow him blindly into a system of parliamentary obstruction, +which there is reason to suppose was suggested to him by a friend who +had studied the Congressional proceedings of the United States, the +native country of his mother, and especially the tactics which had +enabled Mr. Randall of Pennsylvania, the leader of the Democratic +minority in the House of Representatives, to check the so-called "Civil +Rights Bill," sent down by the Senate to that House, during a continuous +session of forty-six hours and a half, with no fewer than seventy-seven +calls of the house, in the month of January 1875, some time before Mr. +Parnell first took his seat in the House of Commons. + +When Mr. Parnell, early in 1878, thanks to this system, had ousted Mr. +Butt, and got himself elected as President of the Irish "Home Rule +Confederation," he found himself, as an Irish friend of mine wrote to me +at the time, in an awkward position. He had command of the "Home Rule" +members at Westminster, but he had no notion what to do with them, and +neither they nor he could see anyway open to securing a permanent hold +upon the Irish voters. Three bad harvests in succession had thrown the +Irish tenants into a state which disinclined them to make sacrifices +for any sentimental policy, but prepared them to lend their ears eagerly +to Michael Davitt, when, on his return from the United States in the +early spring of 1879, he proclaimed anew, at Irishtown in his native +county of Mayo, the gospel of 1848 giving the land of Ireland to the +people of Ireland. Clearly Mr. Davitt held the winning card. As he +frankly put the case to a special correspondent, whom I sent to see him, +and whose report I published in New York, he saw that "the only issue +upon which Home Rulers, Nationalists, Obstructionists, and each and +every shade of opinion existing in Ireland could be united was the Land +Question," and of that question he took control. Naturally enough, Mr. +Parnell, himself a landowner under the English settlement, shrank at +first from committing himself and his fortunes to the leadership of Mr. +Davitt. But no choice was really left him, and there is reason to +believe that a decision was made easier to him by a then inchoate +undertaking that he should be personally protected against the financial +consequences to himself of the new departure, by a testimonial fund, +such as was in fact raised and presented to him in 1883. In June 1879 he +accepted the inevitable, and in a speech at Westport put himself with +his parliamentary following and machinery at the service of the founder +of the Irish Land League, uttering the keynote of Mr. Davitt's "new +departure" in his celebrated appeal to the Irish tenants to "keep a firm +grip of their homesteads." In the middle of October 1879, Mr. Davitt +formally organised the Irish National Land League, "to reduce rack-rents +and facilitate the obtaining of the ownership of the land of Ireland by +the occupiers," and Mr. Parnell was made its first President. He was +sent out to America in that capacity, at the end of the year to explain +to the Irish-American leaders the importance of supplying the new +organisation with funds sufficient to enable it to take and keep the +field at Westminster with a force of paid members not dependent for +their support upon the Irish constituencies. It was obviously impossible +either to guarantee any considerable number of Irishmen holding property +against loss by a policy aimed at the foundations of property, or to +count upon finding for every Irish seat a member of local weight and +stake, imbued with the spirit of martyrdom. + +Mr. Parnell landed at New York on the 1st of January 1880. An interview +with him, written out on board of the steamer which took him to America +by a correspondent detailed for that purpose, was published on the +morning after his arrival. It made on the whole an unfavourable +impression in America, which was not improved by an injudicious quarrel +into which he drifted with a portion of the American press, and which +was distinctly deepened by his inexcusable misrepresentations of the +conduct of Queen Victoria during the famine of 1847, and by his foolish +attacks upon the management and objects of the Duchess of Marlborough's +fund for the relief of Irish distress. The friends of Mr. Davitt in +America, however, and the leaders of the most active Irish organisations +there, came to the rescue, and as the two American parties were +preparing their lines of battle for the Presidential conflict of 1880, +Mr. Parnell was not only "put through" the usual course of "receptions" +by Mayors and State legislatures, but invited on an "off-day" to address +the House of Representatives at Washington. His tour, however, on the +whole, harmed more than it helped the new Irish movement on my side of +the Atlantic, and when he was called back to take his part in the +electoral contest precipitated by Lord Beaconsfield's dissolution of +Parliament at Easter 1880, Mr. Davitt went out to America himself to do +what his Parliamentary associate had not succeeded in doing. During this +visit of Mr. Davitt to the United States, Mr. Henry George finally +transferred his residence from San Francisco to New York, and made his +arrangements to visit England and Ireland, and bring about a practical +combination between the advocates of "the land for the people" on both +sides of the ocean. These arrangements he carried out in 1881-82, +publishing in 1881, in America, his treatise on the Irish Land question, +while Mr. Davitt, who had been arrested after his return to Europe by +Mr. Gladstone's Government in February 1881, on a revocation of his +ticket-of-leave, lay a prisoner at Portland. Mr. George himself, while +travelling in Ireland with an academical English friend, came under +"suspicion" in the eyes of one of Mr. Forster's officers, and was +arrested, but at once released. During the protracted confinement of Mr. +Davitt at Portland, the utter incapacity of Mr. Parnell and his +Parliamentary associates to manage the social revolution initiated by +the founder of the Land League became fully apparent, not only to +impartial, but even to sympathetic observers in America, long before it +was demonstrated by the incarceration of Mr. Parnell in Kilmainham, the +disavowal, under pressure, of the no-rent manifesto by Archbishop Croke, +and the suppression of the Land League. In sequestrating Mr. Davitt, Mr. +Forster, as was shown by the extraordinary scenes which in the House of +Commons followed his arrest, had struck at the core of the revolution, +and had the Irish Secretary not been deserted by Mr. Gladstone, under +influences which originated at Kilmainham, and were reinforced by the +pressure of the United States Government in the spring of 1882, history +might have had a very different tale to tell of the last six years in +Ireland and in Great Britain.[6] + + +V. + +It was after the return of Mr. George from Ireland to New York in 1882 +that the first black point appeared on the horizon, of the conflict, +inevitable in the nature of things, between the social revolution and +the Catholic Church, which assumed such serious proportions two years +ago in America, and which is now developing itself in Ireland. Among the +ablest and the most earnest converts in America to the doctrine of the +new social revolution was the Rev. Dr. M'Glynn, a Catholic priest, +standing in the front rank of his order in New York, in point alike of +eloquence in the pulpit, and of influence in private life. Finding, like +Michael Davitt, in the doctrine of Henry George an outcome and a +confirmation of the principle laid down in 1848 for the liberation of +Ireland by Finton Lalor, Dr. M'Glynn threw himself ardently into the +advocacy of that doctrine,--so ardently that in August 1882 the Prefect +of the Propaganda, Cardinal Simeoni, found it necessary to invite the +attention of Cardinal M'Closkey, then Archbishop of New York, to +speeches of Dr. M'Glynn, reported in the _Irish World_ of New York, as +"containing propositions openly opposed to the teachings of the Catholic +Church." + +It did not concern the Propaganda that these propositions ran on +all-fours with the policy of the Irish Land League established by Mr. +Davitt, and accepted by Mr. Parnell. What concerned the Propaganda in +the propositions of Dr. M'Glynn at New York in 1882 was precisely what +concerns the Propaganda in the programme of Mr. Davitt as mismanaged by +Mr. Dillon in Ireland in 1888--the incompatibility of these +propositions, and of that programme, with the teachings of the Church. + +Upon receiving the instructions of the Propaganda in August 1882, +Cardinal M'Closkey sent for Dr. M'Glynn, and set the matter plainly +before him. Dr. M'Glynn professed regret for his errors, promised to +abstain in future from political meetings, and begged the Cardinal to +inform the authorities at Home of his intention to walk more +circumspectly. The submission of Dr. M'Glynn was approved at Rome, but +it was gently intimated to him that it needed to be crowned by public +reparation for the scandal he had caused. He disregarded this pastoral +hint, and when the Archbishop Coadjutor of New York, Dr. Corrigan, went +to Rome in 1883 to represent the Cardinal, who was unequal to the +journey, he found the Propaganda by no means satisfied with the attitude +of Dr. M'Glynn. Two years after this, in October 1885, Cardinal +M'Closkey died, and Dr. Corrigan succeeded him as Archbishop of New +York. + +Between the first admonition given to the sacerdotal ally of Mr. George +in 1882 and this event much had come to pass in Ireland. The Land League +suppressed by Mr. Forster had been suffered to reappear as the National +League by Earl Spencer and Mr. Trevelyan. Sir William Harcourt's +stringent and sweeping "Coercion Act" of July 11th, 1882, passed under +the stress of the murders in the Phoenix Park, expiring by its own terms +in July 1885, Mr. Gladstone found himself forced either to alienate a +number of his Radical supporters by proposing a renewal of that Act, or +to invite a catastrophe in Ireland by attempting to rule that country +under "the ordinary law." + +He elected to escape from the dilemma by inviting a defeat in Parliament +on a secondary question of the Budget. He went out of power on the 9th +of June 1885, leaving Lord Salisbury to send the Earl of Carnarvon as +Viceroy to Ireland, and the Irish party in Parliament to darken the air +on both sides of the Atlantic with portentous intimations of a +mysterious compact, under which they were to secure Home Rule for +Ireland by establishing the Conservatives in their places at the general +election in November.[7] + +What came of all this I may briefly rehearse. Going out to America in +November 1885, and returning to England in January 1886, I remained in +London long enough to assure myself, and to publish in America my +conviction of the utter hopelessness of Mr. Gladstone's "Home Rule" +measure, the success of which would have made his government the ally +and the instrument of Mr. Parnell in carrying out the plans of Mr. +Davitt, Mr. Henry George, and the active Irish organisations of the +United States. All this is matter of history. + +The effect of Mr. Gladstone's speech of April 8, 1886, introducing his +Home Rule Bill, upon the Irish in America was simply intoxicating. They +saw him, as in a vision, repeating for the benefit of Ireland at Dublin, +on a grander scale, the impressive scene of his surrender in 1858 at +Corfu of the Protectorate of the Ionian Islands to Greece. + +Upon thousands also of Americans, interested more or less intelligently +in British affairs, but neither familiar, nor caring to be, with the +details of the political situation in Great Britain, this appearance of +the British Premier, as the champion of Home Rule for Ireland, +denouncing the "baseness and blackguardism" of Pitt and his +accomplices, the framers of the Union of 1800, naturally produced a very +profound impression. What might be almost called a "tidal wave" of +sympathy with the Irish National League, and with him as its ally, made +itself felt throughout the United States. Had I witnessed the drama from +the far-off auditorium in New York, I might doubtless have shared the +conviction of so many of my countrymen that we were about to behold the +consummation tunefully anticipated so many years ago by John Quincy +Adams, and-- + + "Proud of herself, victorious over fate, + See Erin rise, an independent state." + +The moment seemed propitious for a resolute forward move in America of +Mr. Henry George, and the other American believers in the doctrine of +"the land for the people." It would have been more propitious had not +the political managers of the Irish party, misapprehending to the last +moment the drift of things in the British Parliament, and counting +firmly upon a victory for Mr. Gladstone, either at Westminster or at the +polls, insisted upon holding a great convention of the Irish in America +at Chicago in August 1886. A proposition to do this had been made in the +spring of 1885, and put off, in judicious deference to the disgust which +many independent Americans of both parties then felt at the course +pursued by Mr. Parnell's friends, Mr. Egan and Mr. Sullivan in 1884, +when these leaders openly led the Irish with drums beating and green +flags flying out of the Democratic into the Republican camp. + +As it was, however, Mr. Gladstone having gone out of power a second +time, on the second day of June in 1886, the non-parliamentary and real +leader in Ireland of the Irish revolutionary movement, Mr. Davitt, came +overtly to the front, and crossed the Atlantic to ride the whirlwind and +direct the storm at the Convention appointed to be held in Chicago on +the 18th of August. + +In New York he found Mr. Henry George quietly preparing to put the +emotions of the moment to profit at the municipal election which was to +occur in that city in November, and Dr. M'Glynn more enamoured than ever +of the doctrine of "the land for the people," and more defiant than ever +of the Propaganda and of his ecclesiastical superiors. It was resolved +that Mr. George should come forward as a candidate for the mayoralty in +November, and Dr. M'Glynn determined to take the field in support of +him. + + +VI. + +We now come to close quarters. + +Dr. Corrigan, as I have said, had become the Archbishop of New York in +October 1885. The Irish-American Convention met at Chicago, Mr. Davitt +dominating its proceedings by his courageous and outspoken support of +his defeated Parliamentary allies in England. The candidacy of Mr. Henry +George had not yet been announced in New York. But Dr. M'Glynn resumed +his practice of addressing public meetings in support of the doctrines +of Mr. Davitt and of Henry George. The Archbishop's duty was plain. It +was not pleasant. A Catholic prelate of Irish blood living in New York +might have been pardoned for avoiding, if he could, an open intervention +at such a moment, to prevent an able and popular priest from disobeying +his ecclesiastical superiors in his zeal for a doctrine hostile to +"landlordism," and cordially approved by the most influential of the +Irish leaders. + +But on the 21st August 1886, while all the Irishmen in New York were +wild with excitement over the proceedings at Chicago, Archbishop +Corrigan did his duty, and admonished Dr. M'Glynn to restrain his +political ardour. The admonition was thrown away. A month later, the +canvass of Mr. Henry George being then fully opened, Dr. M'Glynn sent +Mr. George himself to wait upon the Archbishop with a note of +introduction as his "very dear and valued friend," in the hope of +inducing the Archbishop to withdraw his inhibition and allow him to +speak at a great meeting, then about to be held, of the supporters of +Mr. George. + +The Archbishop replied in a firm but friendly note, forbidding Dr. +M'Glynn "in the most positive manner" to attend the meeting referred to, +or "any other political meeting whatever." + +Dr. M'Glynn deliberately disobeyed this order, attended the meeting, and +threw himself with ever increasing heat into the war against +landlordism. On the 2d of October 1886, therefore, he was formally +"suspended" from his priestly functions--nor has he ever since been +permitted to resume them. Another priest presides over the great church +of St. Stephen, of which he was the rector. More than once the door of +repentance and return has been opened to him; but, I believe, he is +still waging war in his own way, and beyond the precincts of the +priesthood, both upon the right of private property in land and upon the +Pope. + +He is a man of vigorous intellect; and he has defined the issue between +himself and the Church in language so terse and clear that I reproduce +it here. It defines also the real issue of to-day between the Church +speaking through the Papal Decree of April 20, 1888, and the National +League of Ireland acting through the "Plan of Campaign." + +No heed having been paid by Dr. M'Glynn to several successive +intimations summoning him to go to Rome and explain his attitude, he +finally, on the 20th of December 1886, wrote a letter in which, with a +single skilful turn of his wrist, he took out the core of Henry George's +doctrine as to land, which really is the core also of the Irish Plan of +Campaign, and thus laid it before the Archbishop of New York:-- + +"My doctrine about land has been made clear in speeches, in reports of +interviews, and in published articles, and I repeat it here. I have +taught, and I shall continue to teach in speeches and writings, as long +as I live, that land is rightfully the property of the people in common, +and that private ownership of land is against natural justice, no matter +by what civil or ecclesiastical laws it may be sanctioned; and I would +bring about instantly, if I could, such change of laws all over the +world as would confiscate private property in land without one penny of +compensation to the miscalled owners." + +There is no shuffling here. With logical precision Dr. M'Glynn strips +Mr. George's doctrine of its technical disguise as a form of taxation, +and presents it to the world as a simple Confiscation of Rents. Many +acute critics of _Progress and Poverty_ have failed to see that when +Mr. George calls upon the State to take over to itself, and to its own +uses, the whole annual rental value of the bare land of a country, the +land, that is, irrespectively of improvements put upon it by man, he +proposes not "a single tax upon land" at all, but an actual confiscation +of the rental of the land--which for practical purposes is the land--to +the uses of the State, without a levy, and without compensation to "the +miscalled owners." + +When a tax is levied, the need by the State levying it of a certain sum +of money must first be ascertained by competent authority, legislative +or executive, as the case may be, and the law-making power must then, +according to a prescribed form, enact that to raise such a sum a certain +tax shall be levied on designated property or occupations. If the +exigencies of the State are held to require it, a tax may be levied upon +property of more than its value, as in the case, for example, of the +customs duty which was imposed in one of our "tariff revisions" upon +plate glass imported into the United States by way of "protecting" a +single plate-glass factory then existing in the United States. This was +an abominable abuse of a constitutional power, but it was not +"confiscation." What Henry George proposes is confiscation, as Dr. +M'Glynn plainly sees and courageously says. What he proposes is that +the State shall compel the annual rental value of all land to be paid +into the public treasury, without regard to the question whether the +State does or does not need such a sum of money. That is confiscation +pure and simple, the State, in the assumed interest of the State, +proceeding against the private owners of land, or the "miscalled +owners," to use Dr. M'Glynn's significant phrase, precisely as under the +feudal system the State proceeded against the private property of rebels +and traitors. No good reason can be shown why the process should not be +applied to personalty and to debts as well as to land. + +This was the doctrine indorsed at the polls in New York in November 1886 +by 68,000 voters. Nor can there be much doubt that it would have been +indorsed by the few thousand more votes needed to defeat Mr. Hewitt, the +actual Mayor of New York, and to put Mr. Henry George into the Chief +Magistracy of the first city of the New World, had not its teachers and +preachers been confronted by the quiet, cool, and determined prelate who +met it as plainly as it was put. "Your letter," said the Archbishop, +"has brought the painful intelligence that you decline to go to Rome, +and that you have taught, and will continue to teach, the injustice of +private ownership of land, no matter by what laws of Church or State it +may be sanctioned. In view of such declarations, to permit you to +exercise the holy ministry would be manifestly wrong." + +In these few words of the Archbishop of New York, we have plainly +affirmed in 1886 the principle underlying the Papal Decree of 1888 +against the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting in Ireland. There is no +question of parties or of politics in the one case or in the other. When +Dr. M'Glynn talked about the private ownership of land in New York as +"against natural justice," he flung himself not only against the Eighth +Commandment and the teachings of the Catholic Church, touching the +rights of property, but against the constitutions of the State of New +York and of the United States. That "private property shall not be taken +for public uses without just compensation" is a fundamental provision of +the Constitution of the United States, which is itself a part of the +Constitution of every State of the Union; and the right of private +ownership in land is defined and protected beyond doubt or cavil in New +York under the State Constitution. An Act passed in 1830 provides and +declares that all lands within the State "are allodial, so that, subject +only to the liability to escheat, the entire and absolute property is +vested in the owners according to the nature of their respective +estates." + +By this Act "all feudal tenures of every description, with all their +incidents," were "abolished." Most of the "feudal incidents" of the +socage tenure had been previously abolished by an Act passed in 1787, +under the first Constitution of the State, adopted at Kingston in 1777, +a year after the Declaration of American Independence; and socage tenure +by fixed and determinate service, not military or variable by the lord +at his will, had been adopted long before by an Act of the first +Assembly of the Province of New York held in 1691 under the first Royal +Governor, after the reconquest of the province from Holland, and in the +reign of William and Mary. This Act provided that all lands should "be +held in free and common socage according to the tenure of East Greenwich +in England." It is an interesting circumstance that the right of private +ownership in land, thus rooted in our history, should have been defended +against a threatening revolutionary movement in New York by the courage +and loyalty to the Constitution of his country as well as to his Church +of a Catholic Archbishop. For this same Assembly of the Province of New +York in 1693, in an Act "to maintain Protestant ministers and churches," +enacted that "every Jesuit and popish priest" found in the Province +after a certain day named, should be put into "perpetual imprisonment," +with the proviso that if he escaped and was retaken he should suffer +death. And even in the Constitution of 1777 the Protestantism of New +York expressed its hostility to the Catholic Church by exacting +subjection "in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil." + +The position of the Archbishop, both as a churchman and as a citizen, +was impregnable. When Dr. M'Glynn advocated the plan of Henry George, he +advocated at one and the same time the immoral seizure and confiscation +of the whole income of many persons within the protection of the +Constitution of New York, and the overthrow of the Constitution of that +State and of the United States. It may be within the competency of the +British Parliament to enact such a confiscation of rent without a +revolution, there being not only no allodial tenure of land in Great +Britain, but, it would appear, no limit to the power of a British +Parliament over the lives, liberties, and property of British subjects, +but the will of its members. But it is not within the competency of the +Congress of the United States, or of the Assembly of New York, to do +such a thing, the powers of these bodies being controlled and denned by +written Constitutions, which can only be altered or amended in a +prescribed manner and through prescribed and elaborate forms. + + +VII. + +By the middle of October 1886 it became clear that Mr. George, whose +candidacy had at first been regarded with indifference by the party +managers, both Democratic and Republican, in New York, would command a +vote certainly larger than that of one of these parties, and possibly +larger than that of either of them. To put him at the head of a poll of +three parties would elect him. This was so apparent that he and his +friends, including Dr. M'Glynn and Mr. Davitt, were warranted in +expecting a victory. + +It was hardly therefore by a mere coincidence that this precise time was +selected for opening the war in Ireland against Rent. It is quite +possible that if Mr. Dillon and his Parliamentary friends had been in +less of a hurry to open this war before the return of Mr. Davitt from +America, it might have been opened in a manner less "politically +stupid," if not less "morally wrong." But, of course, if Mr. Henry +George had been elected Mayor of New York, as he came so near to being +in November 1886, and Mr. Davitt had returned to Ireland with the +prestige of contributing to place him in the municipal chair of the most +important city in the New World, Mr. Dillon and his Parliamentary +friends would probably have found it necessary to accept a much less +conspicuous part in the conduct of the campaign. + +It was on the 17th of October 1886 that Mr. John Dillon, M.P., first +promulgated the "Plan of Campaign" at Portumna, in a speech which was +promptly flashed under the Atlantic to New York, there to feed the +flame, already fanned by the eloquence of Dr. M'Glynn, into a blaze of +enthusiasm for the apostle of the New Gospel of Confiscation. + +Had the "Plan of Campaign" then been met by the highest local authority +of the Catholic Church in Ireland, as Henry George's doctrine of +Confiscation was met in New York by Archbishop Corrigan, it might never +have been necessary to issue the Papal Decree of April 1888. But while +the Bishop of Limerick unhesitatingly denounced the "Plan of Campaign" +as "politically stupid and morally wrong," the Archbishop of Dublin +bestowed upon it what may be called a left-handed benediction. Admitting +that it empowered one of the parties to a contract to "fix the terms on +which that contract should continue in force," the Archbishop actually +condoned the claim of this immoral power by the tenant, on the ground +that the same immoral power had been theretofore exercised by the +landlord! Peter having robbed Paul from January to July, that is, Paul +should be encouraged by his spiritual guides to rob Peter from July to +January! + +That the Catholic Church should even seem for a time to speak with two +voices on such a point as the moral quality of political machinery, or +that speaking with one voice upon such a point in America, it should +even seem to speak with another voice in Ireland, would clearly be a +disaster to the Church and to civilisation. From the moment therefore, +in 1886, when the issue between Dr. M'Glynn and the Archbishop of New +York was defined, as I have shown, and the Irish National League, with a +quasi-indorsement from the Archbishop of Dublin, had arrayed itself +practically and openly on the side of Dr. M'Glynn and against the +Archbishop of New York, interests far transcending those of any +political party in Ireland, in Great Britain, or in the United States, +were involved. Unfortunately for the immediate and decisive settlement +by Rome of the issue between Dr. M'Glynn and the Archbishop of New York, +a certain vague but therefore more vexatious measure of countenance had +been given, before that issue was raised, to the theories of Mr. Henry +George by another American prelate, the Cardinal Archbishop of +Baltimore, and by more than one eminent ecclesiastic in Europe. Of +course this would have been impossible had these ecclesiastics +penetrated, like Dr. M'Glynn, to the heart of Mr. George's contention, +or discerned with the acumen of the Archbishop of New York the +fundamental difference between any imaginable exercise of the power of +taxation by a Constitutional Government, and Mr. George's doctrine of +the Confiscation of Rent. But this having occurred, it was inevitable +that Rome, which has to deal with a world-wide and complex system of the +most varied and delicate human affairs, should proceed in the matter +with infinite patience and care. In January 1887 the Propaganda +accordingly cabled thus to the Archbishop of New York,--Dr. M'Glynn +persisting in his refusal to go to Rome--"for prudential reasons +Propaganda has heretofore postponed action in the case of Dr. M'Glynn. +The Sovereign Pontiff has now taken the matter into his own hands." + +In the hands of his Holiness the matter was safe; and in the Papal +Decree of April 20, 1888, we have at once the most conclusive +vindication of the wisdom and courage shown by the Archbishop of New +York in 1886, and the most emphatic condemnation of the attitude assumed +in 1886 by the Archbishop of Dublin. + + +VIII. + +It must not be assumed that Mr. George has been finally defeated in +America. On the contrary, he was never more active. A legacy left to +him by an Irish-American for the propagation of his doctrines has just +been declared by the Vice-Chancellor of New Jersey, to be invalid on the +ground that George's doctrines are "in opposition to the laws"; and this +decision has bred an uproar in the press which is reviving popular +attention all over the country to the doctrines and to their author. He +is astute, persevering, as much in earnest as Mr. Davitt, and as +familiar with the weak points in the political machinery of the United +States as is Mr. Davitt with the weak points in the political machinery +of Great Britain. This is a Presidential year. The election of 1888 will +be decided, as was the election of 1884, in New York. The Democratic +party go into the contest with a New York candidate, President +Cleveland, who was presented to the Convention at St. Louis for +nomination, not by an Irishman from New York, but by an Irishman from +the hopelessly Republican State of Pennsylvania, and whose renomination, +distasteful to the Democratic Governor of the State, was also openly +opposed by the Democratic Mayor of the city of New York, Mr. Hewitt, Mr. +George's successful competitor in the Municipal election of 1886. +Leaving Dr. M'Glynn to uphold the Confiscation of Land against the Pope +in New York, as Mr. Davitt, Mr. Dillon, and a certain number of Irish +priests uphold the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting against the Pope in +Ireland, Mr. George supports President Cleveland, and in so doing +cleverly makes a flank movement towards his "exclusive taxation of +land," by promoting, under the cover of "Revenue Reform," an attack on +the indirect taxation from which the Federal Revenues are now mainly +derived. Meanwhile the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore, who is also a +political supporter of President Cleveland, has not yet been confronted +by the supreme authority at Rome with such a final sentence upon the +true nature of Mr. George's "exclusive taxation of land," as the +clear-sighted Archbishop of New York is said to be seeking to obtain +from the Holy Office. What the end will be I have little doubt. But for +the moment, it will be seen, the situation in America is only less +confused and troublesome than the situation in Ireland. It is confused +and troubled too, as I have tried in this prologue to show, by forces +identical in character with those which confuse and trouble the +situation in Ireland. + +Of the social conditions amid and against which those forces are working +in America, I believe myself to have some knowledge. + +To get an actual touch and living sense of the social conditions amid +and against which they are working in Ireland was my object, I repeat, +in making the visits, of which this book is a record. More than this I +could not hope, in the time at my disposal, to do. With very much less +than this, it appears to me, many persons, whose views of Irish affairs +I had been inclined, before making these visits, to regard with respect, +must have found it possible to rest content. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +DUBLIN, _Monday, Jan. 30, 1888._--I left London last night. The train +was full of people going to attend levees and drawing-rooms about to be +held at Dublin Castle. + +Near Watford we lost half an hour by the breaking of a connecting-rod: +but the London and North-Western is a model railway, and we ran +alongside the pier at Holyhead exactly "on time." There is no such +railway travelling in America, excepting on the Pennsylvania Central; +and the North-Western sleeping-carriages, if less monumental and +elaborate than ours, are better ventilated, and certainly not less +comfortable. + +I had expected to come upon unusual things and people in Ireland, but I +had not expected to travel thither in company with an Irish Jacobite. +Two of my fellow-passengers, chatting as they smoked their cigarettes +in the little vestibule between the cabins of the carriage, had much to +say about Lord Ashburnham, and the "Order of the White Rose," and the +Grand Mass to be celebrated to-morrow morning at the Church of the +Carmelites in London, in memory of Charles Edward Stuart, who died at +Rome in 1788, and now lies buried as Charles III., King of Great Britain +and Ireland, in the vaults of the Vatican, together with his father +"James III.," and his brother "Henry IX." One of the two was as hot and +earnest about the "Divine Right of Kings" as the parson who, less than +forty years ago, preached a sermon to prove that the great cholera +visitation of 1849 was a direct chastisement of the impiety of the Royal +Mint in dropping the letters D.G. from the first florins of Queen +Victoria issued in that year. He bewailed his sad fate in being called +over to Ireland by family affairs at such a moment, and evidently did +not know that the Mass in question had been countermanded by the +Cardinal Archbishop. + +The incident, odd enough in itself, interested me the more that +yesterday, as it happens, the Cardinal had spoken with me of this +curious affair. + +He heard of it for the first time on Saturday, and, sending at once for +the priest in charge of the Carmelite Church, forbade the celebration. +Later on in the evening, two strangers came to the Archbishop's house, +and in great agitation besought him to allow the arrangements for the +Mass to go on. He declined to do this, and sent them away impaled on a +dilemma. "What you propose," said the Cardinal, "is either a piece of +theatrical tomfoolery, in which case it is unfit to be performed in a +church, or it is flat treason, in which case you should be sent to the +Tower!" + +They went away, like the Senatus of Augsburg from the presence of +Napoleon--"_très mortifiés et peu contents_." After they had gone, the +Cardinal remembered that for some time past queer documents had reached +him through the post-office, setting forth the doctrine of Divine Right, +and the story of the Stuarts. One of these, which with the rest he had +thrown into the fire, was an elaborate genealogical chart, designed to +show that the crowns of Great Britain and Ireland ought rightfully to be +worn by a certain princess in Bavaria! + +If there is anything more in all this than a new variety of the "blue +China craze," may it not be taken as a symptom of that vague but clearly +growing dissatisfaction with the nineteenth century doctrine of +government by mere majorities, which is by no means confined to Europe? +This feeling underlies the "National Association" for getting a preamble +put into the Constitution of the United States, "recognising Almighty +God as the source of all authority and power in Civil Government." There +was such a recognition in the Articles of Confederation of 1781. +Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia should have mentioned to His Holiness +the existence of this Association, when he presented to Leo XIII., the +other day at Rome, President Cleveland's curious Jubilee gift of an +emblazoned copy of what a Monsignore of my acquaintance calls "the +godless American Constitution."[8] + +We made a quick quiet passage to Kingstown. These boats--certainly the +best appointed of their sort afloat--are owned, I find, in Dublin, and +managed exclusively by their Irish owners, to whom the credit therefore +belongs of making the mail service between Holyhead and Kingstown as +admirable, in all respects, as the mail services between Dover and the +Continental ports are not. + +I landed at Kingstown with Lord Ernest Hamilton, M.P. for North Tyrone, +with whom I have arranged an expedition to Gweedore in Donegal, one of +the most ill-famed of the "congested districts" of Ireland, and just now +made a point of special interest by the arrest of Father M'Fadden, the +parish priest of the place, for "criminally conspiring to compel and +induce certain tenants not to fulfil their legal obligations." + +I could understand such a prosecution as this in America, where the +Constitution makes it impossible even for Congress to pass laws +"impairing the validity of contracts." But as the British Parliament has +been passing such laws for Ireland ever since Mr. Butt in 1870 raised +the standard of Irish Land Reform under the name of Home Rule, it seems +a little absurd, not to say Hibernian, of the British authorities to +prosecute Father M'Fadden merely for bettering their own instruction in +his own way. I could better understand a prosecution of Father M'Fadden +on such grounds by the authorities of his own Church. + +A step from the boat at Kingstown puts you into the train for Dublin. +Before we got into motion, a weird shape as of one just escaped from +the Wild West show of Buffalo Bill peered in at the window, inviting us +to buy the morning papers, or a copy of "the greatest book ever +published, 'Paddy at Home!'" This proved to be a translation of M. de +Mandat Grancey's lively volume, _Chez Paddy_. The vendor, "Davy," is one +of the "chartered libertines" of Dublin. He is supposed to be, and I +dare say is, a warm Nationalist, but he has a keen eye to business, and +alertly suits his cries to his customers. Recognising the Conservative +member for North Tyrone, he promptly recommended us to buy the _Irish +Times_ and the _Express_ as "the two best papers in all Ireland." But he +smiled approval when I asked for the _Freeman's Journal_ also, in which +I found a report of a speech delivered yesterday by Mr. Davitt at +Rathkeale, chiefly remarkable for a sensible protest against the +ridiculous and rantipole abuse lavished upon Mr. Balfour by the +Nationalist orators and newspapers. I am not surprised to see this. Mr. +Davitt has the stuff in him of a serious revolutionary leader, and no +such man can stomach the frothy and foolish vituperation to which +parliamentary agitators are addicted, not in Ireland only. Unlike Mr. +Parnell, who is forced to have one voice for New York and Cincinnati, +and another voice for Westminster, Mr. Davitt is free to be always +avowedly bent on bringing about a thorough Democratic revolution in +Ireland. I believe him to be too able a man to imagine, as some of the +Irish agitators do, that this can be done without the consent of +Democratic England, and he has lived too much in England, and knows the +English democracy too well, I suspect, not to know that to abuse an +executive officer for determination and vigour is the surest way to make +him popular. Calling Mr. Forster "Buckshot" Forster did him no harm. On +the contrary, the epithet might have helped him to success had not Mr. +Gladstone given way behind him at the most critical moment of his +grapple with the revolutionary organisation in Ireland. We hear a great +deal about resistance to tyrants being obedience to God, but I fear that +obedience to God is not the strongest natural passion of the human +heart, and I doubt whether resistance to tyrants can often be promoted +by putting about a general conviction that the tyrant has a thumping big +stick in his hand, and may be relied upon to use it. Even Tom Paine had +the wit to see that it was his "good heart" which brought Louis XVI. to +the scaffold. + +Nobody who had not learned from the speeches made in England, and the +cable despatches sent to America, that freedom of speech and of the +press has been brutally trampled under foot in Ireland by a "Coercion" +Government would ever suspect it from reading the Dublin papers which I +this morning bought. + +As a Democratic journalist I had some practical knowledge of a true +"Coercion" government in America a quarter of a century ago. The +American editor who had ventured in 1862 to publish in a New York or +Philadelphia newspaper a letter from Washington, speaking of the +Unionist Government by President Lincoln, as the letter from London +published to-day in the _Freeman's Journal_ speaks of the Unionist +Government of Lord Salisbury, would have found himself in one of the +casemates of Fort Lafayette within twenty-four hours. Our Republican +rulers acted upon the maxim laid down by Mr. Tilden's friend, Montgomery +Blair,[9] that "to await the results of slow judicial prosecution is to +allow crime to be consummated, with the expectation of subsequent +punishment, instead of preventing its accomplishment by prompt and +direct interference." Perhaps Americans take their Government more +seriously than Englishmen do. Certainly we stand by it more sternly in +bad weather. Even so good a Constitutionalist as Professor Parsons at +Harvard, I remember, when a student asked him if he would not suspend +the _Habeas Corpus_ in the case of a man caught hauling down the +American flag, promptly replied, "I would not suspend the _Habeas +Corpus_; I would suspend the _Corpus_." + +We found no "hansoms" at the Dublin Station, only "outside cars," and +cabs much neater than the London four-wheelers. One of these brought us +at a good pace to Maple's Hotel in Kildare Street, a large, +old-fashioned but clean and comfortable house. My windows look down upon +a stately edifice of stone erecting on Kildare Street for all sorts of +educational and "exhibitional" purposes, with the help of an Imperial +grant, I am told, and to be called the Leinster Hall. The style is +decidedly composite, with colonnades and loggie and domes and porticos, +and recalls the ancient Roman buildings depicted in that fresco of a +belated slave-girl knocking at her mistress's door which with its +companion pieces is fast fading away upon the walls of the "House of +Livia" on the Palatine. + +At one end of this street is the fashionable and hospitable Kildare +Street Club; at the other the Shelburne Hotel, known to all Americans. +This seems to have been "furbished-up" since I last saw it. There, for +the last time as it proved, I saw and had speech of my friend of many +years, the prince of all preachers in our time, Father Burke of Tallaght +and of San Clemente. + +I had telegraphed to him from London that I should halt in Dublin for a +day, on my way to America, to see him. He came betimes, to find me +almost as badly-off as St. Lawrence upon his gridiron. The surgeon whom +the hotel people had hastily summoned to relieve me from a sudden attack +of that endemic Irish ecstasy, the lumbago, had applied what he called +the "heroic treatment" on my telling him that I had no time to be ill, +but must spend that day with Father Burke, dine that night with Mr. +Irving and Mr. Toole, and go on the next day to America. + +"What has this Inquisitor done to you?" queried Father Tom. + +"Cauterised me with chloroform." + +"Oh! that's a modern improvement! Let me see--" and, scrutinising the +results, he said, with a merry twinkle in his deep, dark eyes--"I see +how it is! They brought you a veterinary!" + +This was in 1878. On that too brief, delightful morning, we talked of +all things--supralunar, lunar, and sublunary. Much of Wales, I remember, +where he had been making a visit. "A glorious country," he said, "and +the Welsh would have been Irish, only they lost the faith." Full of love +for Ireland as he was, he was beginning then to be troubled by symptoms +in the Nationalist movement, which could not be regarded with composure +by one who, in his youth at Rome, had seen, with me, the devil of +extremes drive Italy down a steep place into the sea. + +Five years afterwards I landed at Queenstown, in July 1883, intending to +visit him at Tallaght. But when the letter which I sent to announce my +coming reached the monastery, the staunchest Soldier of the Church in +Ireland lay there literally "dead on the field of honour." Chatham, in +the House of Lords, John Quincy Adams, in the House of Representatives, +fell in harness, but neither death so speaks to the heart as the simple +and sublime self-sacrifice of the great Dominican, dragging himself from +his dying bed into Dublin to spend the last splendour of his genius and +his life for the starving children of the poor in Donegal. + +What would I not give for an hour with him now! + +After breakfast I went out to find Mr. Davitt, hoping he might suggest +some way of seeing the Nationalist meeting on Wednesday night without +undergoing the dismal penance of sitting out all the speeches. I wished +also to ask him why at Rathkeale he talked about the Dunravens as +"absentees." He was born in Lord Lucan's country, and may know little of +Limerick, but he surely ought to know that Adare Manor was built of +Irish materials, and by Irish workmen, under the eye of Lord Dunraven, +all the finest ornamental work, both in wood and in stone, of the +mansion, being done by local mechanics; and also that the present owners +of Adare spend a large part of every year in the country, and are +deservedly popular. He was not to be found at the National League +headquarters, nor yet at the Imperial Hotel, which is his usual resort, +as Morrison's is the resort of Mr. Parnell. So I sent him a note through +the Post-Office. + +"You had better seal it with wax," said a friend, in whose chambers I +wrote it. + +"Pray, why?" + +"Oh! all the letters to well-known people that are not opened by the +police are opened by the Nationalist clerks in the Post-Offices. 'Tis a +way we've always had with us in Ireland!" + +I had some difficulty in finding the local habitation of the "National +League." I had been told it was in O'Connell Street, and sharing the +usual and foolish aversion of my sex to asking questions on the highway, +I perambulated a good many streets and squares before I discovered that +it has pleased the local authorities to unbaptize Sackville Street, "the +finest thoroughfare in Europe," and convert it into "O'Connell Street." +But they have failed so ignominiously that the National League finds +itself obliged to put up a huge sign over its doorways, notifying all +the world that the offices are not where they appear to be in Upper +Sackville Street at all, but in "O'Connell Street." The effect is as +ludicrous as it is instructive. Oddly enough, they have not attempted to +change the name of another thoroughfare which keeps green the "pious and +immortal memory" of William III., dear to all who in England or America +go in fear and horror of the scarlet woman that sitteth upon the seven +hills! There is a fashion, too, in Dublin of putting images of little +white horses into the fanlights over the doorways, which seems to smack +of an undue reverence for the Protestant Succession and the House of +Hanover. + +What you expect is the thing you never find in Ireland. I had rather +thoughtlessly taken it for granted the city would be agog with the great +Morley reception which is to come off on Wednesday night. There is a +good deal about it in the _Freeman's Journal_ to-day, but chiefly +touching a sixpenny quarrel which has sprung up between the Reception +Committee and the Trades Council over the alleged making of contracts by +the Committee with "houses not employing members of the regular trades." + +For this the typos and others propose to "boycott" the Committee and the +Reception and the Liberators from over the sea. From casual +conversations I gather that there is much more popular interest in the +release, on Wednesday, of Mr. T.D. Sullivan, ex-Lord Mayor, champion +swimmer, M.P., poet, and patriot. A Nationalist acquaintance of mine +tells me that in Tullamore Mr. Sullivan has been most prolific of +poetry. He has composed a song which I am afraid will hardly please my +Irish Nationalist friends in America: + + "We are sons of Sister Isles, + Englishmen and Irishmen, + On our friendship Heaven smiles; + Tyrant's schemes and Tory wiles + Ne'er shall make us foes again." + +There is to be a Drawing-Room, too, at the Castle on Wednesday night. +One would not unnaturally gather from the "tall talk" in Parliament and +the press that this conjuncture of a great popular demonstration in +favour of Irish nationality, with a display of Dublin fashion doing +homage to the alien despot, might be ominous of "bloody noses and +cracked crowns." Not a bit of it! I asked my jarvey, for instance, on an +outside car this afternoon, whether he expected a row to result from +these counter currents of the classes and the masses. "A row!" he +replied, looking around at me in amazement. "A row is it? and what for +would there be? Shure they'll be through with the procession in time to +see the carriages!" + +Obviously he saw nothing in either show to offend anybody; though he +could clearly understand that an intelligent citizen might be vexed if +he found himself obliged to sacrifice one of them in order to fully +enjoy the other. + +Lady Londonderry, it seems, is not yet well enough to cross the Channel; +but the Duchess of Marlborough, who is staying here with her nephew the +Lord-Lieutenant, has volunteered to assist him in holding the +Drawing-Room, whereupon a grave question has arisen in Court circles as +to whether the full meed of honours due to a Vice-Queen regnant ought to +be paid also to an ex-Vice-Queen. This is debated by the Dublin dames as +hotly as official women in Washington fight over the eternal question of +the relative precedence due to the wives of Senators and "Cabinet +Ministers." It will be a dark day for the democracy when women get the +suffrage--and use it. + +At luncheon to-day I met the Attorney-General, Mr. O'Brien, who, with +prompt Irish hospitality, asked me to dine with him to-morrow night, and +Mr. Wilson of the London _Times_, an able writer on Irish questions from +the English point of view. Mr. Balfour, who was expected, did not +appear, being detained by guests at his own residence in the Park. + +I went to see him in the afternoon at the Castle, and found him in +excellent spirits; certainly the mildest-mannered and most sensible +despot who ever trampled in the dust the liberties of a free people. He +was quite delightful about the abuse which is now daily heaped upon him +in speeches and in the press, and talked about it in a casual dreamy way +which reminded me irresistibly of President Lincoln, whom, if in nothing +else, he resembles alike in longanimity and in length of limb. He had +seen Davitt's _caveat_, filed at Rathkeale, against the foolishness of +trying to frighten him out of his line of country by calling him bad +names. "Davitt is quite right," he said, "the thing must be getting to +be a bore to the people, who are not such fools as the speakers take +them to be. One of the stenographers told me the other day that they had +to invent a special sign for the phrase 'bloody and brutal Balfour,' it +is used so often in the speeches." About the prosecution of Father +M'Fadden of Gweedore, he knew nothing beyond the evidence on which it +had been ordered. This he showed me. If the first duty of a government +is to govern, which is the American if not the English way of looking at +it, Father M'Fadden must have meant to get himself into trouble when he +used such language as this to his people: "I am the law in Gweedore; I +despise the recent Coercion Act; if I got a summons to-morrow, I would +not obey it." From language like this to the attitude of Father M'Glynn +in New York, openly flouting the authority of the Holy See itself, is +but an easy and an inevitable step. + +Neither "Home Rule" nor any other "Rule" can exist in a country in which +men whose words carry any weight are suffered to take up such an +attitude. It is just the attitude of the "Comeouters" in New England +during my college days at Harvard, when Parker Pillsbury and Stephen +Foster used to saw wood and blow horns on the steps of the +meeting-houses during service, in order to free their consciences "and +protest against the Sabbatarian laws." + +To see a Catholic priest assume this attitude is almost as amazing as to +see an educated Englishman like Mr. Wilfrid Blunt trying to persuade +Irishmen that Mr. Balfour made him the confidant of a grisly scheme for +doing sundry Irish leaders to death by maltreating them in prison. + +I see with pleasure that the masculine instincts of Mr. Davitt led him +to allude to this nonsense yesterday at Rathkeale in a half +contemptuous way. Mr. Balfour spoke of it to-day with generosity and +good feeling. "When I first heard of it," he said, "I resented it, of +course, as an outrageous imputation on Mr. Blunt's character, and +denounced it accordingly. What I have since learned leads me to fear +that he really may have said something capable of being construed in +this absurd sense, but if he did, it must have been under the +exasperation produced by finding himself locked up." + +I heard the story of Mr. Balfour's meeting with Mr. Blunt very plainly +and vigorously told, while I was staying the other day at Knoyle House, +in the immediate neighbourhood of Clouds, where the two were guests +under conditions which should be at least as sacred in the eyes of +Britons as of Bedouins. In Wiltshire nobody seemed for a moment to +suppose it possible that Mr. Blunt can have really deceived himself as +to the true nature of any conversation he may have had with Mr. Balfour. +This is paying a compliment to Mr. Blunt's common sense at the expense +of his imagination. In any view of the case, to lie in wait at the lips +of a fellow guest in the house of a common friend, for the counts of a +political indictment against him, is certainly a proceeding, as Davitt +said yesterday of Mr. Blunts tale of horror, quite "open to question." +But, as Mr. Blunt himself has sung, "'Tis conscience makes us sinners, +not our sin," and I have no doubt the author of the _Poems of Proteus_ +really persuaded himself that he was playing lawn tennis and smoking +cigarettes in Wiltshire with a modern Alva, cynically vain of his own +dark and bloody designs. Now that he finds himself struck down by the +iron hand of this remorseless tyrant, why should he not cry aloud and +warn, not Ireland alone, but humanity, against the appalling crimes +meditated, not this time in the name of "Liberty," but in the name of +Order? + +What especially struck me in talking with Mr. Balfour to-day was his +obviously unaffected interest in Ireland as a country rather than in +Ireland as a cock-pit. It is the condition of Ireland, and not the +gabble of parties at Westminster about the condition of Ireland, which +is uppermost in his thoughts. This, I should say, is the best guarantee +of his eventual success. + +The weakest point of the modern English system of government by Cabinets +surely is the evanescent tenure by which every Minister holds his +place. Not only has the Cabinet itself no fixed term of office, being in +truth but a Committee of the Legislature clothed with executive +authority, but any member of the Cabinet may be forced by events or by +intrigues to leave it. In this way Mr. Forster, when he filled the place +now held by Mr. Balfour, found himself driven into resigning it by Mr. +Gladstone's indisposition or inability to resist the peremptory pressure +put upon the British Premier at a critical moment by our own Government +in the spring of 1882. Mr. Balfour is in no such peril, perhaps. He is +more sure, I take it, of the support of Lord Salisbury and his +colleagues than Mr. Forster ever was of the support of Mr. Gladstone; +and the "Coercion" law which it is his duty to administer contains no +such sweeping and despotic clause as that provision in Mr. Gladstone's +"Coercion Act" of 1881, under which persons claiming American +citizenship were arrested and indefinitely locked up on "suspicion," +until it became necessary for our Government, even at the risk of war, +to demand their trial or release. + +But if Mr. Balfour were Chief Secretary for Ireland "on the American +plan"; if he held his office, that is, for a fixed term of years, and +cared nothing for a renewal of the lease, he could not be more +pre-occupied than he seems to be with simply getting his executive duty +done, or less pre-occupied than he seems to be with what may be thought +of his way of getting it done. If all executive officers were of this +strain, Parliamentary government might stand in the dock into which +Prince Albert put it with more composure, and await the verdict with +more confidence. Surely if Ireland is ever to govern herself, she must +learn precisely the lesson which Mr. Balfour, I believe, is trying to +teach her--that the duty of executive officers to execute the laws is +not a thing debateable, like the laws themselves, nor yet determinable, +like the enactment of laws, by taking the yeas and the nays. How well +this lesson shall be taught must depend, of course, very much upon the +quality of the men who make up the machine of Government in Ireland. +That the Irish have almost as great a passion for office-holding as the +Spanish, we long ago learned in New York, where the percentage of Irish +office-holders considerably exceeds the percentage of Irish citizens. +And as all the witnesses agree that the Irish Government has for years +been to an inordinate degree a Government by patronage, there must +doubtless be some reasonable ground for the very general impression that +"the Castle" needs overhauling. It is not true, however, I find, +although I have often heard it asserted in England, that the Irish +Government is officered by Englishmen and Scotchmen exclusively. The +murdered Mr. Burke certainly was not an Englishman; and there is an +apparent predominance of Irishmen in the places of trust and power. That +things at the Castle cannot be nearly so bad, moreover, as we in America +are asked to believe, would seem to be demonstrated by the affectionate +admiration with which Lord Spencer is now regarded by men like Mr. +O'Brien, M.P., who only the other day seemed to regard him as an unfit +survival of the Cities of the Plain. If what these men then said of him, +and of the Castle generally, was even very partially true--or if being +wholly false, these men believed it to be true--every man of them who +now touches Lord Spencer's hand is defiled, or defiles him. + +But that concerns them. Their present attitude makes Lord Spencer a good +witness when he declares that the Civil servants of the Crown in +Ireland, called "the Castle," are "diligent, desire to do their duty +with impartiality, and to hold an even balance between opposing +interests in Ireland," and maintains that they "will act with +impartiality and vigour if led by men who know their own minds, and +desire to be firm in the Government of the country." All this being +true, Mr. Balfour ought to make his Government a success. + +Mr. Balfour introduced me to Sir West Ridgway, the successor of Sir +Redvers Buller, who has been rewarded for the great services he did his +country in Asia, by being flung into this seething Irish stew. He takes +it very composedly, though the climate does not suit him, he says; and +has a quiet workmanlike way with him, which impresses one favourably at +once. + +All the disorderly part of Ireland (for disorder is far from being +universal in Ireland) comes under his direct administration, being +divided into five divisions on the lines originally laid down in 1881 by +Mr. Forster. Over each of these divisions presides a functionary styled +a "Divisional Magistrate." The title is not happily chosen, the powers +of these officers being rather like those confided to a French Prefect +than like those which are associated in England and America with the +title of a "magistrate." They have no judicial power, and nothing to do +with the trial of offenders. Their business is to protect life and +property, and to detect and bring to justice offenders against the law. +They can only be called Magistrates as the Executive of the United +States is sometimes called the "Chief Magistrate." + +One of the most conspicuous and trusted of these Divisional Magistrates, +I find, is Colonel Turner, who was Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, +under Lord Aberdeen. He is now denounced by the Irish Nationalists as a +ruthless tyrant. He was then denounced by the Irish Tories as a +sympathiser with Home Rule. It is probable, therefore, that he must be a +conscientious and loyal executive officer, who understands and acts upon +the plain lines of his executive duty. + +I dined to-night at the Castle, not in the great hall or banqueting-room +of St. Patrick, which was designed by that connoisseur in magnificence, +the famous Lord Chesterfield, during his Viceroyalty, but in a very +handsome room of more moderate dimensions. Much of the semi-regal state +observed at the Castle in the days of the Georges has been put down with +the Battle-Axe Guards of the Lord-Lieutenant, and with the +basset-tables of the "Lady-Lieutenant," as the Vice-queen used to be +called. At dinner the Viceroy no longer drinks to the pious and immortal +memory of William III., or to the "1st of July 1690." No more does the +band play "Lillibullero," and no longer is the pleasant custom +maintained, after a dinner to the city authorities of Dublin, of a +"loving cup" passed around the table, into which each guest, as it +passed, dropped a gold piece for the good of the household. Only so much +ceremonial is now observed as suffices to distinguish the residence of +the Queen's personal representative from that of a great officer of +State, or an opulent subject of high rank. + +Dublin Castle indeed is no more of a palace than it is of a castle. Its +claim to the latter title rests mainly on the fine old "Bermingham" +tower of the time of King John; its claim to the former on the Throne +Room, the Council Chamber, and the Hall of St. Patrick already +mentioned. This last is a very stately and sumptuous apartment. Just +twenty years ago the most brilliant banquet modern Dublin has seen was +given in this hall by the late Duke of Abercorn to the Prince and +Princess of Wales, to celebrate the installation of the Prince as a +Knight of St. Patrick. It is a significant fact, testified to by all +the most candid Irishmen I have ever known, that upon the occasion of +this visit to Ireland in 1868 the Prince and Princess were received with +unbounded enthusiasm by the people of all classes. Yet only the year +before, in 1867, the explosion of some gunpowder at Clerkenwell by a +band of desperadoes, to the death and wounding of many innocent people, +had brought the question of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, in +the mind of Mr. Gladstone, within the domain of "practical politics"! By +parity of reasoning, one would think, the reception of the heir-apparent +and his wife in Ireland ought to have taken that question out of the +domain of "practical politics." + +The Prince of Wales, it is known, brought away from this visit an +impression that the establishment of a prince of the blood in Ireland, +or a series of royal visits to Ireland, would go far towards pacifying +the relations between the two Islands. Mr. Gladstone thought his +Disestablishment would quite do the work. Events have shown that Mr. +Gladstone made a sad mistake as to the effect of his measure. The pains +which, I am told, were taken by Mr. Deasy, M.P., and others to organise +hostile demonstrations at one or two points in the south of Ireland, +during a subsequent visit of the Prince and Princess, would seem to show +that in the opinion of the Nationalists themselves, the impression of +the Prince was more accurate than were the inferences of the Premier. + +There is nothing froward or formidable in the aspect of Dublin Castle. +It has neither a portcullis nor a drawbridge. People go in and out of it +as freely as through the City Hall in New York. There is a show of +sentries at the main entrance, and in one of the courts this morning the +picturesque band of a Scotch regiment was playing to the delectation of +a small but select audience of urchins and little girls. A Dublin mob, +never so little in earnest and led by a dozen really determined men, +ought to be able to make as short work of it as the hordes of the +Faubourgs in Paris made of the Bastille, with its handful of invalids, +on that memorable 14th of July, about which so many lies have passed +into history, and so much effervescent nonsense is still annually talked +and printed. + +The greater part of the Castle as it existed when the Irish Parliaments +sat there under Elizabeth, and just before the last Catholic Viceroy +made Protestantism penal, and planned the transformation of Ireland +into a French province, was burned in the time of James II. The Earl of +Arran then reported to his father that "the king had lost nothing but +six barrels of gunpowder, and the worst castle in the worst situation in +Christendom." + +Here, as at Ottawa, a viceregal dinner-table is set off by the neat +uniforms and skyblue facings of the aides-de-camp and secretaries. For +some mysterious reason Lord Spencer put these officers into chocolate +coats with white facings. But the new order soon gave place to the old +again. + +At the dinner to-night was Lord Ormonde, who is returning to London, but +kindly promised to make arrangements for showing me at Kilkenny Castle +the muniment room of the Butlers, which contains one of the most +valuable private collections of charters and State papers in the realm. + + +_Tuesday, Jan. 31._--I lunched to-day with Sir Michael Morris, the Lord +Chief Justice of Ireland, whom I had last seen in Rome at the Jubilee +Mass of His Holiness. Sir Michael is one of the recognised lights of +social life and of the law in Dublin. While he was in Rome some one +highly commended him in the presence of that staunch Nationalist the +Archbishop of Dublin, who assented so far as to say, "Yes, yes, there +are worse fellows in Dublin than that Morris!" It would be hard to find +a more typical Irishman of the better sort than Sir Michael, a man more +sure, in the words of Sheridan, to "carry his honour and his brogue +unstained to the grave." + +The brogue of Sir Michael, it is said, made his fortune in the House of +Commons. It has hardly the glow which made the brogue of Father Burke a +memory as of music in the ears of all who heard it, and differs from +that miraculous gift of the tongue as a ripe wine of Bordeaux differs +from a ripe wine of Burgundy. But to the ordinary brogue of the street +and the stage, it is as is a Brane Mouton Rothschild of 1868 to the +casual Médoc of a Parisian restaurant. "Do you know Father Healy?" said +one of the company to whom I spoke of it; "he was at a wedding with Sir +Michael. As the happy pair drove off under the usual shower of rice and +old slippers, Sir Michael said to the Father, 'How I wish I had +something to throw after her!' 'Ah, throw your brogue after her,' +replied the Father." + +This brogue comes to Sir Michael lawfully enough. He belongs to one of +the fourteen tribes of Galway. His father, Mr. Martin Morris, was High +Sheriff of the County of Galway City in 1841, being the first Catholic +who had served that office since the time of Tyrconnel. His mother was a +Blake of Galway, and the family seat, Spiddal, came to them through a +Fitzpatrick. "Remember these things," said one of the guests to me, a +Catholic from the south of Ireland, "and remember that Sir Michael, like +myself, and, so far as I know, like every Irish Catholic in this room +to-day, is a thoroughgoing Unionist, who would think it midsummer +madness to hand Ireland over to the 'Home Rule' of the 'uncrowned king,' +Mr. Parnell, who hasn't a drop, I believe, of Irish blood in his veins, +and who, whatever else he may be, is certainly not a Catholic. Didn't +Parnell vote at first against religion and in favour of Bradlaugh? and +didn't he do this to force the bargain for the clerical franchise at the +Parliamentary conventions?" + +"But there are some good Catholics, are there not," I answered, "and +some good Christians, and of Irish blood too, among the associates of +Mr. Parnell?" + +"Associates!" he exclaimed; "if you know anything of Mr. Parnell, you +must know that he has no associates. He has followers, and he has +instruments, but he has no associates. The only Irishmen whom he has +really taken counsel with, or treated, I was about to say, with ordinary +civility, were Egan and Brennan. His manner with them was always +conspicuously different from his cold and almost contemptuous bearing +towards the men whom he commands in Parliament, and Egan, who directs +his forces in your country, rewards him by calling him 'the great and +gifted leader of _our_ race!' 'Our race' indeed! Parnell comes of the +conquering race in Ireland, and he never forgets it, or lets his +subordinates forget it. I was in Galway when he came over there suddenly +to quell the revolt organised by Healy. The rebels were at white-heat +before he came. But he strode in among them like a huntsman among the +hounds--marched Healy off into a little room, and brought him out again +in ten minutes, cowed and submissive, but filled, as anybody can see, +ever since, with a dull smouldering hate which will break out one of +these days, if a good and safe opportunity offers." + +"How do you account, then," I asked, "for the support which all these +men give Mr. Parnell?" + +"For the support which they give him!" exclaimed my new acquaintance, +"for the support they give him! Bless your heart, my dear sir, it is he +gives them the support! Barring Biggar, who, to do him justice, is as +free with his pocket as he is with his tongue--and no man can say more +for anybody than that--barring Biggar and M'Kenna and M'Carthy, and +perhaps a dozen more, all these men are nominated by Mr. Parnell, and +draw salaries from the body he controls; they are paid members, like the +working-men members. Support indeed!" + +"But the constituencies," I urged, "surely the voters must know and care +something about their representatives?" + +The gentleman from the south of Ireland laughed aloud. "Very clear it +is," he said, "that you have made your acquaintance with my dear +countrymen in America, or in England perhaps--not in Ireland. Look at +Thurles, in January '85! The voters selected O'Ryan; Parnell ordered him +off, and made them take O'Connor! The voters take their members to-day +from the League--that is, from Mr. Parnell, just as they used to take +them from the landlords. What Lord Clanricarde said in Galway, when he +made all those fagot votes by cutting up his farms, that he could return +his grey mare to Parliament if he liked, Mr. Parnell can say with just +as much truth to-day of any Nationalist seat in the country. I tell +you, the secret of his power is that he understands the Irish people, +and how to ride them. He is a Protestant-ascendency man by blood, and he +is fighting the unlucky devils of landlords to-day by the old 'landlord' +methods that came to him with his mother's milk--that is rightly +speaking, I should say, with his father's," and here he burst out +laughing at his own bull--"for his mother, poor lady, she was an +American." + +"Thank you," I said. + +"Oh, no harm at all! But did you ever know her? An odd woman she was, +and is." + +"Her father," I replied, "was a gallant American sailor of Scottish +blood." + +"Oh yes, and is it true that he got a great hatred of England from being +captured in the _Chesapeake_ by the English Captain Broke? I always +heard that." + +I explained that there were historical difficulties in the way of +accepting this legend, and that Commodore Stewart's experiences, during +the war of 1812, had been those of a captor, not of a captive. + +"Well, a clever woman she is, only very odd. She was a great terror, I +remember, to a worthy Protestant parson, near Avondale; she used to come +at him quite unexpectedly with such a power of theological discussion, +and put him beside himself with questions he couldn't answer." + +"Very likely," I replied, "but she has transferred her interest to +politics now; and she had the good sense, at the Chicago Convention in +1886, to warn the physical-force men against showing their hand too +plainly in support of her son." + +A curious conversation, as showing the personal bitterness of politics +here. It reminded me of Dr. Duche's description in his famous letter to +Washington of the party which carried the Declaration of Independence +through the Continental Congress. But it had a special interest for me +as confirming the inferences I have often drawn as to Mr. Parnell's +relations with his party, from his singular and complete isolation among +them. I remember the profound astonishment of my young friend Mr. D----, +of New York, who, as the son of, perhaps, the most conspicuous and +influential American advocate of Home Rule, had confidently counted upon +seeing Mr. Parnell in London, when he found that the most important +member of the Irish Parliamentary party, in point of position, was +utterly unable to get at Mr. Parnell for him, or even to ascertain where +Mr. Parnell could be reached by letter. + +Though a staunch Unionist, Sir Michael is no blind admirer of things as +they are, nor even a thick-and-thin partisan of English rule in Ireland. +"If you will have the Irish difficulty in a nutshell," he is reported to +have said to a prosy British politician, "here it is: It is simply a +very dull people trying to govern a very bright people." + +He has quick and wide intellectual sympathies, or, as he put it to a +lawyer who was kindly enlightening him about some matters of scientific +notoriety, "I don't live in a cupboard myself." His own terse summing up +of the Irish difficulty could hardly be better illustrated than by the +current story of the discomfiture of an English Treasury official, who +came into his official chambers to complain of the expenditure for fuel +in the Court over which he presides. The Lord Chief-Justice looked at +him quietly while he set forth his errand, and then, ringing a bell on +his table, said to the servant who responded: "Tell Mary the man has +come about the coals." + +At Sir Michael's I had some conversation also with Mr. Justice Murphy, +who won a great reputation in connection with those murders in the +Phoenix Park, which went near to breaking the heart and hope of poor +Father Burke, and with Lord and Lady Ashbourne, whom I had not seen +since I met them some years ago under the hospitable roof of Lord +Houghton. Lord Ashbourne was then Mr. Gibson, Q.C. He is now the Lord +Chancellor of Ireland, and the author of the Land Purchase Act of 1885, +which many well-informed and sensible men regard as the Magna Charta of +peace in Ireland, while others of equal authority assure me that by +reversing the principle of the Bright clauses in the Act of 1871 it has +encouraged the tenants to expect an eventual concession of the +land-ownership to them on merely nominal terms. + +Naturally enough, he is carped at and reviled almost as much by his +political friends as by his political foes. In the time of Sir Michael +Hicks Beach I remember hearing Lord Ashbourne denounced most bitterly by +a leading Tory light as "a Home Ruler in disguise, who had bedevilled +the Irish Question by undertaking to placate the country if it could be +left to be managed by him and by Lord Carnarvon." + +The disguise appears to me quite impenetrable, and after my talk with +him, I remembered a characteristic remark about him made to me by Lord +Houghton after he had gone away: "A very clever man with a very clever +wife. He ought to be on our side, but he has everything the Tories lack, +so they have stolen him, and will make much of him, and keep him. But +one of these days he will do them some great service, and then they'll +never forgive him!" + +Lord Ashbourne went off early to look up some fine old wooden +mantelpieces and wainscotings in the "slums" of Dublin. A brisk trade it +seems has for some time been driven in such relics of the departed +splendour of the Irish capital. In the last century, when Dublin was +further from London than London now is from New York, the Irish +landlords were more fond of living in Dublin than a good many of the +Irish Nationalists I know now are. In this way the Iron Duke came to be +born in Dublin, where his father and mother had a handsome town house, +whereas when they went up to London they used to lodge, according to old +Lady Cork, "over a pastry-cook's in Oxford Street." In those days there +must have been a good many fine solidly built and well decorated +mansions in Dublin, of a type not unlike that of the ample rather +stately and periwigged houses, all British brick without, and all Santo +Domingo mahogany within, which, in my schoolboy days, used to give such +a dignified old-world air to Third and Fourth Streets in Philadelphia. +It is among such of these as are still standing, and have come to vile +uses, that the foragers from London now find their harvest. + +From the Chief-Justice's I went with Lord Ernest Hamilton to a meeting +of the Irish Unionists. Admission was by tickets, and the meeting +evidently "meant business." I suppose Presbyterian Ulster was largely +represented: but Mr. Smith Barry of Fota Island, near Cork, one of the +kindest and fairest, as well as one of the most determined and resolute, +of the southern Irish landlords, was there, and the most interesting +speech I heard was made by a Catholic lawyer of Dublin, Mr. Quill, Q.C., +who grappled with the question of distress among the Irish tenants, and +produced some startling evidence to show that this distress is by no +means so great or so general as it is commonly assumed to be.[10] Able +speeches were also made by Mr. T.W. Russell, M.P. for Tyrone, and by +Colonel Saunderson, the champion of Ulster at Westminster. Both of these +members, and especially Colonel Saunderson, "went for" their +Nationalist colleagues with an unparliamentary plainness of speech which +commanded the cordial sympathy of their audience. "Is it possible," +asked Colonel Saunderson, "that you should ever consent, on any terms, +to be governed by such--, well, by such wretches as these?" to which the +audience gave back an unanimous "Never," neither thundered nor shouted, +but growled, like Browning's "growl at the gates of Ghent,"--a low deep +growl like the final notice served by a bull-dog, which I had not heard +since the meetings which, at the North, followed the first serious +fighting of the Civil War. I was much struck, too, by the prevalence +among the audience of what may be called the Old Middle State type of +American face and head. A majority of these men might have come straight +from those slopes of the Alleghany which, from Pennsylvania down to the +Carolinas, were planted so largely by the only considerable Irish +emigrations known to our history, before the great year of famine, 1847, +the Irish emigrations which followed the wars against the woollen +industries in the seventeenth century, and the linen industries in the +eighteenth. A staunch, doggedly Protestant people, loving the New +England Puritans and the Anglicans of Eastern Virginia little better +than the Maryland Catholics, but contributing more than their full share +of traditional antipathy to that extreme dislike and dread of the Roman +Church which showed itself half-a-century ago in the burning of +convents, and thirty years ago gave life and fire to the Know-Nothing +movement. Even so late as at the time of Father Burke's grand and most +successful mission to America, I remember how much astonished and +impressed he was by the vigour and the virulence of these feelings. One +of the bishops, he told me, in a great diocese tried (though of course +in vain) to dissuade him on this account from wearing his Dominican +dress. These anti-Catholic passions are much stronger in America to-day +than it always suits our politicians to remember, though to forget it +may some day be found very dangerous. Even now two of the ablest +prelates of the most liberal of the Protestant American bodies, Bishop +Cleveland Coxe of Western New York, and Bishop Beckwith of Georgia, the +latter of whom I met the other day in Rome on his return from Palestine, +are promoting what looks very much like a crusade against the plan for +establishing a Catholic University at Washington. Bishop Cleveland +Coxe's denunciations of what he calls "the alien Church," point straight +to a revival of the "Native American" movement; and I fear that +President Cleveland's gift of a copy of the Constitution to Leo XIII. +will hardly make American Catholics forget either the hereditary +anti-Catholic feeling which led him, when Governor of New York, to +imperil the success of the Democratic party by his dogged resistance to +the Catholic demand for the endowment of Catholic schools and +protectories, or the scandalous persecution (it can be called by no +other name) of Catholics in Alaska, which was carried on in the name and +under the patronage of his sister, Miss Cleveland, by a local missionary +of the Presbyterian Church, to the point of the removal by the President +of a Federal judge, who dared to award a Catholic native woman from +Vancouver the custody of her own child. + +It is hard to imagine a greater misfortune for the Church in Ireland, +and for both the Church and the Irish race in America, than the +identification of the Home Rule movement with the Church, and its +triumph, after being so identified, and with the help of British +sympathisers and professional politicians, over the resistance of +Protestant Ireland. This dilemma of the Church in Ireland, plainly seen +at Rome, as I know, to-day, was forcibly presented in the speech of +Colonel Saunderson. + +The chair at this Loyalist meeting was filled by the Provost of Trinity, +Dr. Jellett, a man of winning and venerable aspect, a kind of "angelic +doctor," indeed, whose musical and slightly tremulous voice gave a +singular pathos and interest to his brief but very earnest speech.[11] + +To-night I dined with the Attorney-General, Mr. O'Brien. Among the +company were the Chief-Baron Palles, whose appointment dates back to Mr. +Gladstone's Administration of 1873, but who is now an outspoken opponent +of Home Rule; Judge O'Brien, an extremely able man, with the face of an +eagle; Mr. Carson, Q.C.; and other notabilities of the bench and bar. My +neighbours at table were a charming and agreeable bencher of the King's +Inn, Mr. Atkinson, Q.C., a leader of the Irish bar, and Mr. T.W. +Russell, M.P., who told me some amusing things of one of his colleagues, +an ideal Orangeman, who writes blood-curdling romances in the vein of La +Tosca, and goes in fear of the re-establishment of the Holy Office in +Dublin and London. In view of the clamours about the severity of the +bench in Ireland, it was edifying to find an Irish Judge astonished by +the drastic decisions of our Courts in regard to the anarchists who were +hanged at Chicago, after a thorough and protracted review of the law in +their cases. He thought no Court in Great Britain or Ireland could have +dealt with them thus stringently, it being understood that the charge of +murder against them rested on their connection, solely as provocative +instigators to violence, with the actual throwing of the bombs among the +police. + +Some good stories were told by the lawyers; one of a descendant of the +Irish Kings, a lawyer more remarkable for his mental gifts than for his +physical graces. + +A peasant looking him carefully over at Cork whispered to a neighbour, +"And is he really of the ould blood of the Irish kings now, indeed?" + +"He is indeed!" + +"Well, then, I don't wonder the Saxons conquered the Island!" + +Of the Home Rule movement one of the lawyers said to me, "The whole +thing is a business operation mainly--a business operation with the +people who see in it the hope of appeasing their land hunger--and a +business operation for the agitators who live by it. Its main strength, +outside of the priests, who for one reason or another countenance or +foment it, is in the small country solicitors. The five hundred thousand +odd Irish tenants are the most litigious creatures alive. They are +always after the local lawyer with half-a-crown to fight this, that, or +the other question with some neighbour or kinsman, usually a kinsman. So +the solicitors know the whole country." + +"When the League has chosen a spot in which to work the 'Plan of +Campaign,' the local attorney whips up the tenants to join it. The +poorer tenants are the most easily pushed into the plan, having least to +lose by it. But the lawyer takes the well-to-do tenants in hand, and +promises them that if they yield to the patriotic pressure of the +League, and come to grief by so doing, the landlord will at all events +have to pay the costs of the proceedings. It is this promise which +finally brings down most of them. To enjoy the luxury of a litigation +without paying for it tempts them almost as strongly as the prospect of +getting the land without paying for it. You will find that the League +always insists, when things come to a settlement, that the landlord +shall pay the costs. If the landlord through poverty of spirit or of +purse succumbs to this demand, the League scores a victory. If the +landlord resists, it is a bad job for the League. The local lawyer is +discredited in the eyes of his clients, and if he is to get any fees he +must come down upon his clients for them. Naturally his clients resent +this. If Mr. Balfour keys up the landlords to stand out manfully against +paying for all the trouble and loss they are continually put to, he will +take the life of the League so far as Ireland is concerned. As things +now stand, it is almost the only thriving industry in Ireland!" + + +_Wednesday, Feb. 1._--This morning I called with Lord Ernest Hamilton +upon Sir Bernard Burke, the Ulster King-at-Arms, and the editor or +author of many other well-known publications, and especially of the +"Peerage," sometimes irreverently spoken of as the "British Bible." + +Sir Bernard's offices are in the picturesque old "Bermingham" tower of +the castle. There we found him wearing his years and his lore as lightly +as a flower, and busy in an ancient chamber, converted by him into a +most cosy modern study. He received us with the most cordial courtesy, +and was good enough to conduct us personally through his domain. + +Many of the State papers formerly kept here have been removed to the +Four Courts building. But Sir Bernard's tower is still filled with +documents of the greatest historical interest, all admirably docketed +and arranged on the system adopted at the Hôtel Soubise, now the Palace +of the Archives in Paris. + +These documents, like the tower itself, take us back to the early days +when Dublin was the stronghold of the Englishry in Ireland, and its +citizens went in constant peril of an attack from the wild and "mere +Irish" in the hills. The masonry of the tower is most interesting. The +circular stone floors made up of slabs held together without cement, +like the courses in the towers of Sillustani, by their exact adjustment, +are particularly noteworthy. High up in the tower Sir Bernard showed us +a most uncomfortable sort of cupboard fashioned in the huge wall of the +tower, and with a loophole for a window. In this cell the Red Hugh +O'Donnell of Tyrconnel was kept as a prisoner for several years under +Elizabeth. He was young and lithe, however, and after his friends had +tried in vain to buy him out, a happy thought one day struck him. He +squeezed himself through the loophole, and, dropping unhurt to the +ground, escaped to the mountains. There for a long time he made head +against the English power. In 1597 he drove Sir Conyers Clifford from +before the castle of Ballyshannon, with great loss to the English, and +when he could no longer keep the field, he sought refuge in Spain. He +was with the Spanish, as Prince of Tyrconnel, at the crushing defeat of +Kinsale in 1601. Escaping again, he died, poisoned, at Simancas the next +year. + +Sir Bernard showed us, among other curious manuscripts, a correspondence +between one Higgins, a trained informer, and the Castle authorities in +1798. This correspondence shows that the revolutionary plans of the +Nationalists of 1798 were systematically laid before the Government. + +When one thinks how very much abler were the leaders of the Irish +rebellion in 1798 than are the present heads of the Irish party in +Parliament, how much greater the provocations to rebellion given the +Irish people then were than they are now even alleged to be--how little +the Irish people in general have now to gain by rebellion, and how much +to lose, it is hard to resist a suspicion that it must be even easier +now than it was in 1798 for the Government to tap the secrets of the +organisations opposed to it. + +Sir Bernard showed us also a curious letter written by Henry Grattan to +the founder of the great Guinness breweries, which have carried the fame +of Dublin porter into the uttermost parts of the earth. The Guinnesses +are now among the wealthiest people of the kingdom, and Ireland +certainly owes a great deal to them as "captains of industry," but they +are not Home Rulers. + +At the Kildare Street Club in the afternoon I talked with two Irish +landlords from the north of Ireland, who had come up to take their +womenkind to the Drawing-Room. + +I was struck by their indifference to the political excitements of the +day. One of them had forgotten that the Ripon and Morley reception was +to take place to-night. The other called it "the love-feast of Voltaire +and the Vatican." Both were much more fluent about hunting and farming. +I asked if the hunting still went on in their part of the island. + +"It has never stopped for a moment," he replied. + +"No," added the other, "nor ever a dog poisoned. They were poisoned, +whole packs of them, in the papers, but not a dog really. The stories +were printed just to keep up the agitation, and the farmers winked at it +so as not to be 'bothered.'" + +Both averred that they got their rents "fairly well," but both also said +that they farmed much of their own land. One, a wiry, energetic, elderly +man, of a brisk presence and ruddy complexion, said he constantly went +over to the markets in England. "I go to Norwich," he said, "not to +Liverpool. Liverpool is only a meat-market, and overdone at that. +Norwich is better for meat and for stores." Both agreed this was a great +year for the potatoes, and said Ireland was actually exporting potatoes +to America. One mentioned a case of two cargoes of potatoes just taken +from Dundrum for America, the vessel which took them having brought over +six hundred tons of hay from America. + +They were breezy, out-of-door men, both of them. One amused us with a +tale of espying, the other day, two hounds, a collie dog, a terrier, and +eighteen cats all amicably running together across a farmyard, with +their tails erect, after a dairymaid who was to feed them. The other +capped this with a story of a pig on his own place, which follows one of +his farm lads about like a dog,--"the only pig," he said, "I ever saw +show any human feeling!" The gentleman who goes to Norwich thought the +English landlords were in many cases worse off than the Irish. "Ah, no!" +interfered the other, "not quite; for if the English can't get their +rents, at least they keep their land, but we can neither get our rents +nor keep our land!" They both admitted that there had been much bad +management of the land in Ireland, and that the agents had done the +owners as well as the tenants a great deal of harm in the past, but they +both maintained stoutly that the legislation of late years had been +one-sided and short-sighted. "The tenants haven't got real good from +it," said one, "because the claims of the landlord no longer check their +extravagance, and they run more in debt than ever to the shopkeepers and +traders, who show them little mercy." Both also strenuously insisted on +the gross injustice of leaving the landlords unrelieved of any of the +charges fixed upon their estates, while their means of meeting those +charges were cut down by legislation. + +"You have no landlords in America," said one, "but if you had, how would +you like to be saddled with heavy tithe charges for a Disestablished +Church at the same time that your tenants were relieved of their dues +to you?" + +I explained to him that so far from our having no landlords in America, +the tenant-farmer class is increasing rapidly in the United States, +while it is decreasing in the Old World, while the land laws, especially +in some of our older Western States, give the landlords such absolute +control of their tenants that there is a serious battle brewing at this +moment in Illinois[12] between a small army of tenants and their +absentee landlord, an alien and an Irishman, who holds nearly a hundred +thousand acres in the heart of the State, lives in England, and grants +no leases, except on the condition that he shall receive from his +tenants, in addition to the rent, the full amount of all taxes and +levies whatsoever made upon the lands they occupy. + +"God bless my soul!" exclaimed the gentleman who goes to Norwich, "if +that is the kind of laws your American Irish will give us with Home +Rule, I'll go in for it to-morrow with all my heart!" + +After an early dinner, I set out with Lord Ernest to see the +Morley-Ripon procession. It was a good night for a torchlight +parade--the weather not too chill, and the night dark. The streets were +well filled, but there was no crowding--no misconduct, and not much +excitement. The people obviously were out for a holiday, not for a +"demonstration." It was Paris swarming out to the Grand Prix, not Paris +on the eve of the barricades; very much such a crowd as one sees in the +streets and squares of New York on a Fourth of July night, when the city +fathers celebrate that auspicious anniversary with fireworks at the City +Hall, and not in the least such a crowd as I saw in the streets of New +York on the 12th of July 1871, when, thanks to General Shaler and the +redoubtable Colonel "Jim Fiske," a great Orange demonstration led to +something very like a massacre by chance medley. + +Small boys went about making night hideous with tom-toms, extemporised +out of empty fig-drums, and tooting terribly upon tin trumpets. There +was no general illumination, but here and there houses were bright with +garlands of lamps, and rockets ever and anon went up from the +house-tops. + +We made our way to the front of a mass of people near one of the great +bridges, over which the procession was to pass on its long march from +Kingstown to the house of Mr. Walker, Q.C., in Rutland Square, where the +distinguished visitors were to meet the liberated Lord Mayor, with Mr. +Dwyer Gray, and other local celebrities. A friendly citizen let us perch +on his outside car. + +The procession presently came in sight, and a grand show it made--not of +the strictly popular and political sort, for it was made up of guilds +and other organised bodies on foot and on horseback, marching in +companies--but imposing by reason of its numbers, and of the flaring +torches. Of these there were not so many as there should have been to do +justice to the procession. The crowd cheered from time to time, with +that curious Irish cheer which it is often difficult to distinguish from +groaning, but the only explosive and uproarious greeting given to the +visitors in our neighbourhood came from a member of "the devout female +sex," a young lady who stood up between two friends on the top of a car +very near us, and imperilled both her equilibrium and theirs by wildly +waving her hand-kerchief in the air, and crying out at the top of a +somewhat husky voice, "Three cheers for Mecklenburg Street! Three +cheers for Mecklenburg Street!" + +This made the crowd very hilarious, but as Lord Ernest's local knowledge +did not enable him to enlighten me as to the connection between +Mecklenburg Street and the liberation of Ireland, I must leave the +mystery of their mirth unsolved till a more convenient season. + +At Rutland Square the crowd was tightly packed, but perfectly +well-behaved, and the guests were enthusiastically cheered. But even +before they had entered the house of Mr. Walker it began to break up, +and long files of people wended their way to see "the carriages" +hastening with their lovely freight to the Castle. Thither Lord Ernest +has just gone, arrayed in a captivating Court costume of black velvet, +with cut-steel buttons, sword, and buckles--just the dress in which +Washington used to receive his guests at the White House, and in which +Senator Seward, I remember, insisted in 1860 on getting himself +presented by Mr. Dallas to Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +SION HOUSE, COUNTY TYRONE, _Feb. 3d._--Hearing nothing from Mr. Davitt +yesterday, I gave up the idea of attending the Ripon-Morley meeting last +night. As I have come to Ireland to hear what people living in Ireland +have to say about Irish affairs, I see no particular advantage in +listening to imported eloquence on the subject, even from so clever a +man as his books prove Mr. Morley to be, and from so conscientious a man +as an acquaintance, going back to the days when he sat with Kingsley at +the feet of Maurice, makes me believe Lord Ripon to be. How much either +of them knows about Ireland is another matter. A sarcastic Nationalist +acquaintance of mine, with whom I conversed about the visitors +yesterday, assured me it had been arranged that Lord Ripon should wear +the Star of the Garter, "so the people might know him from Morley." When +I observed that Dublin must have a short memory to forget so soon the +face of a Chief Secretary, he replied: "Forget his face? Why, they never +saw his face! It's little enough he was here, and indoors he kept when +here he was. He shook hands last night with more Irishmen than ever he +spoke to while he was Chief Secretary; for he used to say then, I am +told, in the Reform Club, that the only way to get along with the Irish +was to have nothing to do with them!" + +There was a sharp discussion, I was told, in the private councils of the +Committee yesterday as to whether the Queen should be "boycotted," and +the loyal sentiments usual in connection with her Majesty's name dropped +from the proceedings. I believe it was finally settled that this might +put the guests into an awkward position, both of them having worn her +Majesty's uniform of State as public servants of the Crown. + +During the day I walked through many of the worst quarters of Dublin. I +met fewer beggars in proportion than one encounters in such parts of +London as South Kensington and other residential regions not +over-frequented by the perambulating policemen; but I was struck by the +number of persons--and particularly of women--who wore that most +pathetic of all the liveries of distress, "the look of having seen +better days." In the most wretched streets I traversed there was more +squalor than suffering--the dirtiest and most ragged people in them +showing no signs of starvation, or even of insufficient rations; and +certainly in the most dismal alleys and by-streets, I came upon nothing +so revolting as the hives of crowded misery which make certain of the +tenement house quarters of New York more gruesome than the Cour des +Miracles itself used to be. + +This morning at 7.25 A.M. I left Dublin with Lord Ernest Hamilton for +Strabane. My attention was distracted from the reports of the great +meeting by the varied and picturesque beauty of the landscape, through +which we ran at a very respectable rate in a very comfortable carriage. +We passed Dundalk, where Edward Bruce got himself crowned king of +Ireland, after his brother Robert had won a throne in Scotland. + +These masterful Normans, all over Europe from Apulia to Britain, worked +out the problem of "satisfied nationalities" much more successfully and +simply than Napoleon III. in our own day. If Edward Bruce broke down +where Robert succeeded, the causes of his failure may perhaps be worth +considering even now by people who have set themselves the task in our +times of establishing "an Irish nationality." Leaving out the +Cromwellian English of Tipperary and the South, and the Scotch who have +done for Ulster, what he aimed at for all Ireland, they have very much +the same materials to deal with as those which he dismally failed to +fashion. + +Drogheda stands beautifully in a deep valley through which flows the +Boyne Water, spanned by one of the finest viaducts in Europe. Here, two +years after the discovery of America, Poyning's Parliament enacted that +all laws passed in Ireland must be subject to approval by the English +Privy Council. I wonder nobody has proposed a modification of this form +of Home Rule for Ireland now. Earl Grey's recent suggestion that +Parliamentary government be suspended for ten years in Ireland, which I +heard warmly applauded by some able lawyers and business men in Dublin, +involves like this an elimination of the Westminster debates from the +problem of government in Ireland. As we passed Drogheda, Father Burke's +magnificent presence and thrilling voice came back to me out of the +mist of years, describing with an indignant pathos, never to be +forgotten, the fearful scenes which followed the surrender of Sir Arthur +Ashton's garrison, when "for the glory of God," and "to prevent the +further effusion of blood," Oliver ordered all the officers to be +knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed, and the +rest shipped as slaves to the Barbadoes. But how different was the +spirit in which the great Dominican recalled these events from that in +which the "popular orators," scattering firebrands and death, delight to +dwell upon them! + +At Strabane station we found a handsome outside car waiting on us, and +drove off briskly for this charming place, the home of one of the most +active and prosperous manufacturers in Ireland. A little more than half +way between the station and Sion House, Mr. Herdman met us afoot. We +jumped off and walked up with him. Sion House, built for him by his +brother, an accomplished architect, is a handsome Queen Anne mansion. It +stands on a fine knoll, commanding lovely views on all sides. Below it, +and beyond a little stream, rise the extensive flax-mills which are the +life of the place, under the eye and within touch of the hand of the +master. These works were established here by Mr. Herdman's father, after +he had made a vain attempt to establish them at Ballyshannon in Donegal, +half a century ago. As all salmon fishers know, the water-power is +admirable at Ballyshannon, where the Erne pours in torrents down a +thirty feet fall. But the ignorance and indolence of the people made +Ballyshannon quite impossible, with this result, that while the Erne +still flows unvexed to the sea, and the people of Ballyshannon live very +much as they lived in 1835, here at Sion the Mourne enables 1100 Irish +operatives to work up £90,000 worth of Irish flax every year into yarn +for the Continent, and to divide among themselves some £20,000 a year in +wages. + +After luncheon we walked with Mr. Herdman through the mills and the +model village which has grown up around them. Everywhere we found order, +neatness, and thrift. The operatives are almost all people of the +country, Catholics and Protestants in almost equal numbers. "I find it +wise," said Mr. Herdman, "to give neither religion a preponderance, and +to hold my people of both religions to a common standard of fidelity and +efficiency." The greatest difficulty he has had to contend with is the +ineradicable objection of some of the peasantry to continuous industry. +He told us of a strapping lass of eighteen who came to the mills, but +very soon gave up and went back to the parental shebeen in the mountains +rather than get up early in the morning to earn fourteen shillings a +week. + +Three weeks of her work would have paid the year's rent of the paternal +holding. + +In the village, which is regularly laid out, is a reading-room for the +workpeople. There are cricket clubs, and one of the mill buildings (just +now crammed with bales of flax) has been fitted up by Mr. Herdman as a +theatre. There is a drop-curtain representing the Lake of Como, and the +flies are flanked by life-size copies in plaster of the Apollo Belvidere +and the Medicean Venus. This is a development I had hardly looked to see +in Ulster. + +After we had gone over the works thoroughly, Mr. Herdman took us back, +on a transparent pretext of enlightened curiosity touching certain +qualities of spun flax, to give us a glimpse of the "beauty of Sion"--a +well-grown graceful girl of fifteen or sixteen summers. She +concentrated her attention, as soon as we appeared, upon certain +mysterious bobbins and spindles, with an exaggerated determination which +proved how completely she saw through our futile and frivolous devices. +Mr. Herdman told us, as we came away discomfited, a droll story of the +ugliest girl ever employed here--a girl so preternaturally ugly that one +of his best blacksmiths having been entrapped into offering to marry +her, lost heart of grace on the eve of the sacrifice, and, taking ship +at Derry for America, fled from Sion for ever. + +In the evening came, with other guests, Dr. Webb, Q.C., Regius Professor +of Laws and Public Orator of Trinity at Dublin, well known both as a +Grecian capable of composing "skits" as clever as the verses yclept +Homerstotle--in which the _Saturday Review_ served up the Donnelly +nonsense about Bacon and Shakespeare--and as a translator of _Faust_. He +was abused by the Loyalists at Dublin, in 1884, for his defence of P.N. +Fitzgerald, the leader who beat Parnell and Archbishop Croke so badly at +Thurles the other day; and he is in a fair way now to be denounced with +equal fervour by the Nationalists as a County Court judge in Donegal. +He finds this post no sinecure. "I do as much work in five days," he +said to-night, "as the Superior Judges do in five weeks." + +He is a staunch Unionist, and laughs at the notion that the Irish people +care one straw for a Parliament in Dublin. "Why should they?" he said. +"What did any Parliament in Dublin ever do to gratify the one real +passion of the Irish peasant--his hunger for a bit of land? So far as +the Irish people are concerned, Home Rule means simply agrarian reform. +Would they get that from a Parliament in Dublin? If the British +Parliament evicts the landlords and makes the tenants lords of the land, +they will be face to face with Davitt's demand for the nationalising of +the land. Do you suppose they will like to see the lawyers and the +politicians organising a labour agitation against the 'strong farmers'? +The last thing they want is a Parliament in Dublin. Lord Ashbourne's Act +carries in its principle the death-warrant of the 'National League.'" + +Some excellent stories were told in the picturesque smoking-room after +dinner, one of a clever and humorous, sensible and non-political priest, +who, being taken to task by some of his brethren for giving the cold +shoulder to the Nationalist movement, excused himself by saying, "I +should like to be a patriot; but I can't be. It's all along of the +rheumatism which prevents me from lying out at nights in a ditch with a +rifle." The same priest being reproached by others of the cloth with a +fondness for the company of some of the resident landlords in his +neighbourhood, replied, "It's in the blood, you see. My poor mother, God +rest her soul! she always had a liking for the quality. As for my dear +father, he was just a blundering peasant like the rest of ye!" + + +GWEEDORE, _Saturday, 4th Feb._--A good day's work to-day! + +We left our hospitable friends at Sion House early in the morning. The +sun was shining brightly; the air so soft and bland that the thrushes +were singing like mad creatures in the trees and the shrubbery; and the +sky was more blue than Italy. "A foine day it is, sorr," said our jarvey +as we took our seats on the car. There is some point in the old Irish +sarcasm that English travellers in Ireland only see one side of the +country, because they travel through it on the outside car. But to make +this point tell, four people must travel on the car. In that case they +must sit two on a side, each pair facing one side only of the landscape. +It is a very different business when you travel on an outside car alone, +with the driver sitting on one side of it, or with one companion only, +when the driver occupies the little perch in front between the sides of +the car. When you travel thus, the outside car is the best thing in the +world, after a good roadster, for taking you rapidly over a country, and +enabling you to command all points of the horizon. Double up one leg on +the seat, let the other dangle freely, using the step as a stirrup, and +you go rattling along almost as if you were on horseback. + +We drove through a long suburb of Strabane into the busiest quarter of +the busy little place. The names on the shops were predominantly +Scotch--Maxwells, Stewarts, Hamiltons, Elliotts. I saw but one Celtic +name, M'Ilhenny, and one German, Straub. I changed gold for enormous +Bank of Ireland notes at a neat local bank, and the cheery landlord of +the Abercorn Arms gave us a fresh car to take us on to Letterkenny, a +drive of some twenty miles. + +The car came up like a small blizzard, flying about at the heels of an +uncanny little grey mare. Lord Ernest knew the beast well, and said she +was twenty-five years old. She behaved like an unbroken filly at first, +but soon striking her pace, turned out a capital goer, and took us on +without turning a hair till her work was done. The weather continued to +be good, but clouds rolled up around the horizon. + +"It'll always be bad weather," said our saturnine jarvey, "when the +Judges come to hold court, and never be good again till they rise." + +Here is a consequence of alien rule in Ireland, never, so far as I know, +brought to the notice of Parliament. + +"Why is this?" I asked; "is it because of the time of the year they +select?" + +"The time of year, sorr?" he replied, glancing compassionately at me. +"No, not at all; it's because of the oaths!" + +We reached Letterkenny in time for a very good luncheon at "Hegarty's," +one of the neatest little inns I have ever found in a place of the size. +It stands on the long main street which is really the town. At one end +of this street is a very pretty row of picturesque ivy-clad brick +cottages, built by a landlord whose property and handsome park bound +the town on the west; and the street winds alongside the slope of a hill +rising from the bank of the Swilly river. A fair was going on. The +little market-place was alive with bustling, chattering, and chaffering +country-folk. Smartly-dressed young damsels tripped in and out of the +neat well-filled shops, and in front of a row of semidetached villas, +like a suburban London terrace, on the hill opposite "Hegarty's," a +German band smote the air with discordant fury. Decidedly a lively, +prosperous little town is Letterkenny, nor was I surprised to learn from +a communicative gentleman, nursing his cane near the inn-door, that +advantage would be taken of the presence of the Hussars sent to keep +order at Dunfanaghy, to "give a ball." + +"But I thought all the country was in arms about the trials at +Dunfanaghy," I said. + +"In arms about the trials at Dunfanaghy? Oh no; they'll never be locked +up, Father M'Fadden and Mr. Blane. And the people here at Letterkenny, +they've more sinse than at Dunfanaghy. Have you heard of the champagne?" + +Upon this he proceeded to tell me, as a grand joke, that Father +M'Fadden and Mr. Blane, M.P., having declined to accept the tea offered +them by the authorities during their detention, they had been permitted +to order what they liked from the local hotel-keeper. After the trial +was over, and they were released on bail to prosecute their appeal, the +hotel-keeper demanded of the authorities payment of his bill, including +two bottles of champagne ordered to refresh the member for Armagh! + +A conspicuous, smart, spick-and-span house on the main street, built of +brick and wood, with a verandah, and picked out in bright colours, was +pointed out to me by this amiable citizen as the residence of a +"returned American." This was a man, he said, who had made some money in +America, but got tired of living there, and had come back to end his +days in his native place He was a good man, my informant added, "only he +puts on too many airs." + +A remarkably handsome, rosy-faced young groom, a model of manhood in +vigour and grace, presently brought us up a wagonette with a pair of +stout nags, and a driver in a suit of dark-brown frieze, whose head +seemed to have been driven down between his shoulders. He never lifted +it up all the way to Gweedore, but he proved to be a capital jarvey +notwithstanding, and knew the country as well as his horses. + +Not long after leaving the town by a road which passes the huge County +Asylum (now literally crammed, I am told, with lunatics), we passed a +ruined church on the banks of a stream. Here the country people, it +seems, halt and wash their feet before entering Letterkenny, failing +which ceremony they may expect a quarrel with somebody before they get +back to their homes. This wholesome superstition doubtless was +established ages ago by some good priest, when priests thought it their +duty to be the preachers and makers of peace. + +We soon left the wooded country of the Swilly and began to climb into +the grand and melancholy Highlands of Donegal. The road was as fine as +any in the Scottish Highlands, and despite the keen chill wind, the +glorious and ever-changing panoramas of mountain and strath through +which we drove were a constant delight, until, just as we came within +full range of Muckish, the giant of Donegal, the weather finally broke +down into driving mists and blinding rain. + +We pulled up near a picturesque little shebeen, to water the horses and +get our Highland wraps well about us. Out came a hardy, cheery old +farmer. He swept the heavens with the eye of a mountaineer, and +exclaimed:--"Ah! it's a coorse day intirely, it is." "A coorse day +intirely" from that moment it continued to be. + +Happily the curtain had not fallen before we caught a grand passing +glimpse of the romantic gorge of Glen Veagh, closed and commanded in the +shadowy distance by the modern castle of Glenveagh, the mountain home of +my charming country-woman, Mrs. Adair. + +Thanks to its irregular serpentine outline, and to the desolate majesty +of the hills which environ it, Lough Veagh, though not a large sheet of +water, may well be what it is reputed to be, a rival of the finest lochs +in Scotland. No traces are now discernible on its shores of the too +celebrated evictions of Glen Veagh. But from the wild and rugged aspect +of the surrounding country it is probable enough that these evictions +were to the evicted a blessing in disguise, and that their descendants +are now enjoying, beyond the Atlantic, a measure of prosperity and of +happiness which neither their own labour nor the most liberal +legislation could ever have won for them here. We caught sight, as we +drove through Mrs. Adair's wide and rocky domain, of wire fences, and I +believe it is her intention to create here a small deer forest. This +ought to be as good a stalking country as the Scottish Highlands, +provided the people can be got to like "stalking" stags better than +landlords and agents. + +Long before we reached Glen Veagh we had bidden farewell, not only to +the hedges and walls of Tyrone and Eastern Donegal, but to the +"ditches," which anywhere but in Ireland would be called "embankments," +and entered upon great stone-strewn wastes of land seemingly unreclaimed +and irreclaimable. Huge boulders lay tossed and tumbled about as if they +had been whirled through the air by the cyclones of some prehistoric +age, and dropped at random when the wild winds wearied of the fun. The +last landmark we made out through the gathering storm was the pinnacled +crest of Errigal. Of Dunlewy, esteemed the loveliest of the Donegal +lakes, we could see little or nothing as we hurried along the highway, +which follows its course down to the Clady, the river of Gweedore; and +we blessed the memory of Lord George Hill when suddenly turning from +the wind and the rain into what seemed to be a mediaeval courtyard +flanked by trees, we pulled up in the bright warm light of an open +doorway, shook ourselves like Newfoundland dogs, and were welcomed by a +frank, good-looking Scottish host to a glowing peat fire in this really +comfortable little hotel, the central pivot of a most interesting +experiment in civilisation. + + +GWEEDORE, _Sunday, Feb. 5th._--A morning as soft and bright almost as +April succeeded the stormy night. Errigal lifted his bold irregular +outlines royally against an azure sky. The sunshine glinted merrily on +the swift waters of the Clady, which flows almost beneath our windows +from Dunlewy Lough to the sea. The birds were singing in the trees, +which all about our hotel make what in the West would be called an +"opening" in the wide and woodless expanse of hill and bog. + +This hotel was for many years the home of Lord George Hill, who built it +in the hope of making Gweedore, what in England or Scotland it would +long ago have become, a prosperous watering-place. Now that a +battle-royal is going on between Lord George's son and heir and the +tenants on the estate, organised by Father M'Fadden under the "Plan of +Campaign," it is important to know something of the history of the +place. + +Is this a case of the sons of the soil expropriated by an alien and +confiscating Government to enrich a ruthless invader? I was told by a +Nationalist acquaintance in Dublin that the owner of Gweedore is a near +kinsman of the Marquis of Londonderry, and that the property came to him +by inheritance under an ancient confiscation of the estates of the +O'Dounels of Tyrconnel. All of this I find is embroidery. + +The "Carlisle" room, which our landlord has assigned to us, contains a +number of books, the property of the late Lord George, and ample +materials are here for making out the annals of Gweedore. Lord George, +it seems, was a posthumous son of the fourth Marquis of Downshire, and a +nephew of that Marchioness of Salisbury who was burned to death with the +west wing of Hatfield House half a century ago. He inherited nothing in +Donegal, nor was any provision made for him under his father's will. His +elder brothers made up and settled upon him a sum of twenty thousand +pounds. He entered the Army, and being quartered for a time at +Letterkenny, shot and fished all about Donegal. He found the people here +kindly and friendly, but in a deplorable state of ignorance and of +destitution. Their holdings under sundry small proprietors were entirely +unimproved, and as their families increased, these holdings were cut up +by themselves into even smaller strips under the system known as +"rundale,"--each son as he grew up taking off a slice of the paternal +holding, putting up a hut with mud, and scratching the soil after his +own rude fashion. This custom, necessarily fatal to civilisation, +doubtless came down from the traditional times when the lands of a sept +were held in common by the sept, before the native chieftains had +converted themselves into landlords, and defeated Sir John Davies's +attempt to convert their tribal kinsmen into peasant proprietors. + +Whatever its origin, it had reduced Gweedore, or "Tullaghobegly," fifty +years ago to barbarism. Nearly nine thousand people then dwelt here with +never a landlord among them. There was no "Coercion" in Gweedore, +neither was there a coach nor a car to be found in the whole district. +The nominal owners of the small properties into which the district was +divided knew little and cared less about them. The rents were usually +"made by the tenants,"--a step in advance, it will be seen, of the +system which the collective wisdom of Great Britain has for the last +twenty years been trying to establish in Ireland. But they were only +paid when it was convenient. An agent of one of these properties who +travelled fourteen miles one day to collect some rents gave it up and +drove back again, because the "day was too bad" for him to wander about +in the mountains on the chance of finding the tenants at home and +disposed to give him a trifle on account. On most of the properties +there were arrears of eight, ten, and twenty years' standing. + +There was one priest in the district, and one National School, the +schoolmaster, with a family of nine persons, receiving the munificent +stipend of eight pounds a year. These nine thousand people, depending +absolutely upon tillage and pasture, owned among them all one cart and +one plough, eight saddles, two pillions, eleven bridles, and thirty-two +rakes! They had no means of harrowing their lands but with meadow rakes, +and the farms were so small that from four to ten farms could be +harrowed in a day with one rake. + +Their beds were of straw, mountain grass, or green and dried rushes. +Among the nine thousand people there were but two feather-beds, and but +eight beds stuffed with chaff. There were but two stables and six +cow-houses in the whole district. None of the women owned more than one +shift, nor was there a single bonnet among them all, nor a looking-glass +costing more than threepence. + +The climate and the scenery took the fancy of Lord George. He made up +his mind to see what could be done with this forgotten corner of the +world, and to that end bought up as he could the small and scattered +properties, till he had invested the greater part of his small fortune, +and acquired about twenty thousand acres of land. Of this, little was +fit for cultivation, even with the help of capital and civilised +management. There was not a road in the district, nor a drain. + +Lord George came and established himself here. He went to work +systematically to improve the country, reclaiming bog-lands, building +roads, and laying out the property into regular farms. He went about +among the people himself, trying to get their confidence, and to let +them know what he wanted to do for them, and with their help. + +For a long time they wouldn't believe him to be a lord at all, "because +he spoke Irish"; and the breaking up of the rundale system, under which +they had lived in higgledy-piggledy laziness, exasperated them greatly. +Of the first man who took a fenced and well-defined farm from Lord +George, and went to work on it, the others observed that he would come +to no good by it, because he would "have to keep a maid just to talk to +his wife." Men could not be got for any wages to work at draining, or at +making the "ditches" or embankments to delineate the new holdings; and +when Lord George found adventurous "tramps" willing to earn a few +shillings by honest work of the kind, conspiracies were formed to undo +by night what was done by day. However, Lord George persevered. + +There was not a shop, nor a dispensary, nor a doctor, nor a warehouse, +nor a quay for landing goods in this whole populous and sea-washed +region. He put up storehouses, built a little harbour at Bunbeg, +established a dispensary, got a doctor to settle in the district, and +finally put up the hotel in which we are. He advanced money to tenants +disposed to improve their holdings. Finding the women, as usual, more +thrifty and industrious than the men, and gifted with a natural aptitude +for the loom and the spindle, he introduced the weaving of woollen yarn +into stout frieze stuffs and foot-gear for both sexes. This was in 1840, +and in 1854 Gweedore hand-knit socks and stockings were sold to the +amount of £500, being just about the annual estimated rents of all the +properties bought by Lord George at the time when he bought them in +1838! But with this difference: The owners from whom Lord George bought +the properties got their £500 very irregularly, when they got it at all; +whereas the wives and daughters of the tenants, who made the socks and +stockings, were paid their £500 in cash. + +Clearly in Gweedore I have a case not of the children of the soil +despoiled and trampled upon by the stranger, but of the honest +investment of alien capital in Irish land, and of the administration by +the proprietor himself of the Irish property so acquired for the benefit +alike of the owner and of the occupiers of the land. + +That the deplorable state in which he found the people was mainly due to +their own improvidence and gregarious incapacity is also tolerably +clear. On the west coast of Norway, dear to the heart of the +salmon-fisher, you find people living under conditions certainly no more +favourable than here exist. North of the Hardanger Fjord, the spring +opens only in June. The farmers grow only oats and barley; but they have +no market except for the barley, and live chiefly by the pasturage. It +is as rocky a region as Donegal. But the Norsemen never try to make the +land do more than it is capable of doing. With them the oldest son takes +the farm and works it. The juniors are welcome to work on the farm if +they like for their brother, but they are not allowed to cut it up. +There is no rundale in Norway; and when the cadets see that there is no +room for them they quietly "pull up stakes," and go forth to seek a new +home, no matter where. + +For fourteen years Lord George Hill spent on Gweedore all the rents he +received from it, and a great deal more. During that time the relations +between the people and their new landlord seem to have been, in the +main, most friendly, notwithstanding his constant efforts to break up +their old habits, or, to use their own language, to "bother them." But +there were no "evictions"; rents were not raised even where the tenants +were visibly able to pay better rents; prizes were given annually for +the best and neatest cottages, for the best crops of turnips (neither +turnips, parsnips, nor carrots were there at Gweedore when Lord George +bought the estate), for the best pigs (there was not a pig in Gweedore +in 1838!), for calves and colts, for the best fences, the best ordered +tillage farms, the best labourers' cottages, the best beds and bedding, +the best butter, the best woollen goods made on the estate. The old +rundale plan of dividing up the land among the children was put a stop +to, and every tenant was encouraged not to make his holding smaller, but +to add to and enlarge it. A corn-mill, saw-mill, and flax-mill were +established. In 1838 there was not a baker within ten miles. In 1852 the +local baker was driving a good business in good bread. The tenant's +wife, for whom in 1838 a single shift was a social superiority, in 1852 +went shopping at Bunbeg for the latest fashions from Derry or Dublin. + +Whatever "landlordism" may mean elsewhere in Ireland, it is plain enough +that in the history of Gweedore it has meant the difference between +savage squalor and civilisation. + +Lord George Hill died in 1879, the year in which the Land League began +its operations. He bequeathed this property to his son, Captain Hill, by +whom the management of it has been left to agents. After Lord George's +death two tracts of mountain pasture, reserved by him to feed imported +sheep, were let to the tenants, who by that time had come to own quite a +considerable number, some thousands, of live stock, cattle, horses, and +sheep. + +Concurrently with this concession to the tenants the provisions made by +Lord George against the subdivision of holdings began to give way. +Father M'Fadden, combining the position of President of the National +League with that of parish priest, seems to have favoured this tendency, +and to have encouraged the putting up of new houses on reduced holdings +to accommodate an increasing population. A flood which in August 1880 +damaged the chapel and caused the death of five persons gave him an +opportunity of bringing before the British public the condition of the +people in a letter to the London _Times_, which elicited a very generous +response, several hundred pounds, it is said, having been sent to him +from London alone. Large contributions of relief were also made to +Gweedore from the Duchess of Marlborough's Fund, and Gweedore became a +standing butt of British benevolence. Two results seem to have followed, +naturally enough,--a growing indisposition on the part of the tenants to +pay rent, and a rapid rise in the value of tenant rights. With the +National League standing between them and the landlord, with the British +Parliament legislating year after year in favour of the Irish tenant and +against the Irish landlord, and with the philanthropic public ready to +respond to any appeal for help made on their behalf, the tenants at +Gweedore naturally became a privileged class. In no other way at least +can I explain the extraordinary fact that tenant rights at Gweedore have +been sold, according to Lord Cowper's Blue-book of 1886, during the +period of the greatest alleged distress and congestion in this district, +at prices representing from forty to a hundred-and-thirty years' +purchase of the landlord's rent! + +In this Blue-book the Rev. Father M'Fadden appears as receiving no less +than £115 sterling for the tenant-right sold by him of ground, the head +rent of which is £1, 2s. 6d. a year. The worst enemy of Father M'Fadden +will hardly suspect him, I hope, of taking such a sum as this from a +tenant farmer for the right to starve to death by inches.[13] + +A shrewd Galway man, now here, who seems to know the region well, and +likes both the scenery and the people, tells me that the troubles which +have now culminated in the arrest of Father M'Fadden have been +aggravated by the vacillation of Captain Hill, and by the foibles of his +agent, Colonel Dopping, who not long ago brought down Mr. Gladstone with +his unloaded rifle. That the tenants as a body have been, or now are, +unable to pay their rent he does not believe. On the contrary, he thinks +them, as a body, rather well off. Certainly I have seen and spoken with +none of them about the roads to-day who were not hearty-looking men, and +in very good case. Colonel Dopping, according to my Galwegian, is not an +Englishman, but a Longford Irishman of good family, who got his +training in India as an official of the Woods and Forests in Bengal. "He +is not a bad-hearted man, nor unkind," said my Galwegian, "but he is +too much of a Bengal tiger in his manner. He went into the cottages +personally and lectured the people, and that they never will stand. They +don't require or expect you to believe what they say--in fact they have +little respect for you if you do--but they like to have the agent +pretend that he believes them, and then go on and show that he don't. +But he must never lose his temper about it. Colonel Dopping, I have +heard, argued with an old woman one day who was telling him more yarns +than were ever spun into cloth in Gweedore, till she picked up her cup +of tea and threw it in his face. He flounced out of the cottage, and +ordered the police to arrest her. That did him more harm than if he had +shot a dozen boys." "What with the temper of Colonel Dopping and the +vacillation of Captain Hill, who is always of the mind of the last man +that speaks to him, Father M'Fadden has had it all his own way. Captain +Hill's claim was for £1800 of arrears, long arrears too, and £400 of +costs. How much the people paid in under the Plan of Campaign nobody +knows but Father M'Fadden. But he is a clever _padre_, and he played +Captain Hill till he finally gave up the costs, and settled for £1450." + +"And this sum represents what?" + +"It represents in round numbers about two years' income from an estate +in which Captain Hill's father must have invested, first and last, more +nearly £40,000 than £20,000 of money that never came out of it." + +"That doesn't sound like a very good operation. But isn't the question, +Whether the tenants have earned this sum, such as it is, out of the land +let to them by Captain Hill?" + +"No, not exactly, I think. You must remember there are some twelve +hundred families living here on land bought with Lord George's money, +and enjoying all the advantages which the place owes to his investment +and his management, much more than to any labour or skill of theirs. You +must look at their rents as accommodation rents. Suppose they earn the +rent in Scotland, or England, or Tyrone, or wherever you like, the +question is, What do they get for it from Captain Hill? They get a +holding with land enough to grow potatoes on, and with as much free fuel +as ever they like, and with free pasture for their beasts, and all this +they get on the average, mind you, for no more than ten shillings a +year! Why, there was a time, I can assure you, when the women here +earned the value of all the Hill rents by knitting stockings and making +woollen stuffs. You see the stuffs lying here in this window that they +make even now, and good stuffs too. But before the League boycotted the +agency here, the agency ten years ago used to pay out £900 in a year, +where it pays less than £100 to the women for their work." + +"Why did the League do this?" + +"Why? Why, because it wanted to control the work itself, and to know +just what it brings into the place. You must remember Father M'Fadden is +the President of the League, and the people will do anything for him. I +have heard of one old woman who sat up of nights last year knitting +socks to send up to London, to pay the Christmas dues to the +Father,--six shillings' worth." + +"And are these stuffs here in the hotel made for the agency you speak +of?" + +"Oh no; these are just made by women that know the hotel, and Mr. +Robinson here, he kindly takes in the stuffs. You see the name of every +woman on every one of them that made it, and the price. If a stranger +buys some, he pays the money to Mr. Robinson, and so it goes to the +women, and no commission charged." + +The "stuffs" are certainly excellent, very evenly woven; and the +patterns, all devised, I am told, by the women themselves, very simple +and tasteful. The only dyes used are got by the women also from the +sea-weeds and the kelp, which must be counted among the resources of the +place. The browns and ochres thus produced are both soft and vivid; +while nothing can be better than a peculiar warm grey, produced by a +skilful mingling of the undyed wools. + +"What, then, causes the distress for which the name of Gweedore is a +synonym?" I asked. + +"It doesn't exist," responded my Galwegian; "that is, there is no such +distress in Gweedore as you find in Connemara, for instance;[14] but +what distress there is in Gweedore is due much more to the habits the +people have been getting into of late years, and to the idleness of +them, than to any pressure of the rents you hear about, or even to the +poverty of the soil. Go down to the store at Bunbeg, and see what they +buy and go in debt for! You won't find in any such place as Bunbeg in +England such things. And even this don't measure it; for, you see, +two-thirds of them are not free to deal at Bunbeg." + +"Why not? Is Bunbeg 'boycotted'?" + +"No, not at all. But they are on the books of the 'Gombeen man'--Sweeney +of Dungloe and Burtonport. They're always in debt to him for the meal; +and then he backs the travelling tea-pedlars, and the bakers that carry +around cakes, and all these run up the accounts all the time. Tot up +what these people lay out for tea at four shillings a pound--and they +won't have cheap tea--and what they pay for meal, and what they pay for +interest, and the 'testimonials,'--they paid for the monument here to +O'Donnell, the Donegal man that murdered Carey,--and the dues to the +priest, and you'll find the £700 or so they don't pay the landlord going +in other directions three and four times over." + +"Then they are falling back into all the old laziness, the men +sauntering about, or sitting and smoking, while the women do all the +work." + +The maid having told us Mass would be performed at noon, I walked with +Lord Ernest a mile or so up the road to Derrybeg, to see the people +thronging down from the hills; the women in their picturesque fashion +wearing their bright shawls drawn over their heads. But the maid had +deceived us. The Mass was fixed for eleven, and I suspect her of being a +Protestant in disguise. + +On the way back we met Mr. Burke, the resident magistrate. He has a neat +house here, with a garden, and had come over from Dunfanaghy to see his +wife. He meant to return before dark. The country was quiet enough, he +said; but there were some troublesome fellows about, keeping up the +excitement over the arrest at Father M'Fadden's trial of Father +Stephens--a young priest recently from Liverpool, who has become the +curate of quite another Father M'Fadden--the parish priest of +Falcarragh, and is giving his local superior a great deal of trouble by +his activity in connection with the "Plan of Campaign." Mr. Wybrants +Olphert of Ballyconnell, the chief landlord of Falcarragh, has been +"boycotted," on suspicion of promoting the arrest of the two priests. +Five policemen have been put into his house. At Falcarragh, where six +policemen are usually stationed, there are now forty. Mr. Burke +evidently thinks, though he did not say so, that Father Stephens has +been spoiled of his sleep by the laurels of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore. +He is to be tried at Dunfanaghy on Tuesday, and there are now 150 troops +quartered there--Rifles and Hussars. + +"Are they not boycotted?" I asked. + +"No. The people rather enjoy the bustle and the show, not to speak of +the money the soldiers spend." + +Lord Ernest, who knows Mr. Olphert, sent him over a message by Mr. Burke +that we would drive over to-morrow, and pay our respects to him at +Ballyconnell. From this Mr. Burke tried to dissuade us, but what he told +us naturally increased our wish to go. + +After luncheon I ordered a car, and drove to Derrybeg, to call there on +Father M'Fadden, Lord Ernest, who has already seen him, agreeing to call +there for me on his return from a walk. We passed much reclaimed +bogland, mostly now in grass, and looking fairly well; many piles of +turf and clusters of cottages, well-built, but not very neatly kept. +From each, as we passed, the inevitable cur rushed out and barked +himself hoarse. Then came a waste of bog and boulders, and then a long, +neat stone wall, well coped with unhewn stone, which announced the +vicinity of Father M'Fadden's house, quite the best structure in the +place after the chapel and the hotel. It is of stone, with a neat side +porch, in which, as I drove up, I descried Father M'Fadden, in his trim +well-fitting clerical costume, standing and talking with an elderly +lady. I passed through a handsome iron wicket, and introduced myself to +him. He received me with much courtesy, and asked me to walk into his +well-furnished comfortable study, where a lady, his sister, to whom he +presented me, sat reading by the fire. + +I told Father M'Fadden I had come to get his view of methods and things +at Gweedore, and he gave it to me with great freedom and fluency. He is +a typical Celt in appearance, a M'Fadden Roe, sanguine by temperament, +with an expression at once shrewd and enthusiastic, a most flexible +persuasive voice. All the trouble at Gweedore, he thought, came of the +agents. "Agents had been the curse both of Ireland and of the landlord. +The custom being to pay them by commissions on the sums collected, and +not a regular salary, the more they can screw either out of the soil, or +out of any other resources of the tenants, the better it is for them. At +Gweedore the people earn what they can, not out of the soil, but out of +their labour exported to Scotland, or England, or America. Only +yesterday," he continued, turning to his neat mahogany desk and taking +up a letter, "I received this with a remittance from America to pay the +rent of one of my people." + +"This was in connection," I asked, "with the 'Plan of Campaign' and your +contest here?" + +"Yes," he replied; "and a girl of my parish went over to Scotland +herself and got the money due there for another family, and brought it +back to me here. You see they make me a kind of savings-bank, and have +done so for a long time, long before the 'Plan of Campaign' was talked +about as it is now." + +This was interesting, as I had heard it said by a Nationalist in Dublin +that the "Plan of Campaign" was originally suggested by Father M'Fadden. +He made no such claim himself, however, and I made no allusion to this +aspect of the matter. "I have been living here for fifteen years, and +they listen to me as to nobody else." + +In these affairs with the agents, he had always told his people that +"whenever a settlement came to be made, cash alone in the hand of the +person representing them could make it properly." "Cash I must have," he +said, "and hold the cash ready for the moment. When I had worked out a +settlement with Captain Hill, I had a good part of the money in my hand +ready to pay down. £1450 was the sum total agreed upon, and after the +further collection, necessitated by the settlement, there was a deficit +of about £200. I wrote to Professor Stuart," he added, after a pause, +"that I wanted about £200 of the sum-total. But more has come in since +then. This remittance, from America yesterday, for example." + +"Do they send such remittances without being asked for them?" I +inquired. + +"Yes; they are now and again sending money, and some of them don't send, +but bring it. Some of them go out to America now as they used to go to +England--just to work and earn some money, and come back. + +"If they get on tolerably well they stay for a while, but they find +America is more expensive than Ireland, and if, for any cause, they get +out of work there, they come back to Ireland to spend what they have. +Naturally, you see," said Father M'Fadden, "they find a certain pleasure +to be seen by their old friends in the old place, after borrowing the +four pounds perhaps to take them to America, coming back with the money +jingling in their pockets, and in good clothes, and with a watch and a +chain--and a high hat. And there is in the heart of the Irishman an +eternal longing for his native land constantly luring him back to +Ireland. All do not succeed, though, in your country," he said. "We hear +of two out of ten perhaps who do very well. They take care we hear of +that. The rest disappear, and are never heard of again." + +"Then you do not encourage emigration?" I, asked, "even although the +people cannot earn their living from the soil?" + +Father M'Fadden hesitated a moment, and then replied, "No, for things +should be so arranged that they may earn their living, not out of the +country, but on the soil at home. It is to that I want to bring the +condition of the district." + +At this point Lord Ernest Hamilton came up and knocked at the door. He +was most courteously received by Father M'Fadden. To my query why the +Courts could not intervene to save the priests from taking all this +trouble on themselves between the owners and the occupiers of the land, +Father M'Fadden at first replied that the Courts had no power to +intervene where, as in many cases in Gweedore, the holdings are +subdivided. + +"The Courts," he said, "may not be, and I do not think they are, all +that could be desired, though they undoubtedly do supply a more or less +impartial arbitrator between the landlord and the tenant. It is an +improvement on the past when the landlords fixed the rents for +themselves." + +I did not remind him of what Lord George Hill tells us, that in the +olden time at Gweedore the tenants fixed their own rents--and then did +not pay them--but I asked him how this could be said when the tenant +clearly must have accepted the rent, no matter who fixed it. "Oh!" said +Father M'Fadden, "that may be so, but the tenant was not free, he was +coerced. With all his life and labour represented in the holding and its +improvements, he could not go and give up his holding. It's a +stand-and-deliver business with him--the landlord puts a pistol to his +head!" + +"But is it not true," I said, "that under the new Land Bill the Land +Commissioner's Court has power to fix the rents judicially without +regard to landlord or tenant during fifteen years?" + +"Yes, that is so," said Father M'Fadden. "Under Mr. Gladstone's Act of +81, and under the later Act of the present Government, the rents so +fixed from '81 to '86 inclusive are subject to revision for three years; +but the people have no confidence in the constitution of the Courts, +and, as a matter of fact, the improvements of the tenants are +confiscated under the Act of '81, and the reductions allowed under the +Act of '87 are incommensurate with the fall in prices by 100 per cent. +And there still remains the burden of arrears. I feel that I must stand +between my people and obligations which they are unable to meet. To that +end I take their money, and stand ready to use it to relieve them when +the occasion offers. That is my idea of my work under the 'Plan of +Campaign'; and, furthermore, I think that by doing it I have secured +money for the landlord which he couldn't possibly have got in any other +way." + +This struck me as a very remarkable statement, nor can I see how it can +be interpreted otherwise than as an admission that if the people had +the money to pay their rents, they couldn't be trusted to use it for +that purpose, unless they put it into the control of the priest or of +some other trustee. + +Reverting to what he had said of the necessity for some change in the +conditions of life and labour here, I asked if, in his opinion, the +people could live out of the land if they got the ownership of it. + +In existing circumstances he thought they could not. + +Was he in favour, then, of Mr. Davitt's plan of Land Nationalisation? + +"Well, I have not considered the question of Nationalisation of the +land." + +To my further question, What remedies he would himself propose for a +state of things in which it was impossible for the people to live out of +the land either as occupiers or as owners--emigration being barred, +Father M'Fadden, without looking at Lord Ernest, replied, "Oh, I think +abler men who draw up Parliamentary Acts and live in public life ought +to devise remedies, and that is a matter which would be best settled by +a Home Government." + +The glove was well delivered, but Lord Ernest did not lift it. + +"But, Father M'Fadden," I said, "I am told you are a practical +agriculturist and engineer, and that you have contrived to get excellent +work done by the people here, dividing them off into working squads, and +assigning so many perches to so many--surely then you must understand +better than a dozen members of Parliament what they can be got to do?" + +He smiled at this, and finally admitted that he had a plan of his own. +It was that the Government should advance sums for reclaiming the land. +"The people could live on part of their earnings while thus employed, +and invest the surplus in sheep to be fed on the hill pastures. When the +reclamation was effected the families could be scattered out, and the +holdings increased. In this district alone there are 350 holdings of +reclaimable land of 20 acres each, the reclamation of which, according +to a competent surveyor, "would pay well." And the district could be +improved by creating employment on the spot, establishing factories, +developing fisheries, giving technical education, and encouraging +cottage industries, which are so vigorously reviving in this district +owing to the benevolent efforts of the Donegal Industrial Fund." + +Father M'Fadden spoke freely and without undue heat of his trial, and +gave us a piquant account of his arrest. + +This was effected at Armagh, just as he was getting into an early +morning train. A sergeant of police walked up as the train was about to +start, and asked-- + +"Are you not Father M'Fadden of Gweedore?" + +"What interest have you in my identity?" responded the priest. + +"Only this, sir," said the officer, politely exhibiting a warrant. + +"I had been in Armagh the previous day," said Father M'Fadden, +"attending the month's memory of the late deceased Primate of All +Ireland, Dr. M'Gettigan, and stayed at a private residence, that of +Surgeon-Major Lavery, not suspecting that while enjoying the genial +hospitality of the Surgeon-Major my steps were dogged by a detective, +and that gentleman's house watched by police." + +Of the trial Father M'Fadden spoke with more bitterness. His eyes glowed +as he exclaimed, "Can you imagine that they refused me bail, when bail +had been allowed to such a felon as Arthur Orton? Why should I have +been locked up over two Sundays, for ten days, when I offered to pledge +my honour to appear?" He made no other complaint of the magistrate, and +none of the prosecutor, Mr. Ross. He praised his own lawyer, too, but he +strongly denounced the stenographer who took down his speech, or the +parts of it which I told him I had seen in Dublin. + +"Why, just think of it," he exclaimed; "it took the clerk just eight +minutes to read the report given by that stenographer of a speech which +it took me an hour and twenty minutes to deliver! I do not speak from +the lips, I speak from the heart, and consequently rather rapidly; and a +stenographer who can take down 190 words a minute has told me I run +ahead of him!" + +I suggested that the report, without pretending even to be a full +summary of his speech, might be accurate as to phrases and sentences +pronounced by him. + +"Yes, as to phrases," he answered, "that might be; but the phrases may +be taken out of their true connection, and strung together in an +untruthful, yet telling way. Even my words were not fully set down," he +said, with some heat. "I was made to call a man 'level,' when I said in +the American way that he was 'level-headed.'" _A propos_ of this, I am +told that the American word "spree" has become Hibernian, and is used to +describe meetings of the National League and "other political +entertainments." + +When I told Father M'Fadden I had just come from Rome, where, as I had +reason to believe, the Vatican was anxious to get evidence from others +than Archbishop Walsh and Monsignore Kirby, of the Irish College, as to +the attitude of the priests in Ireland towards the laws of the United +Kingdom, he said he knew that "some Italian prelates neither understood +nor approved the 'Plan of Campaign,' nor is the Irish Land question +understood at Rome;" but this did not seem to disturb him much, as he +was quite sure that in the end the "Plan of Campaign" would be legalised +by the British Government. "I think I see plainly," he said, "that Lord +Ernest's government is fast going to pieces, though I can't expect him +to admit it!" Lord Ernest laughed good-naturedly, and said that Father +M'Fadden saw more in Donegal than he (Lord Ernest) was able to see in +Westminster. Upon my asking him whether the "Plan of Campaign" did not +in effect abrogate the moral duty of a man to meet the legal obligations +he had voluntarily incurred, Father M'Fadden advanced his own theory of +the subject, which was that, "if a man can pay a fair year's rent out of +the produce of his holding, he is bound to pay it. But if the rent be a +rack-rent, imposed on the tenant against his will, or if the holding +does not produce the rent, then I don't think that is a strict +obligation in conscience." + +In America, the courts, I fear, would make short work of this theory of +Father M'Fadden. If a tenant there cannot pay his first quarter's rent +(they don't let him darken his soul by a year's liabilities) they +promptly and mercilessly put him out. + +Interesting as was our conversation with the parish priest of Gweedore, +I felt that we might be trespassing too far upon his kindness and his +time. So we rose to go. He insisted upon our going into the dining-room, +where, as he told us, he had hospitably entertained sundry visiting +statesmen from England, and there offered us a glass of the excellent +wine of the country. He excused himself from joining us as being +"almost a teetotaller." + +On our return to the hotel I met the Galwegian strolling about. When I +told him of Father M'Fadden's courteous hospitality, he said, "I am very +glad you took that glass he offered. I really believe his quarrel with +Captain Hill dates back to Hill's declining that same courtesy under +Father M'Fadden's roof." + + +GWEEDORE, _Monday, Feb. 6._--Another very beautiful morning--as a farmer +said with whom I chatted on my morning stroll, "A grand day, sorr!" +Errigal, which in this mountain atmosphere seems almost to hang over our +hotel, but is in reality three or four miles away, stood out superbly +against a clear azure sky, wreaths of soft luminous mist floating like a +divine girdle half way up his bare volcanic peak. + +I walked up to the Bunbeg road with Lord Ernest to call upon some +peasants whom he knows. In one stone cabin, very well built and +plastered, standing sidewise to the road, with doors on either side, we +found the house apparently in charge of a little girl of nine or ten +years, a weird but pretty child with very delicate well-cut features, +who lay couchant upon her doubled-up arm on a low bed in a corner of the +main room, and peered at us over her elbow with sparkling inquisitive +eyes. + +By her side sat a man with his cap on, who might have been the "young +Pretender," or the "old Kaiser," so far as his looks went towards +indicating his age. He never rose or welcomed us, being, as we +afterwards found out, only a visitor like ourselves, and a kinsman of +Mrs. M'Donnell, the head of the house. "Mrs. M'Donnell," he said, "is +gone to the store at Bunbeg." + +This main room rose perhaps ten feet in height to the open roof. It had +one large and well-glazed window. When Lord George Hill came here there +were not ten square feet of window-glass in the whole parish outside of +the Church, the national school, and the residence of the chief +police-officer. + +Windows when there were any were closed with dried sheepskins, through +which the cats ran in and out as freely as through the curious tunnel +which the kindly Master of Blantyre has constructed at Sheba's Cross for +their special benefit. + +There were two beds in the main room; rather high than low, one of +rushes, on which lay the child of whom I have spoken, and one of +greater pretensions vacant in another corner. + +The door stood wide open, but the cabin was warm and comfortable, and a +peat fire smouldered, sending up, to me, most agreeable odours. An inner +room seemed to be a sort of granary, full of hay and straw. There the +cow is kept at night. "It's handy if you want a drink of milk," said the +visitor. In comparison with the dwellings of small farmers in Eastern +France or in Southern Italy this Donegal cabin was not only clean but +attractive. It was more squalid perhaps, but less dreary than the +extemporised and flimsy dwellings of settlers in the extreme Far West of +the United States, and I should say decidedly a more wholesome +habitation than the hermetically sealed and dismal wooden houses of +hundreds of struggling farmers in the older Eastern States. I am sure my +old friend Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, who made the only thorough surveys +of agricultural life in the United States before the Civil War, would +have pronounced it in all respects superior, so far as health and +comfort go, to the average home of the average "poor buccra," between +the Chesapeake and the Sabine. I am afraid a great deal of not wholly +innocuous nonsense has been written and spoken about this part of the +United Kingdom by well-meaning philanthropists who have gauged the +condition of the people here by their own standards of comfort and +enjoyment. Most things in this life of ours are relative. I well +remember hearing an American millionaire, who began life in New York as +the patentee of a mouse-trap, express his profound compassion for a +judge of the Supreme Court condemned to live "upon a pittance of eight +thousand dollars a year." + +These dwellers in the cabins of Donegal are millionaires, so far as +those essentials of life are concerned, which we call room and air and +freedom to move and breathe, in comparison with hundreds and thousands +of their own race in the slums of New York and Chicago and Liverpool and +London. + +Mrs. M'Donnell's cousin, however, took dark views of things. The times +"were no good at all." + +The potatoes, I had heard, were doing well this year. + +"No! they wouldn't keep the people; indeed, they wouldn't. There would +have to be relief." + +"Why not manure the land?" + +"Manure? oh yes, the sea-stuff was good manure, but the people couldn't +get it. They had no boats; and it cost eighteenpence a load to haul it +from Bunbeg. No! they couldn't get it off the rocks. At the Rosses they +might; the Rosses were not so badly off as Derrybeg or Gweedore, for all +they might say." + +"But Father M'Fadden had urged me," I said, "to see the Rosses, because +the people there were worse off than any of the people." + +"Well, Father M'Fadden was a good man; he was a friend of the people; +and they were bad indeed at the Rosses, but they could get the sea-stuff +there, and hadn't to pay for cartage. And indeed, if you put the +sea-stuff on the bogland, the land was better in among the rocks' at the +Rosses than was the bogland, it was indeed: the stuff did no good at all +the first year. The second and the third it gave good crops--but then +you must burn it--and by the fourth year and the fifth it was all ashes, +and no good at all! This was God's truth, it was; and there must be +relief." + +"But could the people earn nothing in Scotland or in Tyrone?" + +"Oh no, they could earn nothing at all. They could pay no rent." + +So he sat there, a Jeremiah among the potsherds, quite contented and +miserable--well and hearty in a ragged frieze coat, with his hat over +his eyes. + +While we talked, a tall lusty young beggar-girl wandered in and out +unnoticed. Chickens pecked and fluttered about, and at intervals the +inevitable small dog suddenly barked and yelped. + +On our way back we met the elder daughter of Mrs. M'Donnell, a girl of +sixteen, the "beauty of Gweedore." A beauty she certainly is, and of a +type hardly to have been looked for here. + +Her lithe graceful figure, her fine, small, chiselled features, her +shapely little head rather defiantly set on her sloping shoulders, her +fair complexion and clear hazel eyes, her brown golden hair gathered up +behind into a kind of tress, all these were Saxon rather than Celtic. +Her trim neat ankles were bare, after the mountain fashion, but she was +prettily dressed in a well-fitting dark blue gown, wore a smartly +trimmed muslin apron, with lace about her throat, and carried over her +arm a new woollen shawl, very tasteful and quiet in colour. She greeted +us with a self-possessed smile. + +"No," she had not, been shopping with her mother. The shawl was a +present from one of her cousins. Did we not think it very pretty? She +was only out for a walk, and had no notion where her mother might be. A +stalwart red-bearded man who lounged and loitered behind her on the road +was "only a friend," she said, "not a relation at all!" Nor did she +show, I am sorry to say, any compassion for the evident uneasiness with +which, from a distance, he regarded her long and affable parley with two +strangers. + +We asked her whether she expected and wished to live in Gweedore, or +would like to follow elsewhere some calling or trade. "Oh yes," she +unhesitatingly replied, "I should like to be a dress-maker in Deny; +but," she added pensively, "it's no use my thinking about it, for I know +I shouldn't be let!" + +"Wouldn't you like Dublin as well?" I asked. + +"Perhaps; but I shouldn't be let go to Dublin either!" + +Would she like to go to America? + +"No!" she didn't think much of "the Americans who came back," and +America must be "a very hard country for work, and very cold in the +winter." + +Now this was a widow's daughter, living in such a cabin as I have +described, and upon a small holding in a parish reputed to be the most +"distressful" in Donegal![15] + +Returning to the hotel we found our car ready for Falcarragh. Our driver +was a quiet, sensible fellow, who did not seem to care sixpence about +the great Nationality question, though he knew the country very well. + +Iron was visible in the rocks as we drove along, and we passed some +abandoned mining works, "lead and silver mines;" he said, "they were +given up long before his time." We got many fine views of the mountains +Errigal, Aghla More, and Muckish. Lough Altan, a wild tarn, lies between +Errigal and Aghla More. + +The peasants we met stared at us curiously, but, were very civil, even +at a place bearing the ominous name of Bedlam, against which Mr. Burke +had warned us as the most troublesome on the way. All the countryside +was there attending a fair, and we drove through throngs of red-shawled, +barelegged women, ponies, horses, cattle, and sheep. Of Tory Island, +with its famous tower, dating back to the fabled "Fomorians," we had +some grand glimpses. The white surf, flashing and leaping high in the +air on the nearer islets accented and gave life to the landscape. + +In one glorious landlocked bay, we saw not a single boat riding. Our +driver said, "The fishermen all live on Tory Island, and send their fish +to Sligo. The people on the mainland don't like going out in the boats." + +Lord Ernest tells me there is a movement to have a telegraph station set +up on Tory Island, to announce the Canadian steamers coming into Moville +for Deny. + +We found Falcarragh, or "Cross-Roads," a large clean-looking village, +consisting of one long and broad street, through which horses and cattle +were wandering in numbers, apparently at their own sweet will. + +Ballyconnell House, the seat of Mr. Wybrants Olphert, is the manor house +of the place. As we drew near, no signs appeared of the dreadful +"Boycott." The great gates of the park stood hospitably open, and we +drove in unchallenged past a pretty ivy-clad lodge, and through low, but +thickly planted groves. A huge boulder, ruddy with iron ore, bears the +uncanny and unspellable name of the "Clockchinnfhaelaidh," or "Stone of +Kinfaele." Upon this stone, tradition tells us, Balor, a giant of Tory +Island, chopped off the head of an unreasonable person named +Mackinfeale, for complaining that Balor, under some prehistoric "Plan of +Campaign," had driven away his favourite cow, Glasgavlan. + +Ballyconnell House, a substantial mansion of the Georgian era, stands +extremely well. Over a fine sloping lawn in front, you have a glorious +view of the sea, and of a very fine headland, known as "the Duke's +Head," from the really remarkable resemblance it bears to the profile of +Wellington. The winds have such power here that there are but few +well-grown trees, and those near the house. About them paraded many +game-hens, spirited birds, looking like pheasants. These, as we learned, +never sleep save in the trees. + +The "boycotted" lord of the manor came out to greet us--a handsome, +stalwart man of some seventy years, with a kindly face, and most +charming manners. His family, presumably of Dutch origin, has been +established here since Charles II. He himself holds 18,133 acres here, +valued at £1802 a year; and he is a resident landlord in the fullest +sense of the term. For fifty years he has lived here, during all which +time, as he told us to-day, he has "never slept for a week out of the +country." His furthest excursions of late years have been to Raphoe, +where he has a married daughter. "Absenteeism" clearly has nothing to do +with the quarrel between Mr. Olphert and his tenants, or with the +"boycotting" of Ballyconnell. + +The dragoons from Dunfanaghy had just ridden away as we came up. They +had come over in full fig to show themselves, and to encourage the +respectable Catholics of Falcarragh, who side with their parish priest, +Father M'Fadden of Glena, and object to the vehement measures, promoted +by his young curate, Father Stephens, recently of Liverpool. The people +had received them with much satisfaction. "They had never seen the +cavalry before, and were much delighted!" + +Before we sat down to luncheon young Mr. Olphert came in. It was curious +to see this quiet, well-bred young gentleman throw down his belt and his +revolver on the hall table, like his gloves and his umbrella. "Quite +like the Far West," I said. "And we are as far in the West as we can +get," he replied laughingly. + +Our luncheon was excellent--so good, in fact, that we felt a kind of +remorse as if we had selfishly quartered ourselves upon a beleaguered +garrison. But Mr. Olphert said he had no fear of being starved out. +Personally he was, and always had been, on the best terms with the +people of Falcarragh. The older tenants, even now, if he met them +walking in the fields when no one was in sight, would come up and salute +him, and say how "disgusted" they were with what was going on. It was +the younger generation who were troublesome--more troublesome, he added, +to their own parish priest than they were to him. Three or four years +ago a returned American Irishman, an avowed unbeliever, but an active +Nationalist and one of Mr. Forster's "suspects," had come into the +neighbourhood and done his worst to break up the parish. He used to come +to Falcarragh on a Sunday, and get up on a stone outside the chapel +while Father M'Fadden was saying Mass or preaching, and harangue such +people as would listen to him, and caricature the priest and the sermon +going on within sound of his own voice. "I am myself a Protestant," +said Mr. Olphert, "but I have a great respect for priests who do their +duty; and the conduct of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, in countenancing +this man, who tried to overthrow the authority of Father M'Fadden of +Glena, excited my indignation. As to what is going on now," said Mr. +Olphert, "it is to Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, and to Father Stephens +here, that the trouble is chiefly to be charged." This tallies with what +I heard at Gweedore from my Galwegian acquaintance. He thought Mr. +Olphert, and Mr. Hewson, the agent, ought to have made peace on the +terms which Father Stephens said he was willing to accept for the +tenants, these being a reduction of 3s. 4d. in the pound, if Mr. Olphert +would extend the reduction to the whole year. My Galwegian thought this +reasonable, because in this region the rent, it appears, is only +collected once a year. With this impartial temper, my Galwegian still +maintained that but for the two priests--the parish priest of Gweedore +and the curate of Falcarragh--there need have been no trouble at +Falcarragh. There had been no "evictions." When the tenants first went +to Mr. Olphert they asked a reduction of 4s. in the pound on the +non-judicial rents, and this Mr. Olphert at once agreed to give them. +The tenants had regularly paid their rents for ten years before. That +they are not going down in the world would appear from the fact that the +P.O. Savings Banks' deposits at Falcarragh, which stood at £62, 15s. +10d. in 1880, rose in 1887 to £494, 10s. 8d. A small number of them had +gone into Court and had judicial rents fixed; and it was on the +contention promoted by the two priests, through these judicial tenants, +he said, that all the difficulty hinged. Father M'Fadden of Glena, who +thought the quarrel unjustifiable and silly, had an interview with Mr. +Blane, M.P., and with Father Stephens, and tried to arrange it all. He +would have succeeded, my Galwegian thought, had not the agent, Mr. +Hewson, obstinately fought with the obstinate curate, Father Stephens, +over the suggestion made by the latter, that the terms granted on the +fine neighbouring estate of Mr. Stuart of Ards--a man of wealth, who +lives mainly at Brighton, though Ards is one of the loveliest places in +Ireland--should be extended by Mr. Olphert for a whole year to his own +people, who had never asked for anything of the kind! + +Mr. Olphert said he knew Gweedore well. He owns a "townland"[16] there, +on which he has thirty-five tenants, none of them on a holding at more +more than £4 a year. Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, he said, finding that +the people on Mr. Olphert's townland were going back to the "Rundale" +practices, tried to induce Mr. Olphert to return all these subdivisions +as "tenancies." This he refused to do. As to the resources of the +peasantry, he thought them greater than they appeared to be. "This comes +to light," said Mr. Olphert, "whenever there is a tenant-right for sale. +There is never any lack of money to buy it, and at a round good price." +The people also, he thinks, spend a great deal on what they regard as +luxuries, and particularly on tea. "A cup of tea could not be got for +love or money in Gweedore, when Lord George Hill came there. You might +as well have asked for a glass of Tokay." + +Now they use and abuse it in the most deleterious way imaginable. They +buy the tea at exorbitant rates, often at five shillings a pound, and +usually on credit, paying a part of one bill on running up another, put +it into a saucepan or an iron pot, and boil, or rather stew, it over the +fire, till they brew a kind of hell-broth, which they imbibe at odd +moments all day long! Oddly enough, this is the way in which they +prepare tea in Cashmere and other parts of India, with this essential +difference, though, that the Orientals mitigate the astringency of the +herb with milk and almonds and divers ingredients, tending to make a +sort of "compote" of it. Taken as it is taken here, it must have a +tremendous effect on the nerves. Mr. Olphert thinks it has had much to +do with the increase of lunacy in Ireland of late years. From his +official connection with the asylum at Letterkenny, he knows that while +it used to accommodate the lunatics of three counties, it is now hardly +adequate to the needs of Donegal alone. + +Everything about Ballyconnell House is out of key with the actual +military conditions of life here. It is essentially what Tennyson calls +"an ancient home of ordered peace." In the ample hall hang old portraits +and trophies of the chase. The large and handsome library, panelled in +rich dark wood, is filled full of well-bound books. Prints, busts, the +thousand and one things of "bigotry and virtue" which mark the +dwelling-place of educated and thoughtful people are to be seen on every +side. Mr. Olphert showed us a cabinet full of bronzes, picked up on the +strand of the sea. Among these were brooches, pins, clasps, buckles, two +very fine bronze swords, and a pair of bronze links engraved with +distinctly Masonic emblems, such as the level, the square, and the +compasses. When were these things made, and by what people? + +So far as I know, Masonry in the British Islands cannot be historically +traced back much, if at all, beyond the Revolution of 1688. + +Mr. Olphert and his son walked about the place with us. They have no +fears of an attack, but think it wise to keep a force of police on the +premises. The only demonstration yet made of any kind against the house +was the march from Falcarragh some time ago of a mob of young men, who +promptly withdrew on catching sight of half-a-dozen policemen within the +park gates. As to getting his work done, some of his people had steadily +refused to acknowledge the "boycott," and they were now strengthened by +the attitude of those who had surrendered to the pressure, and were now +sullen and angry with the League which had given them nothing to do, and +no supplies. + +At Falcarragh we met a person who knew much about the late Lord Leitrim, +who was murdered in this neighbourhood on the highway some years ago. He +spoke freely of the murderer by name, as if it were matter of common +notoriety. Of the murdered man, he said that he had made himself +extremely unpopular and odious, not so much by certain immoralities +freely alleged at the time of his death, as by vexatious meddling with +the prejudices and whims of his tenants. "He used to go into the houses +and pull down cartoons and placards, if he saw them put up on the +walls." "No! he had no party feeling in the matter; he used to pull down +William III. and the Pope with an equal hand." It seems that in this +region, too, a local legend has grown up of the birth at a place called +Cashelmore of a "Queen of France." The case is worth noting as throwing +light on the genesis and accuracy of local traditions. The "Queen of +France" referred to proves, on inquiry, to have been Miss Patterson, who +married Jerome Bonaparte, brother of the first Emperor, afterwards +created by him King of Westphalia! This Avas the lady so well known in +America as Mrs. Patterson Bonaparte of Baltimore, who died at a great +age only a few years ago. I have no reason to suppose that she was born +at Cashelmore at all or in Ireland. But her father, reputed in the time +of Washington to be the richest man in the United States, who came from +the North of Ireland and settled in Baltimore as a merchant, may very +well have been born there. + +To my great regret Father M'Fadden of Glena, or Falcarragh, was absent +from home. As we drove homeward we met on the way a young lady on a +smart jaunting-car, with a servant in livery. This was the daughter, our +driver told us, of Mr. Griffiths, the Protestant clergyman, past whose +residence our road lay. His church stands high upon a commanding cliff, +and is a feature in the landscape. We met the parson himself also, +walking with a friend. The road from Bedlam to Derrybeg goes by a region +of the "Rosses," reputed the most woe-begone part of the Gweedore +district. This is the scene of a curious tale told about Father M'Fadden +of Gweedore, by his ill-wishers in these parts, to the effect that he +advises English Members of Parliament and other "sympathising" visitors +who come here to make a pilgrimage to "the Bosses," where, no matter at +what time of day they appear, they invariably find sundry of the people +sitting in their huts and eating stewed seaweed out of iron pots. I +cannot vouch for this tale, but certainly I have seen no people here of +either sex, or of any age, who look as if they lived on stewed seaweed. +Another person at Falcarragh told us, as an illustration of the +influence exerted by Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, in this parish, over +which he has no proper authority, that, in obedience to an intimation +from him, the persons whose seats in the chapel had been occupied on two +successive Sundays by the policemen now stationed here, yesterday +refused to allow the policemen to occupy them, the only exception being +in the case of a man who had been arrested at the same time with Father +Stephens, and who had been so well treated by the police, that he felt +bound to repay their courtesy by offering one of them his seat. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +DUNGLOE, _Tuesday, Feb. 7._--We rose early this morning at Gweedore; the +sun shining so brightly that we were forced to drop the window-shades at +breakfast, while I read my letter from Rome, telling me of the bitter +cold there, and of a slight snow-fall last week. Here the birds were +singing, and the air was as soft and exhilarating as that of an April +morning in the Highlands of Mexico or Costa Rica. + +Our host gave us a capital car, with a staunch nag and a wide-awake +jarvey, thanks to all which I found the thirteen miles drive to this +place too short. No doubt it will be a great thing for Donegal when +"light railways" are laid down here. But I pity the traveller of the +future here, if he is never to know the delight of traversing these wild +and picturesque wastes in such weather as we have had to-day, on a car, +well-balanced by a single pleasant companion, drinking, as he goes, +deep draughts of the Atlantic air! Truly on a jaunting-car "two are +company and three are none." You have almost the free companionship of a +South American journey in the saddle, jumping off to walk, when you +like, more freely still. + +We drove near the house of the "beauty of Gweedore," but she was not +visible, though we met her mother (by no means a _pulchra mater_) as we +crossed the Clady at Bryan's Bridge. + +We soon passed from the bogland into a wilderness of granite. Our +jarvey, however, maintained that there was "better land among the stones +than any bogland could be." He was a shrewd fellow, and summed up the +economical situation, I thought, better than some of his betters, when +he said of the whole region that "it will fatten four, feed five, and +starve six." + +It may well fatten six, though, I should say, if the natural wealth of +this vast granite range can be properly turned to account. On every side +of us lay vast blocks of granite of all hues and grades, all absolutely +unworked, but surely not unworkable. We stopped and picked up many +specimens, some of them almost as rich in colour as porphyry. Of lakes +and lakelets supplying water-power the name too, is legion. + +Beyond Annagary we caught a glimpse of the Isle of Arran, the scene, a +few years ago, of so much suffering, and that of a kind I should think +as much beyond the control of legislation as the misery and destruction +which have overtaken successive attempts to establish settlements on +Anticosti in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. + +This town of Dungloe sprawls along the shore of the sea. It is reputed +the most ill-favoured town in Donegal, and it certainly is not a dream +of beauty. But it blooms all over with evidences of the prosperity of +that interesting type of Irish civilisation, the "Gombeen man," of whom +I had heard so much at Gweedore. Over the doorways of most of the shops +appear the names of various members of the family of Sweeney, all of +them, I am told, brought here and established within a few years past by +the head of the sept, who is not only the great "Gombeen man" of the +region, but a leading local member of the National League, and Her +Majesty's Postmaster. The Sweeneys, in fact, commercially speaking, +dominate Dungloe, their, only visible rivals being a returned Irish +American, who has built himself a neat two-story house and shop just at +the entrance of the village, and our own host, Mr. Maurice Boyle, whose +extremely neat little inn just faces a large shop, the stronghold of the +Chief of the Sweeneys. I am sorry to find that this important citizen of +Dungloe is not now here. We went into his chief establishment to make +some purchases, and found it full of customers, chiefly women, neatly +dressed after the Donegal fashion, and busily chaffering with the +shopgirls and shopmen, who had their hands full, exhibiting goods such +as certainly would not be found in any New York or New England village +of this sort. When we secured the attention of the chief shopman, a +nattily dressed, dark-haired young man who would not have discredited +the largest "store" in Grand Street or the Bowery of New York, we asked +him to show us some of the home-made woollen goods of the country. +These, he assured us, had no sale in Dungloe, and he did not keep them. +But he showed us piles of handsome Scottish tweeds at much higher +prices. Now as this is an exclusively agricultural region, it is evident +that the tenants must be able to make it worth a trader's while to keep +on hand such goods as we here found, and therefore that they cannot be +exactly on "the ragged edge" of things. + +Mr. Sweeney is also the proprietor of the chief "hotel" of Dungloe; our +host, Mr. Boyle, being in fact supposed to be "boycotted" for +entertaining officers of the police. This "boycott," however, has +entailed no practical inconvenience upon us; and Mr. Boyle's pretty and +plucky daughters, who manage his house for him, laughed scornfully at +the notion of being "bothered" by it. + +After luncheon we took a car and drove out to Burtonport, on the Roads +of Arranmore, to visit the parish priest there, Father Walker, and Mr. +Hammond, the agent of the Conyngham estates. + +We passed near a large inland lake, Lough Meela, and the seaward views +along the coast were very fine. With peace and order this corner of +Ireland might easily become the chosen site of the most delightful +seaside homes in the United Kingdom. The Recorder of Cork has discovered +this, and passes a great part of the year here. This Donegal coast is no +further from the great centres of British wealth and population than are +Mount Desert and the other summer resorts of Maine and New Hampshire +from New York and Philadelphia; and the islands which break the great +roll of the Atlantic here cannot well be more nearly in "a state of +nature" than were the Isles of Shoals, for example, in my college days, +long after Mr. Lowell first wandered there with the transcendental +Thaxters to celebrate the thunders of the surf at Appledore. + +The wonderful granitic formations we had seen on the way from Gweedore +stretch all along the coast to the Roads of Arranmore. At Burtonport +they lie on the very water's edge. At a place called Lickeena, masses of +beautiful salmon-and rose-coloured granite actually trend into the +tidewater, and at Burtonport proper is a promontory of that +richly-mottled granite which I had supposed to be the peculiar heritage +of Peterhead, and which is now largely exported from Scotland to the +United States. Why should not this Irish granite be shipped directly +from Donegal to America, there to be built up into cathedrals, and +shaped into monuments for the Exiles of Erin? All these formations which +we have seen present themselves in great cubical blocks, so jointed that +they may be detached without blasting, with great comparative ease, and +with little of the waste which results from the squaring of shapeless +masses. At the same time, as we saw while coming from Gweedore, the +many lakes of this region offer all the water-power necessary for +polishing-works, columnar lathes, and the general machinery used in +developing such quarries. Without being an expert in granites, I have +seen enough of the granite works at home to feel quite sure that a +moderate and judiciously managed investment here ought to return a +handsome result. If the National League is as well off as it is reputed +to be, it might go into this business open a new and remunerative +industry to the people of a "congested" district, and earn dividends +large enough to enable it to pay the expenses of the war against England +at Westminster, without drawing on the savings of the servant-girls in +America, The only person likely to suffer would be the "Gombeen man," if +the peasantry earned enough to pay off their debts to him, and stop the +flow of interest into his coffers. + +At Burtonport we found the "Gombeen man," of Dungloe, represented by a +very large "store." He runs steamers between this place and various +ports on the Scottish and Irish coasts, bringing in goods and taking out +the crops which his debtors turn over to him. + +This Burtonport "store" towers high above the modest home of the parish +priest, Father Walker. To our great regret he was absent on parochial +duty, but his niece very kindly welcomed us into his modest study, where +we left a note begging him to honour us with his company at dinner in +Dungloe. + +Mr. Hammond, too, was absent, so after paying our respects to his wife, +we drove back to Dungloe, and walked about the village till dark, +chatting with the good-natured, civil people. The local sensation here +they tell us is not the trial of the priests at Dunfanaghy, but a "row" +breeding between the chief of the Sweeneys and one of his brethren over +the possession of Her Majesty's Post-office. It seems there is an +official regulation or custom that the post-office once established in a +particular building shall not be moved thence without positive cause +shown. The head of the Sweeneys, having completed his new and grand +establishment, wishes to move the post-office thither; but the brother +to whom he confided the office in the older building, where he left it +while making the change of his own business, now desires to keep the +office where it is, and, I suppose, to become postmaster himself![17] A +trivial matter enough, but not without edification for students of the +actual situation in this most curious country. + +About seven o'clock Father Walker made his appearance--a fine-looking, +dignified, most amiable man. He is a teetotaller, which we esteemed a +stroke of good fortune, a bottle of port wine which we obtained, despite +the "boycott," from the Gombeen shop, proving to be of such a quality +that it might have been concocted in the last century, expressly to +discredit the Methuen treaty. + +Father Walker is the President of the National League branch. + +Like Father M'Fadden at Gweedore, he speaks of the landlords in this +part of Donegal as really owning, not so much farms as residential +grounds for tenants who export their thews and sinews to Scotland and +other countries, and live by that traffic mainly. It is a common +practice here, he tells me, for the children, who are very sharp and +bright, to be taken by their parents into Tyrone and other parts of the +North, and put out to live with the people there, who prize them, and +pay very good wages. I asked him if he thought the official estimate I +had seen of the proportion of these "migratory labourers" to the whole +population of Ulster, as about one-tenth of one per cent., an +under-statement. He thought it was an under-statement for this part of +the county of Donegal, but to be explained, perhaps, by the fact that so +much of the migration is merely from one county into another, and not +out of the kingdom. He agreed that the practice goes on upon a much more +extensive scale in the County Mayo, where more than thirteen per cent, +of all the adult male population are said to belong to the category of +migratory labourers. The Irish population of England seems to be +recruited at regular seasons in this way, very much as is the Albanian +population of Constantinople. + +Father Walker was full of information about the granite quarries, and +much interested in the prospect of their development. He told us that a +practical engineer from Liverpool had, not long ago, been here seeking a +lease of the quarries--or, in other words, of the quarrying rights over +sixty or seventy miles of Donegal--from the agent of Lord Conyngham. +This engineer had come to Donegal on a sporting expedition last year, +and gone back full of the capabilities of the granite region. Father +Walker had been told by him that similar quarries also exist in the +County Mayo at Belmullet, where preparations are now making, he thinks, +to develop them, though on a smaller scale than would be both +practicable and desirable here. + +In Mayo, as in Donegal, labour must be plentiful enough, and the +comparatively unskilled labour required in such quarries would be +particularly abundant here. It would be a great thing, Father Walker +thought, to introduce here the custom of a regular pay-day, and with it +gradually habits of exactness and economy, not easily developed without +it. + +He gave me also, at my request, some valuable information as to the +stipends of the Catholic clergy, and the sources from which they are +derived. This subject has been agitated in the local press of this part +of Ireland in connection with estimates of Father M'Fadden's income at +Gweedore, which Father M'Fadden declares, I believe, to be greatly +exaggerated. Father Walker has been parish priest at Burtonport for +about nine years. In all that time the highest sum reached in one year +by the stipend has been £560; this sum having to be divided between the +parish priest, who received £280, and two curates receiving £140 each. +The annual stipend, however, has more than once fallen below £480, and +Father Walker thinks £520 a fair average, giving £260 to the parish +priest, and £130 each to his curates. Where there are only two priests +in a parish, as is the case, for example, in each of the parishes of +Gweedore and Falcarragh, the parish priest receives two-thirds, and the +curate one-third of the stipend. + +The sources of this stipend are various, and in speaking upon this point +Father Walker desired me to note that he could only speak positively of +the rules of this particular diocese, as they do not cover in their +entirety the usages of other provinces, or even of other dioceses in +this province of Ireland. One general and invariable rule indeed exists +throughout Ireland, which is that every parish priest is bound to offer +the Holy Sacrifice, _pro populo_, for the whole people, without fee or +reward, on all Sundays and Holy Days, making in all some eighty-seven +times a year. + +In the diocese of Raphoe, to which Burtonport belongs, there are four +recognised methods by which the revenues of the priests are raised. The +first is an annual fixed stipend of four shillings for each household or +family. "Sometimes," said Father Walker, "but rarely, the better-off +families give more than this; and not unfrequently the poorer families +fail to give anything under this head." The second is a fixed stipend of +one pound upon the occasion of a marriage. "Sometimes, but not often, +this sum is exceeded by generous and prosperous parishioners." The third +is a standard stipend of two shillings for a baptism. "This also +suffers, but on rare occasions," said the good priest, "a favourable +exception. I mention the exceptions as well as the rules," said the good +Father, "in order to make grateful allusion to the donors." + +The fourth and last consists of the offerings at interments. "These vary +very much indeed, but they constitute an important, and, I may say, a +necessary item in the incomes of the clergy." + +Besides these four forms of stipend, the priests derive a revenue from +"those who ask them to offer the Holy Sacrifice 'for their special +intention.'" In such cases it is customary to offer a sum, usually of +two shillings, but sometimes of half-a-crown, which is intended both as +a remuneration for the priest, and to cover the cost of altar +requisites. + +Father Walker estimates the families in his own parish in round numbers +at about thirteen hundred, and in Gweedore and Falcarragh at about nine +hundred each. We had some conversation about the great fisheries, which +one would think ought to exist, but do not exist, on this coast, such +fishing as is done here by the natives being on a very limited scale. +Father Walker tells me that formerly £80,000 worth of herring were taken +on this coast, though he is not sure that Donegal fishermen took them. +But of late years he thinks the herring have deserted these waters. He +admits, however, that the people have no liking for the sea. "Going over +once," he said, "to Arranmore from the mainland in a boat with a priest +of the country, the water was a little rough, and the poor man nearly +pinched a piece out of my arm holding on to me!" Father Walker himself +thought the trip across the "sound" to Tory Island rather a ticklish +piece of business. Yet the natives make it sometimes in their little +corraghs or canvas boats, which would seem to show that some of them +must be capable of seamanship. Most of these islands, notably +Arranmore, Father Walker thought quite incapable of supporting the +people who dwell on them, without constant help from the mainland. Is it +not an open question whether an age which countenances the condemnation +of private property in houses declared unfit for human habitation ought +to hesitate at dealing in the same spirit with nurseries of chronic +penury and intermittent famine? On one of these islands, known as Scull +Island, Father Walker tells me great quantities of human bones are found +in circular graves or trenches, very shallow, and going all around the +island. There are legends of great battles fought on the little island, +and of pestilences, to account for these. But it is likely enough that +the island was simply used as a cemetery by the dwellers on the shore at +some early date. Father Walker when he was last, there had brought away +some of these relics. One he showed us, the beautifully formed jawbone +of a young child, apparently ten or twelve years old, with exquisite +pearly teeth. The chin was not in the least prognathous, but very well +formed. In this district of Dungloe, too, the women weave and knit as +well as at Gweedore; and Father Walker, before he left us for his home, +after a most agreeable evening, promised to send me some specimens of +their handiwork. He is sure that with a proper organisation this +industry might be so developed as to materially relieve the people here +from the pressure of their debts to the dealers of all kinds, a pressure +much more severe than that of the rent. According to the dealers +themselves, no tenant really in debt to them can now expect to work +himself free of the burden under four or five years. It is obvious how +much power, political as well as social, is thus lodged in the hands of +the dealers, and especially of the "Gombeen men." + + +BARON'S COURT, _Wednesday, Feb. 8._--Since last night I have travelled +from one extreme to the other of Irish life--from the desolation of the +Rosses of Donegal to the grandly wooded, picturesque, and beautiful +demesne of Baron's Court. We made an early start from Dungloe on a +capital car for Letterkenny, where we were to strike the railway for +Strabane and Newtown-Stewart. The morning was clear, but cold. On +leaving Dungloe we drove directly into a region of reclaimed land, where +improvements of various kinds seemed to be going on. All this our +jarvey informed us, with a knowing look, belonged to Mr. Sweeney. + +"Was he a squire of this country?" I asked innocently. + +"A squire of this country, sorr? He is just Mr. Sweeney, the Gombeen +man; he and his brothers, they all came here from where I don't know." + +An energetic man, certainly, Mr. Sweeney, and not likely, I should +think, to allow the National League, to push matters here to the point +of nationalising the land of Donegal, if he can prevent it. In the +highway we met, two or three miles out of Dungloe, a very trim dainty +little lady, in a long, well-fitting London waterproof ulster, with a +natty little umbrella in her hand, walking merrily towards the town. How +weatherwise she was soon appeared, the rain coming up suddenly, and +coming down sharply, in the whirling way it has among the hills +everywhere. The scenery was desolate, but grand. Countless little lochs +give sparkle and life to it. Everywhere the granite. About Doocharry, a +romantic little spot, where Lord Cloncurry has a fishing-box in the +heart of a glorious landscape, masses crop out of a rich red granite, +finer in colour than any we had previously seen. In that neighbourhood +the wastes of Donegal take on an aspect which recalls, though upon quite +a different key in colour, the inimitable beauty of those treeless +North-western highlands of Scotland, upon which Nature has lavished all +the wealth of her palette. Vast spaces of brown and red and gold shimmer +away under the softly luminous mountain atmosphere to the dark blues and +purples of the hills. We passed Glen Veagh again, but from quite a +different point of view, which gave us a beautiful picture of Lough +Veagh in its length, and of the smiling pastoral landscape upon its +further shore. + +As we drew near the eastern boundary of Donegal, hedges and civilised +agriculture reappeared. With these we came upon mud cottages, such as I +had not seen in Donegal, being the huts provided for their labourers by +the tenant-farmers, whose comfortable stone-houses and out-buildings +stood well back under the long ranges of the hills. + +We passed through much striking scenery, perhaps the finest point being +a magnificent Gap in the hills, guarded and defined by three colossal +headlands, one of them a vast long rampart, the other two gigantic +counterscarps. The immediate approach to Letterkenny, too, from the west +is charming, passing in full view of the extensive and beautiful park +and the large mansion of Colonel Stewart of the Guards, and skirting the +well-kept estate of Mr. Boyd, the owner of the ivy-clad cottages which +so took my fancy the other day. + +In the Ulster settlement under King James I. a patent for Letterkenny +was issued to one of the Crawfords. Then, as the records tell us, "Sir +George Marburie dwelt there, and there were forty houses all inhabited +by British tenants. A great market town, and standeth well for the +King's service." + +Again we found a fair going on--this time attended by swarms of peddlers +vending old clothes and all sorts of small wares, bread-cartmen, and +tea-vendors. These latter aver that it is easier to sell tea in the +"congested" districts at 4s. 6d. than at 2s. 6d. The people have no test +of its quality but its price! + +The town was gay with soldiers and police--whose advent had created such +a demand for bread and meat, a man told us, that all the butchers and +bakers in Letterkenny and Dunfanaghy were at their wits' ends to meet +it. "But they don't complain of that!" We reached Newtown-Stewart by +railway after dark. As we passed Sion the mills were all lighted up, +giving it the look of an English or New England town. A New England +snow-storm, too, awaited us at our journey's end; and, after a wild +drive of several miles through the whirling white mists, it was a +delectable thing to find ourselves welcomed in a hall full of light and +warmth and flowers by merry children and lively dogs, the guard of +honour of the most gracious and charming of hostesses. + + +BARON'S COURT, _Thursday, Feb. 9._--Among a batch of letters received +this morning I find one from a most estimable and accomplished priest in +the West of Ireland, to whom I wrote from Dublin announcing my intention +of visiting the counties of Clare and Kerry. "I shall be very glad," he +says, "to learn that no evil hath befallen you during your visit to that +solitary plague-spot, where dwell the disgraceful and degraded +'Moonlighters.' Would not 'martial law,' if applied to that particular +spot, suffice to stamp out, these-insensate pests of society?" This +language, strong, but not too strong in view of the hideous murder last +week near Lixnaw of a farmer in the presence of his daughter for the +atrocious crime of taking a farm "boycotted" by the National League, +shows that the open alliance between this organisation and the criminal +classes in certain parts of Ireland is beginning (not a day too soon) to +arouse the better order of priests in Ireland to the peril of playing +with edged tools. For my correspondent is not only a priest, but a +Nationalist. I have sent him in reply a letter received by me, also +to-day, touching the conduct in connection with the Lixnaw murder of a +priest, a curate, I think, comparatively new to the place, who, +standing by the corpse of the murdered man, endeavoured, so my informant +states, to make his unfortunate daughter give up the names of the +murderers, the effect of which would have been to put them on their +guard, and "under the protection of that public conspiracy of silence, +which is the shield of all such criminals in these parts!" Baron's Court +is a very large, stately mansion, lacking elevation perhaps like +Blenheim, but imposing by its mass and the area it covers. It was +rebuilt almost entirely by the late Duke of Abercorn, who also made +immense plantations here which cover the country for miles around. His +grandfather, the handsome Marquis of the days of the Prince Regent, +came here a great deal towards the end of his life, but did little +towards making the mansion worthy of its site. Two very good portraits +of him here show that he deserved his reputation as the finest-looking +man of his day, a reputation attested by a diamond ring, the history of +which is still preserved in the family. A fine though irregular pearl +given by Philip of Spain to his hapless spouse, Mary Tudor, is another +of the heirlooms of Baron's Court; but the ring and the note left by +Mary Stuart to Claud Hamilton, Lord Paisley, mysteriously disappeared +during the long minority of the late Duke under the trusteeship of the +fourth Earl of Aberdeen, and have since, it is said, come into the +possession of the Duke of Hamilton. + +Of the three castles given to Lord Claud Hamilton by James I., to enable +him to hold this country, one which stood at Strabaue has disappeared, +the memory of it surviving only in the name of Castle Street in that +town. The ivy-clad ruins of another adorn a height in this beautiful +park. They are "bosomed high in tufted trees," and overlook one of three +most lovely lakes, stretching in a shining chain through the length of +the demesne. + +Another ruined tower of the time of King John stands on an island in +one of these lakes. When the Ulster settlement was made, these lands +with all the countryside were held by the O'Kanes. With the other Celtic +and Catholic inhabitants, they were driven by the masterful invaders +into the mountains and bogs. There still remain their descendants, still +Celtic and still Catholic, and still dreaming of the day when they shall +descend into the low country and drive the Protestant Scotch and English +from the "fat lands" which they occupy. In this way the racial and +religious animosities are kept alive, which have died out in Tipperary +and Waterford, for example, where the Cromwellian English have become +more Irish and often more Catholic than the Irish themselves. + +I took a long drive and walk with Lord Ernest this afternoon through the +park, which rivals Curraghmore in extent. It is nowhere divided from the +lands of the adjoining tenants, and with great liberality is thrown open +to the people, not only of Newtown-Stewart and Strabane, but of all the +country. Parties, sometimes of seven hundred people, from Belfast come +down to pass the day in these sylvan solitudes, and it is to be recorded +to the praise of Ireland that these visitors always behave with perfect +good sense and good feeling. + +The "terrible trippers" of the English midlands, as I once heard an old +verger in a northern Cathedral call them, who chip off relics from +monuments, pull up flowers by the roots, and scatter sandwich papers and +empty gingerbeer bottles broadcast over well-rolled lawns, are not +known, Lord Ernest tells me, in this island. As he neatly puts it, the +Irishman, no matter what his station in life may be, or how great a +blackguard he may really be, always instinctively knows when he ought to +behave like a gentleman, and knows how to do so. In the lakes were +hundreds of wild fowl. The sky was a sky of Constable--silvery-white +clouds, floating athwart a dome of clear Italian blue. The soil here +must be extraordinarily fertile. The woods and groves are dense beyond +belief. Cut down what you like, the growth soon overtakes you, as lush +almost as in the tropics. + +There was a great cyclone here a year or two ago, which prostrated in a +night over a hundred thousand trees. You see the dentated gaps left by +this disaster in the great circle of firs and birches on the surrounding +hills, but they make hardly a serious break in the thoroughly sylvan +character of the landscape. We visited the centre of the devastation, +where I found myself in what seemed to be a backwoods clearing in +America. An enterprising Scot, Kirkpatrick by name, has taken a contract +under the Duke, built himself a neat wooden cabin and stables, set up a +small saw-mill driven by steam, and is hard at work turning the fallen +trees into timber, and making a very good thing of it, both for the Duke +and for himself. He has one or two of his own people with him, but +employs the labour of the country, and has no fear of disturbance. He +thinks, however, that he must get "a good wicked dog" to frighten away +the tramps, who sometimes stray into his woodland, and put the +enterprise in peril by smoking and drowsing under haystacks. + +Near this clearing is a model village, the houses scrupulously neat, +with trees and flowers, and here we met the Duchess with her devoted dog +walking briskly along to visit one of her people, a wonderful old man, +bearing the ancient name of the O'Kanes, and five years older than the +Kaiser William. Until six months ago this veteran was an active +carpenter, coming and going, about his work at ninety-six like a man in +middle age. Then he went to bed with a bad cold, and will probably +never rise again. In all his life he never has touched meat or soup, and +when they are now offered him rejects them angrily. He has lived, and +preferred to live, entirely on oatmeal in the form of cakes and +porridge, and on potatoes; so I make a present of him as a glorious +example to the vegetarians. As in so many other cases, his memory of +recent events is dim and clouded--of events long past, clear and +photographic: the negatives taken in youth quite perfect, the lenses +which now take, dimmed and fractured. + +He perfectly recollects, for example, the assembling here of the +recruits going out to the Continent before the battle of Waterloo, and +can give the names and describe the peculiarities of stalwart lads long +since crumbled into dust around Mont St. Jean. With the curious +unconcern about death which marks his people, this expectant emigrant +into the unknown world chats about his departure as if it were for +Dublin, and his kinsfolk chat with him. + +"Ye'll be going soon!" + +"Oh yes, I shan't trouble ye more than an hour or two more." + +In quite another part of the domain we came upon a Covenanter--a true, +authentic Covenanter, who might have walked out of _Old Mortality_; the +name of him, Keyes. He greeted Lord Ernest cheerily enough, nodded to me +in a not unfriendly way, and at once broke into exhortation: "It's a +very short life we live; man that is born of woman is of few days, and +full of trouble. Well for them that are the children of light--if seeing +the light they sin not against it"; and so on with amazing volubility. + +There are eighty-five of these Covenanters here. They touch not nor have +touched the accursed thing. To them all parties and all governments are +alike evil. The Whigs persecuted the Solemn League and Covenant--so did +the Tories. Nationalists and Unionists are to them alike abominable, +sold under sin. Withal they are shrewd, canny, successful farmers--and, +as I inferred from sundry incidents, before Lord Ernest confided the +fact to me, not averse from a "right gude williewaught" now and then. + +Mr. Keyes, I thought, was not a blue-ribbon man, nor a ribbon-man of any +kind. + +The Duchess told me afterwards she had vainly endeavoured more than once +to get these people to vote at elections. + +We had a sprinkling of such people, and very good people in quiet times +they were, in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War, to whom +Federals and Confederates were alike anathema. + +We wound up our drive to-day just beyond "the Duke's seat," a little +rustic bench put up by the late Duke on a hill range which commands a +magnificent view over the whole domain of hill and forest and lakes, and +far away to the mountains of Munterlony. There, in the bogs and woods +James Hamilton, "lord baron of Strabane," with "other rebels, unknown, +in his company," hid himself till, after the fall of Charlemont in +August 1650, he was captured by a party of the Commonwealth's +men--whereby, as the record here runs, "all and singular his manors, +towns, lands, and so forth were forfeited to the Commonwealth of +England." Under this pressure he sought "protection," and got it a +fortnight later from Cromwell's General, Sir Charles Coote, whose +descendants still nourish in Wicklow. But on the 31st of December 1650 +he "broke the said protection, and joined himself with Sir Phelim +O'Neill, being then in rebellion." + +Troublous times those, and a "lord baron of Strabane" needed almost the +alacrity in turning his coat of a harlequin or a modern politician! It +is a comfort to know that at last, on the 16th of June 1655, he found +rest, dying at Ballyfathen, "a Roman Catholic and a papist recusant." As +we came back into the gardens and grounds, Lord Ernest showed me, +imbedded in the earth, a huge anchor presented to the present Duke by +the Corporation of Waterford, as having belonged to the French 28-gun +frigate, on which in 1689 James II. and Lord Abercorn sailed away from +Ireland for Prance. I believe that because of its weight the present +First Lord of the Admiralty avers that it is no anchor at all, but a +buoy fixture. It might have been ten times as heavy, and yet not have +availed to keep James from getting to sea at that particular time. + + +BARON'S COURT, _Friday, Feb. 10._--Here also, in County Tyrone, the +Irish women show their skill in women's work. Mrs. Dixon, the English +wife of the house-steward of Baron's Court, has charge of a woollen +industry founded here, after a discourse on thrift, delivered at a +temperance meeting of the people by the then Marquis of Hamilton, had +stirred the country up to consider whether the peasant women might not +possibly find some better and more profitable way of passing their +winter evenings than in sitting huddled around a peat fire with their +elbows on their knees, gossiping about their neighbours. Lord Hamilton +cited the women of Gweedore as proofs that such a way might by searching +be found. + +The Duke and Duchess found the funds, the stewardess invested them in +buying the necessary yarn and knitting-needles, and the Marchioness of +Hamilton acted as corresponding clerk and business agent of the new +industry. The clothing department of the British army lent a listening +ear to the business proposals made to it, and the work began. From that +time on it has been the main substantial resource against suffering and +starvation of the families of some three hundred labourers in the hill +country near Baron's Court. + +These labourers work for the small farmers from April to November; and +between the autumn and the spring their wives and daughters knit, and by +the Baron's Court machinery are enabled to dispose of, nearly twenty +thousand pairs of woollen socks. The yarns are brought from Edinburgh to +the store-house at Baron's Court. Thither every Wednesday come the +knitters. Mrs. Dixon weighs the hanks of yarn, and gives them out. + +On the following Wednesday the knitters reappear, each with her bale of +stockings or socks. These are again weighed, and the knitters receive +their pay according to the weight, quality, and size of the goods. In +some families there are four, five, or six knitters. All these people, +with four or five exceptions, are small cottars living on wretched +little mountain farms, not on the Duke of Abercorn's property; and but +for this industry they would be absolutely without employment all the +winter through. + +Some of them come from a distance of twelve or fourteen miles, and but +for this resource would literally starve. They are nearly all of them +Catholics, and the Protestants here being Unionists, they are probably +Nationalists. About three hundred knitters in all are employed. In the +year 1886-87 the orders given for Baron's Court work enabled Mrs. Dixon +to pay out regularly about five pounds a week, not including casual +private orders. For the current year the orders have been much larger, +and the expenditure proportionally greater. Mrs. Dixon's storehouse was +full of goods to-day. The long knickerbocker stockings which she showed +us were remarkably good, some in "cross-gartered" patterns, handsomer, +I thought, than similar goods in the Scottish Highlands--and all of them +staunch and well-proportioned. + +For socks such as are supplied to the volunteers and the troops the War +Office pays 8-3/4d. a pair. + +It was pleasant to learn from Mrs. Dixon that these people thoroughly +appreciate the spirit which prompted and still directs this enterprise. +Last spring when the Duchess was thought for a time to be hopelessly +ill, a young girl came down to Baron's Court weeping bitterly. On her +arm was a basket, in which were two young chanticleers crowing lustily. +The poor girl said these were all she had, and she had brought them "to +make soup for the Duchess, for she heard that was what the great people +lived on, and it might save her life." + +This afternoon I went over by the railway to Derry with Lord Ernest to +attend a meeting there. The "Maiden City" stands picturesquely on the +Foyle, and has a fine, though not large, cathedral of St. Colomb, +restored only last year, of which it may be noted that the work never +was undertaken while the Protestant Church of Ireland was established by +law, and has been successfully carried out since the disendowment of +that Church. The streets were white with snow, but the meeting in the +old Town Hall was largely attended. It was, in fact, a sort of Orange +symposium--tea being served at long tables, and the platform decorated +with a pianoforte. The Mayor of the city presided, and between the +speeches, songs, mostly in the Pyramus or condoling vein, were sung by a +local tenor of renown. It was very like an American tea-fight in the +country, and the audience were unquestionably enthusiastic. They quite +cheered themselves hoarse when Lord Ernest Hamilton reminded them that +he had made his first political speech in that hall on a "memorable +occasion," when, being an as yet unfledged Parliamentarian, he had taken +a hand in a successful attempt to prevent the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr. +Dawson, from making a speech in Derry. One of my neighbours, a merchant +in the city, told me that a project is afoot for tearing down the old +hall in which we met "to enlarge the street," but he added that "the +people of Derry were too proud of their history to allow it!" + +I understood him to say it is one of the very few buildings in Derry +which witnessed the famous siege, and the breaking of the boom. + +We left the "revel" early, caught a fast train to Newtown-Stewart, and +returned here an hour ago through a driving snowstorm, most dramatically +arranged to enhance the glow and genial charm of our welcome. + + +BARON'S COURT, _Saturday, Feb. 11th._--All the world was white with snow +this morning. Alas! for the deluded birds we have been listening to for +days past; thrushes, larks, and as, I believe, blackbirds, though there +is a tradition in these parts that no man ever heard the blackbird sing +before the 15th of February. I suspect it grew out of the date of St. +Valentine's Day. We had some lovely music, however, within doors this +morning; and, in spite of the snow and the chill wind, a little fairy of +a girl, with her groom, went off like mad across country on her pony, +"Guinea Pig," to fetch the mails from Newtown-Stewart. + +Not long after breakfast came in from Letterkenny Sergeant Mahony of the +constabulary, on whose testimony Father M'Fadden was convicted. We had +heard at Letterkenny that he was now on leave at Belfast, and Lord +Ernest had kindly arranged matters so that he should come here and +tell us his story of Gweedore. + +An admirable specimen he is of a most admirable body of men. He is as +thoroughly Celtic in aspect as he is by name--a dark Celt, with a quiet +resolute face, and a wiry well-built frame. + +Nothing could be better than his manner and bearing, at once respectful +and self-respectful: that manner of a natural gentleman one so often +sees in the Irish peasant. He is a devout Catholic, but no admirer of +Father M'Fadden. + +As to his evidence, he explains very clearly that he was not sent to +report Father M'Fadden's speech at all, but to note and take down and +report language used in the speech of a sort to excite the people +against the law. He was selected for this duty for three reasons: he is +a Donegal man who has lived at Gweedore for sixteen years; he is a fair +stenographer; and he speaks Irish, in which language Father M'Fadden +made his speech. + +"I speak Irish quite as well as he does," said the Sergeant quietly, +"and he knows I do. What I did was to put down in English words what I +heard said in Irish. This I had to do because I have no stenographic +signs for the Irish words." He tells me he taught himself stenography. + +"As for Father M'Fadden," he said, "he told the people that' he was the +law in Gweedore, and they should heed no other.' He spoke the truth, +too, for he makes himself the law in Gweedore. He dislikes me because I +am a living proof that he is not the only law in Gweedore!" Of the +business shrewdness and ability of Father M'Fadden, Sergeant Mahony +expressed a very high opinion, though hardly in terms which would have +gratified such an ecclesiastic as the late Cardinal Barnabo. Possibly +Cardinal Cullen might have relished them no better. "Certainly he has +the finest house in Gweedore, sir, and what's more he made it the finest +himself." + +"Do you mean that he built it?" + +"He did, indeed; and did you not notice the beautiful stone fences he is +putting up all about it, and the four farms he has?" + +"Then he is certainly a man of substance?" + +"And of good substance, sir! The Government, they gave him a hundred +pounds towards the house. But it was the flood that was the blessed +thing for him and made a great man of him!" + +"The flood?" I asked, with some natural astonishment; "the flood? What +flood?" + +"And did you never hear of the great flood of Gweedore? It was in +August 1880. You will mind the water that comes down behind the chapel? +Well, there was a flood, and it swelled, and it swelled, and it burst +the small pipe there behind the chapel: too small it was entirely for +carrying off' the great water, and nobody took notice of it, or that +there was anything wrong, and so the water was piled up behind the +chapel, and at Mass on the Sunday, while the chapel was full, the walls +gave way, and the water rushed in, and was nine feet deep. There were +five people that couldn't get out in time, and were drowned--two old +people and three children, young people. It was a great flood. And +Father M'Fadden wrote about it--oh, he is a clever priest with the +pen--and they made a great subscription in London for the poor people +and the chapel. I can't rightly say how much, but it was in the papers, +a matter of seven hundred pounds, I have heard say. And it was all sent +to Father M'Fadden." + +"And it was spent, of course," I said, "on the repairs of the chapel, or +given to the relatives of the poor people who were drowned." + +"Oh, no doubt; very likely it was, sir! But the repairs of the +chapel--there isn't a mason in Donegal but will tell you a hundred +pounds would not be wanted to make the chapel as good as it ever was. +And for the people that were drowned--two of them were old people, as I +said to you, sir, that had no kith or kin to be relieved, and for the +others they were of well-to-do people that would not wish to take +anything from the parish." + +"What was done with it, then?" + +"Oh! that I can't tell ye. It was spent for the people some way. You +must ask Father M'Fadden. He is the fund in Gweedore, just as he is the +law in Gweedore. Oh! they came from all parts to see the great ruin of +the flood at Gweedore. They did, indeed. And some of them, it was poor +sight they had; they couldn't see the big rift in the walls, when Father +M'Fadden pointed it out to them. 'Whisht! there it is!' he would say, +pointing with his finger. Then they saw it!" + +I asked him at what figure he put the income of Father M'Fadden from his +parish. Without a moment's hesitation he answered, "It's over a thousand +pounds a year, sir, and nearer twelve hundred than eleven." I expressed +my surprise at this, the whole rental of Captain Hill, the landlord, +falling, as I had understood, below rather than above £700 a year; and +Gweedore, as Father Walker had told me, containing fewer houses than +Burtonport. + +"Fewer houses, mayhap," said the sergeant, "though I'm not sure of that; +but if fewer they pay more. There's but one curate--poor man, he does +all the parish work, barring the high masses, and a good man he is, but +he gets £400 a year, and that is but a third of the income!" + +I asked by what special stipends the priest's income at Gweedore could +be thus enhanced. "Oh, it's mainly the funeral-money that helps it up," +he replied. "You see, sir, since Father M'Fadden came to Gweedore it's +come to be the fashion." + +"The fashion?" I said. + +"Yes, sir, the fashion. This is the way it is, you see. When a poor +creature comes to be buried--no matter who it is, a pauper, or a tenant, +or any one--the people all go to the chapel; and every man he walks up +and lays his offering for the priest on the coffin; and the others, they +watch him. And, you see, if a man that thinks a good deal of himself +walks up and puts down five shillings, why, another man that thinks less +of him, and more of himself, he'll go up and make it a gold ten-shilling +piece, or perhaps even a sovereign! I've known Father M'Fadden, sir, to +take in as much as £15 in a week in that way." + +Sergeant Mahony told us a curious tale, too, of the way in which Father +M'Fadden dealt with the people of the neighbouring parish of Falcarragh. +He would go down to the parish boundary, if he wanted to address the +people of Falcarragh, and stand over the line, with one foot in each +parish! + +At our request Sergeant Mahony made some remarks in Irish; very wooing +and winning they were in sound. Before he left Baron's Court he promised +to make out and send me a schedule of the parochial income at Gweedore, +under the separate heads of the sources whence it is derived. + +Obviously Sergeant Mahony would make a good "devil's advocate" at the +canonization of Father M'Fadden. But, all allowances made for this, one +thing would seem to be tolerably clear. Of the three personages who take +tribute of the people of Gweedore, the law intervenes in their behalf +with only one--the landlord. The priest and the "Gombeen man" deal with +them on the old principle of "freedom of contract." But it is by no +means so clear which of the three exacts and receives the greatest +tribute. + +We leave Baron's Court in an hour for Dublin, whence I go on alone +to-night into Queen's County. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +ABBEYLEIX, _Sunday, Feb. 12._--Newtown-Stewart, through which I drove +yesterday afternoon with Lord Ernest to the train, is a prettily +situated town, with the ruins of a castle in which James II. slept for a +night on his flight to France. He was cordially received, and by way of +showing his satisfaction left the little town in flames when he +departed. Here appears to be a case, not of rack-renting, but of +absenteeism. The town belongs to a landlord who lives in Paris, and +rarely, if ever, comes here. There are no improvements--no +sanitation--but the inhabitants make no complaint. "Absenteeism" has its +compensations as well as its disadvantages. They pay low rents, and are +little troubled; the landlord drawing, perhaps, £400 a year from the +whole place. The houses are small, though neat enough in appearance, but +the town has a sleepy, inert look. On the railway between Dundalk and +Newry, we passed a spot known by the ominous name of "The Hill of the +Seven Murders," seven agents having been murdered there since 1840! I +suppose this must be set down to the force of habit. At Newry a cavalry +officer whom Lord Ernest knew got into our carriage. He was full of +hunting, and mentioned a place to which he was going as a "very fine +country." + +"From the point of view of the picturesque?" I asked. + +"Oh no! from the point of view of falling off your horse!" + +At Maple's Hotel I found a most hospitable telegram, insisting that I +should give up my intention of spending the night at Maryborough, and +come on to this lovely place in my host's carriage, which would be sent +to meet me at that station. I left Kingsbridge Station in Dublin about 7 +P.M. We had rather a long train, and I observed a number of people +talking together about one of the carriages before we started; but there +was no crowd at all, and nothing to attract special attention. As we +moved out of the station, some lads at the end of the platform set up a +cheer. We ran on quietly till we reached Kildare. There quite a +gathering awaited our arrival on the platform, and as we slowed up, a +cry went up from among them of, "Hurrah for Mooney! hurrah for Mooney!" +The train stopped just as this cry swelled most loudly, when to my +surprise a tall man in the gathering caught one or two of the people by +the shoulder, shaking them, and called out loudly, "Hurrah for +Gilhooly--you fools, hurrah for Gilhooly!" + +This morning I learned that I had the honour, unwittingly, of travelling +from Dublin to Maryborough with Mr. Gilhooly, M.P., who appears to have +been arrested in London on Friday, brought over yesterday by the day +train, and sent on at once from Dublin to his destined dungeon. + +An hour's drive through a rolling country, showing white and weird under +its blanket of snow in the night, brought us to this large, rambling, +delightful house, the residence of Viscount de Vesci. Mr. Gladstone came +here from Lord Meath's on his one visit to Ireland some years ago. I +find the house full of agreeable and interesting people; and the chill +of the drive soon vanished under the genial influences of a light +supper, and of pleasant chat in the smoking-room. A good story was told +there, by the way, of Archbishop Walsh, who being rather indiscreetly +importuned to put his autograph on a fan of a certain Conservative lady +well known in London, and not a little addicted to lion-hunting, +peremptorily refused, saying, "no, nor any of the likes of her!" And +another of Father Nolan, a well-known priest, who died at the age of +ninety-seven. When someone remonstrated with him on his association with +an avowed unbeliever in Christianity, like Mr. Morley, Father Nolan +replied, "Oh, faith will come with time!" The same excellent priest, +when he came to call on Mr. Gladstone, here at Abbeyleix, on his arrival +from the Earl of Meath's, pathetically and patriarchally adjured him, on +his next visit to Ireland, "not to go from one lord's house to another, +but to stay with the people." This was better than the Irish journal +which, finding itself obliged to chronicle the fact that Mr. Gladstone, +with his wife and daughter, was visiting Abbeyleix, gracefully observed +that he "had been entrapped into going there!" Some one lamenting the +lack of Irish humour and spirit in the present Nationalist movement, as +compared with the earlier movements, Lord de Vesci cited as a solitary +but refreshing instance of it, the incident which occurred the other day +at an eviction in Kerry,[18] of a patriotic priest who chained himself +to a door, and put it across the entrance of the cabin to keep out the +bailiffs! + +It is discouraging to know that this delightful act was bitterly +denounced by some worthy and well-meaning Tory in Parliament as an +"outrage"! + +Despite the snow the air this morning, in this beautiful region, is soft +and almost warm, and all the birds are singing again. The park borders +upon and opens into the pretty town of Abbeyleix, the broad and +picturesque main thoroughfare of which, rather a rural road than a +street, is adorned with a fountain and cross, erected in memory of the +late Lord de Vesci. There is a good Catholic chapel here (the ancient +abbey which gave the place its name stood in the grounds of the present +mansion), and a very handsome Protestant Church. + +It is a curious fact that two of the men implicated in the Phoenix Park +murders had been employed, one, I believe, as a mason, and one as a +carver, in the construction of this church. Both the chapel and the +church to-day were well attended. I am told there has been little real +trouble here, nor has the Plan of Campaign been adopted here. Sometimes +Lord de Vesci finds threatening images of coffins and guns scratched in +the soil, with portraits indicating his agent or himself; but these mean +little or nothing. Lady de Vesci, who loves her Irish home, and has done +and is doing a good deal for the people here, tells me, as an amusing +illustration of the sort of terrorism formerly established by the local +organisations, that when she met two of the labourers on the place +together, they used to pretend to be very busy and not to see her. But +if she met one alone, he greeted her just as respectfully as ever. + +The women here do a great deal of embroidery and lace work, in which she +encourages them, but this industry has suffered what can only be a +temporary check, from the change of fashion in regard to the wearing of +laces. Why the loveliest of all fabrics made for the adornment of women +should ever go "out of fashion" would be amazing if anything in the +vagaries of that occult and omnipotent influence could be. The Irish +ladies ought to circulate Madame de Piavigny's exquisite _Lime +d'Heures_, with its incomparable illustrations by Carot and Meaulle, +drawn from the lace work of all ages and countries, as a tonic against +despair in respect to this industry. In one of the large rooms of her +own house, Lady de Vesci has established and superintends a school of +carving for the children of poor tenants. It has proved a school of +civilisation also. The lads show a remarkable aptitude for the arts of +design, and of their own accord make themselves neat and trim as soon as +they begin to understand what it is they are doing. They are always busy +at home with their drawings and their blocks, and some of them are +already beginning to earn money by their work. + +What I have seen at Adare Manor near Limerick, where the late Earl of +Dunraven educated all the workmen employed on that mansion as +stone-cutters and carvers, suffices to show that the people of this +country have not lost the aptitudes of which we see so many proofs in +the relics of early Irish art. + +Among the guests in the house is a distinguished officer, Colonel +Talbot, who saw hard service in Egypt, and in the advance on Khartoum, +with camels across the desert--a marvellous piece of military work. I +find that he was in America in 1864-65, with Meade and Hunt and Grant +before Petersburg, being in fact the only foreign officer then present. +He there formed what seem to me very sound and just views as to the +ability of the Federal commanders in that closing campaign of the Civil +War, and spoke of Hunt particularly with much admiration. Of General +Grant he told me a story so illustrative of the simplicity and modesty +which were a keynote in his character that I must note it. The day +before the evacuation of Petersburg by the Con federates, Grant was +urged to order an attack upon the Confederate positions. He refused to +do so. The next day the Confederates were seen hastily abandoning them. +Grant watched them quietly for a while, and then putting down his glass, +said to one of the officers who had urged the assault, "You were right, +and I was wrong. I ought to have attacked them." + +It is provoking to know that the notes taken by this British officer at +that time, being sent through the Post Office by him some years ago to +Edinburgh for publication, were lost in the transmission, and have never +been recovered. Curiously enough, however, he thinks he has now and then +discerned indications in articles upon the American War, published in a +newspaper which he named, going to show that his manuscripts are in +existence somewhere. + +ABBEYLEIX, _Monday, Feb. 13._--To-day, in company with Lord de Vesci +and a lady, I went over to Kilkenny. We left and arrived in a snowstorm, +but the trip was most interesting. Kilkenny, chiefly known in America, I +fear, as the city of the cats, is a very picturesque place, thanks to +its turrets and towers. It has two cathedrals, a Bound Tower (one of +these in Dublin was demolished in the last century!), a Town Hall with a +belfry, and looming square and high above the town, the Norman keep of +its castle. The snow enlivened rather than diminished the scenic effect +of the place. Bits of old architecture here and there give character to +the otherwise commonplace streets. Notable on the way to the castle is a +bit of mediaeval wall with Gothic windows, and fretted with the +scutcheon in stone of the O'Sheas. The connection of a gentleman of this +family with the secret as well as the public story of the Parnellite +movement may one day make what Horace Greeley used to call "mighty +interestin' reading." A dealer in spirits now occupies what is left of +the old Parliament House of Kilkenny, in which the rival partisans of +Preston and O'Neill outfought the legendary cats, to the final ruin of +the cause of the Irish confederates, and the despair of the loyal +legate of Pope Innocent. + +Of Kilkenny Castle, founded by Strongbow, but two or three towers +remain. The great quadrangle was rebuilt in 1825, and much of it again +so late as in 1860. There is little, therefore, to recall the image of +the great Marquis who, if Rinuccini read him aright, played so +resolutely here two centuries and a half ago for the stakes which Edward +Bruce won and lost at Dundalk. The castle of the Butlers is now really a +great modern house. + +The town crowds too closely upon it, but the position is superb. The +castle windows look clown upon the Nore, spanned by a narrow ancient +bridge, and command, not only all that is worth seeing in the town, but +a wide and glorious prospect over a region which is even now beautiful, +and in summer must be charming. + +Over the ancient bridge the enterprise of a modern brewer last week +brought a huge iron vat, so menacingly ponderous that the authorities +made him insure the bridge for a day. + +Within the castle, near the main entrance, are displayed some +tapestries, which are hardly shown to due advantage in that position. +They were made here at Kilkenny in a factory established by Piers +Butler, Earl of Ormonde, in the sixteenth century, and they ought to be +sent to the Irish Exhibition of this year in London, as proving what +Irish art and industry well directed could then achieve. They are +equally bold in design and rich in colour. The blues are especially +fine. + +The grand gallery of the castle, the finest in the kingdom, though a +trifle narrow for its length, is hung with pictures and family +portraits. One of the most interesting of these is a portrait of the +black Earl of Ormon'de, a handsome swarthy man, evidently careful of his +person, who was led by that political flirt, Queen Elizabeth, to believe +that she meant to make him a visit in Ireland, and, perhaps, to honour +him with her hand. He went to great expenses thereupon. At a parley with +his kinsman, the Irish chieftain O'Moore of Abbeyleix, this black earl +was traitorously captured, and an ancient drawing representing this +event hangs beneath his portrait. + +The muniment room, where, thanks to Lord Ormonde's courtesy, we found +everything prepared to receive us, is a large, airy, and fire-proof +chamber, with well-arranged shelves and tables for consulting the +records. These go back to the early Norrnan days, long before Edward +III. made James Butler Earl of Ormonde, upon his marriage with Alianore +of England, granddaughter of Edward I. The Butlers came into Ireland +with Henry II., and John gave them estates, the charters of some of +which, with the seals annexed, are here preserved. There are fine +specimens of the great seals also of Henry III., and of his sons Edward +I. and Edmund Crouchback, and of the Tudor sovereigns, as well as many +private seals of great interest. The wax of the early seals was +obviously stronger and better than the wax since used. Of Elizabeth, who +came of the Butler blood through her mother, one large seal in yellow +wax, attached to a charter dated Oct. 24, 1565, is remarkable for the +beauty of the die. The Queen sits on the obverse under a canopy; on the +reverse she rides in state on a pacing steed as in her effigy at the +Tower of London. The seals of James I. follow the design of this die. +Two of these are particularly fine. At the Restoration something +disappears of the old stateliness. A seal of Charles II., of 1660, very +large and florid in style, shows the monarch sitting very much at his +ease, with one knee thrown negligently over the other. Many of the +private letters and papers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth +centuries, during which Kilkenny, as it had been often before, was a +great centre of Irish politics and intrigues, have been bound up in +volumes, and the collection has been freely drawn upon by historians. +But it would obviously bear and reward a more thorough co-ordination and +examination than it has ever yet received. + +There is a curious Table Book here preserved of Charles I. while at +Oxford in 1644, from which it appears that while the colleges were +melting up their plate for the King, his Majesty fared better than might +have been expected. His table was served with sixty pounds of mutton a +day; and he wound up his dinner regularly with "sparaguss" so long as it +lasted, and after it went out with artichokes. + +An Expense Book, too, of the great Marquis, after he became the first +Duke of Ormonde, Colonel Blood's Duke, kept at Kilkenny in 1668 throws +some interesting light on the cost of living and the customs of great +houses at that time. The Duke, who was in some respects the greatest +personage in the realm, kept up his state here at a weekly cost of +about £50, a good deal less--allowing for the fall in the power of the +pound sterling--than it would now cost him to live at a fashionable +London hotel. He paid £9, 10s. a week for the keep of nineteen horses, +18 shillings board wages for three laundry-maids, and £1, 17s. 4d. for +seven dozen of tallow-candles. The wines served at the ducal table were +Burgundy, Bordeaux, "Shampane," Canary, "Renish," and Portaport, the +last named at a shilling a bottle, while he paid no more than £3, 18s. +for six dozen bottles of Bordeaux, and £1, 1s. for a dozen and a half of +"Shampane." This of course was not the sparkling beverage which in our +times is the only contribution of Champagne to the wine markets of the +world, for the _Ay Mousseux_ first appears in history at the beginning +of the eighteenth century. It was the red wine of Champagne, which so +long contested the palm with the vintages of Burgundy. St. Evremond, who +with the Comte d'Olonne and the great _gourmets_ of the seventeenth +century thought Champagne the best, as the Faculty of Paris also +pronounced it the most wholesome of wines, doubtless introduced his own +religion on the subject into England--but the entry in the Duke's +Expense Book of 1668 is an interesting proof that the duel of the +vintages was even then going as it finally went in favour of Burgundy. +While the Duke got his Champagne for 1s. 2d. a bottle, he had to pay +twenty shillings a dozen, or 1s. 8d. a bottle, for five dozen of +Burgundy. He got his wines from Dublin, which then, as long before, was +the most noted wine mart of Britain. The English princes drew their best +supplies thence in the time of Richard II. + +From the castle we drove through the snow to the Cathedral of St. +Canice, a grand and simple Norman edifice of the twelfth century, now +the Church of the Protestant bishop. An ancient Round Tower of much +earlier date stands beside it like a campanile, nearly a hundred feet in +height. + +There is a legend that Rinuccini wanted to buy and carry away one of the +great windows of this Cathedral, in which mass was celebrated while he +was here. The Cathedral contains some interesting monuments of the +Butlers, and there are many curiously channelled burial slabs in the +floor, like some still preserved in the ruins of Abbeyleix. Lord de +Vesci pointed out to me several tombs of families of English origin once +powerful here, but now sunk into the farmer class. On one of these I +think it was that we saw a remarkably well-preserved effigy of a lady, +wearing a plaited cap under a "Waterford cloak"--one of the neatest +varieties of the Irish women's cloak--garment so picturesque at once, +and so well adapted to the climate, that I am not surprised to learn +from Lady de Vesci that it is very fast going out of fashion. This +morning before we left Abbeyleix she showed us two such cloaks, types +from two different provinces, each in its way admirable. Put on and worn +about the room by two singularly stately and graceful ladies, they fell +into lines and folds which recalled the most exquisitely beautiful +statuettes of Tanagra; and all allowance made for the glamour lent them +by these two "daughters of the gods, divinely tall," it was impossible +not to see that no woman could possibly look commonplace and +insignificant in such a garment. Yet Lady de Vesci says that more than +once she has known peasant women, to whom such cloaks had been +presented, cut off the characteristic and useful hood, and trim the +mangled robe with tawdry lace. So it is all over the world! Women who +are models for an artist when they wear some garment indigenous to their +country and appropriate to its conditions, prefer to make guys of +themselves in grotesque travesties of the latest "styles" from London +and Paris and Dublin! + +Kilkenny boasts that its streets are paved with marble. It is in fact +limestone, but none the worse for that. The snow did not improve them. +So without going on a pilgrimage to the Kilkenny College, at which +Swift, Congreve, and Farquhar,--an odd concatenation of +celebrities--were more or less educated, we made our way to the Imperial +Hotel for luncheon. The waiter was a delightful Celt. Upon my asking him +whether the house could furnish anything distantly resembling good Irish +whisky, he produced a bottle of alleged Scotch whisky, which he put upon +the table with a decisive air, exclaiming, "And this, yer honour, is the +most excellent whisky in the whole world, or I'm not an Irishman!" + +Urged by the cold we tempered it with hot water and tasted it. It shut +us up at once to believe the waiter a Calmuck or a Portuguese--anything, +in short, but an Irishman. It is an extraordinary fact that, so far, the +whisky I have found at Irish hotels has been uniformly quite execrable. +I am almost tempted to think that the priests sequestrate all the good +whisky in order to discourage the public abuse of it, for the "wine of +the country" which they offer one is as uniformly excellent. + +Kilkenny ought to be and long was a prosperous town. In 1702, the second +Duke of Ormonde made grants (at almost nominal ground-rents) of the +ground upon which a large portion of the city of Kilkenny was then +standing, or upon which houses have since been built. + +These grants have passed from hand to hand, and form the "root of title" +of very many owners of house property in Kilkenny. The city is the +centre of an extensive agricultural region, famous, according to an +ancient ditty, for "fire without smoke, air without fog, water without +mud, and land without bog"; but of late it has been undeniably +declining. For this there are many reasons. The railways and the +parcel-post diminish its importance as a local emporium. The almost +complete disappearance of the woollen manufacture, the agricultural +depression which has made the banks and wholesale houses "come down" +upon the small dealers, and the "agitation," bankrupting or exiling the +local gentry, have all conspired to the same result. + +From Abbeyleix station we walked back to the house through the park +under trees beautifully silvered with the snow. At dinner the party was +joined by several residents of the county. One of them gave me his views +of the working of the "Plan of Campaign." It is a plan, he maintains, +not of defence as against unjust and exacting landlords, but of offence +against "landlordism," not really promoted, as it appears to be, in the +interest of the tenants to whose cupidity it appeals, but worked from +Dublin as a battering engine against law and order in Ireland. Every +case in which it is applied needs, he thinks, to be looked into on its +own merits. It will then be found precisely why this or that spot has +bees selected by the League for attack. At Luggacurren, for instance, +the "Plan of Campaign" has been imposed upon the tenants because the +property belongs to the Marquis of Lansdowne, who happens to be +Governor-General of Canada, so that to attack him is to attack the +Government. The rents of the Lansdowne property at Luggacurren, this +gentleman offers to prove to me, are not and never have been excessive; +and Lord Lansdowne has expended very large sums on improving the +property, and for the benefit of the tenants. Two of the largest +tenants having got into difficulties through reckless racing and other +forms of extravagance found it convenient to invite the league into +Luggacurren, and compel other tenants in less embarrassed circumstances +to sacrifice their holdings by refusing to pay rents which they knew to +be fair, and were abundantly able and eager to pay. At Mitchelstown the +"Plan of Campaign" was aimed again, not at the Countess of Kingston, the +owner, but at the Disestablished Protestant Church of Ireland, the +trustees of which hold a mortgage of a quarter of a million sterling on +the estates. On the Clanricarde property in Galway the "Plan of +Campaign" has been introduced, my informant says, because Lord +Clanricarde happens to be personally unpopular. "Go down to Portumna and +Woodford," he said, "and look into the matter for yourself. You will +find that the rents on the Clanricarde estates are in the main +exceptionally fair, and even low. The present Marquis has almost never +visited Ireland, I believe, and he is not much known even in London. +People who dislike him for one reason or another readily believe +anything that is said to his disadvantage as a landlord. Most people who +don't like the cut of Dr. Fell's whiskers, or the way in which he takes +soup, are quite disposed to listen to you if you tell them he beats his +wife or plays cards too well. The campaigners are shrewd fellows, and +they know this, so they start the 'Plan of Campaign' on the Portumna +properties, and get a lot of English windbags to come there and hobnob +with some of the most mischievous and pestilent parish priests in all +Ireland--and then you have the dreadful story of the 'evictions,' and +all the rest of it. Lord Clanricarde, or his agent, or both of them, +getting out of temper, will sit down and do some hasty or crabbed or +injudicious thing, or write a provoking letter, and forthwith it is +enough to say 'Clanricarde,' and all common sense goes out of the +question, to the great damage, not so much of Lord Clanricarde--for he +lives in London, and is a rich man, and, I suppose, don't mind the +row--but of landlords all over Ireland, and therefore, in the long-run, +of the tenants of Ireland as well." + +At Luggacurren, this gentleman thinks, the League is beaten. There are +eighty-two tenants there, evicted and living dismally in what is called +the Land League village, a set of huts erected near the roadside, while +their farms are carried on for the owner by the Land Corporation. As +they were most of them unwilling to accept the Plan, and were +intimidated into it for the benefit of the League, and of the two chief +tenants, Mr. Dunn and Mr. Kilbride, men of substance who had squandered +their resources, the majority of the evicted are sore and angry. + +"At first each man was allowed £3 a month by the League for himself and +his family. But they found that Mr. Kilbride, who has been put into +Parliament by Mr. Parnell for Kerry, a county with which he has no more +to do than I have with the Isle of Skye, was getting £5 a week, and so +they revolted, and threatened to bolt if their subsidy was not raised to +£4 a month." + +"And this they get now? Out of what funds?" + +"Out of the League funds, or, in other words, out of their own and other +people's money, foolishly put by the tenants into the keeping of the +League to 'protect' it! They give it the kind of 'protection' that +Oliver gave the liberties of England: once they get hold of it, they +never let go!" + +I submitted that at Gweedore Father M'Fadden had paid over to Captain +Hill the funds confided to him. + +"No doubt; but there the landlord gave in, and the more fool he!" + +With another guest I had an interesting conversation about the Ulster +tenant-right, which got itself more or less enacted into British law +only in 1870, and of which Mr. Froude tells me he sought in vain to +discover the definite origin. "The best lawyers in Ireland" could give +him no light on this point. He could only find that it did not exist +apparently in 1770, but did exist apparently twenty years later. The +gentleman with whom I talked to-night tells me that the custom of Ulster +was really once general throughout Ireland, and is called the "Ulster" +custom, only because it survived there after disappearing elsewhere. +There is a tradition too, he says, in Ulster that the recognition of +this tenant-right as a binding custom there is really due to Lord +Castlereagh. It would be a curious thing, could this be verified, to +find Lord Castlereagh, whose name has been execrated in Ireland for +fourscore years, recommending and securing a century ago that +recognition of the interest of the Irish tenant in his holding, which, +in our time, Mr. Gladstone, just now the object of Irish adulation, was, +with much difficulty and reluctance, brought to accord in the +Compensation for Disturbances clause of his Act of 1870! + +Of this clause, too, I am told to-night that the scale of compensation +fixed for the awards of the Court in the third section of it was devised +(though Mr. Gladstone did not know this) by an Irish member in the +interest of the "strong farmers," who wish to root out the small +farmers. There is an apparent confirmation of this story in the fact +that under this section the small farmers, under £10, may be awarded +against the landlord seven years' rent as compensation for disturbance, +while the number of years to be accounted for in the award diminishes as +the rental increases, a discrimination not unlikely to strengthen the +preference of the landlords for the large farm system. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +DUBLIN, _Tuesday, Feb. 14th._--I left Abbeyleix this morning for Dublin, +in company with Mr. and Mrs. Henry Doyle. Mr. Doyle, C.B., a brother of +that inimitable master of the pencil, and most delightful of men, +Richard Doyle, is the Director of the Irish National Gallery. He was +kind enough to come and lunch with me at Maple's, after which we went +together to the Gallery. It occupies the upper floors of a stately and +handsome building in Merrion Square, in front of which stands a statue +of the founder, Mr. William Dargan, who defrayed all the expenses of the +Dublin Exhibition in 1853, and declined all the honours offered to him +in recognition of his public spirited liberality, save a visit paid to +his wife by Queen Victoria. The collection now under Mr. Doyle's charge +was begun only in 1864, and the Government makes it an annual grant of +no more than £2500, or about one-half the current price, in these days, +of a fine Gainsborough or Sir Joshua! "They manage these things better +in France," was evidently the impression of a recent French tourist in +Ireland, M. Daryl, whose book I picked up the other day in Paris, for +after mentioning three or four of the pictures, and gravely affirming +that the existence here of a gallery of Irish portraits proves the +passionate devotion of Dublin to Home Rule, he dismisses the collection +with the verdict that "_ce ne vaut pas le diable_." Nevertheless it +already contains more really good pictures than the Musée either of +Lyons or of Marseilles, both of them much larger and wealthier cities +than Dublin. Leaving out the Three Maries of Perugino at Marseilles, and +at Lyons the Ascension, which was once the glory of San Pietro di +Perugia, the Moses of Paul Veronese, and Palma Giovanni's Flagellation, +these two galleries put together cannot match Dublin with its Jan Steen, +most characteristic without being coarse, its Terburg, a life-size +portrait of the painter's favourite model, a young Flemish gentleman, +presented to him as a token of regard, its portrait of a Venetian +personage by Giorgione, with a companion portrait by Gian Bellini, its +beautiful Italian landscape by Jan Both, its flower-wreathed head of a +white bull by Paul Potter, its exquisitely finished "Vocalists" by +Cornells Begyn, its admirable portrait of a Dutch gentleman by Murillo, +and its two excellent Jacob Ruysdaels. A good collection is making, too, +of original drawings, and engravings, and a special room is devoted to +modern Irish art. I wish the Corcoran Gallery (founded, too, by an +Irishman!) were half as worthy of Washington, or the Metropolitan Museum +one-tenth part as worthy of New York! + +The National Gallery in London has loaned some pictures to Dublin, and +Mr. Doyle is getting together, from private owners, a most interesting +gallery of portraits of men and women famous in connection with Irish +history. The beautiful Gunnings of the last century, the not less +beautiful and much more brilliant Sheridans of our own, Burke, Grattan, +Tom Moore, Wellington, Curran, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, O'Connell, Peg +Woffington, Canning, and Castlereagh, Dean Swift, Laurence Sterne are +all here--wits and statesmen, soldiers and belles, rebels and royalists, +orators and poets. Two things strike one in this gallery of the "glories +of Ireland." The great majority of the faces are of the Anglo-Irish or +Scoto-Irish type; and the collection owes its existence to an +accomplished public officer, who bears an Irish name, who is a devout +Catholic, and who is also an outspoken opponent of the Home Rule +contention as now carried on. + +The gallery is open on liberal conditions to students. Mr. Doyle tells +me that a young sister of Mr. Parnell was at one time an assiduous +student here. He used to stop and chat with her about her work as he +passed through the gallery. One day he met her coming out. "Mr. Doyle," +she said, "are you a Home Ruler?" "Certainly not," he replied +good-naturedly. Whereupon, with an air of melancholy resignation, the +young lady said, "Then we can never more be friends!" and therewith +flitted forth. + +A small room contains some admirable bits of the work of Richard Doyle, +among other things a weird and grotesque, but charming cartoon of an +elfish procession passing through a quaint and picturesque mediaeval +city. It is a _conte fantastique_ in colour--a marvel of affluent fancy +and masterly skill. + +I found here this morning letters calling me over to Paris for a short +time, and one also from Mr. Davitt, in London, explaining that my note +to him through the National League had never reached him, and that he +had gone to London on his woollen business. I have written asking him to +meet me to-morrow in London, and I shall cross over to-night. + + +LONDON, _Wednesday, Feb. 15th._--Mr. Davitt spent an hour with me +to-day, and we had a most interesting conversation. His mind is just now +full of the woollen enterprise he is managing, which promises, he +thinks, in spite of our tariff, to open the American markets to the +excellent woollen goods of Ireland. He has gone into it with all his +usual earnestness and ability. This is not a matter of politics with +him, but of patriotism and of business. He tells me he has already +secured very large orders from the United States. I hope he is not +surprised, as I certainly am not, to find that the Parliamentarian Irish +party give but a half-hearted and lukewarm support to such enterprises +as this. Perhaps he has forgotten, as I have not, the efforts which a +certain member of that party made in 1886 to persuade an Irish gentleman +from St. Louis, who had brought over a considerable sum of money for the +relief of the distress in North-Western Ireland, into turning it over +to the League, on the express ground that the more the people were made +to feel the pinch of the existing order of things, the better it would +be for the revolutionary movement. + +The Irish Woollen Company will, nevertheless, be a success, I believe, +and a success of considerably more value to Ireland than the election of +Mr. Wilfrid Blunt as M.P. for Deptford would be. + +As to this election, Mr. Davitt seems to feel no great confidence. He +has spoken in support of Mr. Blunt's candidacy, and is hard at work now +to promote it. But he is not sanguine as to the result, as on all +questions, save Home Rule for Ireland, Mr. Blunt's views and ideas, he +thinks, antagonise the record of Mr. Evelyn and the local feeling at +Deptford. I was almost astonished to learn from Mr. Davitt that Mr. +Blunt, by the way, had told him at Ballybrack, long before he was locked +up, how Mr. Balfour meant to lock up and kill four men, the "pivots" of +the Irish movement, to wit, Mr. O'Brien, Mr. Harrington, Mr. Dillon, and +Mr. Davitt himself. But I was not at all astonished to learn that Mr. +Blunt told him all this most seriously, and evidently believed it. + +"How did you take it?" I asked. + +"Oh, I only laughed," said Mr. Davitt, "and told him it would take more +than Mr. Balfour to kill me, at any rate by putting me in prison. As for +being locked up, I prefer Cuninghame Graham's way of taking it, that he +meant 'to beat the record on oakum!'" + +If all the Irish "leaders" were made of the same stuff with Mr. Davitt, +the day of a great Democratic revolution, not in Ireland only, but in +Great Britain, might be a good deal nearer than anything in the signs of +the times now shows it to be. Mr. Parnell and the National League are +really nothing but the mask of Mr. Davitt and the Land League. Mr. +Forster knew what he was about when he proclaimed the Land League in +October 1881, six months or more after he had arrested and locked up Mr. +Davitt in Portland prison. This was shown by the foolish No-Rent +manifesto which Mr. Parnell and his associates issued from Kilmainham +shortly after their incarceration, and without the counsel or consent at +that time of Mr. Davitt--a manifesto which the Archbishop of Cashel, +despite his early sympathies and connection with the agrarian agitation +of 1848, found it expedient promptly to disavow. It would have been +still more clearly shown had not Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Forster parted +company under the restiveness of Mr. Gladstone's Radical followers, and +the pressure of the United States Government in the spring of 1882. But +after the withdrawal of Mr. Forster, and the release of Mr. Davitt, the +English lawyers and politicians who led Lord Spencer and Sir George +Trevelyan into allowing the Land League to be revived under the +transparent alias of the National League, gave Mr. Davitt an +opportunity, of which he promptly availed himself, to regain the ground +lost by the blundering of the men of Kilmainham. From that time forth I +have always regarded him as the soul of the Irish agitation, of the war +against "landlordism" (which is incidentally, of course, a war against +the English influence in Ireland), and of the movement towards Irish +independence. Whether the agitation, the war, and the movement have gone +entirely in accordance with his views and wishes is quite another +matter. + +I have too good an opinion of his capacity to believe that they have; +and when the secret history of the Chicago Convention comes to be +written, I expect to find such confirmation therein of my notions on +this subject as I could neither ask nor, if I asked, could expect to get +from him. + +Meanwhile the manliness and courage of the man must always command for +him the respect, not to say the admiration, even of those who most +sternly condemn his course and oppose his policy. + +Born the child of an evicted tenant, in the times when an eviction meant +such misery and suffering as are seldom, if ever, now caused by the +process--bred and maimed for life in an English factory--captured when +hardly more than a lad in Captain M'Cafferty's daring attempt to seize +Chester Castle, and sent for fifteen years by Lord Chief-Justice +Cockburn into penal servitude of the most rigorous kind, Michael Davitt +might have been expected to be an apostle of hate not against the +English Government of Ireland alone, but against England and the English +people. The truculent talk of too many of his countrymen presents +Ireland to the minds of thoughtful men as a flagrant illustration of the +truth so admirably put by Aubrey de Vere that "worse than wasted weal is +wasted woe." But woe has not been wasted upon Michael Davitt, in this, +that, so far as I know (and I have watched his course now with lively +personal interest ever since I made his acquaintance on his first visit +to America), he has never made revenge and retaliation upon England +either the inspiration or the aim of his revolutionary policy. I have +never heard him utter, and never heard of his uttering, in America, such +malignant misrepresentations of the conduct of the English people and +their sovereign during the great famine of 1847, for example, as those +which earned for Mr. Parnell in 1880 the pretty unanimous condemnation +of the American press. How far he went with Mr. Parnell on the lines of +that speech at New Ross, in which murder was delicately mentioned as "an +unnecessary and prejudicial measure of procedure" in certain +circumstances, I do not know. But he can hardly have gone further than +certain persons calling themselves English Liberals went when the +assassins of Napoleon III. escaped to England. And he has a capacity of +being just to opponents, which certainly all his associates do not +possess. I was much struck to-day by the candour and respect with which +he spoke of John Bright, whose name came incidentally into our +conversation. He seemed to feel personally annoyed and hurt as an +Irishman, that Irishmen should permit themselves to revile and abuse Mr. +Bright because he will not go with them on the question of Home Rule, in +utter oblivion of the great services rendered by him to the cause of +the Irish people "years before many of those whose tongues now wag +against him had tongues to wag." I was tempted to remind him that not +with Irishmen only is gratitude a lively sense of favours to come. + +I find Mr. Davitt quite awake to the great importance of the granite +quarries of Donegal. He is bestirring himself in connection with some +men of Manchester, in behalf of the quarries at Belmullet in Mayo, +which, if I am not mistaken, is his native county. This bent of his mind +towards the material improvement of the condition of the Irish people, +and the development of the resources of Ireland, is not only a mark of +his superiority to the rank and file of the Irish politicians--it goes +far to explain the stronger hold which he undoubtedly has on the people +in Ireland. "Home Rule," as now urged by the Irish politicians, +certainly excites much more attention and emotion in America and England +than it seems to do in Ireland. It seems so simple and elementary to +John Bull and Brother Jonathan that people should be suffered to manage +their own affairs! Yet the North would not suffer the South to do +this--and what would become of India if England turned it over in +fragments to the native races? The Land Question, on the contrary, +touches the "business and bosom" of every Irishman in Ireland, while it +is so complicated with historical conditions and incidents as to be +troublesome and therefore uninteresting to people not immediately +affected by it. If I am right in my impressions the collapse of the +National League will hardly weaken the hold of Mr. Davitt on the Irish +people in Ireland, and it may even strengthen his hold on the agrarian +movement in Wales, England, and Scotland, unless he identifies himself +too completely in that collapse with his Parliamentary instruments. On +the other hand, the triumph of the National League on its present lines +of action would diminish the value for good or evil of any man's hold +upon the Irish people, for the obvious reason that by driving out of +Ireland, and ruining, the class of "landlords" and capitalists, it would +leave the country reduced to a dead level of peasant-holdings, saddled +with a system of poor-rates beyond the ability of the peasant-holders to +carry, and at the mercy, therefore, of the first bad year. The "war +against the landlords," as conducted by the National League, would end +where the Irish difficulty began, in a general surrender of the people +to "poverty and potatoes." + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +ENNIS, _Saturday, Feb. 18._--I found it unnecessary to go on to Paris, +and so returned to Ireland on Thursday night; we had a passage as over a +lake. In the train I met a lively Nationalist friend, whose acquaintance +I made in America. He is a man of substance, but not overburdened with +respect for the public men, either of his own party or of the Unionist +side. When I asked him whether he still thought it would be safe to turn +over Ireland to a Parliament made up of the Westminster members, of whom +he gave me such an amusing but by no means complimentary account, he +looked at me with astonishment:-- + +"Do you suppose for a moment we would send these fellows to a Parliament +in Dublin?" + +He told me some very entertaining tales of the methods used by certain +well-meaning occupants of the Castle in former days to capture Irish +popularity, as, for example, one of a Vice-Queen who gave a fancy dress +ball for the children of the local Dublin people of importance, and had +a beautiful supper of tea and comfits, and cakes served to them, after +which she made her appearance, followed by servants bearing huge bowls +of steaming hot Irish potatoes, which she pressed upon the horrified and +overstuffed infants as "the true food of the country," setting them +herself the example of eating one with much apparent gusto, and a pinch +of salt! + +"Now, fancy that!" he exclaimed; "for the Dublin aristocracy who think +the praties only fit for the peasants!" + +Of a well-known and popular personage in politics, he told me that he +once went with him on a canvassing tour. It was in a county the +candidate had never before visited. "When we came to a place, and the +people were all out crying and cheering, he would whisper to me, 'Now +what is the name of this confounded hole?' And I would whisper back, +'Ballylahnich,' or whatever it was. Then he would draw himself up to the +height of a round tower, and begin, 'Men of Ballylahnich, I rejoice to +meet you! Often has the great Liberator said to me, with tears in his +voice, 'Oh would I might find myself face to face with the noble men of +Ballylahnich!" + +"A great man he is, a great man! + +"Did you ever hear how he courted the heiress? He walked up and down in +front of her house, and threatened to fight every man that came to call, +till he drove them all away!" + +A good story of more recent date, I must also note, of a well-known +priest in Dublin, who being asked by Mr. Balfour one day whether the +people under his charge took for gospel all the rawhead and bloody-bones +tales about himself, replied, "Indeed, I wish they only feared and hated +the devil half as much as they do you!" + +In a more serious vein my Nationalist friend explained to me that for +him "Home Rule" really meant an opportunity of developing the resources +of Ireland under "the American system of Protection." About this he was +quite in earnest, and recalled to me the impassioned protests made by +the then Mayor of Chicago, Mr. Carter Harrison, against the Revenue +Reform doctrines which I had thought it right to set forth at the great +meeting of the Iroquois Club in that city in 1883. "Of course," he +said, "you know that Mr. Harrison was then speaking not only for +himself, but for the whole Irish vote of Chicago which was solidly +behind him? And not of Chicago only! All our people on your side of the +water moved against your party in 1884, and will move against it again, +only much more generally, this year, because they know that the real +hope of Ireland lies in our shaking ourselves free of the British Free +Trade that has been fastened upon us, and is taking our life." I could +only say that this was a more respectable, if not a more reasonable, +explanation of Mr. Alexander Sullivan's devotion to Mr. Blaine and the +Republicans, and of the Irish defection from the Democratic party than +had ever been given to me in America, but I firmly refused to spend the +night between London and Dublin in debating the question whether Meath +could be made as prosperous as Massachusetts by levying forty per cent. +duties on Manchester goods imported into Ireland. + +He had seen the reception of Mr. Sullivan, M.P., in London. "I believe, +on my soul," he said, "the people were angry with him because he didn't +come in a Lord Mayor's coach!" + +When I told him I meant to visit Luggacurren, he said, a little to my +surprise, "That is a bad job for us, and all because of William +O'Brien's foolishness! He always thinks everybody takes note of whatever +he says, and that ruins any man! He made a silly threat at Luggacurren, +that he would go and take Lansdowne by the throat in Canada, and then he +was weak enough to suppose that he was bound to carry it out. He +couldn't be prevented! And what was the upshot of it? But for the +Orangemen in Canada, that were bigger fools than he is, he would have +been just ruined completely! It was the Orangemen saved him!" + +I left Dublin this morning at 7.40 A.M. The day was fine, and the +railway journey most interesting. Before reaching Limerick we passed +through so much really beautiful country that I could not help +expressing my admiration of it to my only fellow-traveller, a most +courteous and lively gentleman, who, but for a very positive brogue, +might have been taken for an English guardsman. + +"Yes, it is a beautiful country," he said, "or would be if they would +let it alone!" + +I asked him what he specially objected to in the recent action of +Parliament as respects Ireland? + +"Object?" he responded; "I object to everything. The only thing that +will do Ireland any good will be to shut up that talking-mill at +Westminster for a good long while!" + +This, I told him, was the remedy proposed by Earl Grey in his recent +volume on Ireland. + +"Is it indeed? I shall read the book. But what's the use? 'For judgment +it is fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.'" + +This he said most cheerily, as if it really didn't matter much; and, +bidding me good-bye, disappeared at Limerick, where several friends met +him. In his place came a good-natured optimistic squire, who thinks +"things are settling down." There is a rise in the price of cattle. +"Beasts I gave £8 for three mouths ago," he said, "I have just sold for +£12. I call that a healthy state of things." And with this he also left +me at Ardsollus, the station nearest the famous old monastery of Quin. + +At Ennis I was met by Colonel Turner, to whom I had written, enclosing a +note of introduction to him. With him were Mr. Roche, one of the local +magistrates, and Mr. Richard Stacpoole, a gentleman of position and +estate near Ennis, about whom, through no provocation of his, a great +deal has been said and written of late years. Mr. Stacpoole at once +insisted that I should let him take me out to stay at his house at +Edenvale, which is, so to speak, at the gates of Ennis. Certainly the +fame of Irish hospitality is well-founded! Meanwhile my traps were +deposited at the County Club, and I went about the town. I walked up to +the Court-house with. Mr. Roche, in the hope of hearing a case set down +for trial to-day, in which a publican named Harding, at Ennis--an +Englishman, by the way--is prosecuted for boycotting. The parties were +in Court; and the defendant's counsel, a keen-looking Irish lawyer, Mr. +Leamy, once a Nationalist member, was ready for action; but for some +technical reason the hearing was postponed. There were few people in +Court, and little interest seemed to be felt in the matter. The +Court-house is a good building, not unlike the White House at Washington +in style. This is natural enough, the White House having been built, I +believe, by an Irish architect, who must have had the Duke of Leinster's +house of Carton, in Kildare, in his mind when he planned it. Carton was +thought a model mansion at the beginning of this century; and Mr. +Whetstone, a local architect of repute, built the Ennis Court-house some +fifty years ago. It is of white limestone from quarries belonging to +Mr. Stacpoole, and cost when built about £12,000. To build it now would +cost nearly three times as much. In fact, a recent and smaller +Court-house at Carlow has actually cost £36,000 within the last few +years. + +I was struck by the extraordinary number of public-houses in Ennis. A +sergeant of police said to me, "It is so all over the country." Mr. +Roche sent for the statistics, from which it appears that Ennis, with a +population of 6307, rejoices in no fewer than 100 "publics"; Ennistymon, +with a population of 1331, has 25; and Milltown Malbay, with a +population of 1400, has 36. At Castle Island the proportion is still +more astounding--51 public-houses in a population of 800. In Kiltimagh +every second house is a public-house! These houses are perhaps a legacy +of the old days of political jobbery.[19] No matter when or why granted, +the licence appears to be regarded as a hereditary "right" not lightly +to be tampered with; and of course the publicans are persons of +consequence in their neighbourhood, no matter how wretched it may be, +or how trifling their legitimate business. Three police convictions are +required to make the resident magistrates refuse the usual yearly +renewal of a licence; and if an application is made against such a +renewal, cause must be shown. The "publics" are naturally centres of +local agitation, and the publicans are sharp enough to see the advantage +to them of this. The sergeant told me of a publican here in Ennis, into +whose public came three Nationalists, bent not upon drinking, but upon +talking. The publican said nothing for a while, but finally, in a +careless way, mentioned "a letter he had just received from Mr. Parnell +on a very private matter." Instantly the politicians were eager to see +it. The publican hesitated. The politicians immediately called for +drinks, which were served, and after this operation had been three times +repeated, the publican produced the letter, began with a line or two, +and then said, "Ah, no! it can't be done. It would be a betrayal of +confidence; and you know you wouldn't have that! But it's a very +important letter you have seen!" So they went away tipsy and happy. + +Only yesterday no fewer than twenty-three of these publicans from +Milltown Malbay appeared at Ennis here to be tried for "boycotting" the +police. One of them was acquitted; another, a woman, was discharged. Ten +of them signed, in open court, a guarantee not further to conspire, and +were thereupon discharged upon their own recognisances, after having +been sentenced with their companions to a month's imprisonment with hard +labour. The magistrate tells me that when the ten who signed (and who +were the most prosperous of the publicans) were preparing to sign, the +only representative of the press who was present, a reporter for _United +Ireland_, approached them in a threatening manner, with such an obvious +purpose of intimidation, that he was ordered out of the court-room by +the police. The eleven who refused to sign the guarantee (and who were +the poorest of the publicans, with least to lose) were sent to gaol. + +An important feature of this case is the conduct of Father White, the +parish priest of Milltown Malbay. In the open court, Colonel Turner +tells me, Father White admitted that he was the moving spirit of all +this local "boycott." While the court was sitting yesterday all the +shops in Milltown Malbay were closed, Father White having publicly +ordered the people to make the town "as a city of the dead." After the +trial was over, and the eleven who elected to be locked up had left in +the train, Father White visited all their houses to encourage the +families, which, from his point of view, was no doubt proper enough; but +one of the sergeants reports that the Father went by mistake into the +house of one of the ten who had signed the guarantee, and immediately +reappeared, using rather unclerical language. All this to an American +resembles a tempest in a tea-pot. But it is a serious matter to see a +priest of the Church assisting laymen to put their fellow-men under a +social interdict, which is obviously a parody on one of the gravest +steps the Church itself can take to maintain the doctrine and the +discipline of the Faith. What Catholics, if honest, must think of this +whole business, I saw curiously illustrated by some marginal notes +pencilled in a copy of Sir Francis Head's _Fortnight in Ireland_, at the +hotel in Gweedore. The author of the _Bubbles from the Brunnen_ +published this book in 1852. At page 152 he tells a story, apparently on +hearsay, of "boycotting" long before Boycott. It is to the effect that, +in order to check the proselyting of Catholics by a combination of +Protestant missionary zeal with Protestant donations of "meal," certain +priests and sisters in the south of Ireland personally instructed the +people to avoid all intercourse of any sort with any Roman Catholic who +"listened to a Protestant clergyman or a Scripture Reader"; and Sir +Francis cites an instance--still apparently on hearsay--of a "shoemaker +at Westport," who, having seceded from the Church, found that not a +single "journeyman dared work for him"; that only "one person would sell +him leather"; and, "in short, lost his custom, and rapidly came to a +state of starvation." + +On the margin of the pages which record these statements, certain +indignant Catholics have pencilled comments, the mildest of which is to +the effect that Sir Francis was "a most damnable liar." It is certainly +most unlikely that Catholics should have arrogated to themselves the +Church's function of combating heresy and schism in the fashion +described by Sir Francis. But without mooting that question, these +expressions are noteworthy as showing how just such proceedings, as are +involved in the political "boycottings" of the present day, must be +regarded by all honest and clear-headed people who call themselves +Catholics; and it is a serious scandal that a parish priest should lay +himself open to the imputation of acting in concert with any political +body whatever, on any pretext whatever, to encourage such proceedings. + +I asked one of the sergeants how the publicans who had signed the +guarantee would probably be treated by their townspeople. He replied, +there was some talk of their being "boycotted" in their turn by the +butchers and bakers. "But it's all nonsense," he said, "they are the +snuggest (the most prosperous) publicans in this part of the country, +and nobody will want to vex them. They have many friends, and the best +friend they have is that they can afford to give credit to the country +people. There'll be no trouble with them at all at all!" + +Walking about the town, I saw many placards calling for subscriptions in +aid of a newsvendor who has been impounded for selling _United Ireland_. +"It'll be a good thing for him," said a cynical citizen, to whom I spoke +of it, "a good deal better than he'd be by selling the papers." And, in +fact, it is noticeable all over Ireland how small the sales of the +papers appear to be. The people about the streets in Ennis, however, +seemed to me much more effervescent and hot in tone than the Dublin +people are--and this on both sides of the question. One very decent and +substantial-looking man, when I told him I was an American, assured me +that "if it was not for the soldiers, the people of Ennis would clear +the police out of the place." He told me, too, that not long ago the +soldiers of an Irish regiment here cheered for Home Rule in the +Court-house, "but they were soon sent away for that same." On the other +hand, a Protestant man of business, of whom I made some inquiries about +the transmission of an important paper to the United States in time to +catch to-morrow's steamer from Queenstown, spoke of the Home Rulers +almost with ferocity, and thought the "Coercion" Government at Dublin +ought to be called the "Concession" Government. He was quite indignant +that the Morley and Ripon procession through the streets of Dublin +should not have been "forbidden." + +There are some considerable shops in Ennis, but the proprietor of one of +the best of them says all this agitation has "killed the trade of the +place." I am not surprised to learn that the farmers and their families +are beginning seriously to demand that the "reduction screw" shall be +applied to other things besides rent. "A very decent farmer," he says, +"only last week stood up in the shop and said it was 'a shame the +shopkeepers were not made to reduce the tenpence muslin goods to +sixpence!'" + +This shopkeeper finds some dreary consolation for the present state of +things in standing at his deserted shop-door and watching the doors of +his brethren. He finds them equally deserted. In his own he has had to +dismiss a number of his attendants. "When a man finds he is taking in +ten shillings a day, and laying out three pounds ten, what can he do but +pull up pretty short?" As with the shopkeepers, so it is with the +mechanics. "They are losing custom all the time. You see the tenants are +expecting to come into the properties, so they spend nothing now on +painting or improvements. The money goes into the bank. It don't go to +the landlords, or to the shopkeepers, or the mechanics; and then we that +have been selling on credit, and long credit too, where are we? +Formerly, from one place, Dromoland, Lord Inchiquin's house, we used +regularly to make a bill of a hundred pounds at Christmas, for blankets +and other things given away. Now the house is shut up and we make +nothing!" + +It is a short but very pleasant drive from Ennis to Edenvale--and +Edenvale itself is not ill-named. The park is a true park, with fine +wide spaces and views, and beautiful clumps of trees. A swift river +flows beyond the lawn in front of the spacious goodly house--a river +alive with wild fowl, and overhung by lofty trees, in which many pairs +of herons build. A famous heronry has existed here for many years, and +the birds are held now by Mr. and Mrs. Stacpoole as sacred as are the +storks in Holland. Where the river widens to a lake, fine terraced +gardens and espalier walls, on which nectarines, apricots, and peaches +ripen in the sun, stretch along the shore. Deer come down to the further +bank to drink, and in every direction the eye is charmed and the mind is +soothed by the loveliest imaginable sylvan landscapes. + + +EDENVALE, _Sunday, Feb. 19._--I was awakened at dawn by the clamour of +countless wild ducks, to a day of sunshine as brilliant and almost as +warm as one sees at this season in the south of France. Mrs. Stacpoole +speaks of this place with a kind of passion, and I can quite understand +it. Clearly this, again, is not a case of the absentee landlord draining +the lifeblood of the land to lavish it upon an alien soil! The demesne +is a sylvan sanctuary for the wild creatures of the air and the wood, +and they congregate here almost as they did at Walton Hall in the days +of that most delightful of naturalists and travellers, whose adventurous +gallop on the back of a cayman was the delight of all English-reading +children forty years ago, or as they do now at Gosford. Yet the crack of +the gun, forbidden in the precincts of Walton Hall, is here by no means +unknown--the whole family being noted as dead shots. I asked Mr. +Stacpoole this morning whether the park had been invaded by trespassers +since the local Nationalists declared war upon him. He said that his +only experience of anything like an attack befell not very long ago, +when his people came to the house on a Sunday afternoon and told him +that a crowd of men from Ennis, with dogs, were coming towards the park +with a loudly proclaimed intent to enter it, and go hunting upon the +property. + +Upon this Mr. Stacpoole left the house with his brother and another +person, and walked down to the park entrance. Presently the men of Ennis +made their appearance on the highway. A very brief parley followed. The +men of Ennis announced their intention of marching across the park, and +occupying it. + +"I think not," the proprietor responded quietly. "I think you will go +back the way you came. For you may be sure of one thing: the first man +who crosses that park wall, or enters that gate, is a dead man." + +There was no show of weapons, but the revolvers were there, and this the +men of Ennis knew. They also knew that it rested with themselves to +create the right and the occasion to use the revolvers, and that if the +revolvers were used they would be used to some purpose. To their credit, +be it said, as men of sense, they suddenly experienced an almost +Caledonian respect for the "Sabbath-day," and after expressing their +discontent with Mr. Stacpoole's inhospitable reception, turned about and +went back whence they had come. + +This morning an orderly from Ennis brought out news of the arrest +yesterday, at the Clare Road, of Mr. Lloyd, a Labour delegate from +London, on his return from an agitation meeting at Kildysart. Harding, +the Englishman I saw awaiting his trial yesterday, became bail for +Lloyd. + +In the afternoon we took a delightful walk to Killone Abbey, a pile of +monastic ruins on a lovely site near a very picturesque lake. The ruins +have been used as a quarry by all the country, and are now by no means +extensive. But the precincts are used as a graveyard, not only by the +people of Ennis, but by the farmers and villagers for many miles around. +Nothing can be imagined more painful than the appearance of these +precincts. The graves are, for the most part, shallow, and closely +huddled together. The cemetery, in truth, is a ghastly slum, a +"tenement-house" of the dead. The dead of to-day literally elbow the +dead of yesterday out of their resting-places, to be in their turn +displaced by the dead of to-morrow. Instead of the crosses and the fresh +garlands, and the inscriptions full of loving thoughtfulness, which lend +a pathetic charm to the German "courts of peace"--instead of the +carefully tended hillocks and flower-studded turf which make the +churchyard of a typical old English village beautiful,--all here is +confusion, squalor, and neglect. Fragments of coffins and bones lie +scattered among the sunken and shattered stones. We picked up a skull +lying quite apart in a corner of the enclosure. A clean round bullet +hole in the very centre of the frontal bone was dumbly and grimly +eloquent. Was it the skull of a patriot or of a policeman? of a +"White-boy" or of a "landlord"? + +One thing only was apparent from the conformation of the grisly relic. +It was the skull of a Celt. Probably, therefore, not of a land agent, +shot to repress his fiduciary zeal, but perhaps of some peasant +selfishly and recklessly bent on paying his rent. + +While we wandered amid the ruins we came suddenly upon a woman wearing a +long Irish cloak, and accompanied by two well-dressed men. One of the +men started upon catching sight of Colonel Turner, who was of our party, +grew quite red for a moment, and then very civilly exchanged salutations +with him. The party walked quietly away on a lower road leading to +Ennis. When they had gone Colonel Turner told us that the man who had +spoken to him was a local Nationalist of repute and influence in Ennis. +"He would never have ventured to be civil to me in the town," he said. A +discussion arose as to the probable object of the party in visiting +these ruins. A gentleman who was with us half-laughingly suggested that +they might have been putting away dynamite bombs for an attack on +Edenvale. Colonel Turner's more practical and probable theory was that +they were looking about for a site for the grave of the Fenian veteran, +Stephen J. Meany, who died in America not long ago. He was a native, I +believe, of Ennis, and his remains are now on their way across the +Atlantic for interment in his birth-place. "Would a processional funeral +be allowed for him?" I asked. Colonel Turner could see no reason why it +should not be. + +One exception I noted to the general slovenliness of the graves. A new +and handsome monument had just been set up by a man of Ennis, living in +Australia, to the memory of his father and mother, buried here twenty +years ago. But this touching symbol of a heart untravelled, fondly +turning to its home, had been so placed, either by accident or by +design, as to block the entrance way to the vault of a family living, or +rather owning property, in this neighbourhood. Until within a year or +two past this family had occupied a very handsome mansion in a park +adjoining the park of Edenvale. But the heir, worn out with local +hostilities, and reduced in fortune by the pressure of the times and of +the League, has now thrown up the sponge. His ancestral acres have been +turned over for cultivation to Mr. Stacpoole. His house, a large fine +building, apparently of the time of James II., containing, I am told, +some good pictures and old furniture, is shut up, as are the model +stables, ample enough for a great stud; and so another centre of local +industry and activity is made sterile. + +Near the ruins of Killone is a curious ancient shrine of St. John, +beside a spring known as the Holy Well. All about the rude little altar +in the open air simple votive offerings were displayed, and Mrs. +Stacpoole tells me pilgrims come here from Galway and Connemara to climb +the hill upon their knees, and drink of the water. Last year for the +first time within the memory of man the well went dry. Such was the +distress caused in Ennis by this news, that on the eve of St. John +certain pious persons came out from the town, drew water from the lake, +and poured it into the well! + +As we walked away one of the party pointed to a rabbit fleeing swiftly +into a hole in one of the graves. "I was on this hill," he said, "one +day not very long ago when a funeral train came out from Ennis. As it +entered the precincts a rabbit ran rapidly across the grounds. Instantly +the procession broke up; the coffin was literally dropped to the +ground, and the bearers, the mourners, and the whole company united in a +hot and general chase of bunny. Of course, I need not say," he added, +"that there was no priest with them. The fixed charge of the priest for +a burial is twenty shillings, but there is usually no service at the +grave whatever." + +This may possibly be a trace of the practices which grew up under the +Penal Laws against Catholics. When Rinuccini came to Ireland in the time +of the Civil War, he found the observances of the Church all fallen into +degradation through these laws. The Holy Sacrifice was celebrated in the +cabins, and not unfrequently on tables which had been covered +half-an-hour before with the remains of the last night's supper, and +would be cleared half-an-hour afterwards for the midday meal, and +perhaps for a game of cards. + +Several guests joined us at dinner. One gentleman, a magistrate familiar +with Gweedore, told me he believed the statements of Sergeant Mahony as +to the income of Father M'Fadden to fall within the truth. While he +believes that many people in that region live, as he put it, "constantly +within a hair's-breadth of famine," he thinks that the great body of +the peasants there are in a position, "with industry and thrift, not +only to make both ends meet, but to make them overlap." + +Mr. Stacpoole told us some of his own experiences nearer home. Not long +ago he was informed that the National League had ordered some decent +people, who hold the demesne lands of his neighbour, Mr. Macdonald +(already alluded to) at a very low rental, to make a demand for a +reduction, which would have left Mr. Macdonald without a penny of +income. To counter this Mr. Stacpoole offered to take the lands over for +pasture at the existing rental, whereupon the tenants promptly made up +their minds to keep their holdings in defiance of the League. + +Last year a man, whom Mr. Stacpoole had regarded as a "good" tenant, +came to him, bringing the money to pay his rent. "I have the rint, +sorr," the man said, "but it is God's truth I dare not pay it to ye!" +Other tenants were waiting outside. "Are you such a coward that you +don't dare be honest?" said Mr. Stacpoole. The man turned rather red, +went and looked out of all the windows, one after another, lifted up the +heavy cloth of the large table in the room, and peeped under it +nervously, and finally walked up to Mr. Stacpoole and paid the money. +The receipt being handed to him, he put it back with his hand, eyed it +askance as if it were a bomb, and finally took it, and carefully put it +into the lining of his hat, after which, opening the door with a great +noise, he exclaimed as he went out, "I'm very, very sorry, master, that +I can't meet you about it!" This man is now as loud in protestation of +his "inability" to pay his rent as any of the "Campaigners." Mr. +Stacpoole thinks one great danger of the actual situation is that men +who were originally "coerced" by intimidation into dishonestly refusing +to pay just rents, which they were abundantly able to pay, are beginning +now to think that they will be, and ought to be, relieved by the law of +the land from any obligation to pay these rents. + +It seems to be his impression that things look better, however, of late +for law and order. On Monday of last week at Ennis an example was made +of a local official, which, he thinks, will do good. This was a Poor-Law +Guardian named Grogan. He was bound over on Monday last to keep the +peace for twelve months towards one George Pilkington. Pilkington, it +appears, in contempt of the League, took and occupied, in 1886, a +certain farm in Tarmon West. For this he was "boycotted" from that time +forth. In December last he was summoned, with others, before the Board +of Guardians at Kilrush, to fix the rents of certain labourers' +cottages. While he sat in the room awaiting the action of the Board, +Grogan, one of its members, rose up, and, looking at Pilkington, said in +a loud voice, "There's an obnoxious person here present that should not +be here, a land-grabber named Pilkington." There was a stir in the room, +and Pilkington, standing up, said, "I am here because I have had notice +from the Guardians. If I am asked to leave the place, I shall not come +back." The Chairman of the Board upon this declared that "while the +ordinary business of the Board was transacting, Mr. Pilkington would be +there only by the courtesy of the Board;" and treating the allusions of +Grogan to Pilkington as a part of the business of the Board, he said, "A +motion is before the Board, does any one second it?" Another guardian, +Collins, got up, and said "I do." Thereupon the Chairman put it to the +vote whether Pilkington should be requested to leave. The ayes had it, +and the Chairman of the Board thereupon invited Pilkington to leave the +meeting which the Board had invited him to attend! + +Grogan has now been prosecuted for the offence of "wrongfully, and +without legal authority, using violence and intimidation to and towards +George Pilkington of Tarmon West, with a view to cause the said +Pilkington to abstain from doing an act which he had a legal right to +do, namely, to hold, occupy, and work on a certain farm of land at +Tarmon West." + +Plainly this case is one of a grapple between the two Governments which +have been and are now contending for the control of Ireland: the +Government of the Queen of Ireland, which authorises Pilkington to take +and farm a piece of land, and the Government of the National League, +which forbids him to do this. Is it possible to doubt which of the two +is the government of Liberty, as well as the government of Law? + +It illustrates the demoralising influence upon society in Ireland of the +protracted toleration of such a contest as has been waging between the +authority of the Law and the authority of the League, that, when this +case came up for consideration ten days ago, an official here actually +thought it ought to be put off. Colonel Turner insisted it should be +dealt with at once; and so Mr. Grogan was proceeded against, with the +result I have stated. + +The trees on this demesne are the finest I have so far seen in Ireland, +beautiful and vigorous pencil-cedars, ilexes, Scotch firs, and Irish +yews. There is one noble cedar of Lebanon here worth a special trip to +see. In conversation about the country to-night, Mr. Stacpoole mentioned +that tobacco was grown here, strong and of good quality, and he was much +interested, as I remember were also the charming châtelaine of Newtown +Anner and Mr. Le Poer of Gurteen four or five years ago, to learn how +immensely successful has been the tobacco-culture introduced into +Pennsylvania only a quarter of a century ago, as a consequence of the +Civil War. The climatic conditions here are certainly not more +unfavourable to such an experiment in agriculture than they were at +first supposed to be in the Pennsylvanian counties of York and +Lancaster. Of course the Imperial excise would deal with it as harshly +as it is now dealing with a similar experiment in England. But the Irish +tobacco-growers would not now have to fear such hostile legislation as +ruined the Irish linen industries in the last century. The +"Moonlighters" of 1888 lineally represent, if they do not simply +reproduce, the "Whiteboys" of 1760; and the domination of the "uncrowned +king" constantly reminds one of Froude's vivid and vigorous sketch of +the sway wielded by "Captain Dwyer" and "Joanna Maskell" from Mallow to +Westmeath, between the years 1762 and 1765. On that side of the quarrel +there seems to be nothing very new under the sun in Ireland. But the +spirit and the forms of the Imperial authority over the country have +unquestionably undergone a great change for the better, not only since +the last century, but since the accession of Queen Victoria. + +Upon the question of land improvements, Mr. Stacpoole told me, to-night, +that he borrowed £1000 of the Government for drainage improvements on +his property here, the object of which was to better the holdings of +tenants. Of this sum he had to leave £400 undrawn, as he could not get +the men to work at the improvements, even for their own good. They all +wanted to be gangers or chiefs. It reminded me of Berlioz's reply to the +bourgeois who wanted his son to be made a "great composer." "Let him go +into the army," said Berlioz, "and join the only regiment he is fit +for." "What regiment is that?" "The regiment of colonels." + +In the course of the evening a report was brought out from Ennis to +Colonel Turner. He read it, and then handed it to me, with an +accompanying document. The latter, at my request, he allowed me to keep, +and I must reproduce it here. It tells its own tale. + +A peasant came to the authorities and complained that he was "tormented" +to make a subscription to a "testimonial" for one Austen Mackay of +Kilshanny, in the County Clare, producing at the same time a copy of the +circular which had been sent about to the people. It is a +cheaply-printed leaflet, not unlike a penny ballad in appearance, and +thus it runs:-- + + +"_Testimonial to_ Mr. AUSTEN MACKAY, _Kilshanny_, _County Clare_. + +"We, the Nationalists and friends of Mr. Austen Mackay, at a meeting +held in March 1887, agreed and resolved on presenting the long-tried and +trusted friend--the persecuted widow's son--with a testimonial worthy of +the fearless hero who on several occasions had to hide his head in the +caves and caverns of the mountains, with a price set on his body. First, +for firing at and wounding a spy in his neighbourhood, as was alleged +in '65, for which he had to stand his trial at Clare Assizes. Again, for +firing at and wounding his mother's agent and under-strapper while in +the act of evicting his widowed mother in the broad daylight of Heaven, +thus saved his mother's home from being wrecked by the robber agent, the +shock of which saved other hearths from being quenched; but the noble +widow's son was chased to the mountains, where he had to seek shelter +from a thousand bloodhounds. + +"The same true widow's son nobly guarded his mother's homestead and that +of others from the foul hands of the exterminators. This is the same +widow's son who bravely reinstated the evicted, and helped to rebuild +the levelled houses of many; for this he was persecuted and convicted at +Cork Assizes, and flung into prison to sleep on the cold plank beds of +Cork and Limerick gaols. Many other manly and noble services did he +which cannot be made known to the public. At that meeting you were +appointed collector with other Nationalists of Clare at home and abroad. +This is the widow's son, Austen Mackay, whom we, the Committee to this +testimonial, hope and trust every Irishman in Clare will cheerfully +subscribe, that he may be enabled in his present state of health to get +into some business under the protection of the Stars and Stripes, where +he is a citizen of." + +"Subscriptions to be sent to Henry Higgins, Ennis. + +"Treasurers: Daniel O'Loghlen, Lisdoonvarna; James Kennedy, Ennistymon." + +Then follow, with the name of the Society, the names of the committee. + +In behalf of the Stars and Stripes, "where he is a citizen of," I thanked +Colonel Turner for this interesting contribution to the possible future +history of my country, there being nothing to prevent the election of +any heir of this illustrious "widow's son," born to him in America, to +the Presidency of the Republic. The use of this phrase, the "widow's +son," by the way, gives a semi-masonic character to this curious +circular. + +One officer says in his report upon this Committee: "All the persons +named are well known to their respective local police, and, except one, +have little or no following or influence in their respective localities. +They are all members of the National League." The same officer subjoins +this instructive observation: "I beg to add that I find no matter how +popular a man may be in Clare, start a testimonial for him, and from +that time forth his influence is gone." + +Can it be possible that the "testimonial," which, as the papers tell me, +is getting up all over Ireland for Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, can have been +"started" with a sinister eye to this effect, by local patriots jealous +of any alien intrusion into their bailiwick? I am almost tempted to +suspect this, remembering that a Nationalist with whom I talked about +Mr. Blunt in Dublin, after lavishing much praise upon his disinterested +devotion to the cause of Ireland, moodily remarked, "For all that, I +don't believe he will do us any good, for he comes of the blood of +Mountjoy, I am told!" + + +EDENVALE, _Monday, Feb. 20._--This morning Colonel Turner called my +attention to the report in the papers of a colloquy between the Chief +Secretary for Ireland and Mr. J. Redmond, M.P., in the House, on the +subject of last week's trials at Ennis. In speaking of the boycotting at +Milltown Malbay of a certain Mrs. Connell, Mr. Balfour described the +case as one of barbarous inhumanity shown to a helpless old woman. Mr. +Redmond denying this, asserted that he had seen the woman Connell a +fortnight ago in Court, and that so far from her being a decrepit old +woman, she was only fifty years of age, hale and hearty, but +disreputable and given to drink; he also said she was drunk at the +trial, so drunk that the Crown prosecutor, Mr. Otter, was obliged to +order her down from the table. + +"What are the facts?" I asked. "Mr. Balfour speaks from report and +belief, Mr. Redmond asserts that he speaks from actual observation." + +"The facts," said Colonel Turner quietly, "are that Mr. Balfour's +statement is accurate, and that Mr. Redmond, speaking from actual +observation, asserts the thing that is not." + +"Where is this old woman?" I asked. "Would it be possible for me to see +her?" + +"Certainly; she is at no great distance, and I will with pleasure send a +car with an officer to bring her here this afternoon!" + +"Meanwhile, how came the old woman into Court? and what is her +connection with the cases of boycotting last week tried?" + +"Those cases arose out of her case," said Colonel Turner; "the publicans +last week arraigned, 'boycotted' a fortnight ago the police and +soldiers who were called in to keep the peace during the trial of the +dealers who 'boycotted' her. + +"Her case was first publicly made known by a letter which appeared in +the Dublin _Express_ on the 28th of January. That day a line was sent to +me from Dublin ordering an inquiry into it. I endorsed upon the order, +'Please report. I imagine this is greatly exaggerated.' This was on +January 30th. The next day, January 31st, I received a full report from +Milltown Malbay. Here it is,"--taking a document from a portfolio and +handing it to me--"and you may make what use you like of it." + +It is worth giving at length:-- + + "James Connell, ex-soldier, and his mother, Hannah Connell, of + Fintamore, in this sub-district are boycotted, and have been since + July last. James Connell held a farm and a garden from one Michael + Carroll, a farmer, who was evicted from his holding for non-payment + of three years' rent, July 14, 1886. After the period of redemption, + six months, had passed, the agent made Connell a tenant for his + house and garden, giving him in addition about half an acre (Irish) + of the evicted farm which adjoins his house. In consequence Connell + was regarded by the National League here as a 'land-grabber.' About + the same time the agent also appointed him a rent-warner. + + "On the 22d June last Connell received a letter through the + Post-Office threatening him if he did not give up his place as a + rent-warner. I have no doubt the letter was written by (here a + resident was named). On the 10th, and again on the 17th, of July, + Connell was brought before indoor meetings of the National League + here for having taken the half acre of land, when he through fear + declared he had not done it. + + "At the first meeting the Rev. J.S. White, P.P., suggested that in + order to test whether Connell had taken the land, Carroll, the + evicted tenant, should go and cut the meadowing on it, which he did, + when Connell interfered and prevented him. At the next meeting + Carroll brought this under notice, and Connell was thereupon + boycotted. Immediately afterwards the men who had been engaged + fishing for Connell refused to fish, saying that if they fished for + him the sale of the fish would be boycotted, which was true. + + "Since then Connell has been deprived of his means of livelihood, + and no one dare employ him. He, however, through his mother, was + able to procure the necessaries of life until about the 22d of + November last, when his mother was refused goods by the tradesmen + with whom she had dealt, owing to a resolution passed at a meeting + of the 'suppressed' branch of the League here, to the effect that + any person supplying her would be boycotted. December 23d she came + into Milltown Malbay for goods, and was refused. The police + accompanied her, but no person would supply her. On the 2d of + January she came again, when one trader supplied her with some + bread, but refused groceries. The police accompanied her to several + traders, who all refused. Ultimately she was supplied by the + post-mistress. On the 7th of January she came, and the police + accompanied her to several traders, all of whom refused her even + bread. Believing she wanted it badly, we, the police, supplied her + with some. On these three occasions she was followed by large + numbers of young people about the street, evidently to frighten and + intimidate her, and their demeanour was so hostile that we were + obliged to disperse them and protect her home. On a subsequent + occasion she stated that stones were thrown at her. Since then she + has not come here for goods, and, in my opinion, it would not be + safe for her to do so without protection. She and her son are now + getting goods from Mrs. Moroney's shop at Spanish Point, which she + opened a few years ago to supply boycotted persons. + + "The Connells find it hard to get turf, and are obliged to bring it + a distance in bags so that it may not be observed. As for milk, the + person who did supply them privately for a considerable time + declined some weeks ago to do so any longer. They are now really + destitute, as any little money Connell had saved is spent, and, + although willing and anxious to work, no person will employ him. + Summonses have been issued against the tradesmen for refusing to + supply Hannah Connell on the occasions already referred to. I have + only to add that I have from time to time reported fully the + foregoing facts with regard to the persecution of this poor man and + his aged mother; and I regret to say that boycotting and + intimidation never prevailed to a greater extent here than at + present. Connell's safety is being looked after by patrols from this + and Spanish Point station." + +Three things seem to me specially noteworthy in this tale of cowardly +and malignant tyranny. The victims of this vulgar Vehmgericht are +neither landlords nor agents. They are a poor Irish labourer and his +aged mother. The "crime" for which these poor creatures are thus +persecuted is simply that one of them--the man--chose to obey the law of +the land in which he lives, and to work for his livelihood and that of +his mother. And the priest of the parish, instead of sheltering and +protecting these hunted creatures, is presented as joining in the hunt, +and actually devising a trap to catch the poor frightened man in a +falsehood. + +Upon this third point, a correspondence which passed between Father +White and Colonel Turner, after the conviction of the boycotters of Mrs. +Connell, and copies of which the latter has handed to me at my request, +throws an instructive light. + +When the report of January 31st reached him, Colonel Turner ordered the +tradespeople implicated in the persecution to be proceeded against. Six +of them were put on their trials on the 3d and 4th of February. All the +shops in Milltown Malbay were closed, by order of the local League, +during the trial, and the police and the soldiers called in were refused +all supplies. + +On the 4th, one of the persons arraigned was bound over for +intimidation, and the five others were sentenced to three months' +imprisonment with hard labour. + +A week later, February 11th, Colonel Turner addressed the following +letter to Father White, twenty-six publicans of Milltown Malbay having +meanwhile been prosecuted for boycotting the police and the soldiers:-- + + "DEAR SIR,--I write to you as a clergyman who possesses great + influence with the people in your part of the country, to put it to + you whether it would not be better for the interests of all + concerned if the contemptible system of petty persecution, called + boycotting, were put an end to in and about Milltown Malbay, which + would enable me to drop prosecutions. If it is not put a stop to, I + am determined to stamp it out, and restore to all the ordinary + rights of citizenship. + + "But I should very greatly prefer that the people should stop it + themselves, and save me from taking strong measures, which I should + deplore. The story of a number of men combining to persecute a poor + old woman is one of the most pitiful I ever heard.--I am, sir, yours + truly, + + ALFRED TURNER." + +As the cost of the extra policemen sent to Milltown Malbay at this time +falls upon the people there, this letter in effect offered the priest an +opportunity to relieve his parish of a burden as well as to redeem its +character. + +The next day Father White replied:-- + + "DEAR SIR,--No one living is more anxious for peace in this district + than I. During very exciting times I have done my best to keep it + free from outrage, and with success, except in one mysterious + instance.[20] There is but one obstacle to it now. If ever you can + advise Mrs. Moroney to restore the evicted tenant, whose rent you + admitted was as high as Colonel O'Callaghan's, I can guarantee on + the part of the people the return of good feelings; or, failing + that, if she and her employees are content with the goods which she + has of all kinds in her own shop, there need be no further trouble. + + "I have a promise from the people that the police will be supplied + for the future. This being so, if you will kindly have prosecutions + withdrawn, or even postponed for say a month, it will very much + strengthen me in the effort I am making to calm down the feeling. + Regarding Mrs. Connell, the head-constable was told by me that she + was to get goods, and she did get bread, till the police went round + with her. This upset my arrangements, as I had induced the people to + give her what she might really want. In fact she was a convenience + to Mrs. Moroney for obvious reasons, and her son is now in her + employment in place of Kelly, who has been dismissed since his very + inconvenient evidence. It is, and was, well known they were not + starving as they said, they having a full supply of their accustomed + food.--Thanking you for your great courtesy, I am, dear sir, truly + yours, + + "J. White." + +On the 14th Colonel Turner replied:-- + + "My dear Sir,--We cannot adjourn the cases. But if those who are + prosecuted are prepared to make reparation by promising future good + conduct in Court, I can then see my way to interfere, and to prevent + them from suffering imprisonment. + + "These cases have nothing whatever to do with Mrs. Moroney.[21] They + are simply between the defendants and the police and other + officials, who were at Milltown Malbay that day. I am greatly + pleased at your evident wish to co-operate with me in calming down + the ill-feeling which unfortunately exists, and I am satisfied that + success will attend our efforts." + +On Thursday and Friday last, as I have recorded, the cases came on of +the twenty-six publicans charged. Between February 4th, when the +offences were committed, and the 17th of February, one of these +publicans had died, one had fled to America, and there proved to be an +informality in the summons issued against a third. Twenty-three only +were put upon their trial. As I have stated, one was acquitted and the +others were found guilty, and sentenced to be imprisoned. In accordance +with his promise made to Father White, Colonel Turner offered to relieve +them all of the imprisonment if they would sign an undertaking in Court +not to repeat the offence. Ten, the most prosperous and substantial of +the accused, accepted this offer and signed, as has been already stated. +One, a woman, was discharged without being required to sign the +guarantee, the other eleven refused to sign, and were sent to prison. +Father White, whose own evidence given at the trial, as his letter to +Colonel Turner would lead one to expect, had gone far to prove the +existence of the conspiracy, encouraged the eleven in their attitude. + +This was his way of "co-operating" with Colonel Turner to "calm down the +ill-feeling which exists"! + +During the morning Mrs. Stacpoole sent for the clerk and manager of the +estate, and asked him to show me the books. He is a native of these +parts, by name Considine, and has lived at Edenvale for eighteen years. +In his youth he went out to America, but there found out that he had a +"liver," an unpleasant discovery, which led him to return to the land of +his birth, and to the service of Mr. Stacpoole. He is perfectly familiar +with the condition of the country here, and as the accounts of this +estate are kept minutely and carefully from week to week, he was able +this morning to show me the current prices of all kinds of farm produce +and of supplies in and about Ennis--not estimated prices, but prices +actually paid or received in actual transactions during the last ten +years. I am surprised to see how narrow has been the range of local +variations during that time; and I find Mr. Considine inclined to think +that the farmers here have suffered very little, if at all, from these +fluctuations, making up from time to time on their reduced expenses what +they have lost through lessened receipts. The expenses of the landlord +have however increased, while his receipts have fallen off. In 1881 +Edenvale paid out for labour £466, 0s. 1-1/2d., in 1887 £560, 6s. +3-1/2d., though less labour was employed in 1887 than in 1881. The wages +of servants, where any change appears, have risen. In 1881 a gardener +received £14 a year, in 1888 he receives 15s. a week, or at the rate of +£39 a year. A housemaid receiving £12 a year in 1881, receives now £17 a +year. A butler receiving in 1881 £26 a year, now receives £40 a year. A +kitchen maid receiving in 1881 £6, now receives £10, 10s. a year. +Meanwhile, the Sub-Commissioners are at this moment cutting down the +Edenvale rents again by £190, 3s. 2d., after a walk over the property in +the winter. Yet in July 1883 Mr. Reeves, for the Sub-Commission, +"thought it right to say there was no estate in the County Clare so +fairly rented, to their knowledge, or where the tenants had less cause +for complaint." In but one case was a reduction of any magnitude made by +the Commission of 1883, and in one case that Commission actually +increased the rent from £11, 10s. to £16. In January 1883 the rental of +this property was £4065, 5s. 1d. The net reduction made by the +Commissioners in July 1883 was £296, 14s. 0-1/2d. + +After luncheon a car came up to the mansion, bringing a stalwart, +good-natured-looking sergeant of police, and with him the boycotted old +woman Mrs. Connell and her son. The sergeant helped the old woman down +very tenderly, and supported her into the house. She came in with some +trepidation and uneasiness, glancing furtively all about her, with the +look of a hunted creature in her eyes. Her son, who followed her, was +more at his ease, but he also had a worried and careworn look. Both were +warmly but very poorly clad, and both worn and weatherbeaten of aspect. +The old woman might have passed anywhere for a witch, so wizened and +weird she was, of small stature, and bent nearly double by years and +rheumatism. Her small hands were withered away into claws, and her head +was covered with a thick and tangled mat of hair, half dark, half grey, +which gave her the look almost of the Fuegian savages who come off from +the shore in their flat rafts and clamour to you for "rum" in the +Straits of Magellan. Her eyes were intensely bright, and shone like hot +coals in her dusky, wrinkled face. It was a raw day, and she came in +shivering with the cold. It was pathetic to see how she positively +gloated with extended palms over the bright warm, fire in the +drawing-room, and clutched at the cup of hot tea which my kind hostess +instantly ordered in for her. + +This was the woman of whom Mr. Redmond wrote to Mr. Parnell that she was +"an active strong dame of about fifty." When Mr. Balfour, in Parliament, +described her truly as a "decrepit old woman of eighty," Mr. Redmond +contradicted him, and accused her of being "the worse for liquor" in a +public court. + +"How old is your mother?" I asked her son. + +"I am not rightly sure, sir," he replied, "but she is more than eighty." + +"The man himself is about fifty," said the sergeant; "he volunteered to +go to the Crimean War, and that was more than thirty years ago!" + +"I did indeed, sir," broke in the man, "and it was from Cork I went. And +I'd be a corpse now if it wasn't for the mercy of God and the +protection. God bless the police, sir, that protected my old mother, +sir, and me. That Mr. Redmond, sir, they read me what he said, and sure +he should be ashamed of his shadow, to get up there in Parliament, and +tell those lies, sir, about my old mother!" I questioned Connell as to +his relations with Carroll, the man who brought him before the League. +He was a labourer holding a bit of ground under Carroll. Carroll refused +to pay his own rent to the landlord. But he compelled Connell to pay +rent to him. When Carroll was evicted, the landlord offered to let +Connell have half an acre more of land. He took it to better himself, +and "how did he injure Carroll by taking it?" How indeed, poor man! Was +he a rent-warner? Yes; he earned something that way two or three times +a year; and for that he had to ask the protection of the police--"they +would kill him else." What with worry and fright, and the loss of his +livelihood, this unfortunate labourer has evidently been broken down +morally and physically. It is impossible to come into contact with such +living proofs of the ineffable cowardice and brutality of this business +of "boycotting" without indignation and disgust. + +While Connell was telling his pitiful tale a happy thought occurred to +the charming daughter of the house. Mrs. Stacpoole is a clever amateur +in photography. "Why not photograph this 'hale and hearty woman of +fifty,' with her son of fifty-three?" Mrs. Stacpoole clapped her hands +at the idea, and went off at once to prepare her apparatus. + +While she was gone the sergeant gave me an account of the trial, which +Mr. Redmond, M.P., witnessed. He was painfully explicit. "Mr. Redmond +knew the woman was sober," he said; "she was lifted up on the table at +Mr. Redmond's express request, because she was so small and old, and +spoke in such a low voice that he could not hear what she said. Connell +had always been a decent, industrious fellow--a fisherman. But for the +lady, Mrs. Moroney, he and his mother would have starved, and would +starve now. As for the priest, Father White, Connell went to him to ask +his intercession and help, but he could get neither." + +The sergeant had heard Father White preach yesterday. "It was a curious +sermon. He counselled peace and forbearance to the people, because they +might be sure the wicked Tory Government would very soon fall!" + +Presently the sun came out with golden glow, and with the sun came out +Mrs. Stacpoole. It was a job to "pose" the subjects, the old woman +evidently suspecting some surgical or legal significance in the +machinery displayed, and her son finding some trouble in making her +understand what it meant. But finally we got the tall, personable +sergeant, with his frank, shrewd, sensible face, to put himself between +the two, in the attitude as of a guardian angel; the camera was nimbly +adjusted, and lo! the thing was done. + +Mrs. Stacpoole thinks the operation promises a success. I suppose it +would hardly be civil to send a finished proof of the group to Mr. J. +Redmond, M.P. + + + + +APPENDIX. + + +NOTE A. + +MR. GLADSTONE AND THE AMERICAN WAR. (Prologue, p. xxix.) + + +This statement as to the action of Lord Palmerston in connection with +Mr. Gladstone's Newcastle speech of October 7th, 1862, made upon the +authority of a British public man whose years and position entitle him +to speak with confidence on such a subject, appeared to me of so much +interest, that after sending it to the printer I caused search to be +made for the speech referred to as made by Sir George Cornewall Lewis. +My informant's statement was that Lord Palmerston insisted that Sir +George Lewis should find or make an immediate opportunity of covering +what Mr. Gladstone had said at Newcastle. He was angry about it, and his +anger was increased by an article which Mr. Delane printed in the +_Times_, intimating that Mr. Gladstone's speech was considered by many +people to be a betrayal of Cabinet secrets. Sir George Lewis was far +from well (he died the next spring), and reluctant to do what his chief +wished; but he did it on the 17th of October 1862 in a speech at +Hereford. Mr. Milner-Gibson was also put forward to the same end, and +after Parliament met, in February 1863, Mr. Disraeli gave the +Government a sharp lashing for sending one or two Ministers into the +country in the recess to announce that the Southern States would be +recognised, and then putting forward the President of the Board of Trade +(Milner-Gibson) to attack the Southern States and the pestilent +institution of slavery. Mr. Gladstone's speech at Newcastle, coming as +it did from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, after the close of a +session during which everybody knew that the Emperor of the French had +been urging upon England the recognition of the Confederate States, and +that Mr. Mason had been in active correspondence on that subject with +Lord Russell, was taken at Newcastle, and throughout the country, to +mean that the recognition was imminent. Mr. Gladstone even went so far +as to say he rather rejoiced that the Confederates had not been able to +hold Maryland, as that might have made them aggressive, and so made a +settlement more difficult, it being, he said, as certain as anything in +the future could be that the South must succeed in separating itself +from the Union. This remark about Maryland distinctly indicated +consultation as to what limits and boundaries between the South and the +North should be recognised in the recognition, and on that account, it +seems, was particularly resented by Earl Russell as well as by Lord +Palmerston. + +Sir George Cornewall Lewis's speech of October 17, 1862, was a most +skilful and masterly attempt to protect the Cabinet against the +consequences of what the _Times_, on the 9th of October, had treated as +the "indiscretion or treason" of his colleague. But it did not save the +Government from the scourge of Mr. Disraeli, or much mitigate the effect +in America of Mr. Gladstone's performance at Newcastle, which was a much +more serious matter from the American point of view than any of the +speeches recently delivered about "Home Rule" in the American Senate +can be fairly said to be from the British point of view. + + + +NOTE B. + +MR. PARNELL AND THE DYNAMITERS. (Prologue, p. xxxiii.) + + +The relation of Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates to what is +called the extreme and "criminal" section of the Irish American +Revolutionary Party can only be understood by those who understand that +it is the ultimate object of this party not to effect reforms in the +administration of Ireland as an integral part of the British Empire, but +to sever absolutely the political connection between Ireland and the +British Empire. Loyal British subjects necessarily consider this object +a "criminal" object, just as loyal Austrian subjects considered the +object of the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 to be a "criminal" object. +But the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 did not accept this view of their +object. On the contrary, they held their end to be so high and holy that +it more or less sanctified even assassination when planned as a means to +that end. Why should the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 be judged by one +standard and the Irish Revolutionists of 1888 by another? + +If Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates were to declare in +unequivocal terms their absolute loyalty to the British Crown, and their +determination to maintain in all circumstances the political connection +between Great Britain and Ireland, they might or might not retain their +hold upon Mr. Davitt and upon their constituents in Ireland, but they +would certainly put themselves beyond the pale of support by the great +Irish American organisations. Nor do I believe they could retain the +confidence of those organisations if it were supposed that they really +regarded the most extreme and violent of the Irish Revolutionists, the +"Invincibles" and the "dynamiters" as "criminals," in the sense in which +the "Invincibles" and the "dynamiters" are so regarded by the rest of +the civilised world. Can it, for example, be doubted that any English or +Scottish public man who co-operates with Mr. Parnell and his +Parliamentary associates would instantly hand over to the police any +"Invincible" or "dynamiter" who might come within his reach? And can it +for a moment be believed that Mr. Parnell, or any one of his +Parliamentary associates, would do this? There are thousands of Irish +citizens in the United States who felt all the horror and indignation +expressed by Mr. Parnell at the murders in the Phoenix Park, but I +should be very much surprised to learn that any one of them all ever +did, or ever would do, anything likely to bring any one of the authors +of these murders to the bar of justice. Mr. Parnell and his +Parliamentary associates are held and bound by the essential conditions +of their political existence to treat with complaisance the most extreme +and violent men of their party. Nor is this true of them alone. + +There is no more respectable body of men in the United States than the +Hibernian Society of Philadelphia. This society was instituted in 1771, +five years before the declaration of American Independence. It is a +charitable and social organisation only, with no political object or +colour. It is made up of men of character and substance. Its custom has +always been to celebrate St. Patrick's Day by a banquet, to which the +most distinguished men of the country have repeatedly been bidden. +Immediately after the inauguration of Mr. Cleveland as President, on +the 4th of March 1885, Mr. Bayard, the new Secretary of State of the +United States, was invited by this Society to attend its one hundred and +fourteenth banquet. It will be remembered that, on the 30th of May 1884, +London had been startled and shocked by an explosion of dynamite in St. +James's Square, which shattered many houses and inflicted cruel injuries +upon several innocent people. It was not so fatal to life as that +explosion at the Salford Barracks, which Mr. Parnell treated as a +"practical joke." But it excited lively indignation on both sides of the +Atlantic, and Mr. Bayard, who at that time was a Senator of the United +States, sternly denounced it and its authors on the floor of the +American Senate. What he had said as a Senator he thought it right to +repeat as the Foreign Secretary of the United States in his reply to the +invitation of the Hibernian Society in March 1885. This reply ran as +follows:-- + + "WASHINGTON, D.C., _March_ 9, 1885. + + "NICHOLAS J. GRIFFIN, Esq., _Secretary of the Hibernian Society of + Philadelphia._ + + "Dear Sir,--I have your personal note accompanying the card of + invitation to dine with your ancient and honourable Society on their + one hundred and fourteenth anniversary, St. Patrick's Day, and I + sincerely regret that I cannot accept it. The obvious and many + duties of my public office here speak for themselves, and to none + with more force than to American citizens of Irish blood or birth + who are honestly endeavouring to secure liberty by maintaining a + government of laws, and who realise the constant attention that is + needful. + + "In the midst of anarchical demonstrations which we witness in other + lands, and the echoes of which we can detect even here in our own + free country, where base and silly individuals seek to stain the + name of Ireland by associating the honest struggle for just + government with senseless and wicked crimes, there are none of our + citizens from whom honest reprobation can be more confidently + expected than from such as compose your respected and benevolent + Society. Those who worthily celebrate the birthday[22] of St. + Patrick will not forget that he drove out of Ireland the reptiles + that creep and sting. + + "The Hibernian Society can contain no member who will not resent the + implication that sympathy with assassins can dwell in a genuine + Irish heart, which will ever be opposed to cruelty and cowardice, + whatever form either may take. + + "Present to your Society my thanks for the kind remembrance, and + assure them of the good-will and respect with which I am--Your + obedient servant, + + T.F. BAYARD." + +What was the response of this Society, representing all the best +elements of the Irish American population of the United States, to this +letter of the Secretary of State, the highest executive officer of the +American Government after the President, upon whom under an existing law +the succession of the chief magistracy now devolves in the event of the +death or disability of the President and the Vice-President? + +_The letter was not read at the banquet._ + +But it was given to the press by the officers of the Society, and the +most influential Irish American newspaper in the United States did not +hesitate to describe it as an "insulting letter," going to show that its +author was "an Englishman in spirit who will not allow any opportunity +to go by, however slight, without testifying his sympathy with the +British Empire and his antipathy for its foes." + +This was capped by an American political journal which used the +following language: "Lord Granville himself would hardly strike a more +violent attitude against the dynamite section of the Irish people. When +Lord Wolseley, whom it is proposed to make Governor-General of the +Soudan, is offering a reward for the head of Ollivier Pain, it is hardly +in good taste for an American Secretary of State to condemn so bitterly +a class of Irishmen which, while it includes bad men no doubt, also +includes men who are moved by as worthy motives as Lord Wolseley." + +In the face of this testimony to the "solidarity" of all branches of the +Irish revolutionary movement in America, how can Mr. Parnell, or any +other Parliamentary Irishman who depends upon Irish American support, be +expected by men of sense to condemn in earnest "the dynamite section of +the Irish people"? + + + +NOTE C. + +THE AMERICAN "SUSPECTS" OF 1881. (Prologue, p. xlvii.) + + +In his recently published and very interesting _Life of Mr. Forster_, +Mr. Wemyss Reid alludes to some action taken by the United States +Government in the spring of 1882 as one of the determining forces which +brought about the abandonment at that time by Mr. Gladstone of Mr. +Forster's policy in Ireland. Without pretending to concern myself here +with what is an essentially British question as between Mr. Forster and +Mr. Gladstone, it may be both proper and useful for me to throw some +light, not, perhaps, in the possession of Mr. Reid, upon the part taken +in this matter by the American Government. Sir William Harcourt's +"Coercion Bill" was passed on the 2d of March 1881, two days before the +inauguration of General Garfield as President of the United States. Mr. +Blaine, who was appointed by the new President to take charge of the +Foreign Relations of the American Government, received, on the 10th of +March, at Washington, a despatch written by Mr. Lowell, the American +Minister in London, on the 26th of February, being the day after the +third reading in the Commons of the "Coercion Bill." In this despatch +Mr. Lowell called the attention of the American State Department to a +letter from Mr. Parnell to the Irish National Land League, dated at +Paris, February 13, 1881, in which Mr. Parnell attempted to make what +Mr. Lowell accurately enough described as an "extraordinary" distinction +between "the American people" and "the Irish nation in America." + +"This double nationality," said Mr. Lowell, "is likely to be of great +practical inconvenience whenever the 'Coercion Bill' becomes law." By +"this double nationality" in this passage, the American Minister, of +course, meant "this claim of a double nationality;" for neither by Great +Britain nor by the United States is any man permitted to consider +himself at one and the same time a citizen of the American republic and +a subject of the British monarchy. Nor was he quite right in +anticipating "great practical inconvenience" from this "claim," upon +which neither the British nor the American Government for a moment +bestowed, or could bestow, the slightest attention. + +The "great practical inconvenience" which, first to the American +Legation in England, then to the United States Government at Washington, +and finally to the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone, did, however, arise from +the application of Sir William Harcourt's Coercion Act of 1881 to +American citizens in Ireland, had its origin not in Mr. Parnell's +preposterous idea of an Irish nationality existing in the United States, +but in the failure of the authorities of the United States to deal +promptly and firmly with the situation created for American citizens in +Ireland by the administration of Sir William Harcourt's Act. + +As I have said, Sir William Harcourt's Act became law on the 2d of +March 1881, two days before the inauguration of President Garfield at +Washington. Without touching the question of the relations between Great +Britain and Ireland, and between the British Parliament and the Irish +National Land League, it was clearly incumbent upon the Secretary of +State of the United States, who entered upon his duties three days after +Sir William Harcourt's Bill went into force in Ireland, to inform +himself minutely and exactly as to the possible effects of that Bill +upon the rights and interests of American citizens travelling or +sojourning in that country. This was due not only to his own Government +and to its citizens, but to the relations which ought to exist between +his own Government and the Government of Great Britain. It was no affair +of an American Secretary of State either to impede or to further the +execution of "Coercion Acts" in Ireland against British subjects. But it +was his affair to ascertain without delay the nature and the measure of +any new and unusual perils, or "inconveniences," to which American +citizens in Ireland might be exposed in the execution there by the +British authorities of such Acts. + +And it is on record, under his own hand, in a despatch to the American +Minister in London, dated May 26, 1881, that Mr. Blaine had not so much +as seen a copy of Sir William Harcourt's Coercion Act at that date, +three months after it had gone into effect; three months after many +persons claiming American citizenship had been arrested and imprisoned +under it; and two months after his own official attention had been +called by the American Minister in London, in an elaborate despatch, to +the arrest under it of one such person, a man of Irish birth, who based +his claim of American citizenship upon allegations of military service +during the Civil War, of residence and citizenship in New York, and of +the granting to him, by an American Secretary of State, of a citizen's +passport. And when he did finally take the trouble to look at this Act, +Mr. Elaine seems to have examined it so cursorily, and with such slight +attention, that he overlooked a provision made in it, under which, had +its true force and meaning been perceived by him, the State Department +of the United States might, in the early summer of 1881, have secured +for American citizens in Ireland the consideration due to them as the +citizens of a friendly State. A curious despatch from Mr. Sackville +West, the British Minister at Washington, to Earl Granville, published +in a British Blue-book now in my possession, plainly intimates that in +the summer of 1881 the American Secretary of State had given the British +Minister to understand that no representations made to him or to his +Government by the Government of the United States touching +American-Irish "suspects" need be taken at all seriously. The whole +diplomatic correspondence on this subject which went on between the two +Governments while Mr. Blaine was Secretary of State, from the 4th of +March 1881 to the 20th of December 1881, was of a sort to lull the +British Government into the belief that "suspects" might be freely and +safely arrested and locked up all over Ireland, with no more question of +their nationality than of any evidence to establish their guilt or their +innocence. During the whole of that time the State Department at +Washington seems to have substantially remained content with the +declaration of Earl Granville, in a letter sent to the American Legation +on the 8th of July 1881, four months after the Coercion Act went into +effect, that "no distinction could be made in the circumstances between +foreigners and British subjects, and that in the case of British +subjects the only information given was that contained in the warrant." + +No fault can be found with the British Government for standing by this +declaration so long as it thus seemed to command the assent of the +Government of the United States. + +But when Mr. Frelinghuysen was called into the State Department by +President Arthur in December 1881, to overhaul the condition into which +our foreign relations had been brought by his predecessor, he found that +in no single instance had Mr. Blaine succeeded in inducing the British +Government, either to release any American citizen arrested under a +general warrant without specific charges of criminal conduct, and on +"suspicion" in Ireland, or to order the examination of any such citizen. +The one case in which an American citizen arrested under the Coercion +Act in Ireland during Mr. Blaine's tenure of office had been liberated +when Mr. Frelinghuysen took charge of the State Department, was that of +Mr. Joseph B. Walsh, arrested at Castlebar, in Mayo, March 8, 1881, and +discharged by order of the Lord-Lieutenant, October 21, 1881, not +because he was an American citizen, nor after any examination, but +expressly and solely on the ground of ill-health. + +When Mr. Frelinghuysen became Secretary of State in December 1881 the +Congress of the United States was in session. So numerous were the +American "suspects" then lying in prison in Ireland, some of whom had +been so confined for many months, that the doors of Congress were soon +besieged by angry demands for an inquiry into the subject. A resolution +in this sense was adopted by the House of Representatives, and +forwarded, through the American Legation in London, to the British +Foreign Office. Memorials touching particular cases were laid before +both Houses of the American Congress. On the 10th of February 1882, Mr. +Bancroft Davis, the Assistant-Secretary of State, instructed the +American Minister at London to take action concerning one such case, and +to report upon it. The Minister not moving more rapidly than he had been +accustomed to do under Mr. Blaine, Mr. Davis grew impatient, and on the +2d of March 1882 (being the anniversary of the adoption of the Coercion +Act in England) the American Secretary of State cabled to the Minister +in London significantly enough, "Use all diligence in regard to the late +cases, especially of Hart and M'Sweeney, and report by cable." + +Mr. Lowell replied the next day, giving the views in regard to Hart of +the American Vice-Consul, and of the British Inspector of Police at +Queenstown, and adding an expression of his own opinion that neither +Hart nor M'Sweeney was "more innocent than the majority of those under +arrest." + +This was an unfortunate despatch. It roused the American Secretary of +State into responding instantly by cable in the following explicit and +emphatic terms: "Referring to the cases of O'Connor, Hart, M'Sweeney, +M'Enery, and D'Alton, American citizens imprisoned in Ireland, say to +Lord Granville that, without discussing whether the provisions of the +Force Act can be applied to American citizens, the President hopes that +the Lord-Lieutenant will be instructed to exercise the powers intrusted +to him by the first section to order early trials in these and all other +cases in which Americans may be arrested." + +There was no mistaking the tone of this despatch. It was instantly +transmitted to the British Foreign Secretary, who replied the same day +that "the matter would receive the immediate attention of Her Majesty's +Government." + +The reference made to the Coercion Act by Mr. Frelinghuysen touched a +plain and precise provision, that persons detained under the Act +"should not be discharged or tried by any court without the direction of +the Lord-Lieutenant." Had the Coercion Act received from Mr. Blaine in +March 1881 the attention bestowed upon it in March 1882 by Mr. +Frelinghuysen, this provision might have been used to obviate the +dangerous accumulation of injustice to individuals, and of international +irritation, resulting from the application to possibly innocent foreign +citizens in Ireland of the despotic powers conferred by that Act upon +Mr. Gladstone's Government, powers as nearly as possible analogous with +those which Mr. Gladstone himself, years before, had denounced in +unmeasured terms when they were claimed and exercised by the Government +of Naples in dealing with its own subjects. + +After the consideration by Her Majesty's Government of this despatch of +the United States Government, it is understood in America that Mr. +Forster, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, was invited to communicate with +the Lord-Lieutenant, and request him to exercise his discretion in the +sense desired, and that Mr. Forster positively refused to do this. + +How this may be I do not pretend to say. But as no satisfactory reply +was made to the American despatch, and as public feeling in the United +States grew daily more and more determined that a stop should be put to +the unexplained arrest and the indefinite detention of American citizens +in Ireland, the American Secretary of State made up his mind towards the +end of the month of March to repeat his despatch of March 3d in a more +terse and peremptory form. As a final preliminary to this step, however, +Mr. Frelinghuysen was induced to avail himself of the unusual and +officious intervention of his most distinguished living predecessor in +the State Department, Mr. Hamilton Fish. After measuring the gravity of +the situation, Mr. Fish at the end of March sent a despatch to an +eminent public man, well known on both sides of the Atlantic, and now +resident in London, with authority to show it personally to Mr. +Gladstone, to the effect that if any further delay occurred in complying +with the moderate and reasonable demand of the American Government for +the immediate release or the immediate trial of the American "suspects," +the relations between Great Britain and the United States would be very +seriously "strained." + +This despatch was at once communicated to Mr. Gladstone. Within the +week, the liberation was announced of six American "suspects." Within a +fortnight, Mr. Parnell, Mr. O'Kelly, and Mr. Dillon, it is understood, +imprisoned members of Parliament, were offered their liberty if they +would consent to a sham exile on the Continent for a few weeks, or even +days; and within a month Mr. Forster, in his place in Parliament, was +imputing to his late chief and Premier the negotiation of that +celebrated "Treaty of Kilmainham," which was repudiated with equal +warmth by the three Irish members already named, and by Mr. Gladstone. + + + + +NOTE D. + +THE PARNELLITES AND THE ENGLISH PARTIES. + +(Prologue, p. 1.) + + +As I am not writing a history of English parties, I need not discuss +here the truth or falsehood of this contention. But I cannot let it pass +without a word as to two cases which came under my own observation, and +which aggravate the inherent improbability of the tale. In November 1885 +I went to America, and on my way passed through Stockport, where my +friend, Mr. Jennings, long my correspondent in England, was then +standing as a Conservative candidate. I attended one of his meetings and +heard him make an effective speech, much applauded, which turned +exclusively upon imperial and financial issues. That he had no +understanding whatever with the "managers" of the Irish vote in +Stockport, I have the best reason to believe. But he was assured by them +that the Irish intended to vote for him; and at a subsequent time he was +rashly assailed in the House of Commons by an Irish member with the +charge that he had broken faith with the Irish who elected him. It was +an unlucky assault for the assailant, as it gave Mr. Jennings an +opportunity, which he promptly improved, to show that he owed nothing to +the Irish voters of Stockport. Whether they voted for him in any number +in 1885 was more than doubtful; while in 1886 they voted solidly against +him, with the result of swelling his majority from 369 to 518 votes. + +In January 1886 I returned to Europe, and going on a visit into +Yorkshire, there met a prominent Irish Nationalist, who told me that he +had come into the north of England expressly to regiment the Irish +voters, and throw their votes for the Conservative candidates, on the +ground that it was necessary to make the Liberals fully understand their +power. He had fully expected in this way to elect a Conservative member +for the city of York. Great was his chagrin, therefore, when he found +the Liberal candidate returned. Upon investigation he discovered, as he +told me, that the catastrophe was due to the activity of a local Irish +priest, _who was a devoted Fenian_, utterly opposed to the Parliamentary +programme, and who had exerted his authority over the local Irish to +bring them to the polls for the Liberal candidate. + +Sir Frederick Milner, Bart., the defeated Conservative candidate for +York, afterwards told me that the local priest referred to here was a +most excellent man, and that so far from playing the part thus ascribed +to him, he took the trouble, as a matter of fair dealing, to see his +parishioners on the morning of the election and warn them against +believing a pamphlet which was sedulously circulated among the Irish +voters on the night before the polling, with a message to the effect +that Sir Frederick despised the Irish, and wanted nothing to do with +them or their votes. Sir Frederick has no doubt, from his knowledge of +what occurred during the canvass, that direct instructions were sent by +Mr. Parnell or his agents to the Irish voters in York to throw their +votes against the Radical candidates. These latter brought down a Home +Rule lecturer to counteract the effect of these instructions, and the +pamphlet above referred to was an eleventh-hour blow in the same +interest. It was successful; the Irish votes, some 500 in number, being +polled early in the morning under the impression produced by it. The +moral of this incident would seem to be, not that there was any real +understanding in 1885 between the Parnellites and the English +Conservatives at all, but simply that the English Radical wirepullers +are more alert and active than either the Irish Parnellites or the +English Conservatives. It is interesting, too, as it illustrates the +deep dread and distrust of the "Fenians" in which the Parnellites +habitually go. + + + +NOTE E. + +THE "BOYCOTT" AT MILTOWN-MALBAY. + +(Vol. i. p. 209.) + + +Father White of Miltown-Malbay, taking exception to the statement made +by me, upon the authority of Colonel Turner, that he was "the moving +spirit" of the local "boycott" of policemen and soldiers at that place, +addressed a note to Colonel Turner on the 5th of September, in which he +desired to know whether Colonel Turner, had given me grounds for making +this statement. To this note Colonel Turner tells me he returned at once +the following reply, which he kindly forwards to me for publication:-- + + "ENNIS, _6th September_ 1888. + + "REV. SIR,--I am in receipt of your letter of yesterday, and in + reply thereto beg to state that I informed Mr. Hurlbert that you + said 'in open court' that you had directed (I believe from the + altar) that the town was to be 'made as a city of the dead' during + the trials of 23 publicans who were charged for conspiracy in + boycotting the forces of the Crown who had been employed in + preserving the peace on the occasion of a former trial--this you + said you did in the interests of peace. The magistrates, however, + took a different view, viz., that it was done with the object of + preventing the military and police from obtaining any supplies, + which they were unable to do; and that their view was the correct + one was proved by the fact that half of the accused pleaded guilty + to the offence, and on promise of future good behaviour were allowed + out on their own recognisances. That the people followed your + instructions on that day, coupled with the fact that in your letter + to the _Freeman's Journal_, dated 17th March of this year, you + stated that you offered me peace all round on certain conditions, + thereby showing that at least you consider yourself possessed of + authority to bring about a state of peace or otherwise, probably led + Mr. Hurlbert, to whom I showed a copy of this letter, to infer that + you admitted that you were the moving spirit of all this 'local + boycott,' while you only did so in the particular case above + mentioned. Whether Mr. Hurlbert is correct in drawing the inference + he does as to your being the moving spirit, and as to your conduct, + may perhaps be gathered from the numerous numbers of _United + Ireland_ and other papers which he saw giving reports of illegal + meetings of the suppressed branch of the Miltown-Malbay National + League, at which you were stated to have presided, and at some of + which condemnatory resolutions were passed, and also from the fact + that you are reported to have presided at a meeting on Sunday, April + 8, which was held at Miltown-Malbay in defiance of Government + proclamation.--I am, dear Sir, yours faithfully, + + ALFRED E. TURNER. + + "Rev. P. White, P.P., Miltown-Malbay." + +On further investigation of his records, Colonel Turner found it +necessary to follow up this letter with another, a copy of which, +through his courtesy, I subjoin:-- + + "ENNIS, _10th September_ 1888. + + "REV. SIR,--A slight inaccuracy has been pointed out to me in my + letter to you of the 6th inst., which I hasten to correct. It + occurred in transcribing my letter from the original draft. I should + have said that I told Mr. Hurlbert that you stated in open court, at + the trial of 23 publicans charged with boycotting the forces of the + Crown on the occasion of a former trial, that you had told the + people (I believe from the altar) that the town was to be made as a + city of the dead during the former trial; and that in consequence + the soldiers and police could get nothing to eat or drink in Miltown + that day. + + "I also told him that this boycotting of the police was by no means + new, since on the 13th March 1887, at a meeting of the + Miltown-Malbay branch of the League at which you are reported to + have presided, in _United Ireland_ of 19/3/87, the following + resolution was unanimously adopted:-- + + "'That from this day any person who supplies the police while + engaged in work which is opposed to the wishes of the people with + drink, food, or cars, be censured by this branch, and that no + further intercourse be held with them.' + + "I regret that through inadvertence I have had to trouble you with a + second letter.--I am, Rev. Sir, yours faithfully, + + "ALFRED E. TURNER. + + "Rev. P. White, P.P." + + + + +[1] Vol. ii. p. 376. + +[2] Vol. ii. p. 364-370. + +[3] The exasperation of the local agitators under the cool and +determined treatment of Mr. Tener may be measured by the facts stated in +the following communication received by me from Mr. Tener on the 20th of +September. I leave them to speak for themselves:-- + + + "POLICE BARRACKS, WOODFORD, _17th Sept._ 1888. + + "DEAR MR. HURLBERT,--I enclose you _a printed_ placard found posted + up in Woodford district on Sunday morning the 9th inst. It alludes + to _tenants_ who had paid me their rent,--and broken the 'unwritten + law of the League.' All the men named are now in great danger. The + police force of the district has been increased--for their + protection; but the police are very anxious about their safety! + + "I send you also a _pencil_ copy taken from a more _perfect_ placard + which the police preserve. John White or Whyte is the tenant whose + name I already have given you. He is the tall dark man whom you saw + (with an ex-bailiff) at Portumna. He was then an "Evicted Tenant." + He has since been, on payment of his rent, restored to his farm by + me. And now, as you see in the placard, he is held up to the + vengeance of the "League of Hell," as P.J. Smyth called it.--Yours, + etc. + + "ED. TENER. + + "_P.S._--The evictions were finished on the 1st of September, and on + the 9th (_after_ it became known that the men whose names are in the + placard had paid) the placard was issued." + + + _(Placard.)_ + + "IRISHMEN!--Need we say in the face of the desperate Battle the + People are making for their Hearths and Homes that the time has come + for every HONEST MAN, trader and otherwise, to extend a helping hand + to the MEN in the GAP. You may ask, How will that be done? The + answer is plain. + + "Let those who have become traitors to their neighbours and their + Country be shunned as if they were possessed by a devil. Let no man + buy from them or sell to them, let no man work for them. Leave them + to Tener and his Emergency gang. The following are a few of the + greatest traitors and meanest creatures that ever walked--John + Whyte, of Dooras; Fahey (of the hill) of Dooras; big Anthony + Hackett, of Rossmore; Tom Moran, of Rossmore! Your Country calls on + you to treat them as they deserve. Bravo Woodford! Remember Tom + Larkin!--'GOD SAVE IRELAND!'" + + +[4] Appendix, Note A. + +[5] Appendix, Note B. + +[6] Appendix, Note C. + +[7] Appendix, Note D. + +[8] Since this was written fifteen Catholic bishops in England, +headed by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, have united (April 12, +1888) in a public protest against the Optional Oaths Bill, in which they +say: "To efface the recognition of God in our public legislature is an +act which will surely bring evil consequences." Yet how can the +recognition of God be more effectually "effaced" than by the unqualified +assertion that the will of the people, or of a majority, is the one +legitimate source of political authority? + +[9] Mr. Blair was then a member of the Lincoln Cabinet, and its +"fighting member." + +[10] Mr. Quill stated that the Savings-Banks deposits increased +in Ireland during 1887 eight per cent. more than in thrifty Scotland, +and _forty per cent._ more than in England and Wales! + +[11] This was the Provost's last appearance in public. He died +rather suddenly a few weeks afterwards. + +[12] In the Census of 1880 it appears that of 255,741 farms in +Illinois, 59,624 were held on the métayer system, pronounced by Toubeau +the worst of systems, and 20,620 on a money rental. + +[13] I have since learned that Father M'Fadden sold another +holding, rental 6s. 8d., for £80. He has three more holdings from +Captain Hill, at 15s., 6s. 8d., and 11s. 2d., for which he was in +arrears for two years in April 1887, when ejectment decrees were +obtained against him. For his house holding he pays 2s. a year! So he +was really fighting his own battle as a tenant in the Plan of Campaign. + +[14] Yet of Connemara, Cardinal Manning, in his letter to the +Archbishop of Armagh, August 31, 1873, cites the "trust-worthy" evidence +of "an Englishman who had raised himself from the plough's tail," and +who had gone "to see with his own eyes the material condition of the +peasantry in Ireland." It was to the effect that in abundance and +quality of food, in rate of wages, and even if the comfort of their +dwellings, the working men of Connemara were better off than the +agricultural labourers of certain English counties. + +[15] For this holding, of 10 Irish acres, I have since learned +the widow O'Donnell pays 10s. a year. She is in the receipt of outdoor +relief, there being fever in the house (May 1888). + +[16] This "townland" is a curious use of a Saxon term to +describe a Celtic fact. The territory of an Irish sept seems to have +been divided up into "townlands," each townland consisting of four, or +in some cases six, groups of holdings, occupied by as many families of +the "sept." The chief of the "sept" divided up each "townland" +periodically among these groups, while the common fields were cut up +among the families as they increased and multiplied according to the +system--against which Lord George Hill battled at Gweedore--known as +"rimdale" or "rundeal," from the Celtic, "ruindioll," a "partition" or +"man's share." This is quite unlike the Russian "mir" or collective +village, and not more like the South Slav "zadruga" which makes each +family a community, the land belonging to all, as, according to M. +Eugene Simon, it does in China. But it is as inconsistent with Henry +George's State ownership of the land or the rents as either of those +systems. + +[17] From a question just asked (July 12) in the House of +Commons, and answered by the Postmaster-General, I gather that this +"local question" has been further complicated by the removal of Mr. +Sweeney, the sub-postmaster, under an official regulation. + +[18] The incident occurred in Clare. See p. 45. + +[19] Or they may date back to the Parliament of Grattan, who +wrote to Mr. Guinness that he regarded the brewery of Ireland as "the +actual nurse of the people, and entitled to every encouragement, favour, +and exemption." + +[20] This refers, I am told, to the murder, in open daylight, +in 1881, of an old man, Linnane, who acted as a "caretaker" for Mrs. +Moroney. It should gratify Father White to know that, as I am now +informed (May 21, 1888), a clue has just been found to the assassins, +who appear to have received the same price for doing their work that was +paid the murderers of Fitzmaurice. + +[21] Mrs. Moroney, so often referred to here, is the widow of a +gentleman formerly High Sheriff and Deputy-Lieutenant for the County +Clare, who died in 1870. She lives at Milton House, and has fought the +local League steadily and successfully. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) 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(1 of 2) +(1888), by William Henry Hurlbert + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) + +Author: William Henry Hurlbert + +Release Date: December 29, 2004 [EBook #14510] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRELAND, VOL. 1 *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Robert Ledger and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + +<h1>IRELAND UNDER COERCION</h1> + +<h2>THE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN</h2> + +<h1>BY<br />WILLIAM HENRY HURLBERT</h1> + +<h2>VOL. I.</h2> + +<h3><i>SECOND EDITION.</i></h3> + +<h2>1888</h2> + + +<h3>“Upon the future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire.”<br />CARDINAL MANNING TO EARL GREY, 1868</h3> + +<h3><a href="#pagexvii" />CONTENTS OF VOL. I.</h3> + +<div class="ctr"> + <a id="map"></a> + <img src="images/iucmap.png" width="95%" + alt="MAP TO ILLUSTRATE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN." + title="MAP TO ILLUSTRATE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN." /> + +</div> + +<hr /> + +<h2><a name="pagev" id="pagev"></a> + +<span class="pagenum">[pg v] +</span> +PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.</h2> + + +<p>Although barely a month has elapsed since the publication of these +volumes, events of more or less general notoriety have so far confirmed +the views taken in them of the actual state and outlook of affairs in +Ireland, that I gladly comply with the request of my publisher for a +Preface to this Second Edition.</p> + +<p>Upon one most important point—the progressive demoralisation of the +Irish people by the methods of the so-called political combinations, +which are doing the work of the Agrarian and Anti-Social Revolution in +Ireland, some passages, from a remarkable sermon delivered in August in +the Cathedral of Waterford by the Catholic bishop of that diocese, will +be found to echo almost to the letter the statement given to me in June +by a strong Protestant Home Ruler, that “the Nationalists are stripping +Irishmen as bare of moral sense as the bushmen of South Africa.”</p> + +<p>Speaking of what he had personally witnessed in one of the lanes of +Waterford, the Bishop says, in <a name="pagevi" id="pagevi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg vi] +</span> +the report which I have seen of his +sermon, “the most barbarous tribes of Africa would justly feel ashamed +if they were guilty of what I saw, or approached to the guilt I +witnessed, on that occasion.” As a faithful shepherd of his people, he +is not content with general denunciations of their misconduct, but goes +on to analyse the influences which are thus reducing a Christian people +to a level below that of the savages whom Cardinal Lavigerie is now +organising a great missionary crusade to rescue from their degradation.</p> + +<p>He agrees with Archbishop Croke in attributing much of this +demoralisation to the excessive and increasing use of strong drink, +striking evidences of which came under my own observation at more than +one point of my Irish journeys. But I fear Archbishop Croke would +scarcely agree with the Bishop of Waterford in his diagnosis of the +effects upon the popular character of what has now come to pass current +in many parts of Ireland as “patriotism.”</p> + +<p>The Bishop says, “The women as well as the men were fighting, and when +we sought to bring them to order, one man threatened to take up a weapon +and drive bishop, priests, and police from the place! On the Quay, I +understand, it was one scene of riot and disorder, and what made matters +worse was that when the police went to discharge their <a name="pagevii" id="pagevii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg vii] +</span> +duty for the +protection of the people, the moment they interfered the people turned +on them and maltreated them in a shocking way. I understand that some +police who were in coloured clothes were picked out for the worst +treatment—knocked down and kicked brutally. One police officer, I +learn, had his fingers broken. This is a state of things that nothing at +all would justify. It is not to be justified or excused on any principle +of reason or religion. What is still worse, sympathy was shown for those +who had obstructed and attacked the police. The only excuse I could find +that was urged for this shameful misconduct was that it was dignified +with the name of ‘patriotism’! All I can say is, that if rowdyism like +this be an indication of the patriotism of the people, as far as I am +concerned, I say, better our poor country were for ever in political +slavery than attain to liberty by such means.”</p> + +<p>This is the language of a good Catholic, of a good Irishman, and of a +faithful Bishop. Were it more often heard from the lips of the Irish +Episcopate the true friends of Ireland might look forward to her future +with more hope and confidence than many of the best and ablest of them +are now able to feel. As things actually are, not even the Papal Decree +has yet sufficed to restrain ecclesiastics, not always of the lowest +degree, from encouraging <a name="pageviii" id="pageviii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg viii] +</span> +by their words and their conduct “patriotism” +of the type commemorated by the late Colonel Prentiss of Louisville, in +a story which he used to tell of a tipsy giant in butternut garments, +armed with a long rifle, who came upon him in his office on a certain +Fourth of July demanding the loan of a dollar on the ground that he felt +“so confoundedly patriotic!”</p> + +<p>The Colonel judiciously handed the man a dollar, and then asked, “Pray, +how do you feel when you feel confoundedly patriotic?”</p> + +<p>“I feel,” responded the man gravely, “as if I should like to kill +somebody or steal something.”</p> + +<p>It is “patriotism” of this sort which the Papal Decree was issued to +expel from within the pale of the Catholic Church. And it is really, in +the last analysis of the facts of the case, to the suppression of +“patriotism” of this sort that many well-intentioned, but certainly not +well-informed, “sympathisers” with what they suppose to be the cause of +Ireland, object, in my own country and in Great Britain, when they +denounce as “Coercion” the imprisonment of members of Parliament and +other rhetorical persons who go about encouraging or compelling ignorant +people to support “boycotting” and the “Plan of Campaign.”</p> + +<p>Yet it would seem to be sufficiently obvious that “patriotism” of this +sort, once full-blown and flourishing on the soil of Ireland, must tend +to <a name="pageix" id="pageix"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg ix] +</span> +propagate itself far beyond the confines of that island, and to +diversify with its blood-red flowers and its explosive fruits the social +order of countries in which it has not yet been found necessary for the +Head of the Catholic Church to reaffirm the fundamental principles of +Law and of Liberty.</p> + +<p>Since these volumes were published, too, the Agrarian Revolution in +Ireland has been brought into open and defiant collision with the +Catholic Church by its leader, Mr. Davitt, the founder of the Land +League. In the face of Mr. Davitt’s contemptuous and angry repudiation +of any binding force in the Papal Decree, it will be difficult even for +the Cardinal-Archbishop of Sydney to devise an understanding between the +Church and any organisation fashioned or led by him. It may be inferred +from Mr. Davitt’s contemporaneous and not less angry intimation, that +the methods of the Parnellite party are inadequate to the liberation of +Ireland from the curse of landlordism, that he is prepared to go further +than Mr. George, who still clings in America to the shadowy countenance +given him by the Cardinal-Archbishop of Baltimore, and that the +Nationalisation of the Land will ere long be urged both in Ireland and +in Great Britain by organisations frankly Anti-Catholic as well as +Anti-Social.</p> + +<p>This is to be desired on many accounts. It will bring the clergy in +Ireland face to face with the <a name="pagex" id="pagex"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg x] +</span> +situation, which will be a good thing +both for them and for the people; and it should result in making an end +of the pernicious influence upon the popular mind of such extraordinary +theological outgivings; for example, as the circular issued in 1881 to +the clergy and laity of Meath by the Bishop of that diocese, in which it +was laid down that “the land of every country is the common property of +the people of that country, because its real owner, the Creator who made +it, has transferred it as a voluntary gift to them.”</p> + +<p>Language of this sort addressed to ignorant multitudes must do harm of +course whenever and by whomsoever used. It must tend to evil if +addressed by demagogues to the Congress of a Trade Union. But it must do +much more harm when uttered with the seeming sanction of the Church by a +mitred bishop to congregations already solicited to greed, cunning, and +dishonesty, by an unscrupulous and well-organised “agitation.”</p> + +<p>Not less instructive than Mr. Davitt’s outburst from the Church is his +almost furious denunciation of the Irish tenants who obeyed an instinct, +thought honourable to mankind in most ages and countries, by agreeing +together to present to their landlord, Earl Fitzwilliam, a token of +their respect and regard on the celebration of his golden wedding day.</p> + +<p>These tenants are denounced, not because they <a name="pagexi" id="pagexi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xi] +</span> +were paying homage to a +tyrannical or an unworthy landlord, though Mr. Davitt was so transported +beyond his ordinary and cooler self with rage at their action that he +actually stooped to something like an insinuation of disbelief in the +excellence of Lord Fitzwilliam’s character. The true and avowed burden +of his diatribe was that no landlord could possibly deserve well of his +tenants. The better he is as a man, the more they ought to hate him as a +landlord.</p> + +<p>The ownership of land, in other words, is of itself in the eyes of Mr. +Davitt what the ownership of a slave was in the eyes of the earlier +Abolitionists—crime so monstrous as to be beyond pardon or endurance. +If this be true of Great Britain and Ireland, where no allodial tenure +exists, how much more true must it be of New York? And if true of the +man who owns a thousand acres, it must be equally true of the man who +owns an acre. There could not be a better illustration than Mr. Davitt +has given in his attack on the Fitzwilliam tenants of the precise +accuracy of what I have had occasion to say in these volumes of the +“irrepressible conflict” between his schemes and the establishment of a +peasant proprietorship in Ireland. It is more than this. It is a +distinct warning served upon the smallest tenants as well as upon the +greatest landlords in the United Kingdom that fixity of any <a name="pagexii" id="pagexii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xii] +</span> +form of +individual tenure is irreconcilable with the Agrarian agitations.</p> + +<p>I anticipated this demonstration, but I did not anticipate that it would +come so fully or so soon.</p> + +<p>I anticipated also abundant proof from my own side of the water of the +accuracy of my impressions as to the drift of the American-Irish towards +Protection and Republicanism in American politics. This, too, has come +earlier and not less fully than I had expected. Mr. Patrick Ford, the +most influential leader of the American-Irish, issued early in August a +statement of his views as to the impending Presidential election. “The +issue to-day,” he says, “is the Tariff. It is the American system +<i>versus</i> the British Colonial system. The Irish are instinctively +Protectionists.” And why? Mr. Ford goes on to explain. “The fact,” he +observes, “that the Lion and the Unicorn have taken the stump for +Cleveland and Thurnan is not calculated to hurt Harrison and Morton in +the estimation of the Irish, who will, I promise, give a good account of +themselves in the coming Presidential election.” Hatred of England, in +other words, is an axiom in their Political Economy!</p> + +<p>Mr. Davitt’s menacing allusion to Parnell as a landlord, and Mr. +O’Leary’s scornful treatment in a letter to me of the small-fry English +Radicals, <a id="footnotetag1" + name="footnotetag1"></a><a href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a> <a name="pagexiii" id="pagexiii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xiii] +</span> +when taken together, distinctly prefigure an imminent +rupture between the Parnellite party and the two wings—Agrarian and +Fenian—of the real revolutionary movement in Ireland. It is clear that +clerical agitators, high and low, must soon elect between following Mr. +George, Dr. M‘Glynn, and Mr. Davitt, and obeying fully the Papal Decree.</p> + +<p>It is a most curious feature of the situation in Ireland that much more +discontent with the actual conditions of life in that country seems to +be felt by people who do not than by people who do live in Ireland. It +is the Irish in America and Australia, who neither sow nor reap in +Ireland, pay no taxes there, and bear no burdens, who find the alien +oppression most intolerable. This explains the extreme bitterness with +which Mr. Davitt in some recent speeches and letters denounces the +tameness of the Irish people, and rather amusingly berates the British +allies of his Parnellite associates for their failure to develop any +striking and sensational resistance to the administration of law in +Ireland. I have printed in this edition <a id="footnotetag2" + name="footnotetag2"></a><a href="#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a> an instructive account, +furnished to me by Mr. Tener, of some recent evictions on the +Clanricarde property in Galway, which shows how hard it is for the most +determined “agitators” to keep the Irish tenants up to that high concert +pitch of resistance <a name="pagexiv" id="pagexiv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xiv] +</span> +to the law which alone would meet the wishes of the +true agrarian leaders; and how comparatively easy it is for a just and +resolute man, armed with the power of the law resolutely enforced, to +break up an illegal combination even in some of the most disturbed +regions of Ireland. <a id="footnotetag3" + name="footnotetag3"></a><a href="#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a> While this is encouraging to the friends of law +and order in Ireland, it must not be forgotten that it involves also a +certain peril for them. The more successfully the law is enforced in +Ireland, the greater perhaps is the danger that the British +constituencies, upon which, of course, the administrators of the law +depend for their authority, may lose <a name="pagexv" id="pagexv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xv] +</span> +sight and sense of the +Revolutionary forces at work there. History shows that this has more +than once happened in the past. Englishmen and Scotchmen will be better +able than I am to judge how far it is unlikely that it should happen +again in the future. + +As to one matter of great moment—the effect of Lord Ashbourne’s Act—a +correspondent sends me a statement, which I reproduce here, as it gives +a very satisfactory account of the automatic financial machinery upon +which that Act must depend for success:—</p> + + +<blockquote><a name="pagexvi" id="pagexvi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xvi] +</span> +“Out of £90,630 of instalments due last May, less than £4000 is + unpaid at the present moment, on transactions extending over three + years with all classes of tenants. The total amount which accrued, + due to the Land Commission in respect of instalments since the + passing of the Act to the 1st November 1887, was £50,910. Of this + there is only now unpaid £731, 17s. 9d. There accrued a further + amount to the 1st May 1888 of £39,720, in respect of which only + £4071, 16s. 11d. is now unpaid, making in all only £4803, 14s. 8d. + unpaid, out of a total sum of £90,630 due up to last gale day, some + of which by this time has been paid off.” </blockquote> + +<p>This would seem to be worth considering in connection with the objection +made to any serious extension of Lord Ashbourne’s Act by Mr. Chamberlain +in his extremely clear and able preface to a programme of “Unionist +Policy for Ireland” just issued by the “National Radical Union.”</p> + +<p class="dateline">LONDON, <i>21st Sept</i>. 1888.</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="pagexvii" id="pagexvii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xvii] +</span> +CONTENTS OF VOL. I.</h2> + + +<p class="i0">CLUE MAP <i>Frontispiece</i></p> +<p class="i0">PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION p. <a href="#pagev">v</a></p> +<p class="i0">PROLOGUE <a href="#pagexxi">xxi</a>-<a href="#pagelxvii">lxvii</a></p> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER I.</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>London to Dublin, Jan. 20, 1888, p. <a href="#page1">1</a></li> +<li>Irish Jacobite, <a href="#page1">1</a></li> +<li>Proposed Mass in memory of Charles Edward, <a href="#page2">2</a></li> +<li>Cardinal Manning, <a href="#page3">3</a></li> +<li>President Cleveland’s Jubilee Gift to Leo XIII, <a href="#page4">4</a></li> +<li>Arrival at Kingstown, <a href="#page5">5</a></li> +<li>Admirable Mail Service, <a href="#page5">5</a></li> +<li>“Davy,” the newsvendor, <a href="#page6">6</a></li> +<li>Mr. Davitt, <a href="#page7">7</a></li> +<li>Coercion in America and Ireland, <a href="#page8">8</a></li> +<li>Montgomery Blair’s maxim, <a href="#page8">8</a></li> +<li>Irish cars, <a href="#page9">9</a></li> +<li>Maple’s Hotel, <a href="#page9">9</a></li> +<li>Father Burke of Tallaght, <a href="#page10">10</a>, <a href="#page11">11</a></li> +<li>Peculiarities of Post-offices, <a href="#page12">12</a>, <a href="#page13">13</a></li> +<li>National League Office, <a href="#page13">13</a></li> +<li>The Dublin National Reception, <a href="#page14">14</a></li> +<li>Mr. T.D. Sullivan, M.P., <a href="#page14">14</a></li> +<li>Dublin Castle, <a href="#page15">15</a></li> +<li>Mr. O’Brien, Attorney-General, <a href="#page16">16</a></li> +<li>The Chief-Secretary, Mr. Balfour, <a href="#page17">17</a>-<a href="#page24">24</a></li> +<li>Fathers M‘Fadden and M‘Glynn, <a href="#page18">18</a></li> +<li>Come-outers of New England, <a href="#page18">18</a></li> +<li>Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, <a href="#page19">19</a>, <a href="#page20">20</a></li> +<li>Sir West Ridgway, <a href="#page24">24</a></li> +<li>Divisional Magistrates, <a href="#page24">24</a></li> +<li>Colonel Turner, <a href="#page25">25</a></li> +<li>The Castle Service, p. <a href="#page25">25</a>-<a href="#page29">29</a></li> +<li>Visit of the Prince of Wales, <a href="#page27">27</a></li> +<li>Lord Chief-Justice Morris, <a href="#page29">29</a>-<a href="#page37">37</a></li> +<li>An Irish Catholic on Mr. Parnell, <a href="#page31">31</a>-<a href="#page33">33</a></li> +<li>Mr. Justice Murphy, <a href="#page36">36</a></li> +<li>Lord Ashbourne, <a href="#page37">37</a>, <a href="#page38">38</a></li> +<li>Unionist meeting, <a href="#page39">39</a></li> +<li>Old Middle State type of American-Irish Protestant, <a href="#page39">39</a></li> +<li>Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in America, <a href="#page41">41</a></li> +<li>Difficulties of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, <a href="#page43">43</a></li> +<li>Dr. Jellett, <a href="#page43">43</a></li> +<li>Dinner at the Attorney-General’s, <a href="#page43">43</a>-<a href="#page46">46</a></li> +<li>Sir Bernard Burke, <a href="#page46">46</a>-<a href="#page49">49</a></li> +<li>Irish Landlords at Kildare Street Club, <a href="#page49">49</a>-<a href="#page52">52</a></li> +<li>The people and the procession, <a href="#page53">53</a>-<a href="#page55">55</a></li> +<li>Ripon and Morley, <a href="#page54">54</a>, <a href="#page55">55</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER II.</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Dublin to Sion, Feb 3, <a href="#page56">56</a></li> +<li>Poor of the city, <a href="#page57">57</a></li> +<li>Strabane, <a href="#page58">58</a>-<a href="#page60">60</a></li> +<li>Sion flax-mills, <a href="#page60">60</a>-<a href="#page62">62</a></li> +<li>Dr. Webb, <a href="#page63">63</a>-<a href="#page65">65</a></li> +<li>Gweedore, Feb 4, <a href="#page65">65</a></li> +<li>A good day’s work, <a href="#page65">65</a></li> +<li>Strabane, <a href="#page66">66</a></li> +<li>Names of the people, <a href="#page66">66</a></li> +<li>Bad weather judges, <a href="#page67">67</a></li> +<li>Letterkenny, p <a href="#page67">67</a>, <a href="#page68">68</a></li> +<li>Picturesque cottages, <a href="#page67">67</a></li> +<li>Communicative gentleman, <a href="#page68">68</a></li> +<li>Donegal Highlands, <a href="#page68">68</a>-<a href="#page70">70</a></li> +<li>Glen Veagh, <a href="#page71">71</a></li> +<li>Errigal, <a href="#page72">72</a></li> +<li>Dunlewy and the Clady, <a href="#page72">72</a></li> +<li>Gweedore, Feb 5, <a href="#page73">73</a></li> +<li>Lord George Hill, <a href="#page74">74</a></li> +<li>Gweedore 1838 to 1879, <a href="#page75">75</a>-<a href="#page81">81</a></li> +<li>Gweedore 1879 to 1888, <a href="#page81">81</a>-<a href="#page91">91</a></li> +<li>Father M‘Fadden, <a href="#page83">83</a>-<a href="#page104">104</a></li> +<li>A Galway man’s opinions, <a href="#page84">84</a>-<a href="#page89">89</a></li> +<li>Value of tenant-right, <a href="#page83">83</a></li> +<li>Condition of tenantry, <a href="#page84">84</a></li> +<li>Woollen stuffs, <a href="#page87">87</a>, <a href="#page88">88</a></li> +<li>Distress in Gweedore, <a href="#page88">88</a></li> +<li>Distress in Connemara, <a href="#page88">88</a></li> +<li>Mr Burke, <a href="#page90">90</a></li> +<li>Plan of Campaign, <a href="#page93">93</a></li> +<li>Emigration, <a href="#page94">94</a>, <a href="#page95">95</a></li> +<li>Settlement with Captain Hill, <a href="#page94">94</a></li> +<li>Landlord and tenant, <a href="#page96">96</a>-<a href="#page98">98</a></li> +<li>Land Nationalisation, <a href="#page98">98</a></li> +<li>Father M‘Fadden’s plan, <a href="#page98">98</a></li> +<li>Gweedore, Feb 6, <a href="#page104">104</a></li> +<li>On the Bunbeg road, <a href="#page104">104</a>-<a href="#page110">110</a></li> +<li>Falcarragh, <a href="#page111">111</a>-<a href="#page123">123</a></li> +<li>Ballyconnell House, <a href="#page112">112</a>-<a href="#page123">123</a></li> +<li>Townland and Rundale, <a href="#page118">118</a></li> +<li>Use and abuse of tea, <a href="#page119">119</a></li> +<li>Lord Leitrim, <a href="#page121">121</a></li> +<li>A “Queen of France,” <a href="#page121">121</a></li> +<li>The Rosses, <a href="#page123">123</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER III.</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Dungloe, Feb. 7, <a href="#page124">124</a></li> +<li>From Gweedore, <a href="#page124">124</a></li> +<li>Irish “jaunting car,” <a href="#page125">125</a></li> +<li>“It will fatten four, feed five, and starve six,” <a href="#page125">125</a></li> +<li>Natural wealth of the country, <a href="#page125">125</a></li> +<li>Isle of Arran and Anticosti, p <a href="#page12">12</a></li> +<li>The Gombeen man, <a href="#page126">126</a>-<a href="#page130">130</a></li> +<li>Dungloe, <a href="#page126">126</a>-<a href="#page131">131</a></li> +<li>Burtonport, <a href="#page129">129</a></li> +<li>Lough Meela, <a href="#page128">128</a></li> +<li>Attractions of the Donegal coast, <a href="#page128">128</a></li> +<li>Compared with Isles of Shoals and Appledore, <a href="#page129">129</a></li> +<li>Wonderful granite formations, <a href="#page129">129</a></li> +<li>Material for a new industry, <a href="#page129">129</a></li> +<li>Father Walker, <a href="#page131">131</a></li> +<li>Migratory labourers, <a href="#page133">133</a></li> +<li>Granite quarries, <a href="#page133">133</a></li> +<li>Stipends of the Roman Catholic clergy, <a href="#page134">134</a>-<a href="#page137">137</a></li> +<li>Herring Fisheries, <a href="#page137">137</a></li> +<li>Arranmore, <a href="#page137">137</a></li> +<li>Dungloe woollen work, <a href="#page138">138</a></li> +<li>Baron’s Court, Feb 8, <a href="#page139">139</a></li> +<li>Dungloe to Letterkenny, <a href="#page139">139</a>-<a href="#page141">141</a></li> +<li>Doocharry Red Granite, <a href="#page140">140</a></li> +<li>Fair at Letterkenny, <a href="#page142">142</a></li> +<li>Feb 9, <a href="#page143">143</a></li> +<li>On Clare and Kerry, <a href="#page143">143</a></li> +<li>A Priest’s opinion on Moonlighters, <a href="#page143">143</a></li> +<li>The Lixnaw murder, <a href="#page143">143</a></li> +<li>Baron’s Court, <a href="#page144">144</a></li> +<li>James I.’s three castles, <a href="#page145">145</a></li> +<li>Ulster Settlement, <a href="#page146">146</a></li> +<li>Descendants of the old Celtic stock, <a href="#page146">146</a></li> +<li>The park at Baron’s Court, <a href="#page146">146</a></li> +<li>A nonogenarian O’Kane, <a href="#page148">148</a></li> +<li>Irish “Covenanters,” <a href="#page150">150</a></li> +<li>Shenandoah Valley people, <a href="#page151">151</a></li> +<li>The murderers of Munterlony, <a href="#page151">151</a></li> +<li>A relic of 1689, <a href="#page152">152</a></li> +<li>Woollen industry, <a href="#page152">152</a>-<a href="#page155">155</a></li> +<li>Londonderry Orange symposium, <a href="#page156">156</a></li> +<li>February 11, <a href="#page157">157</a></li> +<li>Sergeant Mahony on Father M‘Fadden, <a href="#page157">157</a>-<a href="#page163">163</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER IV. +</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Abbeyleix, Feb. 12, p. <a href="#page164">164</a></li> +<li>Newtown-Stewart, <a href="#page164">164</a></li> +<li>An absentee landlord, <a href="#page164">164</a></li> +<li>“The hill of the seven murders,” <a href="#page165">165</a></li> +<li>Newry, Dublin, Maple’s Hotel, Maryborough, <a href="#page165">165</a></li> +<li>“Hurrah for Gilhooly,” <a href="#page166">166</a></li> +<li>Abbeyleix town, chapel, and church, <a href="#page168">168</a></li> +<li>Embroidery and lace work, <a href="#page169">169</a></li> +<li>Wood-carving, <a href="#page170">170</a></li> +<li>General Grant, <a href="#page171">171</a></li> +<li>Kilkenny, <a href="#page172">172</a></li> +<li>Kilkenny Castle, <a href="#page173">173</a></li> +<li>Muniment-room, <a href="#page174">174</a></li> +<li>Table and Expense Books, <a href="#page176">176</a></li> +<li>Dublin once the most noteD wine-mart of Britain, <a href="#page177">177</a>, <a href="#page178">178</a></li> +<li>Cathedral of St. Canice, <a href="#page178">178</a></li> +<li>The Waterford cloak, <a href="#page179">179</a></li> +<li>The College, <a href="#page180">180</a></li> +<li>Irish and Scotch whisky, <a href="#page180">180</a></li> +<li>Duke of Ormonde’s grants, <a href="#page181">181</a></li> +<li>The Plan of Campaign, <a href="#page182">182</a>-<a href="#page186">186</a></li> +<li>Ulster tenant-right, <a href="#page186">186</a>, <a href="#page187">187</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER V.</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Dublin, Feb. 14, <a href="#page188">188</a></li> +<li>The Irish National Gallery, <a href="#page188">188</a>-<a href="#page191">191</a></li> +<li>Feb. 15, <a href="#page192">192</a></li> +<li>London: Mr. Davitt, <a href="#page192">192</a></li> +<li>Irish Woollen Company, <a href="#page193">193</a></li> +<li>Mr. Davitt and Mr. Blunt, <a href="#page193">193</a></li> +<li>Mr. Davitt’s character and position, <a href="#page192">192</a>-<a href="#page199">199</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0">CHAPTER VI.</p><ul class="TOC"> +<li>Ennis, Feb. 18, <a href="#page200">200</a></li> +<li>Return to Ireland, <a href="#page200">200</a></li> +<li>Irish Nationalists, <a href="#page200">200</a>, <a href="#page201">201</a></li> +<li>Home Rule and Protection, p. <a href="#page202">202</a></li> +<li>Luggacurren and Mr. O’Brien, <a href="#page204">204</a></li> +<li>Dublin to Limerick and Ennis, <a href="#page204">204</a>, <a href="#page205">205</a></li> +<li>Colonel Turner, <a href="#page205">205</a></li> +<li>Architecture of Ennis Courthouse—Resemblance + to White House, Washington, <a href="#page206">206</a></li> +<li>Number of public-houses in Ennis, and in Ireland, <a href="#page207">207</a>, <a href="#page208">208</a></li> +<li>Innkeepers of Milltown Malbay, <a href="#page208">208</a>, <a href="#page209">209</a></li> +<li>Father White (see Note E), <a href="#page209">209</a></li> +<li>Sir Francis Head, <a href="#page210">210</a>, <a href="#page211">211</a></li> +<li>Different opinions in Ennis, <a href="#page212">212</a>, <a href="#page213">213</a></li> +<li>State of trade in Ennis, <a href="#page213">213</a>, <a href="#page214">214</a></li> +<li>Edenvale, Heronry, <a href="#page215">215</a> <i>seq.</i></li> +<li>Feb. 19, <a href="#page215">215</a></li> +<li>The men of Ennis at Edenvale, <a href="#page216">216</a></li> +<li>Killone Abbey, <a href="#page218">218</a>-<a href="#page221">221</a></li> +<li>Stephen J. Meany, <a href="#page220">220</a></li> +<li>“Holy Well” of St. John, <a href="#page221">221</a></li> +<li>Superstition as to rabbits, <a href="#page222">222</a></li> +<li>Religious practices under Penal Laws, <a href="#page222">222</a></li> +<li>Experiences under National League, <a href="#page223">223</a>, <a href="#page224">224</a></li> +<li>Case of George Pilkington, <a href="#page224">224</a>-<a href="#page226">226</a></li> +<li>Trees at Edenvale, <a href="#page227">227</a></li> +<li>Moonlighters, a reproduction of Whiteboys, <a href="#page227">227</a>, <a href="#page228">228</a></li> +<li>Difficulty in getting men to work, <a href="#page228">228</a></li> +<li>A testimonial to Mr. Austen Mackay, <a href="#page229">229</a>-<a href="#page232">232</a></li> +<li>Effect of testimonials, <a href="#page232">232</a></li> +<li>Feb. 20, <a href="#page232">232</a></li> +<li>The case of Mrs. Connell at Milltown Malbay, <a href="#page232">232</a> <i>seq.</i></li> +<li>Estate accounts and prices, <a href="#page240">240</a></li> +<li>A rent-warner, <a href="#page245">245</a></li> +<li>Mr. Redmond, M.P., <a href="#page245">245</a></li> +<li>Father White’s Sermon, <a href="#page246">246</a></li> +<li>A photograph, <a href="#page246">246</a></li> +</ul> + +<p class="i0"><a name="pagexx" id="pagexx"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xx] +</span>APPENDIX <br /><br />NOTES—</p><ul class="TOC"> + +<li> <a href="#noteA">A.</a> Mr. Gladstone and the American War (Prologue xxix), <a href="#page249">249</a> +</li><li> <a href="#noteB">B.</a> Mr. Parnell and the Dynamiters (Prologue xxxiii), <a href="#page251">251</a></li> + <li><a href="#noteC">C.</a> The American “Suspects” of 1881 (Prologue xlvii), <a href="#page255">255</a></li> + <li><a href="#noteD">D.</a> The Parnellites and the English Parties (Prologue l.), <a href="#page262">262</a></li> + <li><a href="#noteE">E.</a> The “Boycott” at Miltown-Malbay (p. <a href="#page209">209</a>), <a href="#page264">264</a></li> +</ul> + + + +<h2><a name="pagexxi" id="pagexxi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxi] +</span> +PROLOGUE.</h2> + + +<h3>I.</h3> +<p>This book is a record of things seen, and of conversations had, during a +series of visits to Ireland between January and June 1888.</p> + +<p>These visits were made in quest of light, not so much upon the +proceedings and the purposes of the Irish “Nationalists,”—with which, +on both sides of the Atlantic, I have been tolerably familiar for many +years past—as upon the social and economical results in Ireland of the +processes of political vivisection to which that country has been so +long subjected.</p> + +<p>As these results primarily concern Great Britain and British subjects, +and as a well-founded and reasonable jealousy exists in Great Britain of +American intromission in the affairs of Ireland, it is proper for me to +say at the outset, that the condition of Ireland interests me not +because I believe, with Cardinal Manning, that upon the future of +Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire, but because I know that +America is largely responsible for the actual condition of Ireland, and +because the future condition of Ireland, and of the British <a name="pagexxii" id="pagexxii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxii] +</span> +Empire, +must gravely influence the future of my own country.</p> + +<p>In common with the vast majority of my countrymen, who come with me of +what may now not improperly be called the old American stock—by which I +mean the three millions of English-speaking dwellers in the New World, +who righteously resented, and successfully resisted, a hundred years +ago, the attempt—not of the Crown under which the Colonies held their +lands, but of the British Parliament in which they were +unrepresented—to take their property without their consent, and apply +it to purposes not passed upon by them, I have always felt that the +claim of the Irish people to a proper control of matters exclusively +Irish was essentially just and reasonable. The measure of that proper +control is now, as it always has been, a question not for Americans, but +for the people of Great Britain and of Ireland. If Lord Edward +Fitzgerald and his associates had succeeded in expelling British +authority from Ireland, and in founding an Irish Republic, we should +probably have recognised that Republic. Yet an American minister at the +Court of St. James’s saw no impropriety in advising our Government to +refuse a refuge in the United States to the defeated Irish exiles of +’98.</p> + +<p>It is undoubtedly the opinion of every Irish <a name="pagexxiii" id="pagexxiii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxiii] +</span> +American who possesses any +real influence with the people of his own race in my country, that the +rights and liberties of Ireland can only be effectually secured by a +complete political separation from Great Britain. Nor can the right of +Irish American citizens, holding this opinion, to express their sympathy +with Irishmen striving in Ireland to bring about such a result, and with +Englishmen or Scotchmen contributing to it in Great Britain, be +questioned, any more than the right of Polish citizens of the French +Republic to express their sympathy with Poles labouring in Poland for +the restoration of Polish nationality. It is perhaps even less open to +question than the right of Americans not of Irish race, and of Frenchmen +not of Polish race, to express such sympathies; and certainly less open +to question than the right of Englishmen or Americans to express their +sympathy with Cubans bent on sundering the last link which binds Cuba to +Spain, or with Greeks bent on overthrowing the authority of the Sultan +in Crete.</p> + +<p>But for all American citizens of whatever race, the expression of such +sympathies ceases to be legitimate when it assumes the shape of action +transcending the limits set by local or by international law. It is of +the essence of American constitutionalism that one community shall not +lay hands upon the domestic affairs of another; and it is an undeniable +<a name="pagexxiv" id="pagexxiv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxiv] +</span> +fact that the sympathy of the great body of the American people with +Irish efforts for self-government has been diminished, not increased, +since 1848, by the gradual transfer of the head-quarters and machinery +of those efforts from Ireland to the United States. The recent refusal +of the Mayor of New York, Mr. Hewitt, to allow what is called the “Irish +National flag” to be raised over the City Hall of New York is vastly +more significant of the true drift of American feeling on this subject +than any number of sympathetic resolutions adopted at party conventions +or in State legislatures by party managers, bent on harpooning Irish +voters. If Ireland had really made herself a “nation,” with or without +the consent of Great Britain, a refusal to hoist the Irish flag on the +occasion of an Irish holiday would be not only churlish but foolish. But +thousands of Americans, who might view with equanimity the disruption of +the British Empire and the establishment of an Irish republic, regard, +not only with disapprobation, but with resentment, the growing +disposition of Irish agitators in and out of the British Parliament to +thrash out on American soil their schemes for bringing about these +results with the help of Irishmen who have assumed the duties by +acquiring the rights of American citizenship. It is not in accordance +with the American doctrine of “Home Rule” that “Home Rule” of any sort +for <a name="pagexxv" id="pagexxv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxv] +</span> +Ireland should be organised in New York or in Chicago by +expatriated Irishmen.</p> + +<p>No man had a keener or more accurate sense of this than the most +eloquent and illustrious Irishman whose voice was ever heard in America.</p> + +<p>In the autumn of 1871 Father Burke of Tallaght and San Clemente, with +whom I had formed at Rome in early manhood a friendship which ended only +with his life, came to America as the commissioned Visitor of the +Dominican Order. His mission there will live for ever in the Catholic +annals of the New World. But of one episode of that mission no man +living perhaps knows so much as I, and I make no excuse for this +allusion to it here, as it illustrates perfectly the limits between the +lawful and the unlawful in the agitation of Irish questions upon +American soil.</p> + +<p>While Father Burke was in New York Mr. Froude came there, having been +invited to deliver before a Protestant Literary Association a series of +lectures upon the history of Ireland. My personal relations with Mr. +Froude, I should say here, and my esteem for his rare abilities, go back +to the days of the <i>Nemesis of Faith</i>, and I did not affect to disguise +from him the regret with which I learned his errand to the New World. +That his lectures would be brilliant, impressive, and interesting, was +quite certain; but it was equally certain, I thought, that <a name="pagexxvi" id="pagexxvi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxvi] +</span> +they would +do a world of mischief, by stirring up ancient issues of strife between +the Protestant and the Catholic populations of the United States.</p> + +<p>That they would be answered angrily, indiscreetly, and in a fashion to +aggravate prejudices which ought to be appeased on both sides of the +questions involved, was much more than probable. All this accordingly I +urged upon Father Burke, begging him to find or make time in the midst +of his engrossing duties for a systematic course of lectures in reply. +What other men would surely say in heat and with virulence would be said +by him, I knew, temperately, loftily, and wisely. Three strenuous +objections he made. One was that his work as a Catholic missionary +demanded all his thought and all his time; another that he was not +historically equipped to deal with so formidable an antagonist; and a +third that America ought not to be a battle-ground of Irish contentions. +It was upon the last that he dwelt most tenaciously; nor did he give way +until he had satisfied himself, after consulting with the highest +authorities of his Church, and with two or three of the coolest and most +judicious Irish citizens of New York, that I was right in believing that +his appearance in the arena as the champion of Ireland, would lift an +inevitable controversy high above the atmosphere of unworthy passion, +and put it beyond the reach of political mischief-makers.</p> + +<p><a name="pagexxvii" id="pagexxvii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxvii] +</span> +How nobly he did his work when he had become convinced that he ought to +do it, is now matter of history. But it is a hundredfold more needful +now than it was in 1871 and 1872, that the spirit in which he did it +should be known and published abroad. In the interval between the +delivery of two of his replies to Mr. Froude, Mr. Froude went to Boston. +A letter from Boston informed me that upon Mr. Froude’s arrival there, +all the Irish servants of the friend with whom he was to stay had +suddenly left the house, refusing to their employer the right to invite +under his roof a guest not agreeable to them. I handed this letter, +without a word, to Father Burke a few hours before he was to speak in +the Academy of Music. He read it with a kind of humorous wrath; and when +the evening came, he prefaced his lecture with a few strong and stirring +words, in which he castigated with equal sense and severity the +misconduct of his country-people, anticipating thus by many a year the +spirit in which the supreme authority of his Church has just now dealt +with the social plague of “boycotting,” whereof the strike of the +servant girls at Boston sixteen years ago was a precursory symptom.</p> + +<p>Father Burke understood that American citizenship imposes duties where +it confers rights. Nobody expects the European emigrant who abjures his +foreign allegiance to divest himself of his native <a name="pagexxviii" id="pagexxviii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxviii] +</span> +sympathies or +antipathies. But American law, and the conditions of American liberty, +require him to divest himself of the notion that he retains any right +actively to interfere in the domestic affairs of the country of his +birth. For public and political purposes, the Irishman who becomes an +American ceases to be an Irishman. When Mr. Gladstone’s Government in +1881 seized and locked up indefinitely, on “suspicion” of what they +might be about to do, American citizens of Irish birth, these “suspects” +clamoured, and had a right to clamour, for the intervention of the +American Government to protect them against being dealt with as if they +were Irishmen and British subjects. But by the abjuration of British +allegiance which gave them this right to clamour for American +protection, they had voluntarily made themselves absolute foreigners to +Ireland, with no more legal or moral right to interfere in the affairs +of that country than so many Chinamen or Peruvians.</p> + +<p>Having said this, I ought, in justice to my fellow-citizens of Irish +birth, to say that these elementary truths have too often been obscured +for them by the conduct of public bodies in America, and of American +public men.</p> + +<p>No American public man of reputation, holding an executive office in the +Federal Government, has ever thrust himself, it is true, so inexcusably +into <a name="pagexxix" id="pagexxix"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxix] +</span> +the domestic affairs of Great Britain and Ireland as did Mr. +Gladstone into the domestic affairs of the United States when, speaking +at Newcastle in the very crisis of our great civil war, he gave all the +weight of his position as a Cabinet Minister to the assertion that Mr. +Jefferson Davis had created not only an army and a navy, but a nation, +and thereby compelled the Prime Minister of Great Britain to break the +effect of this declaration by insisting that another Cabinet Minister, +Sir George Cornewall Lewis, should instantly make a speech countering +it, and covering the neutrality of the British Government. <a id="footnotetag4" + name="footnotetag4"></a><a href="#footnote4"><sup>4</sup></a></p> + +<p>Nor has either House of the Congress of the United States ever been +guilty of the impertinence of adopting resolutions of sympathy with the +Home Rule, or any other movement affecting directly the domestic affairs +of the British Empire, though, within my own knowledge, very strong +pressure has been more than once put upon the Foreign Affairs Committees +of both Houses to bring this about.</p> + +<p>But such resolutions have been repeatedly adopted by State Legislatures, +and individual members, both of the Federal Senate and of the Federal +Lower House, have discredited themselves, and brought such discredit as +they could upon the Congress, by effusions of the same sort. The bad +citizenship of <a name="pagexxx" id="pagexxx"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxx] +</span> +Irish-American citizens, however, is not the less bad +citizenship because they may have been led into it by the recklessness +of State Legislatures—which have no responsibility for our foreign +relations—or the sycophancy of public men. If it were proved to +demonstration that Home Rule would be the salvation of Ireland, no +American citizen would have any more right to take an active part in +furthering it than to take an active part in dethroning the Czar of all +the Russias. The lesson which Washington administered to Citizen Genet, +when that meddlesome minister of the French Republic undertook to “boom” +the rights of men by issuing letters of marque at Charleston, has +governed the foreign relations of the United States ever since, and it +is as binding upon every private citizen as upon every public servant of +the Republic.</p> + +<p>I must ask my readers, therefore, to bear it constantly in mind that all +my observations and comments have been made from an American, not from a +British or an Irish point of view. How or by whom Ireland shall be +governed concerns me only in so far as the government of Ireland may +affect the character and the tendencies of the Irish people, and +thereby, through the close, intimate, and increasing connection between +the Irish people and the people of the United States, may tend to affect +the future of my country. This being my point of view, <a name="pagexxxi" id="pagexxxi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxi] +</span> +it will be +apparent, I think, that I have at least laboured under no temptation to +see things otherwise than as they were, or to state things otherwise +than as I saw them.</p> + +<p>With Arthur Young, who more clearly than any other man of his time saw +the end from the beginning of the fatuous and featherheaded French +Revolution of 1789, I have always been inclined to think “the +application of theory to methods of government a surprising imbecility +in the human mind:” and it will be found that in this book I have done +little more than set down, as fully and clearly as I could, what I +actually saw and heard in Ireland. My method has been as simple as my +object. During each day as occasion served, and always at night, I made +stenographic notes of whatever had attracted my attention or engaged my +interest. As I had no case to make for or against any political party or +any theory of government in Ireland, I took things great and small, and +people high and low, as they came, putting myself in contact by +preference, wherever I could, with those classes of the Irish people of +whom we see least in America, and concerning myself, as to my notes, +only that they should be made under the vivid immediate impress of +whatever they were to record. These notes I have subsequently written +out in the spirit in which I made them, in all cases taking what pains +<a name="pagexxxii" id="pagexxxii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxii] +</span> +I could to verify statements of facts, and in many cases, where it +seemed desirable or necessary, submitting the proofs of the pages as +finally printed to the persons whom, after myself, they most concerned.</p> + +<p>I have been more annoyed by the delay than by the trouble thus entailed +upon me; but I shall be satisfied if those who may take the pains to +read the book shall as nearly as possible see what I saw, and hear what +I heard.</p> + +<p>I have no wish to impress my own conclusions upon others who may be +better able than I am accurately to interpret the facts from which these +conclusions have been drawn. Such as they are, I have put them into a +few pages at the end of the book.</p> + +<p>It will be found that I have touched only incidentally upon the subject +of Home Rule for Ireland. Until it shall be ascertained what “Home Rule +for Ireland” means, that subject seems to me to lie quite outside the +domain of my inquiries. “Home Rule for Ireland” is not now a plan—nor +so much as a proposition. It is merely a polemical phrase, of little +importance to persons really interested in the condition of Ireland, +however invaluable it may be to the makers of party platforms in my own +country, or to Parliamentary candidates on this side of the Atlantic. It +may mean anything or nothing, from Mr. Chamberlain’s imperialist scheme +of four Provincial Councils—which recalls the <a name="pagexxxiii" id="pagexxxiii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxiii] +</span> +outlines of a system +once established with success in New Zealand—to that absolute and +complete separation in all particulars of the government of Ireland from +the government of Great Britain, which has unquestionably been the aim +of every active Irish organisation in the United States for the last +twenty years, and which the accredited leader of the “Home Rule” party +in the British Parliament, Mr. Parnell, is understood in America to have +pledged himself that he will do anything to further and nothing to +impede. On this point, what I took to be conclusive documentary evidence +was submitted to me in New York several years ago by Mr. Sheridan, at a +time when the fever-heat of British indignation excited by those murders +in the Phoenix Park, for which I believe it is now admitted by the best +informed authorities that Mr. Sheridan had no responsibility, was +driving Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates into disavowals of +the extreme men of their connection, which, but for Mr. Sheridan’s +coolness and consciousness of his well-assured domination over them, +might have led to extremely inconvenient consequences to all +concerned. <a id="footnotetag5" + name="footnotetag5"></a><a href="#footnote5"><sup>5</sup></a> But whatever “Home Rule” may or may not mean, I went to +Ireland, not to find some achromatic meaning for a prismatic phrase, +which is flashed at you fifty times <a name="pagexxxiv" id="pagexxxiv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxiv] +</span> +in England or America where you +encounter it once in Ireland, but to learn what I could of the social +and economical condition of the Irish people as affected by the +revolutionary forces which are now at work in that country.</p> + +<p>I have watched the development of these forces too long and too closely +to be under any illusion as to the real importance relatively with them +of the so-called “Parliamentary” action of the Irish Nationalists.</p> + + +<h3>II.</h3> +<p>The visits to Ireland, of which this book is a record, were made on my +return from a sojourn in Rome during the celebration of the Jubilee of +His Holiness Leo XIII. What I then and there learned convinced me that +the Vatican was on the eve of grappling in Ireland with issues +substantially identical with those which were forced, in my own country, +two years ago, upon a most courageous and gifted member of the American +Catholic hierarchy, the Archbishop of New York, by the open adhesion of +an eminent Irish American ecclesiastic, the Rev. Dr. M‘Glynn, to the +social revolution of which Mr. Henry George is the best-equipped and +most indefatigable apostle. Entertaining this conviction (which events +have since shown to have been well-founded), I was anxious to survey on +the <a name="pagexxxv" id="pagexxxv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxv] +</span> +spot the conditions under which the conflict so vigorously +encountered by the Archbishop in New York must be waged by the Vatican +in Ireland.</p> + +<p>To suppose that the Vatican, in dealing with this conflict, either in +Ireland or in America, is troubling itself about the balancing of +political acrobats, British or American, upon the tight-rope of “Home +Rule,” is as absurd as it would have been to suppose that in 1885 the +Vatican concerned itself with the subterranean intrigues which there is +reason to believe the Irish Nationalists then sought to carry on with +the wire-pullers of the two great British political parties. To get a +correct perspective of the observations which I came from Rome this year +to make in Ireland, my readers, as I have already said, must allow me to +take them across the Atlantic, and must put aside as accessory and +incidental the forensic and polemic phenomena of Irish politics, with +which they are perhaps only too familiar.</p> + +<p>It is as easy to go too far back as it is not to go back far enough in +the study of such a revolutionary movement as that of which Ireland is +just now the arena.</p> + +<p>Many and sore are the historical grievances of the Irish people. That +they are historical and not actual grievances would seem to be admitted +by so sympathetic and minutely well-informed a writer <a name="pagexxxvi" id="pagexxxvi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxvi] +</span> +as Dr. Sigerson, +when he gives it as his opinion, that after the passage of the Land Act +of 1870, “the concession in principle of the demands of the cultivators +as tenants” had “abolished the class war waged between landlords and +their tenantry.”</p> + +<p>The class war between the tenantry and their landlords, therefore, which +is now undoubtedly waging in Ireland cannot be attributed to the +historical grievances of the Irish people. The tradition and the memory +of these historical grievances may indeed be used by designing or +hysterical traders in agitation to inflame the present war. But the war +itself is not the old war, nor can it be explained by recurring to the +causes of the old war. It has the characteristics no longer of a +defensive war, nor yet of a war of revenge absolutely, but of an +aggressive war, and of a war of conquest. In his able work on “The Land +Tenure and the Land Classes of Ireland,” Dr. Sigerson, writing in 1871, +looked forward to the peaceful co-existence in Ireland of two systems of +land-holding, “whereby the country might enjoy the advantage of what is +good in the ‘landlord,’ or single middleman system, and in the peasant +proprietary or direct system.”</p> + +<p>What we now see in Ireland, after nearly twenty years of legislation, +steadily tending to the triumph of equal rights, is an agitation +threatening not only the “co-existence” of these two systems, but the +very existence of each of these systems.</p> + +<p><a name="pagexxxvii" id="pagexxxvii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxvii] +</span> +To get at the origin and the meaning of this agitation we must be +content, I believe, to go no further back than ten years, and to look +for them, not in Ireland, but in America, not to Mr. Parnell and Mr. +Gladstone primarily, but to Mr. Davitt and Mr. Henry George.</p> + + +<h3>III.</h3> +<p>In a very remarkable letter written to Earl Grey in 1868, after the +Clerkenwell explosions had brought the disestablishment of the Irish +Protestant Church into Mr. Gladstone’s scheme of “practical politics,” +the Archbishop of Westminster, not then a Cardinal, called the attention +of Englishmen to the fact, not yet I fear adequately apprehended by +them, that “the assimilating power of America upon the Irish people, if +seven days slower than that of England in reaching Ireland, is sevenfold +more penetrating and powerful upon the whole population.” By this the +Archbishop meant, what was unquestionably true, that even in 1868, only +twenty years after the great Irish exodus to America began, the social +and political ideas of America were exerting a seven-fold stronger +influence upon the character and the tendencies of the Irish people than +the social and political ideas of England. Thanks to the development of +the cables and the <a name="pagexxxviii" id="pagexxxviii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxviii] +</span> +telegraph since 1868, and to the enormous progress +of America since that time in wealth and population, this “assimilating +power” reaches Ireland much more rapidly, and exerts upon the Irish +people a very much more drastic influence than in 1868. This +establishes, of course, a return current westward, which is as necessary +to he watched, and is as much neglected by American as the original +eastward current is by British public men.</p> + +<p>In this letter of 1868 to Earl Grey, the Archbishop of Westminster +desiring, as an Englishman, to counteract, if possible, this influence +which was drawing Ireland away from the British monarchy, and towards +the American Republic, maintained that by two things the “heart of +Ireland” might be won, and her affections enlisted with her interests in +the support of the unity, solidity, and prosperity of the British +Empire. One of these two things was “perfect religious equality between +the Catholics and the Protestants of Ireland.” The other was that the +Imperial Legislature should by statute make it impossible for any +landlord in Ireland to commit three wrongs,—“first, the wrong of +abusing his rights by arbitrary eviction; secondly, by exacting an +exorbitant rent; thirdly, by appropriating to his own use the +improvements effected by the industry of his tenants.”</p> + +<p>Perfect religious equality has since been estab<a name="pagexxxix" id="pagexxxix"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xxxix] +</span> +lished between the +Catholics and the Protestants of Ireland. The three wrongs which the +Archbishop called upon the Imperial Legislature to make impossible to +Irish landlords have since been made impossible by Statute.</p> + +<p>Yet it is on all hands admitted that the “unity, solidity, and +prosperity” of the British Empire have never been so seriously +threatened in Ireland as during the last ten years. Was the Archbishop +wrong, therefore, in his estimate of the situation in 1868? Or has the +centripetal influence of remedial British legislation since 1868 failed +to check a centrifugal advance “by leaps and bounds,” in the +“assimilating power” of America upon Ireland?</p> + + +<h3>IV.</h3> +<p>Just ten years ago, in 1878, Mr. Michael Davitt and Mr. John Devoy (the +latter of whom had been commissioned in 1865 by the Fenian leader +Stephens, as “chief organiser of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the +British army”), being then together in America, promulgated, Mr. Davitt +in a speech at Boston, and Mr. Devoy in a letter sent to the <i>Freeman’s +Journal</i> in Dublin, the outlines of a scheme for overthrowing British +rule in Ireland by revolutionising the ownership of land in that +country.</p> + +<p><a name="pagexl" id="pagexl"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xl] +</span> +The basis of this scheme had been laid thirty years before, in 1848, by +Finton Lalor, John Mitchel, and the present Archbishop of Cashel, then a +simple curate.</p> + +<p>It was thus stated by Lalor in his paper, the <i>Irish Felon</i>:—</p> + +<p>“The entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the sun and +down to the centre of the earth, is vested, as of right, in the people +of Ireland. The soil of the country belongs as of right to the entire +people of the country, not to any one class, but to the nation.”</p> + +<p>This was a distinct denial of the right of private property in land. If +true of Ireland and the Irish people this proposition was true of all +lands and of all peoples. Lalor, though more of a patriot than of a +philosopher, saw this plainly; and in one of the three numbers of his +paper which appeared before it was suppressed by the British Government, +he said “the principle I propose goes to the foundations of Europe, and +sooner or later will cause Europe to uprise.” Michael Davitt saw this as +clearly in 1878 as Finton Lalor thirty years before. He had matured his +plans in connection with this principle during the weary but not wasted +years of his imprisonment as a Fenian at Dartmoor, a place, the name of +which is connected in America with many odious memories of the second +war between England and <a name="pagexli" id="pagexli"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xli] +</span> +the United States; and going out to America +almost immediately after his release on a ticket of leave, he there +found the ideas of Finton Lalor and his associates of 1848, ripened and +harvested in the mind of an American student of sociology, Henry George. +Nowhere in the world has what a shrewd English traveller calls “the +illegitimate development of private wealth” attained such proportions in +modern times as in America, and especially in California. Nowhere, too, +in the world is the ostentatious waste of the results of labour upon the +antics of a frivolous plutocracy a more crying peril of our times than +in America. Henry George, an American of the Eastern States, who went to +the Pacific coast as a lad, had grown up with and watched the progress +of this social disease in California; and when Davitt reached America in +1878, Henry George was preparing to publish his revolutionary book on +<i>Progress and Poverty</i>, which appeared in 1879. Dates are important from +this point, as they will trace for the reader the formation of the +strongest forces which, as I believe, are to-day at work to shape the +future of Ireland, and, if Cardinal Manning is right, with the future of +Ireland, the future of the British Empire.</p> + +<p>The year 1878 saw the “Home Rule” movement in Irish politics brought to +an almost ludicrous halt by the success of Mr. Parnell, then a young +member of Parliament for Meath, in unhorsing the leader of <a name="pagexlii" id="pagexlii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xlii] +</span> +that +movement, Mr. Butt. As the Irish members then had no coherent purpose or +policy, Mr. Parnell had, without much trouble, dominated and brigaded +them to follow him blindly into a system of parliamentary obstruction, +which there is reason to suppose was suggested to him by a friend who +had studied the Congressional proceedings of the United States, the +native country of his mother, and especially the tactics which had +enabled Mr. Randall of Pennsylvania, the leader of the Democratic +minority in the House of Representatives, to check the so-called “Civil +Rights Bill,” sent down by the Senate to that House, during a continuous +session of forty-six hours and a half, with no fewer than seventy-seven +calls of the house, in the month of January 1875, some time before Mr. +Parnell first took his seat in the House of Commons.</p> + +<p>When Mr. Parnell, early in 1878, thanks to this system, had ousted Mr. +Butt, and got himself elected as President of the Irish “Home Rule +Confederation,” he found himself, as an Irish friend of mine wrote to me +at the time, in an awkward position. He had command of the “Home Rule” +members at Westminster, but he had no notion what to do with them, and +neither they nor he could see anyway open to securing a permanent hold +upon the Irish voters. Three bad harvests in succession had thrown the +Irish tenants <a name="pagexliii" id="pagexliii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xliii] +</span> +into a state which disinclined them to make sacrifices +for any sentimental policy, but prepared them to lend their ears eagerly +to Michael Davitt, when, on his return from the United States in the +early spring of 1879, he proclaimed anew, at Irishtown in his native +county of Mayo, the gospel of 1848 giving the land of Ireland to the +people of Ireland. Clearly Mr. Davitt held the winning card. As he +frankly put the case to a special correspondent, whom I sent to see him, +and whose report I published in New York, he saw that “the only issue +upon which Home Rulers, Nationalists, Obstructionists, and each and +every shade of opinion existing in Ireland could be united was the Land +Question,” and of that question he took control. Naturally enough, Mr. +Parnell, himself a landowner under the English settlement, shrank at +first from committing himself and his fortunes to the leadership of Mr. +Davitt. But no choice was really left him, and there is reason to +believe that a decision was made easier to him by a then inchoate +undertaking that he should be personally protected against the financial +consequences to himself of the new departure, by a testimonial fund, +such as was in fact raised and presented to him in 1883. In June 1879 he +accepted the inevitable, and in a speech at Westport put himself with +his parliamentary following and machinery at the service of the founder +of the Irish Land League, <a name="pagexliv" id="pagexliv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xliv] +</span> +uttering the keynote of Mr. Davitt’s “new +departure” in his celebrated appeal to the Irish tenants to “keep a firm +grip of their homesteads.” In the middle of October 1879, Mr. Davitt +formally organised the Irish National Land League, “to reduce rack-rents +and facilitate the obtaining of the ownership of the land of Ireland by +the occupiers,” and Mr. Parnell was made its first President. He was +sent out to America in that capacity, at the end of the year to explain +to the Irish-American leaders the importance of supplying the new +organisation with funds sufficient to enable it to take and keep the +field at Westminster with a force of paid members not dependent for +their support upon the Irish constituencies. It was obviously impossible +either to guarantee any considerable number of Irishmen holding property +against loss by a policy aimed at the foundations of property, or to +count upon finding for every Irish seat a member of local weight and +stake, imbued with the spirit of martyrdom.</p> + +<p>Mr. Parnell landed at New York on the 1st of January 1880. An interview +with him, written out on board of the steamer which took him to America +by a correspondent detailed for that purpose, was published on the +morning after his arrival. It made on the whole an unfavourable +impression in America, which was not improved by an in<a name="pagexlv" id="pagexlv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xlv] +</span> +judicious quarrel +into which he drifted with a portion of the American press, and which +was distinctly deepened by his inexcusable misrepresentations of the +conduct of Queen Victoria during the famine of 1847, and by his foolish +attacks upon the management and objects of the Duchess of Marlborough’s +fund for the relief of Irish distress. The friends of Mr. Davitt in +America, however, and the leaders of the most active Irish organisations +there, came to the rescue, and as the two American parties were +preparing their lines of battle for the Presidential conflict of 1880, +Mr. Parnell was not only “put through” the usual course of “receptions” +by Mayors and State legislatures, but invited on an “off-day” to address +the House of Representatives at Washington. His tour, however, on the +whole, harmed more than it helped the new Irish movement on my side of +the Atlantic, and when he was called back to take his part in the +electoral contest precipitated by Lord Beaconsfield’s dissolution of +Parliament at Easter 1880, Mr. Davitt went out to America himself to do +what his Parliamentary associate had not succeeded in doing. During this +visit of Mr. Davitt to the United States, Mr. Henry George finally +transferred his residence from San Francisco to New York, and made his +arrangements to visit England and Ireland, and bring about a practical +combination be<a name="pagexlvi" id="pagexlvi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xlvi] +</span> +tween the advocates of “the land for the people” on both +sides of the ocean. These arrangements he carried out in 1881-82, +publishing in 1881, in America, his treatise on the Irish Land question, +while Mr. Davitt, who had been arrested after his return to Europe by +Mr. Gladstone’s Government in February 1881, on a revocation of his +ticket-of-leave, lay a prisoner at Portland. Mr. George himself, while +travelling in Ireland with an academical English friend, came under +“suspicion” in the eyes of one of Mr. Forster’s officers, and was +arrested, but at once released. During the protracted confinement of Mr. +Davitt at Portland, the utter incapacity of Mr. Parnell and his +Parliamentary associates to manage the social revolution initiated by +the founder of the Land League became fully apparent, not only to +impartial, but even to sympathetic observers in America, long before it +was demonstrated by the incarceration of Mr. Parnell in Kilmainham, the +disavowal, under pressure, of the no-rent manifesto by Archbishop Croke, +and the suppression of the Land League. In sequestrating Mr. Davitt, Mr. +Forster, as was shown by the extraordinary scenes which in the House of +Commons followed his arrest, had struck at the core of the revolution, +and had the Irish Secretary not been deserted by Mr. Gladstone, under +influences which originated at Kilmainham, and were reinforced by <a name="pagexlvii" id="pagexlvii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xlvii] +</span> +the +pressure of the United States Government in the spring of 1882, history +might have had a very different tale to tell of the last six years in +Ireland and in Great Britain. <a id="footnotetag6" + name="footnotetag6"></a><a href="#footnote6"><sup>6</sup></a></p> + + +<h3>V.</h3> +<p>It was after the return of Mr. George from Ireland to New York in 1882 +that the first black point appeared on the horizon, of the conflict, +inevitable in the nature of things, between the social revolution and +the Catholic Church, which assumed such serious proportions two years +ago in America, and which is now developing itself in Ireland. Among the +ablest and the most earnest converts in America to the doctrine of the +new social revolution was the Rev. Dr. M‘Glynn, a Catholic priest, +standing in the front rank of his order in New York, in point alike of +eloquence in the pulpit, and of influence in private life. Finding, like +Michael Davitt, in the doctrine of Henry George an outcome and a +confirmation of the principle laid down in 1848 for the liberation of +Ireland by Finton Lalor, Dr. M‘Glynn threw himself ardently into the +advocacy of that doctrine,—so ardently that in August 1882 the Prefect +of the Propaganda, Cardinal Simeoni, found it necessary to invite the +attention of Car<a name="pagexlviii" id="pagexlviii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xlviii] +</span> +dinal M‘Closkey, then Archbishop of New York, to +speeches of Dr. M‘Glynn, reported in the <i>Irish World</i> of New York, as +“containing propositions openly opposed to the teachings of the Catholic +Church.”</p> + +<p>It did not concern the Propaganda that these propositions ran on +all-fours with the policy of the Irish Land League established by Mr. +Davitt, and accepted by Mr. Parnell. What concerned the Propaganda in +the propositions of Dr. M‘Glynn at New York in 1882 was precisely what +concerns the Propaganda in the programme of Mr. Davitt as mismanaged by +Mr. Dillon in Ireland in 1888—the incompatibility of these +propositions, and of that programme, with the teachings of the Church.</p> + +<p>Upon receiving the instructions of the Propaganda in August 1882, +Cardinal M‘Closkey sent for Dr. M‘Glynn, and set the matter plainly +before him. Dr. M‘Glynn professed regret for his errors, promised to +abstain in future from political meetings, and begged the Cardinal to +inform the authorities at Home of his intention to walk more +circumspectly. The submission of Dr. M‘Glynn was approved at Rome, but +it was gently intimated to him that it needed to be crowned by public +reparation for the scandal he had caused. He disregarded this pastoral +hint, and when the Archbishop Coadjutor of New York, Dr. Corrigan, went +to Rome in 1883 to <a name="pagexlix" id="pagexlix"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg xlix] +</span> +represent the Cardinal, who was unequal to the +journey, he found the Propaganda by no means satisfied with the attitude +of Dr. M‘Glynn. Two years after this, in October 1885, Cardinal +M‘Closkey died, and Dr. Corrigan succeeded him as Archbishop of New +York.</p> + +<p>Between the first admonition given to the sacerdotal ally of Mr. George +in 1882 and this event much had come to pass in Ireland. The Land League +suppressed by Mr. Forster had been suffered to reappear as the National +League by Earl Spencer and Mr. Trevelyan. Sir William Harcourt’s +stringent and sweeping “Coercion Act” of July 11th, 1882, passed under +the stress of the murders in the Phoenix Park, expiring by its own terms +in July 1885, Mr. Gladstone found himself forced either to alienate a +number of his Radical supporters by proposing a renewal of that Act, or +to invite a catastrophe in Ireland by attempting to rule that country +under “the ordinary law.”</p> + +<p>He elected to escape from the dilemma by inviting a defeat in Parliament +on a secondary question of the Budget. He went out of power on the 9th +of June 1885, leaving Lord Salisbury to send the Earl of Carnarvon as +Viceroy to Ireland, and the Irish party in Parliament to darken the air +on both sides of the Atlantic with portentous intimations of a +mysterious compact, under which they were to <a name="pagel" id="pagel"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg l] +</span> +secure Home Rule for +Ireland by establishing the Conservatives in their places at the general +election in November. <a id="footnotetag7" + name="footnotetag7"></a><a href="#footnote7"><sup>7</sup></a></p> + +<p>What came of all this I may briefly rehearse. Going out to America in +November 1885, and returning to England in January 1886, I remained in +London long enough to assure myself, and to publish in America my +conviction of the utter hopelessness of Mr. Gladstone’s “Home Rule” +measure, the success of which would have made his government the ally +and the instrument of Mr. Parnell in carrying out the plans of Mr. +Davitt, Mr. Henry George, and the active Irish organisations of the +United States. All this is matter of history.</p> + +<p>The effect of Mr. Gladstone’s speech of April 8, 1886, introducing his +Home Rule Bill, upon the Irish in America was simply intoxicating. They +saw him, as in a vision, repeating for the benefit of Ireland at Dublin, +on a grander scale, the impressive scene of his surrender in 1858 at +Corfu of the Protectorate of the Ionian Islands to Greece.</p> + +<p>Upon thousands also of Americans, interested more or less intelligently +in British affairs, but neither familiar, nor caring to be, with the +details of the political situation in Great Britain, this appearance of +the British Premier, as the champion of Home Rule for Ireland, +denouncing the “base<a name="pageli" id="pageli"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg li] +</span> +ness and blackguardism” of Pitt and his +accomplices, the framers of the Union of 1800, naturally produced a very +profound impression. What might be almost called a “tidal wave” of +sympathy with the Irish National League, and with him as its ally, made +itself felt throughout the United States. Had I witnessed the drama from +the far-off auditorium in New York, I might doubtless have shared the +conviction of so many of my countrymen that we were about to behold the +consummation tunefully anticipated so many years ago by John Quincy +Adams, and—</p> + +<p class="i4"> +“Proud of herself, victorious over fate,<br /> +See Erin rise, an independent state.” +</p> + +<p>The moment seemed propitious for a resolute forward move in America of +Mr. Henry George, and the other American believers in the doctrine of +“the land for the people.” It would have been more propitious had not +the political managers of the Irish party, misapprehending to the last +moment the drift of things in the British Parliament, and counting +firmly upon a victory for Mr. Gladstone, either at Westminster or at the +polls, insisted upon holding a great convention of the Irish in America +at Chicago in August 1886. A proposition to do this had been made in the +spring of 1885, and put off, in judicious deference to the disgust which +many independent Americans of both parties then <a name="pagelii" id="pagelii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lii] +</span> +felt at the course +pursued by Mr. Parnell’s friends, Mr. Egan and Mr. Sullivan in 1884, +when these leaders openly led the Irish with drums beating and green +flags flying out of the Democratic into the Republican camp.</p> + +<p>As it was, however, Mr. Gladstone having gone out of power a second +time, on the second day of June in 1886, the non-parliamentary and real +leader in Ireland of the Irish revolutionary movement, Mr. Davitt, came +overtly to the front, and crossed the Atlantic to ride the whirlwind and +direct the storm at the Convention appointed to be held in Chicago on +the 18th of August.</p> + +<p>In New York he found Mr. Henry George quietly preparing to put the +emotions of the moment to profit at the municipal election which was to +occur in that city in November, and Dr. M‘Glynn more enamoured than ever +of the doctrine of “the land for the people,” and more defiant than ever +of the Propaganda and of his ecclesiastical superiors. It was resolved +that Mr. George should come forward as a candidate for the mayoralty in +November, and Dr. M‘Glynn determined to take the field in support of +him.</p> + + +<h3><a name="pageliii" id="pageliii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg liii] +</span> +VI.</h3> + +<p>We now come to close quarters.</p> + +<p>Dr. Corrigan, as I have said, had become the Archbishop of New York in +October 1885. The Irish-American Convention met at Chicago, Mr. Davitt +dominating its proceedings by his courageous and outspoken support of +his defeated Parliamentary allies in England. The candidacy of Mr. Henry +George had not yet been announced in New York. But Dr. M‘Glynn resumed +his practice of addressing public meetings in support of the doctrines +of Mr. Davitt and of Henry George. The Archbishop’s duty was plain. It +was not pleasant. A Catholic prelate of Irish blood living in New York +might have been pardoned for avoiding, if he could, an open intervention +at such a moment, to prevent an able and popular priest from disobeying +his ecclesiastical superiors in his zeal for a doctrine hostile to +“landlordism,” and cordially approved by the most influential of the +Irish leaders.</p> + +<p>But on the 21st August 1886, while all the Irishmen in New York were +wild with excitement over the proceedings at Chicago, Archbishop +Corrigan did his duty, and admonished Dr. M‘Glynn to restrain his +political ardour. The admonition was thrown away. A month later, the +canvass of Mr. Henry George being then fully opened, Dr. M‘Glynn <a name="pageliv" id="pageliv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg liv] +</span> +sent +Mr. George himself to wait upon the Archbishop with a note of +introduction as his “very dear and valued friend,” in the hope of +inducing the Archbishop to withdraw his inhibition and allow him to +speak at a great meeting, then about to be held, of the supporters of +Mr. George.</p> + +<p>The Archbishop replied in a firm but friendly note, forbidding Dr. +M‘Glynn “in the most positive manner” to attend the meeting referred to, +or “any other political meeting whatever.”</p> + +<p>Dr. M‘Glynn deliberately disobeyed this order, attended the meeting, and +threw himself with ever increasing heat into the war against +landlordism. On the 2d of October 1886, therefore, he was formally +“suspended” from his priestly functions—nor has he ever since been +permitted to resume them. Another priest presides over the great church +of St. Stephen, of which he was the rector. More than once the door of +repentance and return has been opened to him; but, I believe, he is +still waging war in his own way, and beyond the precincts of the +priesthood, both upon the right of private property in land and upon the +Pope.</p> + +<p>He is a man of vigorous intellect; and he has defined the issue between +himself and the Church in language so terse and clear that I reproduce +it here. It defines also the real issue of to-day between the Church +speaking through the Papal Decree of <a name="pagelv" id="pagelv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lv] +</span> +April 20, 1888, and the National +League of Ireland acting through the “Plan of Campaign.”</p> + +<p>No heed having been paid by Dr. M‘Glynn to several successive +intimations summoning him to go to Rome and explain his attitude, he +finally, on the 20th of December 1886, wrote a letter in which, with a +single skilful turn of his wrist, he took out the core of Henry George’s +doctrine as to land, which really is the core also of the Irish Plan of +Campaign, and thus laid it before the Archbishop of New York:—</p> + +<p>“My doctrine about land has been made clear in speeches, in reports of +interviews, and in published articles, and I repeat it here. I have +taught, and I shall continue to teach in speeches and writings, as long +as I live, that land is rightfully the property of the people in common, +and that private ownership of land is against natural justice, no matter +by what civil or ecclesiastical laws it may be sanctioned; and I would +bring about instantly, if I could, such change of laws all over the +world as would confiscate private property in land without one penny of +compensation to the miscalled owners.”</p> + +<p>There is no shuffling here. With logical precision Dr. M‘Glynn strips +Mr. George’s doctrine of its technical disguise as a form of taxation, +and presents it to the world as a simple Confiscation of Rents. Many +acute critics of <i>Progress and Poverty</i> have <a name="pagelvi" id="pagelvi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lvi] +</span> +failed to see that when +Mr. George calls upon the State to take over to itself, and to its own +uses, the whole annual rental value of the bare land of a country, the +land, that is, irrespectively of improvements put upon it by man, he +proposes not “a single tax upon land” at all, but an actual confiscation +of the rental of the land—which for practical purposes is the land—to +the uses of the State, without a levy, and without compensation to “the +miscalled owners.”</p> + +<p>When a tax is levied, the need by the State levying it of a certain sum +of money must first be ascertained by competent authority, legislative +or executive, as the case may be, and the law-making power must then, +according to a prescribed form, enact that to raise such a sum a certain +tax shall be levied on designated property or occupations. If the +exigencies of the State are held to require it, a tax may be levied upon +property of more than its value, as in the case, for example, of the +customs duty which was imposed in one of our “tariff revisions” upon +plate glass imported into the United States by way of “protecting” a +single plate-glass factory then existing in the United States. This was +an abominable abuse of a constitutional power, but it was not +“confiscation.” What Henry George proposes is confiscation, as Dr. +M‘Glynn plainly sees and courageously says. What <a name="pagelvii" id="pagelvii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lvii] +</span> +he proposes is that +the State shall compel the annual rental value of all land to be paid +into the public treasury, without regard to the question whether the +State does or does not need such a sum of money. That is confiscation +pure and simple, the State, in the assumed interest of the State, +proceeding against the private owners of land, or the “miscalled +owners,” to use Dr. M‘Glynn’s significant phrase, precisely as under the +feudal system the State proceeded against the private property of rebels +and traitors. No good reason can be shown why the process should not be +applied to personalty and to debts as well as to land.</p> + +<p>This was the doctrine indorsed at the polls in New York in November 1886 +by 68,000 voters. Nor can there be much doubt that it would have been +indorsed by the few thousand more votes needed to defeat Mr. Hewitt, the +actual Mayor of New York, and to put Mr. Henry George into the Chief +Magistracy of the first city of the New World, had not its teachers and +preachers been confronted by the quiet, cool, and determined prelate who +met it as plainly as it was put. “Your letter,” said the Archbishop, +“has brought the painful intelligence that you decline to go to Rome, +and that you have taught, and will continue to teach, the injustice of +private ownership of land, no matter by what laws of Church or State it +may be sanctioned. In view <a name="pagelviii" id="pagelviii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lviii] +</span> +of such declarations, to permit you to +exercise the holy ministry would be manifestly wrong.”</p> + +<p>In these few words of the Archbishop of New York, we have plainly +affirmed in 1886 the principle underlying the Papal Decree of 1888 +against the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting in Ireland. There is no +question of parties or of politics in the one case or in the other. When +Dr. M‘Glynn talked about the private ownership of land in New York as +“against natural justice,” he flung himself not only against the Eighth +Commandment and the teachings of the Catholic Church, touching the +rights of property, but against the constitutions of the State of New +York and of the United States. That “private property shall not be taken +for public uses without just compensation” is a fundamental provision of +the Constitution of the United States, which is itself a part of the +Constitution of every State of the Union; and the right of private +ownership in land is defined and protected beyond doubt or cavil in New +York under the State Constitution. An Act passed in 1830 provides and +declares that all lands within the State “are allodial, so that, subject +only to the liability to escheat, the entire and absolute property is +vested in the owners according to the nature of their respective +estates.”</p> + +<p>By this Act “all feudal tenures of every description, with all their +incidents,” were “abolished.” <a name="pagelix" id="pagelix"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lix] +</span> +Most of the “feudal incidents” of the +socage tenure had been previously abolished by an Act passed in 1787, +under the first Constitution of the State, adopted at Kingston in 1777, +a year after the Declaration of American Independence; and socage tenure +by fixed and determinate service, not military or variable by the lord +at his will, had been adopted long before by an Act of the first +Assembly of the Province of New York held in 1691 under the first Royal +Governor, after the reconquest of the province from Holland, and in the +reign of William and Mary. This Act provided that all lands should “be +held in free and common socage according to the tenure of East Greenwich +in England.” It is an interesting circumstance that the right of private +ownership in land, thus rooted in our history, should have been defended +against a threatening revolutionary movement in New York by the courage +and loyalty to the Constitution of his country as well as to his Church +of a Catholic Archbishop. For this same Assembly of the Province of New +York in 1693, in an Act “to maintain Protestant ministers and churches,” +enacted that “every Jesuit and popish priest” found in the Province +after a certain day named, should be put into “perpetual imprisonment,” +with the proviso that if he escaped and was retaken he should suffer +death. And even in the Constitution of 1777 the <a name="pagelx" id="pagelx"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lx] +</span> +Protestantism of New +York expressed its hostility to the Catholic Church by exacting +subjection “in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil.”</p> + +<p>The position of the Archbishop, both as a churchman and as a citizen, +was impregnable. When Dr. M‘Glynn advocated the plan of Henry George, he +advocated at one and the same time the immoral seizure and confiscation +of the whole income of many persons within the protection of the +Constitution of New York, and the overthrow of the Constitution of that +State and of the United States. It may be within the competency of the +British Parliament to enact such a confiscation of rent without a +revolution, there being not only no allodial tenure of land in Great +Britain, but, it would appear, no limit to the power of a British +Parliament over the lives, liberties, and property of British subjects, +but the will of its members. But it is not within the competency of the +Congress of the United States, or of the Assembly of New York, to do +such a thing, the powers of these bodies being controlled and denned by +written Constitutions, which can only be altered or amended in a +prescribed manner and through prescribed and elaborate forms.</p> + + +<h3><a name="pagelxi" id="pagelxi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lxi] +</span> +VII.</h3> + +<p>By the middle of October 1886 it became clear that Mr. George, whose +candidacy had at first been regarded with indifference by the party +managers, both Democratic and Republican, in New York, would command a +vote certainly larger than that of one of these parties, and possibly +larger than that of either of them. To put him at the head of a poll of +three parties would elect him. This was so apparent that he and his +friends, including Dr. M‘Glynn and Mr. Davitt, were warranted in +expecting a victory.</p> + +<p>It was hardly therefore by a mere coincidence that this precise time was +selected for opening the war in Ireland against Rent. It is quite +possible that if Mr. Dillon and his Parliamentary friends had been in +less of a hurry to open this war before the return of Mr. Davitt from +America, it might have been opened in a manner less “politically +stupid,” if not less “morally wrong.” But, of course, if Mr. Henry +George had been elected Mayor of New York, as he came so near to being +in November 1886, and Mr. Davitt had returned to Ireland with the +prestige of contributing to place him in the municipal chair of the most +important city in the New World, Mr. Dillon and his Parliamentary +friends would pro<a name="pagelxii" id="pagelxii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lxii] +</span> +bably have found it necessary to accept a much less +conspicuous part in the conduct of the campaign.</p> + +<p>It was on the 17th of October 1886 that Mr. John Dillon, M.P., first +promulgated the “Plan of Campaign” at Portumna, in a speech which was +promptly flashed under the Atlantic to New York, there to feed the +flame, already fanned by the eloquence of Dr. M‘Glynn, into a blaze of +enthusiasm for the apostle of the New Gospel of Confiscation.</p> + +<p>Had the “Plan of Campaign” then been met by the highest local authority +of the Catholic Church in Ireland, as Henry George’s doctrine of +Confiscation was met in New York by Archbishop Corrigan, it might never +have been necessary to issue the Papal Decree of April 1888. But while +the Bishop of Limerick unhesitatingly denounced the “Plan of Campaign” +as “politically stupid and morally wrong,” the Archbishop of Dublin +bestowed upon it what may be called a left-handed benediction. Admitting +that it empowered one of the parties to a contract to “fix the terms on +which that contract should continue in force,” the Archbishop actually +condoned the claim of this immoral power by the tenant, on the ground +that the same immoral power had been theretofore exercised by the +landlord! Peter having robbed Paul from January to July, that is, Paul +should be encouraged by his spiritual guides to rob Peter from July to +January!</p> + +<p><a name="pagelxiii" id="pagelxiii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lxiii] +</span> +That the Catholic Church should even seem for a time to speak with two +voices on such a point as the moral quality of political machinery, or +that speaking with one voice upon such a point in America, it should +even seem to speak with another voice in Ireland, would clearly be a +disaster to the Church and to civilisation. From the moment therefore, +in 1886, when the issue between Dr. M‘Glynn and the Archbishop of New +York was defined, as I have shown, and the Irish National League, with a +quasi-indorsement from the Archbishop of Dublin, had arrayed itself +practically and openly on the side of Dr. M‘Glynn and against the +Archbishop of New York, interests far transcending those of any +political party in Ireland, in Great Britain, or in the United States, +were involved. Unfortunately for the immediate and decisive settlement +by Rome of the issue between Dr. M‘Glynn and the Archbishop of New York, +a certain vague but therefore more vexatious measure of countenance had +been given, before that issue was raised, to the theories of Mr. Henry +George by another American prelate, the Cardinal Archbishop of +Baltimore, and by more than one eminent ecclesiastic in Europe. Of +course this would have been impossible had these ecclesiastics +penetrated, like Dr. M‘Glynn, to the heart of Mr. George’s contention, +or discerned with the acumen of the <a name="pagelxiv" id="pagelxiv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lxiv] +</span> +Archbishop of New York the +fundamental difference between any imaginable exercise of the power of +taxation by a Constitutional Government, and Mr. George’s doctrine of +the Confiscation of Rent. But this having occurred, it was inevitable +that Rome, which has to deal with a world-wide and complex system of the +most varied and delicate human affairs, should proceed in the matter +with infinite patience and care. In January 1887 the Propaganda +accordingly cabled thus to the Archbishop of New York,—Dr. M‘Glynn +persisting in his refusal to go to Rome—“for prudential reasons +Propaganda has heretofore postponed action in the case of Dr. M‘Glynn. +The Sovereign Pontiff has now taken the matter into his own hands.”</p> + +<p>In the hands of his Holiness the matter was safe; and in the Papal +Decree of April 20, 1888, we have at once the most conclusive +vindication of the wisdom and courage shown by the Archbishop of New +York in 1886, and the most emphatic condemnation of the attitude assumed +in 1886 by the Archbishop of Dublin.</p> + + +<h3>VIII.</h3> +<p>It must not be assumed that Mr. George has been finally defeated in +America. On the contrary, he was never more active. A legacy left <a name="pagelxv" id="pagelxv"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lxv] +</span> +to +him by an Irish-American for the propagation of his doctrines has just +been declared by the Vice-Chancellor of New Jersey, to be invalid on the +ground that George’s doctrines are “in opposition to the laws”; and this +decision has bred an uproar in the press which is reviving popular +attention all over the country to the doctrines and to their author. He +is astute, persevering, as much in earnest as Mr. Davitt, and as +familiar with the weak points in the political machinery of the United +States as is Mr. Davitt with the weak points in the political machinery +of Great Britain. This is a Presidential year. The election of 1888 will +be decided, as was the election of 1884, in New York. The Democratic +party go into the contest with a New York candidate, President +Cleveland, who was presented to the Convention at St. Louis for +nomination, not by an Irishman from New York, but by an Irishman from +the hopelessly Republican State of Pennsylvania, and whose renomination, +distasteful to the Democratic Governor of the State, was also openly +opposed by the Democratic Mayor of the city of New York, Mr. Hewitt, Mr. +George’s successful competitor in the Municipal election of 1886. +Leaving Dr. M‘Glynn to uphold the Confiscation of Land against the Pope +in New York, as Mr. Davitt, Mr. Dillon, and a certain number of Irish +priests uphold the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting against the <a name="pagelxvi" id="pagelxvi"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lxvi] +</span> +Pope in +Ireland, Mr. George supports President Cleveland, and in so doing +cleverly makes a flank movement towards his “exclusive taxation of +land,” by promoting, under the cover of “Revenue Reform,” an attack on +the indirect taxation from which the Federal Revenues are now mainly +derived. Meanwhile the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore, who is also a +political supporter of President Cleveland, has not yet been confronted +by the supreme authority at Rome with such a final sentence upon the +true nature of Mr. George’s “exclusive taxation of land,” as the +clear-sighted Archbishop of New York is said to be seeking to obtain +from the Holy Office. What the end will be I have little doubt. But for +the moment, it will be seen, the situation in America is only less +confused and troublesome than the situation in Ireland. It is confused +and troubled too, as I have tried in this prologue to show, by forces +identical in character with those which confuse and trouble the +situation in Ireland.</p> + +<p>Of the social conditions amid and against which those forces are working +in America, I believe myself to have some knowledge.</p> + +<p>To get an actual touch and living sense of the social conditions amid +and against which they are working in Ireland was my object, I repeat, +in making the visits, of which this book is a record. More than this I +could not hope, in the time at my <a name="pagelxvii" id="pagelxvii"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg lxvii] +</span> +disposal, to do. With very much less +than this, it appears to me, many persons, whose views of Irish affairs +I had been inclined, before making these visits, to regard with respect, +must have found it possible to rest content.</p> + + + +<h2><a name="page1" id="page1"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 1] +</span> +CHAPTER I.</h2> + + +<p><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Monday, Jan. 30, 1888.</i></span>—I left London last night. The train +was full of people going to attend levees and drawing-rooms about to be +held at Dublin Castle.</p> + +<p>Near Watford we lost half an hour by the breaking of a connecting-rod: +but the London and North-Western is a model railway, and we ran +alongside the pier at Holyhead exactly “on time.” There is no such +railway travelling in America, excepting on the Pennsylvania Central; +and the North-Western sleeping-carriages, if less monumental and +elaborate than ours, are better ventilated, and certainly not less +comfortable.</p> + +<p>I had expected to come upon unusual things and people in Ireland, but I +had not expected to travel thither in company with an Irish Jacobite. +Two of my fellow-passengers, chatting as they <a name="page2" id="page2"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 2] +</span> +smoked their cigarettes +in the little vestibule between the cabins of the carriage, had much to +say about Lord Ashburnham, and the “Order of the White Rose,” and the +Grand Mass to be celebrated to-morrow morning at the Church of the +Carmelites in London, in memory of Charles Edward Stuart, who died at +Rome in 1788, and now lies buried as Charles III., King of Great Britain +and Ireland, in the vaults of the Vatican, together with his father +“James III.,” and his brother “Henry IX.” One of the two was as hot and +earnest about the “Divine Right of Kings” as the parson who, less than +forty years ago, preached a sermon to prove that the great cholera +visitation of 1849 was a direct chastisement of the impiety of the Royal +Mint in dropping the letters D.G. from the first florins of Queen +Victoria issued in that year. He bewailed his sad fate in being called +over to Ireland by family affairs at such a moment, and evidently did +not know that the Mass in question had been countermanded by the +Cardinal Archbishop.</p> + +<p>The incident, odd enough in itself, interested me the more that +yesterday, as it happens, the Cardinal had spoken with me of this +curious affair.</p> + +<p>He heard of it for the first time on Saturday, and, sending at once for +the priest in charge of the <a name="page3" id="page3"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 3] +</span> +Carmelite Church, forbade the celebration. +Later on in the evening, two strangers came to the Archbishop’s house, +and in great agitation besought him to allow the arrangements for the +Mass to go on. He declined to do this, and sent them away impaled on a +dilemma. “What you propose,” said the Cardinal, “is either a piece of +theatrical tomfoolery, in which case it is unfit to be performed in a +church, or it is flat treason, in which case you should be sent to the +Tower!”</p> + +<p>They went away, like the Senatus of Augsburg from the presence of +Napoleon—“<i>très mortifiés et peu contents</i>.” After they had gone, the +Cardinal remembered that for some time past queer documents had reached +him through the post-office, setting forth the doctrine of Divine Right, +and the story of the Stuarts. One of these, which with the rest he had +thrown into the fire, was an elaborate genealogical chart, designed to +show that the crowns of Great Britain and Ireland ought rightfully to be +worn by a certain princess in Bavaria!</p> + +<p>If there is anything more in all this than a new variety of the “blue +China craze,” may it not be taken as a symptom of that vague but clearly +growing dissatisfaction with the nineteenth century doctrine of +government by mere majorities, which <a name="page4" id="page4"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 4] +</span> +is by no means confined to Europe? +This feeling underlies the “National Association” for getting a preamble +put into the Constitution of the United States, “recognising Almighty +God as the source of all authority and power in Civil Government.” There +was such a recognition in the Articles of Confederation of 1781. +Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia should have mentioned to His Holiness +the existence of this Association, when he presented to Leo XIII., the +other day at Rome, President Cleveland’s curious Jubilee gift of an +emblazoned copy of what a Monsignore of my acquaintance calls “the +godless American Constitution.” <a id="footnotetag8" + name="footnotetag8"></a><a href="#footnote8"><sup>8</sup></a></p> + +<p>We made a quick quiet passage to Kingstown. These boats—certainly the +best appointed of their sort afloat—are owned, I find, in Dublin, and +managed exclusively by their Irish owners, to whom the credit therefore +belongs of making the mail service between Holyhead and Kingstown as +admirable, in <a name="page5" id="page5"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 5] +</span> +all respects, as the mail services between Dover and the +Continental ports are not.</p> + +<p>I landed at Kingstown with Lord Ernest Hamilton, M.P. for North Tyrone, +with whom I have arranged an expedition to Gweedore in Donegal, one of +the most ill-famed of the “congested districts” of Ireland, and just now +made a point of special interest by the arrest of Father M‘Fadden, the +parish priest of the place, for “criminally conspiring to compel and +induce certain tenants not to fulfil their legal obligations.”</p> + +<p>I could understand such a prosecution as this in America, where the +Constitution makes it impossible even for Congress to pass laws +“impairing the validity of contracts.” But as the British Parliament has +been passing such laws for Ireland ever since Mr. Butt in 1870 raised +the standard of Irish Land Reform under the name of Home Rule, it seems +a little absurd, not to say Hibernian, of the British authorities to +prosecute Father M‘Fadden merely for bettering their own instruction in +his own way. I could better understand a prosecution of Father M‘Fadden +on such grounds by the authorities of his own Church.</p> + +<p>A step from the boat at Kingstown puts you into the train for Dublin. +Before we got into <a name="page6" id="page6"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 6] +</span> +motion, a weird shape as of one just escaped from +the Wild West show of Buffalo Bill peered in at the window, inviting us +to buy the morning papers, or a copy of “the greatest book ever +published, ‘Paddy at Home!’” This proved to be a translation of M. de +Mandat Grancey’s lively volume, <i>Chez Paddy</i>. The vendor, “Davy,” is one +of the “chartered libertines” of Dublin. He is supposed to be, and I +dare say is, a warm Nationalist, but he has a keen eye to business, and +alertly suits his cries to his customers. Recognising the Conservative +member for North Tyrone, he promptly recommended us to buy the <i>Irish +Times</i> and the <i>Express</i> as “the two best papers in all Ireland.” But he +smiled approval when I asked for the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i> also, in which +I found a report of a speech delivered yesterday by Mr. Davitt at +Rathkeale, chiefly remarkable for a sensible protest against the +ridiculous and rantipole abuse lavished upon Mr. Balfour by the +Nationalist orators and newspapers. I am not surprised to see this. Mr. +Davitt has the stuff in him of a serious revolutionary leader, and no +such man can stomach the frothy and foolish vituperation to which +parliamentary agitators are addicted, not in Ireland only. Unlike Mr. +Parnell, who is forced to have <a name="page7" id="page7"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 7] +</span> +one voice for New York and Cincinnati, +and another voice for Westminster, Mr. Davitt is free to be always +avowedly bent on bringing about a thorough Democratic revolution in +Ireland. I believe him to be too able a man to imagine, as some of the +Irish agitators do, that this can be done without the consent of +Democratic England, and he has lived too much in England, and knows the +English democracy too well, I suspect, not to know that to abuse an +executive officer for determination and vigour is the surest way to make +him popular. Calling Mr. Forster “Buckshot” Forster did him no harm. On +the contrary, the epithet might have helped him to success had not Mr. +Gladstone given way behind him at the most critical moment of his +grapple with the revolutionary organisation in Ireland. We hear a great +deal about resistance to tyrants being obedience to God, but I fear that +obedience to God is not the strongest natural passion of the human +heart, and I doubt whether resistance to tyrants can often be promoted +by putting about a general conviction that the tyrant has a thumping big +stick in his hand, and may be relied upon to use it. Even Tom Paine had +the wit to see that it was his “good heart” which brought Louis XVI. to +the scaffold.</p> + +<p>Nobody who had not learned from the speeches <a name="page8" id="page8"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 8] +</span> +made in England, and the +cable despatches sent to America, that freedom of speech and of the +press has been brutally trampled under foot in Ireland by a “Coercion” +Government would ever suspect it from reading the Dublin papers which I +this morning bought.</p> + +<p>As a Democratic journalist I had some practical knowledge of a true +“Coercion” government in America a quarter of a century ago. The +American editor who had ventured in 1862 to publish in a New York or +Philadelphia newspaper a letter from Washington, speaking of the +Unionist Government by President Lincoln, as the letter from London +published to-day in the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i> speaks of the Unionist +Government of Lord Salisbury, would have found himself in one of the +casemates of Fort Lafayette within twenty-four hours. Our Republican +rulers acted upon the maxim laid down by Mr. Tilden’s friend, Montgomery +Blair, <a id="footnotetag9" + name="footnotetag9"></a><a href="#footnote9"><sup>9</sup></a> that “to await the results of slow judicial prosecution is to +allow crime to be consummated, with the expectation of subsequent +punishment, instead of preventing its accomplishment by prompt and +direct interference.” Perhaps Americans take their Government more +<a name="page9" id="page9"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 9] +</span> +seriously than Englishmen do. Certainly we stand by it more sternly in +bad weather. Even so good a Constitutionalist as Professor Parsons at +Harvard, I remember, when a student asked him if he would not suspend +the <i>Habeas Corpus</i> in the case of a man caught hauling down the +American flag, promptly replied, “I would not suspend the <i>Habeas +Corpus</i>; I would suspend the <i>Corpus</i>.”</p> + +<p>We found no “hansoms” at the Dublin Station, only “outside cars,” and +cabs much neater than the London four-wheelers. One of these brought us +at a good pace to Maple’s Hotel in Kildare Street, a large, +old-fashioned but clean and comfortable house. My windows look down upon +a stately edifice of stone erecting on Kildare Street for all sorts of +educational and “exhibitional” purposes, with the help of an Imperial +grant, I am told, and to be called the Leinster Hall. The style is +decidedly composite, with colonnades and loggie and domes and porticos, +and recalls the ancient Roman buildings depicted in that fresco of a +belated slave-girl knocking at her mistress’s door which with its +companion pieces is fast fading away upon the walls of the “House of +Livia” on the Palatine.</p> + +<p>At one end of this street is the fashionable and hospitable Kildare +Street Club; at the other <a name="page10" id="page10"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 10] +</span> +the Shelburne Hotel, known to all Americans. +This seems to have been “furbished-up” since I last saw it. There, for +the last time as it proved, I saw and had speech of my friend of many +years, the prince of all preachers in our time, Father Burke of Tallaght +and of San Clemente.</p> + +<p>I had telegraphed to him from London that I should halt in Dublin for a +day, on my way to America, to see him. He came betimes, to find me +almost as badly-off as St. Lawrence upon his gridiron. The surgeon whom +the hotel people had hastily summoned to relieve me from a sudden attack +of that endemic Irish ecstasy, the lumbago, had applied what he called +the “heroic treatment” on my telling him that I had no time to be ill, +but must spend that day with Father Burke, dine that night with Mr. +Irving and Mr. Toole, and go on the next day to America.</p> + +<p>“What has this Inquisitor done to you?” queried Father Tom.</p> + +<p>“Cauterised me with chloroform.”</p> + +<p>“Oh! that’s a modern improvement! Let me see—” and, scrutinising the +results, he said, with a merry twinkle in his deep, dark eyes—“I see +how it is! They brought you a veterinary!”</p> + +<p><a name="page11" id="page11"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 11] +</span> +This was in 1878. On that too brief, delightful morning, we talked of +all things—supralunar, lunar, and sublunary. Much of Wales, I remember, +where he had been making a visit. “A glorious country,” he said, “and +the Welsh would have been Irish, only they lost the faith.” Full of love +for Ireland as he was, he was beginning then to be troubled by symptoms +in the Nationalist movement, which could not be regarded with composure +by one who, in his youth at Rome, had seen, with me, the devil of +extremes drive Italy down a steep place into the sea.</p> + +<p>Five years afterwards I landed at Queenstown, in July 1883, intending to +visit him at Tallaght. But when the letter which I sent to announce my +coming reached the monastery, the staunchest Soldier of the Church in +Ireland lay there literally “dead on the field of honour.” Chatham, in +the House of Lords, John Quincy Adams, in the House of Representatives, +fell in harness, but neither death so speaks to the heart as the simple +and sublime self-sacrifice of the great Dominican, dragging himself from +his dying bed into Dublin to spend the last splendour of his genius and +his life for the starving children of the poor in Donegal.</p> + +<p><a name="page12" id="page12"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 12] +</span> +What would I not give for an hour with him now!</p> + +<p>After breakfast I went out to find Mr. Davitt, hoping he might suggest +some way of seeing the Nationalist meeting on Wednesday night without +undergoing the dismal penance of sitting out all the speeches. I wished +also to ask him why at Rathkeale he talked about the Dunravens as +“absentees.” He was born in Lord Lucan’s country, and may know little of +Limerick, but he surely ought to know that Adare Manor was built of +Irish materials, and by Irish workmen, under the eye of Lord Dunraven, +all the finest ornamental work, both in wood and in stone, of the +mansion, being done by local mechanics; and also that the present owners +of Adare spend a large part of every year in the country, and are +deservedly popular. He was not to be found at the National League +headquarters, nor yet at the Imperial Hotel, which is his usual resort, +as Morrison’s is the resort of Mr. Parnell. So I sent him a note through +the Post-Office.</p> + +<p>“You had better seal it with wax,” said a friend, in whose chambers I +wrote it.</p> + +<p>“Pray, why?”</p> + +<p><a name="page13" id="page13"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 13] +</span> +“Oh! all the letters to well-known people that are not opened by the +police are opened by the Nationalist clerks in the Post-Offices. ’Tis a +way we’ve always had with us in Ireland!”</p> + +<p>I had some difficulty in finding the local habitation of the “National +League.” I had been told it was in O’Connell Street, and sharing the +usual and foolish aversion of my sex to asking questions on the highway, +I perambulated a good many streets and squares before I discovered that +it has pleased the local authorities to unbaptize Sackville Street, “the +finest thoroughfare in Europe,” and convert it into “O’Connell Street.” +But they have failed so ignominiously that the National League finds +itself obliged to put up a huge sign over its doorways, notifying all +the world that the offices are not where they appear to be in Upper +Sackville Street at all, but in “O’Connell Street.” The effect is as +ludicrous as it is instructive. Oddly enough, they have not attempted to +change the name of another thoroughfare which keeps green the “pious and +immortal memory” of William III., dear to all who in England or America +go in fear and horror of the scarlet woman that sitteth upon the seven +hills! There is <a name="page14" id="page14"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 14] +</span> +a fashion, too, in Dublin of putting images of little +white horses into the fanlights over the doorways, which seems to smack +of an undue reverence for the Protestant Succession and the House of +Hanover.</p> + +<p>What you expect is the thing you never find in Ireland. I had rather +thoughtlessly taken it for granted the city would be agog with the great +Morley reception which is to come off on Wednesday night. There is a +good deal about it in the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i> to-day, but chiefly +touching a sixpenny quarrel which has sprung up between the Reception +Committee and the Trades Council over the alleged making of contracts by +the Committee with “houses not employing members of the regular trades.”</p> + +<p>For this the typos and others propose to “boycott” the Committee and the +Reception and the Liberators from over the sea. From casual +conversations I gather that there is much more popular interest in the +release, on Wednesday, of Mr. T.D. Sullivan, ex-Lord Mayor, champion +swimmer, M.P., poet, and patriot. A Nationalist acquaintance of mine +tells me that in Tullamore Mr. Sullivan has been most prolific of +poetry. He has composed <a name="page15" id="page15"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 15] +</span> +a song which I am afraid will hardly please my +Irish Nationalist friends in America:</p> + +<p class="poem">“We are sons of Sister Isles,<br /> + Englishmen and Irishmen,<br /> + On our friendship Heaven smiles;<br /> + Tyrant’s schemes and Tory wiles<br /> + Ne’er shall make us foes again.”<br /> +</p> + +<p>There is to be a Drawing-Room, too, at the Castle on Wednesday night. +One would not unnaturally gather from the “tall talk” in Parliament and +the press that this conjuncture of a great popular demonstration in +favour of Irish nationality, with a display of Dublin fashion doing +homage to the alien despot, might be ominous of “bloody noses and +cracked crowns.” Not a bit of it! I asked my jarvey, for instance, on an +outside car this afternoon, whether he expected a row to result from +these counter currents of the classes and the masses. “A row!” he +replied, looking around at me in amazement. “A row is it? and what for +would there be? Shure they’ll be through with the procession in time to +see the carriages!”</p> + +<p>Obviously he saw nothing in either show to offend anybody; though he +could clearly understand that an intelligent citizen might be vexed <a name="page16" id="page16"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 16] +</span> +if +he found himself obliged to sacrifice one of them in order to fully +enjoy the other.</p> + +<p>Lady Londonderry, it seems, is not yet well enough to cross the Channel; +but the Duchess of Marlborough, who is staying here with her nephew the +Lord-Lieutenant, has volunteered to assist him in holding the +Drawing-Room, whereupon a grave question has arisen in Court circles as +to whether the full meed of honours due to a Vice-Queen regnant ought to +be paid also to an ex-Vice-Queen. This is debated by the Dublin dames as +hotly as official women in Washington fight over the eternal question of +the relative precedence due to the wives of Senators and “Cabinet +Ministers.” It will be a dark day for the democracy when women get the +suffrage—and use it.</p> + +<p>At luncheon to-day I met the Attorney-General, Mr. O’Brien, who, with +prompt Irish hospitality, asked me to dine with him to-morrow night, and +Mr. Wilson of the London <i>Times</i>, an able writer on Irish questions from +the English point of view. Mr. Balfour, who was expected, did not +appear, being detained by guests at his own residence in the Park.</p> + +<p>I went to see him in the afternoon at the Castle, <a name="page17" id="page17"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 17] +</span> +and found him in +excellent spirits; certainly the mildest-mannered and most sensible +despot who ever trampled in the dust the liberties of a free people. He +was quite delightful about the abuse which is now daily heaped upon him +in speeches and in the press, and talked about it in a casual dreamy way +which reminded me irresistibly of President Lincoln, whom, if in nothing +else, he resembles alike in longanimity and in length of limb. He had +seen Davitt’s <i>caveat</i>, filed at Rathkeale, against the foolishness of +trying to frighten him out of his line of country by calling him bad +names. “Davitt is quite right,” he said, “the thing must be getting to +be a bore to the people, who are not such fools as the speakers take +them to be. One of the stenographers told me the other day that they had +to invent a special sign for the phrase ‘bloody and brutal Balfour,’ it +is used so often in the speeches.” About the prosecution of Father +M‘Fadden of Gweedore, he knew nothing beyond the evidence on which it +had been ordered. This he showed me. If the first duty of a government +is to govern, which is the American if not the English way of looking at +it, Father M‘Fadden must have meant to get himself into trouble when <a name="page18" id="page18"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 18] +</span> +he +used such language as this to his people: “I am the law in Gweedore; I +despise the recent Coercion Act; if I got a summons to-morrow, I would +not obey it.” From language like this to the attitude of Father M‘Glynn +in New York, openly flouting the authority of the Holy See itself, is +but an easy and an inevitable step.</p> + +<p>Neither “Home Rule” nor any other “Rule” can exist in a country in which +men whose words carry any weight are suffered to take up such an +attitude. It is just the attitude of the “Comeouters” in New England +during my college days at Harvard, when Parker Pillsbury and Stephen +Foster used to saw wood and blow horns on the steps of the +meeting-houses during service, in order to free their consciences “and +protest against the Sabbatarian laws.”</p> + +<p>To see a Catholic priest assume this attitude is almost as amazing as to +see an educated Englishman like Mr. Wilfrid Blunt trying to persuade +Irishmen that Mr. Balfour made him the confidant of a grisly scheme for +doing sundry Irish leaders to death by maltreating them in prison.</p> + +<p>I see with pleasure that the masculine instincts of Mr. Davitt led him +to allude to this nonsense <a name="page19" id="page19"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 19] +</span> +yesterday at Rathkeale in a half +contemptuous way. Mr. Balfour spoke of it to-day with generosity and +good feeling. “When I first heard of it,” he said, “I resented it, of +course, as an outrageous imputation on Mr. Blunt’s character, and +denounced it accordingly. What I have since learned leads me to fear +that he really may have said something capable of being construed in +this absurd sense, but if he did, it must have been under the +exasperation produced by finding himself locked up.”</p> + +<p>I heard the story of Mr. Balfour’s meeting with Mr. Blunt very plainly +and vigorously told, while I was staying the other day at Knoyle House, +in the immediate neighbourhood of Clouds, where the two were guests +under conditions which should be at least as sacred in the eyes of +Britons as of Bedouins. In Wiltshire nobody seemed for a moment to +suppose it possible that Mr. Blunt can have really deceived himself as +to the true nature of any conversation he may have had with Mr. Balfour. +This is paying a compliment to Mr. Blunt’s common sense at the expense +of his imagination. In any view of the case, to lie in wait at the lips +of a fellow guest in the house of a common friend, for the counts of a +political indictment <a name="page20" id="page20"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 20] +</span> +against him, is certainly a proceeding, as Davitt +said yesterday of Mr. Blunts tale of horror, quite “open to question.” +But, as Mr. Blunt himself has sung, “’Tis conscience makes us sinners, +not our sin,” and I have no doubt the author of the <i>Poems of Proteus</i> +really persuaded himself that he was playing lawn tennis and smoking +cigarettes in Wiltshire with a modern Alva, cynically vain of his own +dark and bloody designs. Now that he finds himself struck down by the +iron hand of this remorseless tyrant, why should he not cry aloud and +warn, not Ireland alone, but humanity, against the appalling crimes +meditated, not this time in the name of “Liberty,” but in the name of +Order?</p> + +<p>What especially struck me in talking with Mr. Balfour to-day was his +obviously unaffected interest in Ireland as a country rather than in +Ireland as a cock-pit. It is the condition of Ireland, and not the +gabble of parties at Westminster about the condition of Ireland, which +is uppermost in his thoughts. This, I should say, is the best guarantee +of his eventual success.</p> + +<p>The weakest point of the modern English system of government by Cabinets +surely is the evanescent <a name="page21" id="page21"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 21] +</span> +tenure by which every Minister holds his +place. Not only has the Cabinet itself no fixed term of office, being in +truth but a Committee of the Legislature clothed with executive +authority, but any member of the Cabinet may be forced by events or by +intrigues to leave it. In this way Mr. Forster, when he filled the place +now held by Mr. Balfour, found himself driven into resigning it by Mr. +Gladstone’s indisposition or inability to resist the peremptory pressure +put upon the British Premier at a critical moment by our own Government +in the spring of 1882. Mr. Balfour is in no such peril, perhaps. He is +more sure, I take it, of the support of Lord Salisbury and his +colleagues than Mr. Forster ever was of the support of Mr. Gladstone; +and the “Coercion” law which it is his duty to administer contains no +such sweeping and despotic clause as that provision in Mr. Gladstone’s +“Coercion Act” of 1881, under which persons claiming American +citizenship were arrested and indefinitely locked up on “suspicion,” +until it became necessary for our Government, even at the risk of war, +to demand their trial or release.</p> + +<p>But if Mr. Balfour were Chief Secretary for Ire<a name="page22" id="page22"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 22] +</span> +land “on the American +plan”; if he held his office, that is, for a fixed term of years, and +cared nothing for a renewal of the lease, he could not be more +pre-occupied than he seems to be with simply getting his executive duty +done, or less pre-occupied than he seems to be with what may be thought +of his way of getting it done. If all executive officers were of this +strain, Parliamentary government might stand in the dock into which +Prince Albert put it with more composure, and await the verdict with +more confidence. Surely if Ireland is ever to govern herself, she must +learn precisely the lesson which Mr. Balfour, I believe, is trying to +teach her—that the duty of executive officers to execute the laws is +not a thing debateable, like the laws themselves, nor yet determinable, +like the enactment of laws, by taking the yeas and the nays. How well +this lesson shall be taught must depend, of course, very much upon the +quality of the men who make up the machine of Government in Ireland. +That the Irish have almost as great a passion for office-holding as the +Spanish, we long ago learned in New York, where the percentage of Irish +office-holders considerably exceeds the percentage of Irish citizens. +And as all the witnesses agree that the Irish Government <a name="page23" id="page23"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 23] +</span> +has for years +been to an inordinate degree a Government by patronage, there must +doubtless be some reasonable ground for the very general impression that +“the Castle” needs overhauling. It is not true, however, I find, +although I have often heard it asserted in England, that the Irish +Government is officered by Englishmen and Scotchmen exclusively. The +murdered Mr. Burke certainly was not an Englishman; and there is an +apparent predominance of Irishmen in the places of trust and power. That +things at the Castle cannot be nearly so bad, moreover, as we in America +are asked to believe, would seem to be demonstrated by the affectionate +admiration with which Lord Spencer is now regarded by men like Mr. +O’Brien, M.P., who only the other day seemed to regard him as an unfit +survival of the Cities of the Plain. If what these men then said of him, +and of the Castle generally, was even very partially true—or if being +wholly false, these men believed it to be true—every man of them who +now touches Lord Spencer’s hand is defiled, or defiles him.</p> + +<p>But that concerns them. Their present attitude makes Lord Spencer a good +witness when he declares that the Civil servants of the Crown in +<a name="page24" id="page24"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 24] +</span> +Ireland, called “the Castle,” are “diligent, desire to do their duty +with impartiality, and to hold an even balance between opposing +interests in Ireland,” and maintains that they “will act with +impartiality and vigour if led by men who know their own minds, and +desire to be firm in the Government of the country.” All this being +true, Mr. Balfour ought to make his Government a success.</p> + +<p>Mr. Balfour introduced me to Sir West Ridgway, the successor of Sir +Redvers Buller, who has been rewarded for the great services he did his +country in Asia, by being flung into this seething Irish stew. He takes +it very composedly, though the climate does not suit him, he says; and +has a quiet workmanlike way with him, which impresses one favourably at +once.</p> + +<p>All the disorderly part of Ireland (for disorder is far from being +universal in Ireland) comes under his direct administration, being +divided into five divisions on the lines originally laid down in 1881 by +Mr. Forster. Over each of these divisions presides a functionary styled +a “Divisional Magistrate.” The title is not happily chosen, the powers +of these officers being rather like those confided to a French Prefect +than like those which are associated in <a name="page25" id="page25"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 25] +</span> +England and America with the +title of a “magistrate.” They have no judicial power, and nothing to do +with the trial of offenders. Their business is to protect life and +property, and to detect and bring to justice offenders against the law. +They can only be called Magistrates as the Executive of the United +States is sometimes called the “Chief Magistrate.”</p> + +<p>One of the most conspicuous and trusted of these Divisional Magistrates, +I find, is Colonel Turner, who was Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, +under Lord Aberdeen. He is now denounced by the Irish Nationalists as a +ruthless tyrant. He was then denounced by the Irish Tories as a +sympathiser with Home Rule. It is probable, therefore, that he must be a +conscientious and loyal executive officer, who understands and acts upon +the plain lines of his executive duty.</p> + +<p>I dined to-night at the Castle, not in the great hall or banqueting-room +of St. Patrick, which was designed by that connoisseur in magnificence, +the famous Lord Chesterfield, during his Viceroyalty, but in a very +handsome room of more moderate dimensions. Much of the semi-regal state +observed at the Castle in the days of the Georges has been put down with +the Battle-Axe Guards of the Lord-<a name="page26" id="page26"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 26] +</span> +Lieutenant, and with the +basset-tables of the “Lady-Lieutenant,” as the Vice-queen used to be +called. At dinner the Viceroy no longer drinks to the pious and immortal +memory of William III., or to the “1st of July 1690.” No more does the +band play “Lillibullero,” and no longer is the pleasant custom +maintained, after a dinner to the city authorities of Dublin, of a +“loving cup” passed around the table, into which each guest, as it +passed, dropped a gold piece for the good of the household. Only so much +ceremonial is now observed as suffices to distinguish the residence of +the Queen’s personal representative from that of a great officer of +State, or an opulent subject of high rank.</p> + +<p>Dublin Castle indeed is no more of a palace than it is of a castle. Its +claim to the latter title rests mainly on the fine old “Bermingham” +tower of the time of King John; its claim to the former on the Throne +Room, the Council Chamber, and the Hall of St. Patrick already +mentioned. This last is a very stately and sumptuous apartment. Just +twenty years ago the most brilliant banquet modern Dublin has seen was +given in this hall by the late Duke of Abercorn to the Prince and +Princess of Wales, to celebrate the installation of the Prince as a +Knight <a name="page27" id="page27"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 27] +</span> +of St. Patrick. It is a significant fact, testified to by all +the most candid Irishmen I have ever known, that upon the occasion of +this visit to Ireland in 1868 the Prince and Princess were received with +unbounded enthusiasm by the people of all classes. Yet only the year +before, in 1867, the explosion of some gunpowder at Clerkenwell by a +band of desperadoes, to the death and wounding of many innocent people, +had brought the question of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, in +the mind of Mr. Gladstone, within the domain of “practical politics”! By +parity of reasoning, one would think, the reception of the heir-apparent +and his wife in Ireland ought to have taken that question out of the +domain of “practical politics.”</p> + +<p>The Prince of Wales, it is known, brought away from this visit an +impression that the establishment of a prince of the blood in Ireland, +or a series of royal visits to Ireland, would go far towards pacifying +the relations between the two Islands. Mr. Gladstone thought his +Disestablishment would quite do the work. Events have shown that Mr. +Gladstone made a sad mistake as to the effect of his measure. The pains +which, I am told, were taken by Mr. Deasy, M.P., and others to organise +hostile demonstrations <a name="page28" id="page28"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 28] +</span> +at one or two points in the south of Ireland, +during a subsequent visit of the Prince and Princess, would seem to show +that in the opinion of the Nationalists themselves, the impression of +the Prince was more accurate than were the inferences of the Premier.</p> + +<p>There is nothing froward or formidable in the aspect of Dublin Castle. +It has neither a portcullis nor a drawbridge. People go in and out of it +as freely as through the City Hall in New York. There is a show of +sentries at the main entrance, and in one of the courts this morning the +picturesque band of a Scotch regiment was playing to the delectation of +a small but select audience of urchins and little girls. A Dublin mob, +never so little in earnest and led by a dozen really determined men, +ought to be able to make as short work of it as the hordes of the +Faubourgs in Paris made of the Bastille, with its handful of invalids, +on that memorable 14th of July, about which so many lies have passed +into history, and so much effervescent nonsense is still annually talked +and printed.</p> + +<p>The greater part of the Castle as it existed when the Irish Parliaments +sat there under Elizabeth, and just before the last Catholic Viceroy +made Protestantism penal, and planned the transformation of <a name="page29" id="page29"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 29] +</span> +Ireland +into a French province, was burned in the time of James II. The Earl of +Arran then reported to his father that “the king had lost nothing but +six barrels of gunpowder, and the worst castle in the worst situation in +Christendom.”</p> + +<p>Here, as at Ottawa, a viceregal dinner-table is set off by the neat +uniforms and skyblue facings of the aides-de-camp and secretaries. For +some mysterious reason Lord Spencer put these officers into chocolate +coats with white facings. But the new order soon gave place to the old +again.</p> + +<p>At the dinner to-night was Lord Ormonde, who is returning to London, but +kindly promised to make arrangements for showing me at Kilkenny Castle +the muniment room of the Butlers, which contains one of the most +valuable private collections of charters and State papers in the realm.</p> + +<p><span class="diary"><i>Tuesday, Jan. 31.</i></span>—I lunched to-day with Sir Michael Morris, the Lord +Chief Justice of Ireland, whom I had last seen in Rome at the Jubilee +Mass of His Holiness. Sir Michael is one of the recognised lights of +social life and of the law in Dublin. While he was in Rome some one +highly commended him in the presence of that staunch Nationalist the +Archbishop of Dublin, who assented so far as to say, <a name="page30" id="page30"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 30] +</span> +“Yes, yes, there +are worse fellows in Dublin than that Morris!” It would be hard to find +a more typical Irishman of the better sort than Sir Michael, a man more +sure, in the words of Sheridan, to “carry his honour and his brogue +unstained to the grave.”</p> + +<p>The brogue of Sir Michael, it is said, made his fortune in the House of +Commons. It has hardly the glow which made the brogue of Father Burke a +memory as of music in the ears of all who heard it, and differs from +that miraculous gift of the tongue as a ripe wine of Bordeaux differs +from a ripe wine of Burgundy. But to the ordinary brogue of the street +and the stage, it is as is a Brane Mouton Rothschild of 1868 to the +casual Médoc of a Parisian restaurant. “Do you know Father Healy?” said +one of the company to whom I spoke of it; “he was at a wedding with Sir +Michael. As the happy pair drove off under the usual shower of rice and +old slippers, Sir Michael said to the Father, ‘How I wish I had +something to throw after her!’ ‘Ah, throw your brogue after her,’ +replied the Father.”</p> + +<p>This brogue comes to Sir Michael lawfully enough. He belongs to one of +the fourteen tribes of Galway. His father, Mr. Martin Morris, was High +Sheriff of the County of Galway City in 1841, <a name="page31" id="page31"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 31] +</span> +being the first Catholic +who had served that office since the time of Tyrconnel. His mother was a +Blake of Galway, and the family seat, Spiddal, came to them through a +Fitzpatrick. “Remember these things,” said one of the guests to me, a +Catholic from the south of Ireland, “and remember that Sir Michael, like +myself, and, so far as I know, like every Irish Catholic in this room +to-day, is a thoroughgoing Unionist, who would think it midsummer +madness to hand Ireland over to the ‘Home Rule’ of the ‘uncrowned king,’ +Mr. Parnell, who hasn’t a drop, I believe, of Irish blood in his veins, +and who, whatever else he may be, is certainly not a Catholic. Didn’t +Parnell vote at first against religion and in favour of Bradlaugh? and +didn’t he do this to force the bargain for the clerical franchise at the +Parliamentary conventions?”</p> + +<p>“But there are some good Catholics, are there not,” I answered, “and +some good Christians, and of Irish blood too, among the associates of +Mr. Parnell?”</p> + +<p>“Associates!” he exclaimed; “if you know anything of Mr. Parnell, you +must know that he has no associates. He has followers, and he has +instruments, but he has no associates. The only Irish<a name="page32" id="page32"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 32] +</span> +men whom he has +really taken counsel with, or treated, I was about to say, with ordinary +civility, were Egan and Brennan. His manner with them was always +conspicuously different from his cold and almost contemptuous bearing +towards the men whom he commands in Parliament, and Egan, who directs +his forces in your country, rewards him by calling him ‘the great and +gifted leader of <i>our</i> race!’ ‘Our race’ indeed! Parnell comes of the +conquering race in Ireland, and he never forgets it, or lets his +subordinates forget it. I was in Galway when he came over there suddenly +to quell the revolt organised by Healy. The rebels were at white-heat +before he came. But he strode in among them like a huntsman among the +hounds—marched Healy off into a little room, and brought him out again +in ten minutes, cowed and submissive, but filled, as anybody can see, +ever since, with a dull smouldering hate which will break out one of +these days, if a good and safe opportunity offers.”</p> + +<p>“How do you account, then,” I asked, “for the support which all these +men give Mr. Parnell?”</p> + +<p>“For the support which they give him!” exclaimed my new acquaintance, +“for the support they give him! Bless your heart, my dear sir, it is <a name="page33" id="page33"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 33] +</span> +he +gives them the support! Barring Biggar, who, to do him justice, is as +free with his pocket as he is with his tongue—and no man can say more +for anybody than that—barring Biggar and M‘Kenna and M‘Carthy, and +perhaps a dozen more, all these men are nominated by Mr. Parnell, and +draw salaries from the body he controls; they are paid members, like the +working-men members. Support indeed!”</p> + +<p>“But the constituencies,” I urged, “surely the voters must know and care +something about their representatives?”</p> + +<p>The gentleman from the south of Ireland laughed aloud. “Very clear it +is,” he said, “that you have made your acquaintance with my dear +countrymen in America, or in England perhaps—not in Ireland. Look at +Thurles, in January ’85! The voters selected O’Ryan; Parnell ordered him +off, and made them take O’Connor! The voters take their members to-day +from the League—that is, from Mr. Parnell, just as they used to take +them from the landlords. What Lord Clanricarde said in Galway, when he +made all those fagot votes by cutting up his farms, that he could return +his grey mare to Parliament if he liked, Mr. Parnell can say with just +as much truth to-day of any Nationalist <a name="page34" id="page34"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 34] +</span> +seat in the country. I tell +you, the secret of his power is that he understands the Irish people, +and how to ride them. He is a Protestant-ascendency man by blood, and he +is fighting the unlucky devils of landlords to-day by the old ‘landlord’ +methods that came to him with his mother’s milk—that is rightly +speaking, I should say, with his father’s,” and here he burst out +laughing at his own bull—“for his mother, poor lady, she was an +American.”</p> + +<p>“Thank you,” I said.</p> + +<p>“Oh, no harm at all! But did you ever know her? An odd woman she was, +and is.”</p> + +<p>“Her father,” I replied, “was a gallant American sailor of Scottish +blood.”</p> + +<p>“Oh yes, and is it true that he got a great hatred of England from being +captured in the <i>Chesapeake</i> by the English Captain Broke? I always +heard that.”</p> + +<p>I explained that there were historical difficulties in the way of +accepting this legend, and that Commodore Stewart’s experiences, during +the war of 1812, had been those of a captor, not of a captive.</p> + +<p>“Well, a clever woman she is, only very odd. She was a great terror, I +remember, to a worthy Protestant parson, near Avondale; she used to come +at him quite unexpectedly with such a power of <a name="page35" id="page35"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 35] +</span> +theological discussion, +and put him beside himself with questions he couldn’t answer.”</p> + +<p>“Very likely,” I replied, “but she has transferred her interest to +politics now; and she had the good sense, at the Chicago Convention in +1886, to warn the physical-force men against showing their hand too +plainly in support of her son.”</p> + +<p>A curious conversation, as showing the personal bitterness of politics +here. It reminded me of Dr. Duche’s description in his famous letter to +Washington of the party which carried the Declaration of Independence +through the Continental Congress. But it had a special interest for me +as confirming the inferences I have often drawn as to Mr. Parnell’s +relations with his party, from his singular and complete isolation among +them. I remember the profound astonishment of my young friend Mr. D——, +of New York, who, as the son of, perhaps, the most conspicuous and +influential American advocate of Home Rule, had confidently counted upon +seeing Mr. Parnell in London, when he found that the most important +member of the Irish Parliamentary party, in point of position, was +utterly unable to get at Mr. Parnell for him, or even to ascertain where +Mr. Parnell could be reached by letter.</p> + +<p><a name="page36" id="page36"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 36] +</span> +Though a staunch Unionist, Sir Michael is no blind admirer of things as +they are, nor even a thick-and-thin partisan of English rule in Ireland. +“If you will have the Irish difficulty in a nutshell,” he is reported to +have said to a prosy British politician, “here it is: It is simply a +very dull people trying to govern a very bright people.”</p> + +<p>He has quick and wide intellectual sympathies, or, as he put it to a +lawyer who was kindly enlightening him about some matters of scientific +notoriety, “I don’t live in a cupboard myself.” His own terse summing up +of the Irish difficulty could hardly be better illustrated than by the +current story of the discomfiture of an English Treasury official, who +came into his official chambers to complain of the expenditure for fuel +in the Court over which he presides. The Lord Chief-Justice looked at +him quietly while he set forth his errand, and then, ringing a bell on +his table, said to the servant who responded: “Tell Mary the man has +come about the coals.”</p> + +<p>At Sir Michael’s I had some conversation also with Mr. Justice Murphy, +who won a great reputation in connection with those murders in the +Phoenix Park, which went near to breaking the heart and hope of poor +Father Burke, and with <a name="page37" id="page37"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 37] +</span> +Lord and Lady Ashbourne, whom I had not seen +since I met them some years ago under the hospitable roof of Lord +Houghton. Lord Ashbourne was then Mr. Gibson, Q.C. He is now the Lord +Chancellor of Ireland, and the author of the Land Purchase Act of 1885, +which many well-informed and sensible men regard as the Magna Charta of +peace in Ireland, while others of equal authority assure me that by +reversing the principle of the Bright clauses in the Act of 1871 it has +encouraged the tenants to expect an eventual concession of the +land-ownership to them on merely nominal terms.</p> + +<p>Naturally enough, he is carped at and reviled almost as much by his +political friends as by his political foes. In the time of Sir Michael +Hicks Beach I remember hearing Lord Ashbourne denounced most bitterly by +a leading Tory light as “a Home Ruler in disguise, who had bedevilled +the Irish Question by undertaking to placate the country if it could be +left to be managed by him and by Lord Carnarvon.”</p> + +<p>The disguise appears to me quite impenetrable, and after my talk with +him, I remembered a characteristic remark about him made to me by Lord +Houghton after he had gone away: “A very <a name="page38" id="page38"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 38] +</span> +clever man with a very clever +wife. He ought to be on our side, but he has everything the Tories lack, +so they have stolen him, and will make much of him, and keep him. But +one of these days he will do them some great service, and then they’ll +never forgive him!”</p> + +<p>Lord Ashbourne went off early to look up some fine old wooden +mantelpieces and wainscotings in the “slums” of Dublin. A brisk trade it +seems has for some time been driven in such relics of the departed +splendour of the Irish capital. In the last century, when Dublin was +further from London than London now is from New York, the Irish +landlords were more fond of living in Dublin than a good many of the +Irish Nationalists I know now are. In this way the Iron Duke came to be +born in Dublin, where his father and mother had a handsome town house, +whereas when they went up to London they used to lodge, according to old +Lady Cork, “over a pastry-cook’s in Oxford Street.” In those days there +must have been a good many fine solidly built and well decorated +mansions in Dublin, of a type not unlike that of the ample rather +stately and periwigged houses, all British brick without, and all Santo +Domingo mahogany <a name="page39" id="page39"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 39] +</span> +within, which, in my schoolboy days, used to give such +a dignified old-world air to Third and Fourth Streets in Philadelphia. +It is among such of these as are still standing, and have come to vile +uses, that the foragers from London now find their harvest.</p> + +<p>From the Chief-Justice’s I went with Lord Ernest Hamilton to a meeting +of the Irish Unionists. Admission was by tickets, and the meeting +evidently “meant business.” I suppose Presbyterian Ulster was largely +represented: but Mr. Smith Barry of Fota Island, near Cork, one of the +kindest and fairest, as well as one of the most determined and resolute, +of the southern Irish landlords, was there, and the most interesting +speech I heard was made by a Catholic lawyer of Dublin, Mr. Quill, Q.C., +who grappled with the question of distress among the Irish tenants, and +produced some startling evidence to show that this distress is by no +means so great or so general as it is commonly assumed to be. <a id="footnotetag10" + name="footnotetag10"></a><a href="#footnote10"><sup>10</sup></a> Able +speeches were also made by Mr. T.W. Russell, M.P. for Tyrone, and by +Colonel Saunderson, the champion of Ulster at Westminster. Both of these +members, and especially <a name="page40" id="page40"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 40] +</span> +Colonel Saunderson, “went for” their +Nationalist colleagues with an unparliamentary plainness of speech which +commanded the cordial sympathy of their audience. “Is it possible,” +asked Colonel Saunderson, “that you should ever consent, on any terms, +to be governed by such—, well, by such wretches as these?” to which the +audience gave back an unanimous “Never,” neither thundered nor shouted, +but growled, like Browning’s “growl at the gates of Ghent,”—a low deep +growl like the final notice served by a bull-dog, which I had not heard +since the meetings which, at the North, followed the first serious +fighting of the Civil War. I was much struck, too, by the prevalence +among the audience of what may be called the Old Middle State type of +American face and head. A majority of these men might have come straight +from those slopes of the Alleghany which, from Pennsylvania down to the +Carolinas, were planted so largely by the only considerable Irish +emigrations known to our history, before the great year of famine, 1847, +the Irish emigrations which followed the wars against the woollen +industries in the seventeenth century, and the linen industries in the +eighteenth. A staunch, doggedly Protestant people, loving the New +England <a name="page41" id="page41"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 41] +</span> +Puritans and the Anglicans of Eastern Virginia little better +than the Maryland Catholics, but contributing more than their full share +of traditional antipathy to that extreme dislike and dread of the Roman +Church which showed itself half-a-century ago in the burning of +convents, and thirty years ago gave life and fire to the Know-Nothing +movement. Even so late as at the time of Father Burke’s grand and most +successful mission to America, I remember how much astonished and +impressed he was by the vigour and the virulence of these feelings. One +of the bishops, he told me, in a great diocese tried (though of course +in vain) to dissuade him on this account from wearing his Dominican +dress. These anti-Catholic passions are much stronger in America to-day +than it always suits our politicians to remember, though to forget it +may some day be found very dangerous. Even now two of the ablest +prelates of the most liberal of the Protestant American bodies, Bishop +Cleveland Coxe of Western New York, and Bishop Beckwith of Georgia, the +latter of whom I met the other day in Rome on his return from Palestine, +are promoting what looks very much like a crusade against the plan for +establishing a Catholic University at Washington. <a name="page42" id="page42"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 42] +</span> +Bishop Cleveland +Coxe’s denunciations of what he calls “the alien Church,” point straight +to a revival of the “Native American” movement; and I fear that +President Cleveland’s gift of a copy of the Constitution to Leo XIII. +will hardly make American Catholics forget either the hereditary +anti-Catholic feeling which led him, when Governor of New York, to +imperil the success of the Democratic party by his dogged resistance to +the Catholic demand for the endowment of Catholic schools and +protectories, or the scandalous persecution (it can be called by no +other name) of Catholics in Alaska, which was carried on in the name and +under the patronage of his sister, Miss Cleveland, by a local missionary +of the Presbyterian Church, to the point of the removal by the President +of a Federal judge, who dared to award a Catholic native woman from +Vancouver the custody of her own child.</p> + +<p>It is hard to imagine a greater misfortune for the Church in Ireland, +and for both the Church and the Irish race in America, than the +identification of the Home Rule movement with the Church, and its +triumph, after being so identified, and with the help of British +sympathisers and professional politicians, over the resistance of +Protestant Ireland. <a name="page43" id="page43"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 43] +</span> +This dilemma of the Church in Ireland, plainly seen +at Rome, as I know, to-day, was forcibly presented in the speech of +Colonel Saunderson.</p> + +<p>The chair at this Loyalist meeting was filled by the Provost of Trinity, +Dr. Jellett, a man of winning and venerable aspect, a kind of “angelic +doctor,” indeed, whose musical and slightly tremulous voice gave a +singular pathos and interest to his brief but very earnest speech. <a id="footnotetag11" + name="footnotetag11"></a><a href="#footnote11"><sup>11</sup></a></p> + +<p>To-night I dined with the Attorney-General, Mr. O’Brien. Among the +company were the Chief-Baron Palles, whose appointment dates back to Mr. +Gladstone’s Administration of 1873, but who is now an outspoken opponent +of Home Rule; Judge O’Brien, an extremely able man, with the face of an +eagle; Mr. Carson, Q.C.; and other notabilities of the bench and bar. My +neighbours at table were a charming and agreeable bencher of the King’s +Inn, Mr. Atkinson, Q.C., a leader of the Irish bar, and Mr. T.W. +Russell, M.P., who told me some amusing things of one of his colleagues, +an ideal Orangeman, who writes blood-curdling romances in the vein of La +Tosca, and goes in fear of the <a name="page44" id="page44"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 44] +</span> +re-establishment of the Holy Office in +Dublin and London. In view of the clamours about the severity of the +bench in Ireland, it was edifying to find an Irish Judge astonished by +the drastic decisions of our Courts in regard to the anarchists who were +hanged at Chicago, after a thorough and protracted review of the law in +their cases. He thought no Court in Great Britain or Ireland could have +dealt with them thus stringently, it being understood that the charge of +murder against them rested on their connection, solely as provocative +instigators to violence, with the actual throwing of the bombs among the +police.</p> + +<p>Some good stories were told by the lawyers; one of a descendant of the +Irish Kings, a lawyer more remarkable for his mental gifts than for his +physical graces.</p> + +<p>A peasant looking him carefully over at Cork whispered to a neighbour, +“And is he really of the ould blood of the Irish kings now, indeed?”</p> + +<p>“He is indeed!”</p> + +<p>“Well, then, I don’t wonder the Saxons conquered the Island!”</p> + +<p>Of the Home Rule movement one of the lawyers said to me, “The whole +thing is a business opera<a name="page45" id="page45"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 45] +</span> +tion mainly—a business operation with the +people who see in it the hope of appeasing their land hunger—and a +business operation for the agitators who live by it. Its main strength, +outside of the priests, who for one reason or another countenance or +foment it, is in the small country solicitors. The five hundred thousand +odd Irish tenants are the most litigious creatures alive. They are +always after the local lawyer with half-a-crown to fight this, that, or +the other question with some neighbour or kinsman, usually a kinsman. So +the solicitors know the whole country.”</p> + +<p>“When the League has chosen a spot in which to work the ‘Plan of +Campaign,’ the local attorney whips up the tenants to join it. The +poorer tenants are the most easily pushed into the plan, having least to +lose by it. But the lawyer takes the well-to-do tenants in hand, and +promises them that if they yield to the patriotic pressure of the +League, and come to grief by so doing, the landlord will at all events +have to pay the costs of the proceedings. It is this promise which +finally brings down most of them. To enjoy the luxury of a litigation +without paying for it tempts them almost as strongly as the prospect of +getting the land without paying for <a name="page46" id="page46"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 46] +</span> +it. You will find that the League +always insists, when things come to a settlement, that the landlord +shall pay the costs. If the landlord through poverty of spirit or of +purse succumbs to this demand, the League scores a victory. If the +landlord resists, it is a bad job for the League. The local lawyer is +discredited in the eyes of his clients, and if he is to get any fees he +must come down upon his clients for them. Naturally his clients resent +this. If Mr. Balfour keys up the landlords to stand out manfully against +paying for all the trouble and loss they are continually put to, he will +take the life of the League so far as Ireland is concerned. As things +now stand, it is almost the only thriving industry in Ireland!”</p> + +<p><span class="diary"><i>Wednesday, Feb. 1.</i></span>—This morning I called with Lord Ernest Hamilton +upon Sir Bernard Burke, the Ulster King-at-Arms, and the editor or +author of many other well-known publications, and especially of the +“Peerage,” sometimes irreverently spoken of as the “British Bible.”</p> + +<p>Sir Bernard’s offices are in the picturesque old “Bermingham” tower of +the castle. There we found him wearing his years and his lore as lightly +as a flower, and busy in an ancient chamber, converted <a name="page47" id="page47"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 47] +</span> +by him into a +most cosy modern study. He received us with the most cordial courtesy, +and was good enough to conduct us personally through his domain.</p> + +<p>Many of the State papers formerly kept here have been removed to the +Four Courts building. But Sir Bernard’s tower is still filled with +documents of the greatest historical interest, all admirably docketed +and arranged on the system adopted at the Hôtel Soubise, now the Palace +of the Archives in Paris.</p> + +<p>These documents, like the tower itself, take us back to the early days +when Dublin was the stronghold of the Englishry in Ireland, and its +citizens went in constant peril of an attack from the wild and “mere +Irish” in the hills. The masonry of the tower is most interesting. The +circular stone floors made up of slabs held together without cement, +like the courses in the towers of Sillustani, by their exact adjustment, +are particularly noteworthy. High up in the tower Sir Bernard showed us +a most uncomfortable sort of cupboard fashioned in the huge wall of the +tower, and with a loophole for a window. In this cell the Red Hugh +O’Donnell of Tyrconnel was kept as a prisoner for several years under +Elizabeth. He was young and lithe, however, and after his friends had +tried in vain to buy him out, a happy thought <a name="page48" id="page48"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 48] +</span> +one day struck him. He +squeezed himself through the loophole, and, dropping unhurt to the +ground, escaped to the mountains. There for a long time he made head +against the English power. In 1597 he drove Sir Conyers Clifford from +before the castle of Ballyshannon, with great loss to the English, and +when he could no longer keep the field, he sought refuge in Spain. He +was with the Spanish, as Prince of Tyrconnel, at the crushing defeat of +Kinsale in 1601. Escaping again, he died, poisoned, at Simancas the next +year.</p> + +<p>Sir Bernard showed us, among other curious manuscripts, a correspondence +between one Higgins, a trained informer, and the Castle authorities in +1798. This correspondence shows that the revolutionary plans of the +Nationalists of 1798 were systematically laid before the Government.</p> + +<p>When one thinks how very much abler were the leaders of the Irish +rebellion in 1798 than are the present heads of the Irish party in +Parliament, how much greater the provocations to rebellion given the +Irish people then were than they are now even alleged to be—how little +the Irish people in general have now to gain by rebellion, and how much +to lose, it is hard to resist a suspicion that <a name="page49" id="page49"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 49] +</span> +it must be even easier +now than it was in 1798 for the Government to tap the secrets of the +organisations opposed to it.</p> + +<p>Sir Bernard showed us also a curious letter written by Henry Grattan to +the founder of the great Guinness breweries, which have carried the fame +of Dublin porter into the uttermost parts of the earth. The Guinnesses +are now among the wealthiest people of the kingdom, and Ireland +certainly owes a great deal to them as “captains of industry,” but they +are not Home Rulers.</p> + +<p>At the Kildare Street Club in the afternoon I talked with two Irish +landlords from the north of Ireland, who had come up to take their +womenkind to the Drawing-Room.</p> + +<p>I was struck by their indifference to the political excitements of the +day. One of them had forgotten that the Ripon and Morley reception was +to take place to-night. The other called it “the love-feast of Voltaire +and the Vatican.” Both were much more fluent about hunting and farming. +I asked if the hunting still went on in their part of the island.</p> + +<p>“It has never stopped for a moment,” he replied.</p> + +<p>“No,” added the other, “nor ever a dog poisoned. <a name="page50" id="page50"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 50] +</span> +They were poisoned, +whole packs of them, in the papers, but not a dog really. The stories +were printed just to keep up the agitation, and the farmers winked at it +so as not to be ‘bothered.’”</p> + +<p>Both averred that they got their rents “fairly well,” but both also said +that they farmed much of their own land. One, a wiry, energetic, elderly +man, of a brisk presence and ruddy complexion, said he constantly went +over to the markets in England. “I go to Norwich,” he said, “not to +Liverpool. Liverpool is only a meat-market, and overdone at that. +Norwich is better for meat and for stores.” Both agreed this was a great +year for the potatoes, and said Ireland was actually exporting potatoes +to America. One mentioned a case of two cargoes of potatoes just taken +from Dundrum for America, the vessel which took them having brought over +six hundred tons of hay from America.</p> + +<p>They were breezy, out-of-door men, both of them. One amused us with a +tale of espying, the other day, two hounds, a collie dog, a terrier, and +eighteen cats all amicably running together across a farmyard, with +their tails erect, after a dairymaid who was to feed them. The other +capped this with a story of a pig on his own place, which follows one of +his <a name="page51" id="page51"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 51] +</span> +farm lads about like a dog,—“the only pig,” he said, “I ever saw +show any human feeling!” The gentleman who goes to Norwich thought the +English landlords were in many cases worse off than the Irish. “Ah, no!” +interfered the other, “not quite; for if the English can’t get their +rents, at least they keep their land, but we can neither get our rents +nor keep our land!” They both admitted that there had been much bad +management of the land in Ireland, and that the agents had done the +owners as well as the tenants a great deal of harm in the past, but they +both maintained stoutly that the legislation of late years had been +one-sided and short-sighted. “The tenants haven’t got real good from +it,” said one, “because the claims of the landlord no longer check their +extravagance, and they run more in debt than ever to the shopkeepers and +traders, who show them little mercy.” Both also strenuously insisted on +the gross injustice of leaving the landlords unrelieved of any of the +charges fixed upon their estates, while their means of meeting those +charges were cut down by legislation.</p> + +<p>“You have no landlords in America,” said one, “but if you had, how would +you like to be saddled with heavy tithe charges for a Disestablished +Church <a name="page52" id="page52"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 52] +</span> +at the same time that your tenants were relieved of their dues +to you?”</p> + +<p>I explained to him that so far from our having no landlords in America, +the tenant-farmer class is increasing rapidly in the United States, +while it is decreasing in the Old World, while the land laws, especially +in some of our older Western States, give the landlords such absolute +control of their tenants that there is a serious battle brewing at this +moment in Illinois <a id="footnotetag12" + name="footnotetag12"></a><a href="#footnote12"><sup>12</sup></a> between a small army of tenants and their +absentee landlord, an alien and an Irishman, who holds nearly a hundred +thousand acres in the heart of the State, lives in England, and grants +no leases, except on the condition that he shall receive from his +tenants, in addition to the rent, the full amount of all taxes and +levies whatsoever made upon the lands they occupy.</p> + +<p>“God bless my soul!” exclaimed the gentleman who goes to Norwich, “if +that is the kind of laws your American Irish will give us with Home +Rule, I’ll go in for it to-morrow with all my heart!”</p> + +<p><a name="page53" id="page53"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 53] +</span> +After an early dinner, I set out with Lord Ernest to see the +Morley-Ripon procession. It was a good night for a torchlight +parade—the weather not too chill, and the night dark. The streets were +well filled, but there was no crowding—no misconduct, and not much +excitement. The people obviously were out for a holiday, not for a +“demonstration.” It was Paris swarming out to the Grand Prix, not Paris +on the eve of the barricades; very much such a crowd as one sees in the +streets and squares of New York on a Fourth of July night, when the city +fathers celebrate that auspicious anniversary with fireworks at the City +Hall, and not in the least such a crowd as I saw in the streets of New +York on the 12th of July 1871, when, thanks to General Shaler and the +redoubtable Colonel “Jim Fiske,” a great Orange demonstration led to +something very like a massacre by chance medley.</p> + +<p>Small boys went about making night hideous with tom-toms, extemporised +out of empty fig-drums, and tooting terribly upon tin trumpets. There +was no general illumination, but here and there houses were bright with +garlands of lamps, and rockets ever and anon went up from the +house-tops.</p> + +<p><a name="page54" id="page54"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 54] +</span> +We made our way to the front of a mass of people near one of the great +bridges, over which the procession was to pass on its long march from +Kingstown to the house of Mr. Walker, Q.C., in Rutland Square, where the +distinguished visitors were to meet the liberated Lord Mayor, with Mr. +Dwyer Gray, and other local celebrities. A friendly citizen let us perch +on his outside car.</p> + +<p>The procession presently came in sight, and a grand show it made—not of +the strictly popular and political sort, for it was made up of guilds +and other organised bodies on foot and on horseback, marching in +companies—but imposing by reason of its numbers, and of the flaring +torches. Of these there were not so many as there should have been to do +justice to the procession. The crowd cheered from time to time, with +that curious Irish cheer which it is often difficult to distinguish from +groaning, but the only explosive and uproarious greeting given to the +visitors in our neighbourhood came from a member of “the devout female +sex,” a young lady who stood up between two friends on the top of a car +very near us, and imperilled both her equilibrium and theirs by wildly +waving her hand-kerchief in the air, and crying out at the top of a +<a name="page55" id="page55"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 55] +</span> +somewhat husky voice, “Three cheers for Mecklenburg Street! Three +cheers for Mecklenburg Street!”</p> + +<p>This made the crowd very hilarious, but as Lord Ernest’s local knowledge +did not enable him to enlighten me as to the connection between +Mecklenburg Street and the liberation of Ireland, I must leave the +mystery of their mirth unsolved till a more convenient season.</p> + +<p>At Rutland Square the crowd was tightly packed, but perfectly +well-behaved, and the guests were enthusiastically cheered. But even +before they had entered the house of Mr. Walker it began to break up, +and long files of people wended their way to see “the carriages” +hastening with their lovely freight to the Castle. Thither Lord Ernest +has just gone, arrayed in a captivating Court costume of black velvet, +with cut-steel buttons, sword, and buckles—just the dress in which +Washington used to receive his guests at the White House, and in which +Senator Seward, I remember, insisted in 1860 on getting himself +presented by Mr. Dallas to Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace. +</p> + + + +<h2><a name="page56" id="page56"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 56] +</span> +CHAPTER II.</h2> + + +<p><span class="diary">SION HOUSE, COUNTY TYRONE, <i>Feb. 3d.</i></span>—Hearing nothing from Mr. Davitt +yesterday, I gave up the idea of attending the Ripon-Morley meeting last +night. As I have come to Ireland to hear what people living in Ireland +have to say about Irish affairs, I see no particular advantage in +listening to imported eloquence on the subject, even from so clever a +man as his books prove Mr. Morley to be, and from so conscientious a man +as an acquaintance, going back to the days when he sat with Kingsley at +the feet of Maurice, makes me believe Lord Ripon to be. How much either +of them knows about Ireland is another matter. A sarcastic Nationalist +acquaintance of mine, with whom I conversed about the visitors +yesterday, assured me it had been arranged that Lord Ripon should wear +the Star of the Garter, “so the people might know him from Morley.” When +I observed <a name="page57" id="page57"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 57] +</span> +that Dublin must have a short memory to forget so soon the +face of a Chief Secretary, he replied: “Forget his face? Why, they never +saw his face! It’s little enough he was here, and indoors he kept when +here he was. He shook hands last night with more Irishmen than ever he +spoke to while he was Chief Secretary; for he used to say then, I am +told, in the Reform Club, that the only way to get along with the Irish +was to have nothing to do with them!”</p> + +<p>There was a sharp discussion, I was told, in the private councils of the +Committee yesterday as to whether the Queen should be “boycotted,” and +the loyal sentiments usual in connection with her Majesty’s name dropped +from the proceedings. I believe it was finally settled that this might +put the guests into an awkward position, both of them having worn her +Majesty’s uniform of State as public servants of the Crown.</p> + +<p>During the day I walked through many of the worst quarters of Dublin. I +met fewer beggars in proportion than one encounters in such parts of +London as South Kensington and other residential regions not +over-frequented by the perambulating policemen; but I was struck by the +number of <a name="page58" id="page58"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 58] +</span> +persons—and particularly of women—who wore that most +pathetic of all the liveries of distress, “the look of having seen +better days.” In the most wretched streets I traversed there was more +squalor than suffering—the dirtiest and most ragged people in them +showing no signs of starvation, or even of insufficient rations; and +certainly in the most dismal alleys and by-streets, I came upon nothing +so revolting as the hives of crowded misery which make certain of the +tenement house quarters of New York more gruesome than the Cour des +Miracles itself used to be.</p> + +<p>This morning at 7.25 A.M. I left Dublin with Lord Ernest Hamilton for +Strabane. My attention was distracted from the reports of the great +meeting by the varied and picturesque beauty of the landscape, through +which we ran at a very respectable rate in a very comfortable carriage. +We passed Dundalk, where Edward Bruce got himself crowned king of +Ireland, after his brother Robert had won a throne in Scotland.</p> + +<p>These masterful Normans, all over Europe from Apulia to Britain, worked +out the problem of “satisfied nationalities” much more successfully and +simply than Napoleon III. in our own day. If <a name="page59" id="page59"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 59] +</span> +Edward Bruce broke down +where Robert succeeded, the causes of his failure may perhaps be worth +considering even now by people who have set themselves the task in our +times of establishing “an Irish nationality.” Leaving out the +Cromwellian English of Tipperary and the South, and the Scotch who have +done for Ulster, what he aimed at for all Ireland, they have very much +the same materials to deal with as those which he dismally failed to +fashion.</p> + +<p>Drogheda stands beautifully in a deep valley through which flows the +Boyne Water, spanned by one of the finest viaducts in Europe. Here, two +years after the discovery of America, Poyning’s Parliament enacted that +all laws passed in Ireland must be subject to approval by the English +Privy Council. I wonder nobody has proposed a modification of this form +of Home Rule for Ireland now. Earl Grey’s recent suggestion that +Parliamentary government be suspended for ten years in Ireland, which I +heard warmly applauded by some able lawyers and business men in Dublin, +involves like this an elimination of the Westminster debates from the +problem of government in Ireland. As we passed Drogheda, Father Burke’s +magnificent <a name="page60" id="page60"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 60] +</span> +presence and thrilling voice came back to me out of the +mist of years, describing with an indignant pathos, never to be +forgotten, the fearful scenes which followed the surrender of Sir Arthur +Ashton’s garrison, when “for the glory of God,” and “to prevent the +further effusion of blood,” Oliver ordered all the officers to be +knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed, and the +rest shipped as slaves to the Barbadoes. But how different was the +spirit in which the great Dominican recalled these events from that in +which the “popular orators,” scattering firebrands and death, delight to +dwell upon them!</p> + +<p>At Strabane station we found a handsome outside car waiting on us, and +drove off briskly for this charming place, the home of one of the most +active and prosperous manufacturers in Ireland. A little more than half +way between the station and Sion House, Mr. Herdman met us afoot. We +jumped off and walked up with him. Sion House, built for him by his +brother, an accomplished architect, is a handsome Queen Anne mansion. It +stands on a fine knoll, commanding lovely views on all sides. Below it, +and beyond a little stream, rise the extensive flax-mills which are the +life of the place, <a name="page61" id="page61"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 61] +</span> +under the eye and within touch of the hand of the +master. These works were established here by Mr. Herdman’s father, after +he had made a vain attempt to establish them at Ballyshannon in Donegal, +half a century ago. As all salmon fishers know, the water-power is +admirable at Ballyshannon, where the Erne pours in torrents down a +thirty feet fall. But the ignorance and indolence of the people made +Ballyshannon quite impossible, with this result, that while the Erne +still flows unvexed to the sea, and the people of Ballyshannon live very +much as they lived in 1835, here at Sion the Mourne enables 1100 Irish +operatives to work up £90,000 worth of Irish flax every year into yarn +for the Continent, and to divide among themselves some £20,000 a year in +wages.</p> + +<p>After luncheon we walked with Mr. Herdman through the mills and the +model village which has grown up around them. Everywhere we found order, +neatness, and thrift. The operatives are almost all people of the +country, Catholics and Protestants in almost equal numbers. “I find it +wise,” said Mr. Herdman, “to give neither religion a preponderance, and +to hold my people of both religions to a common standard of fidelity and +<a name="page62" id="page62"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 62] +</span> +efficiency.” The greatest difficulty he has had to contend with is the +ineradicable objection of some of the peasantry to continuous industry. +He told us of a strapping lass of eighteen who came to the mills, but +very soon gave up and went back to the parental shebeen in the mountains +rather than get up early in the morning to earn fourteen shillings a +week.</p> + +<p>Three weeks of her work would have paid the year’s rent of the paternal +holding.</p> + +<p>In the village, which is regularly laid out, is a reading-room for the +workpeople. There are cricket clubs, and one of the mill buildings (just +now crammed with bales of flax) has been fitted up by Mr. Herdman as a +theatre. There is a drop-curtain representing the Lake of Como, and the +flies are flanked by life-size copies in plaster of the Apollo Belvidere +and the Medicean Venus. This is a development I had hardly looked to see +in Ulster.</p> + +<p>After we had gone over the works thoroughly, Mr. Herdman took us back, +on a transparent pretext of enlightened curiosity touching certain +qualities of spun flax, to give us a glimpse of the “beauty of Sion”—a +well-grown graceful girl of fifteen or <a name="page63" id="page63"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 63] +</span> +sixteen summers. She +concentrated her attention, as soon as we appeared, upon certain +mysterious bobbins and spindles, with an exaggerated determination which +proved how completely she saw through our futile and frivolous devices. +Mr. Herdman told us, as we came away discomfited, a droll story of the +ugliest girl ever employed here—a girl so preternaturally ugly that one +of his best blacksmiths having been entrapped into offering to marry +her, lost heart of grace on the eve of the sacrifice, and, taking ship +at Derry for America, fled from Sion for ever.</p> + +<p>In the evening came, with other guests, Dr. Webb, Q.C., Regius Professor +of Laws and Public Orator of Trinity at Dublin, well known both as a +Grecian capable of composing “skits” as clever as the verses yclept +Homerstotle—in which the <i>Saturday Review</i> served up the Donnelly +nonsense about Bacon and Shakespeare—and as a translator of <i>Faust</i>. He +was abused by the Loyalists at Dublin, in 1884, for his defence of P.N. +Fitzgerald, the leader who beat Parnell and Archbishop Croke so badly at +Thurles the other day; and he is in a fair way now to be denounced with +equal fervour by the Nationalists as a County Court <a name="page64" id="page64"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 64] +</span> +judge in Donegal. +He finds this post no sinecure. “I do as much work in five days,” he +said to-night, “as the Superior Judges do in five weeks.”</p> + +<p>He is a staunch Unionist, and laughs at the notion that the Irish people +care one straw for a Parliament in Dublin. “Why should they?” he said. +“What did any Parliament in Dublin ever do to gratify the one real +passion of the Irish peasant—his hunger for a bit of land? So far as +the Irish people are concerned, Home Rule means simply agrarian reform. +Would they get that from a Parliament in Dublin? If the British +Parliament evicts the landlords and makes the tenants lords of the land, +they will be face to face with Davitt’s demand for the nationalising of +the land. Do you suppose they will like to see the lawyers and the +politicians organising a labour agitation against the ‘strong farmers’? +The last thing they want is a Parliament in Dublin. Lord Ashbourne’s Act +carries in its principle the death-warrant of the ‘National League.’”</p> + +<p>Some excellent stories were told in the picturesque smoking-room after +dinner, one of a clever and humorous, sensible and non-political priest, +who, being taken to task by some of his brethren <a name="page65" id="page65"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 65] +</span> +for giving the cold +shoulder to the Nationalist movement, excused himself by saying, “I +should like to be a patriot; but I can’t be. It’s all along of the +rheumatism which prevents me from lying out at nights in a ditch with a +rifle.” The same priest being reproached by others of the cloth with a +fondness for the company of some of the resident landlords in his +neighbourhood, replied, “It’s in the blood, you see. My poor mother, God +rest her soul! she always had a liking for the quality. As for my dear +father, he was just a blundering peasant like the rest of ye!”</p> + +<p><span class="diary">GWEEDORE, <i>Saturday, 4th Feb.</i></span>—A good day’s work to-day!</p> + +<p>We left our hospitable friends at Sion House early in the morning. The +sun was shining brightly; the air so soft and bland that the thrushes +were singing like mad creatures in the trees and the shrubbery; and the +sky was more blue than Italy. “A foine day it is, sorr,” said our jarvey +as we took our seats on the car. There is some point in the old Irish +sarcasm that English travellers in Ireland only see one side of the +country, because they travel through it on the outside car. But to make +this point tell, <a name="page66" id="page66"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 66] +</span> +four people must travel on the car. In that case they +must sit two on a side, each pair facing one side only of the landscape. +It is a very different business when you travel on an outside car alone, +with the driver sitting on one side of it, or with one companion only, +when the driver occupies the little perch in front between the sides of +the car. When you travel thus, the outside car is the best thing in the +world, after a good roadster, for taking you rapidly over a country, and +enabling you to command all points of the horizon. Double up one leg on +the seat, let the other dangle freely, using the step as a stirrup, and +you go rattling along almost as if you were on horseback.</p> + +<p>We drove through a long suburb of Strabane into the busiest quarter of +the busy little place. The names on the shops were predominantly +Scotch—Maxwells, Stewarts, Hamiltons, Elliotts. I saw but one Celtic +name, M‘Ilhenny, and one German, Straub. I changed gold for enormous +Bank of Ireland notes at a neat local bank, and the cheery landlord of +the Abercorn Arms gave us a fresh car to take us on to Letterkenny, a +drive of some twenty miles.</p> + +<p>The car came up like a small blizzard, flying <a name="page67" id="page67"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 67] +</span> +about at the heels of an +uncanny little grey mare. Lord Ernest knew the beast well, and said she +was twenty-five years old. She behaved like an unbroken filly at first, +but soon striking her pace, turned out a capital goer, and took us on +without turning a hair till her work was done. The weather continued to +be good, but clouds rolled up around the horizon.</p> + +<p>“It’ll always be bad weather,” said our saturnine jarvey, “when the +Judges come to hold court, and never be good again till they rise.”</p> + +<p>Here is a consequence of alien rule in Ireland, never, so far as I know, +brought to the notice of Parliament.</p> + +<p>“Why is this?” I asked; “is it because of the time of the year they +select?”</p> + +<p>“The time of year, sorr?” he replied, glancing compassionately at me. +“No, not at all; it’s because of the oaths!”</p> + +<p>We reached Letterkenny in time for a very good luncheon at “Hegarty’s,” +one of the neatest little inns I have ever found in a place of the size. +It stands on the long main street which is really the town. At one end +of this street is a very pretty row of picturesque ivy-clad brick +cottages, built <a name="page68" id="page68"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 68] +</span> +by a landlord whose property and handsome park bound +the town on the west; and the street winds alongside the slope of a hill +rising from the bank of the Swilly river. A fair was going on. The +little market-place was alive with bustling, chattering, and chaffering +country-folk. Smartly-dressed young damsels tripped in and out of the +neat well-filled shops, and in front of a row of semidetached villas, +like a suburban London terrace, on the hill opposite “Hegarty’s,” a +German band smote the air with discordant fury. Decidedly a lively, +prosperous little town is Letterkenny, nor was I surprised to learn from +a communicative gentleman, nursing his cane near the inn-door, that +advantage would be taken of the presence of the Hussars sent to keep +order at Dunfanaghy, to “give a ball.”</p> + +<p>“But I thought all the country was in arms about the trials at +Dunfanaghy,” I said.</p> + +<p>“In arms about the trials at Dunfanaghy? Oh no; they’ll never be locked +up, Father M‘Fadden and Mr. Blane. And the people here at Letterkenny, +they’ve more sinse than at Dunfanaghy. Have you heard of the champagne?”</p> + +<p>Upon this he proceeded to tell me, as a grand <a name="page69" id="page69"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 69] +</span> +joke, that Father +M‘Fadden and Mr. Blane, M.P., having declined to accept the tea offered +them by the authorities during their detention, they had been permitted +to order what they liked from the local hotel-keeper. After the trial +was over, and they were released on bail to prosecute their appeal, the +hotel-keeper demanded of the authorities payment of his bill, including +two bottles of champagne ordered to refresh the member for Armagh!</p> + +<p>A conspicuous, smart, spick-and-span house on the main street, built of +brick and wood, with a verandah, and picked out in bright colours, was +pointed out to me by this amiable citizen as the residence of a +“returned American.” This was a man, he said, who had made some money in +America, but got tired of living there, and had come back to end his +days in his native place He was a good man, my informant added, “only he +puts on too many airs.”</p> + +<p>A remarkably handsome, rosy-faced young groom, a model of manhood in +vigour and grace, presently brought us up a wagonette with a pair of +stout nags, and a driver in a suit of dark-brown frieze, whose head +seemed to have been driven down be<a name="page70" id="page70"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 70] +</span> +tween his shoulders. He never lifted +it up all the way to Gweedore, but he proved to be a capital jarvey +notwithstanding, and knew the country as well as his horses.</p> + +<p>Not long after leaving the town by a road which passes the huge County +Asylum (now literally crammed, I am told, with lunatics), we passed a +ruined church on the banks of a stream. Here the country people, it +seems, halt and wash their feet before entering Letterkenny, failing +which ceremony they may expect a quarrel with somebody before they get +back to their homes. This wholesome superstition doubtless was +established ages ago by some good priest, when priests thought it their +duty to be the preachers and makers of peace.</p> + +<p>We soon left the wooded country of the Swilly and began to climb into +the grand and melancholy Highlands of Donegal. The road was as fine as +any in the Scottish Highlands, and despite the keen chill wind, the +glorious and ever-changing panoramas of mountain and strath through +which we drove were a constant delight, until, just as we came within +full range of Muckish, the giant of Donegal, the weather finally broke +down into driving mists and blinding rain.</p> + +<p><a name="page71" id="page71"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 71] +</span> +We pulled up near a picturesque little shebeen, to water the horses and +get our Highland wraps well about us. Out came a hardy, cheery old +farmer. He swept the heavens with the eye of a mountaineer, and +exclaimed:—“Ah! it’s a coorse day intirely, it is.” “A coorse day +intirely” from that moment it continued to be.</p> + +<p>Happily the curtain had not fallen before we caught a grand passing +glimpse of the romantic gorge of Glen Veagh, closed and commanded in the +shadowy distance by the modern castle of Glenveagh, the mountain home of +my charming country-woman, Mrs. Adair.</p> + +<p>Thanks to its irregular serpentine outline, and to the desolate majesty +of the hills which environ it, Lough Veagh, though not a large sheet of +water, may well be what it is reputed to be, a rival of the finest lochs +in Scotland. No traces are now discernible on its shores of the too +celebrated evictions of Glen Veagh. But from the wild and rugged aspect +of the surrounding country it is probable enough that these evictions +were to the evicted a blessing in disguise, and that their descendants +are now enjoying, beyond the Atlantic, a measure of prosperity and of +happiness which neither their <a name="page72" id="page72"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 72] +</span> +own labour nor the most liberal +legislation could ever have won for them here. We caught sight, as we +drove through Mrs. Adair’s wide and rocky domain, of wire fences, and I +believe it is her intention to create here a small deer forest. This +ought to be as good a stalking country as the Scottish Highlands, +provided the people can be got to like “stalking” stags better than +landlords and agents.</p> + +<p>Long before we reached Glen Veagh we had bidden farewell, not only to +the hedges and walls of Tyrone and Eastern Donegal, but to the +“ditches,” which anywhere but in Ireland would be called “embankments,” +and entered upon great stone-strewn wastes of land seemingly unreclaimed +and irreclaimable. Huge boulders lay tossed and tumbled about as if they +had been whirled through the air by the cyclones of some prehistoric +age, and dropped at random when the wild winds wearied of the fun. The +last landmark we made out through the gathering storm was the pinnacled +crest of Errigal. Of Dunlewy, esteemed the loveliest of the Donegal +lakes, we could see little or nothing as we hurried along the highway, +which follows its course down to the Clady, the river of Gweedore; and +we blessed the memory of Lord George Hill <a name="page73" id="page73"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 73] +</span> +when suddenly turning from +the wind and the rain into what seemed to be a mediaeval courtyard +flanked by trees, we pulled up in the bright warm light of an open +doorway, shook ourselves like Newfoundland dogs, and were welcomed by a +frank, good-looking Scottish host to a glowing peat fire in this really +comfortable little hotel, the central pivot of a most interesting +experiment in civilisation.</p> + + +<p><span class="diary">GWEEDORE, <i>Sunday, Feb. 5th.</i></span>—A morning as soft and bright almost as +April succeeded the stormy night. Errigal lifted his bold irregular +outlines royally against an azure sky. The sunshine glinted merrily on +the swift waters of the Clady, which flows almost beneath our windows +from Dunlewy Lough to the sea. The birds were singing in the trees, +which all about our hotel make what in the West would be called an +“opening” in the wide and woodless expanse of hill and bog.</p> + +<p>This hotel was for many years the home of Lord George Hill, who built it +in the hope of making Gweedore, what in England or Scotland it would +long ago have become, a prosperous watering-place. Now that a +battle-royal is going on between Lord <a name="page74" id="page74"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 74] +</span> +George’s son and heir and the +tenants on the estate, organised by Father M‘Fadden under the “Plan of +Campaign,” it is important to know something of the history of the +place.</p> + +<p>Is this a case of the sons of the soil expropriated by an alien and +confiscating Government to enrich a ruthless invader? I was told by a +Nationalist acquaintance in Dublin that the owner of Gweedore is a near +kinsman of the Marquis of Londonderry, and that the property came to him +by inheritance under an ancient confiscation of the estates of the +O’Dounels of Tyrconnel. All of this I find is embroidery.</p> + +<p>The “Carlisle” room, which our landlord has assigned to us, contains a +number of books, the property of the late Lord George, and ample +materials are here for making out the annals of Gweedore. Lord George, +it seems, was a posthumous son of the fourth Marquis of Downshire, and a +nephew of that Marchioness of Salisbury who was burned to death with the +west wing of Hatfield House half a century ago. He inherited nothing in +Donegal, nor was any provision made for him under his father’s will. His +elder brothers made up and settled upon him a sum of twenty thousand +pounds. <a name="page75" id="page75"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 75] +</span> +He entered the Army, and being quartered for a time at +Letterkenny, shot and fished all about Donegal. He found the people here +kindly and friendly, but in a deplorable state of ignorance and of +destitution. Their holdings under sundry small proprietors were entirely +unimproved, and as their families increased, these holdings were cut up +by themselves into even smaller strips under the system known as +“rundale,”—each son as he grew up taking off a slice of the paternal +holding, putting up a hut with mud, and scratching the soil after his +own rude fashion. This custom, necessarily fatal to civilisation, +doubtless came down from the traditional times when the lands of a sept +were held in common by the sept, before the native chieftains had +converted themselves into landlords, and defeated Sir John Davies’s +attempt to convert their tribal kinsmen into peasant proprietors.</p> + +<p>Whatever its origin, it had reduced Gweedore, or “Tullaghobegly,” fifty +years ago to barbarism. Nearly nine thousand people then dwelt here with +never a landlord among them. There was no “Coercion” in Gweedore, +neither was there a coach nor a car to be found in the whole district. +The nominal owners of the small properties into which <a name="page76" id="page76"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 76] +</span> +the district was +divided knew little and cared less about them. The rents were usually +“made by the tenants,”—a step in advance, it will be seen, of the +system which the collective wisdom of Great Britain has for the last +twenty years been trying to establish in Ireland. But they were only +paid when it was convenient. An agent of one of these properties who +travelled fourteen miles one day to collect some rents gave it up and +drove back again, because the “day was too bad” for him to wander about +in the mountains on the chance of finding the tenants at home and +disposed to give him a trifle on account. On most of the properties +there were arrears of eight, ten, and twenty years’ standing.</p> + +<p>There was one priest in the district, and one National School, the +schoolmaster, with a family of nine persons, receiving the munificent +stipend of eight pounds a year. These nine thousand people, depending +absolutely upon tillage and pasture, owned among them all one cart and +one plough, eight saddles, two pillions, eleven bridles, and thirty-two +rakes! They had no means of harrowing their lands but with meadow rakes, +and the farms were so small that from four to ten farms could be +harrowed in a day with one rake.</p> + +<p><a name="page77" id="page77"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 77] +</span> +Their beds were of straw, mountain grass, or green and dried rushes. +Among the nine thousand people there were but two feather-beds, and but +eight beds stuffed with chaff. There were but two stables and six +cow-houses in the whole district. None of the women owned more than one +shift, nor was there a single bonnet among them all, nor a looking-glass +costing more than threepence.</p> + +<p>The climate and the scenery took the fancy of Lord George. He made up +his mind to see what could be done with this forgotten corner of the +world, and to that end bought up as he could the small and scattered +properties, till he had invested the greater part of his small fortune, +and acquired about twenty thousand acres of land. Of this, little was +fit for cultivation, even with the help of capital and civilised +management. There was not a road in the district, nor a drain.</p> + +<p>Lord George came and established himself here. He went to work +systematically to improve the country, reclaiming bog-lands, building +roads, and laying out the property into regular farms. He went about +among the people himself, trying to get their confidence, and to let +them know what he wanted to do for them, and with their help.</p> + +<p><a name="page78" id="page78"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 78] +</span> +For a long time they wouldn’t believe him to be a lord at all, “because +he spoke Irish”; and the breaking up of the rundale system, under which +they had lived in higgledy-piggledy laziness, exasperated them greatly. +Of the first man who took a fenced and well-defined farm from Lord +George, and went to work on it, the others observed that he would come +to no good by it, because he would “have to keep a maid just to talk to +his wife.” Men could not be got for any wages to work at draining, or at +making the “ditches” or embankments to delineate the new holdings; and +when Lord George found adventurous “tramps” willing to earn a few +shillings by honest work of the kind, conspiracies were formed to undo +by night what was done by day. However, Lord George persevered.</p> + +<p>There was not a shop, nor a dispensary, nor a doctor, nor a warehouse, +nor a quay for landing goods in this whole populous and sea-washed +region. He put up storehouses, built a little harbour at Bunbeg, +established a dispensary, got a doctor to settle in the district, and +finally put up the hotel in which we are. He advanced money to tenants +disposed to improve their holdings. Finding the women, as <a name="page79" id="page79"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 79] +</span> +usual, more +thrifty and industrious than the men, and gifted with a natural aptitude +for the loom and the spindle, he introduced the weaving of woollen yarn +into stout frieze stuffs and foot-gear for both sexes. This was in 1840, +and in 1854 Gweedore hand-knit socks and stockings were sold to the +amount of £500, being just about the annual estimated rents of all the +properties bought by Lord George at the time when he bought them in +1838! But with this difference: The owners from whom Lord George bought +the properties got their £500 very irregularly, when they got it at all; +whereas the wives and daughters of the tenants, who made the socks and +stockings, were paid their £500 in cash.</p> + +<p>Clearly in Gweedore I have a case not of the children of the soil +despoiled and trampled upon by the stranger, but of the honest +investment of alien capital in Irish land, and of the administration by +the proprietor himself of the Irish property so acquired for the benefit +alike of the owner and of the occupiers of the land.</p> + +<p>That the deplorable state in which he found the people was mainly due to +their own improvidence and gregarious incapacity is also tolerably +clear. <a name="page80" id="page80"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 80] +</span> +On the west coast of Norway, dear to the heart of the +salmon-fisher, you find people living under conditions certainly no more +favourable than here exist. North of the Hardanger Fjord, the spring +opens only in June. The farmers grow only oats and barley; but they have +no market except for the barley, and live chiefly by the pasturage. It +is as rocky a region as Donegal. But the Norsemen never try to make the +land do more than it is capable of doing. With them the oldest son takes +the farm and works it. The juniors are welcome to work on the farm if +they like for their brother, but they are not allowed to cut it up. +There is no rundale in Norway; and when the cadets see that there is no +room for them they quietly “pull up stakes,” and go forth to seek a new +home, no matter where.</p> + +<p>For fourteen years Lord George Hill spent on Gweedore all the rents he +received from it, and a great deal more. During that time the relations +between the people and their new landlord seem to have been, in the +main, most friendly, notwithstanding his constant efforts to break up +their old habits, or, to use their own language, to “bother them.” But +there were no “evictions”; rents were not raised <a name="page81" id="page81"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 81] +</span> +even where the tenants +were visibly able to pay better rents; prizes were given annually for +the best and neatest cottages, for the best crops of turnips (neither +turnips, parsnips, nor carrots were there at Gweedore when Lord George +bought the estate), for the best pigs (there was not a pig in Gweedore +in 1838!), for calves and colts, for the best fences, the best ordered +tillage farms, the best labourers’ cottages, the best beds and bedding, +the best butter, the best woollen goods made on the estate. The old +rundale plan of dividing up the land among the children was put a stop +to, and every tenant was encouraged not to make his holding smaller, but +to add to and enlarge it. A corn-mill, saw-mill, and flax-mill were +established. In 1838 there was not a baker within ten miles. In 1852 the +local baker was driving a good business in good bread. The tenant’s +wife, for whom in 1838 a single shift was a social superiority, in 1852 +went shopping at Bunbeg for the latest fashions from Derry or Dublin.</p> + +<p>Whatever “landlordism” may mean elsewhere in Ireland, it is plain enough +that in the history of Gweedore it has meant the difference between +savage squalor and civilisation.</p> + +<p>Lord George Hill died in 1879, the year in which <a name="page82" id="page82"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 82] +</span> +the Land League began +its operations. He bequeathed this property to his son, Captain Hill, by +whom the management of it has been left to agents. After Lord George’s +death two tracts of mountain pasture, reserved by him to feed imported +sheep, were let to the tenants, who by that time had come to own quite a +considerable number, some thousands, of live stock, cattle, horses, and +sheep.</p> + +<p>Concurrently with this concession to the tenants the provisions made by +Lord George against the subdivision of holdings began to give way. +Father M‘Fadden, combining the position of President of the National +League with that of parish priest, seems to have favoured this tendency, +and to have encouraged the putting up of new houses on reduced holdings +to accommodate an increasing population. A flood which in August 1880 +damaged the chapel and caused the death of five persons gave him an +opportunity of bringing before the British public the condition of the +people in a letter to the London <i>Times</i>, which elicited a very generous +response, several hundred pounds, it is said, having been sent to him +from London alone. Large contributions of relief were also made to +Gweedore from the Duchess <a name="page83" id="page83"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 83] +</span> +of Marlborough’s Fund, and Gweedore became a +standing butt of British benevolence. Two results seem to have followed, +naturally enough,—a growing indisposition on the part of the tenants to +pay rent, and a rapid rise in the value of tenant rights. With the +National League standing between them and the landlord, with the British +Parliament legislating year after year in favour of the Irish tenant and +against the Irish landlord, and with the philanthropic public ready to +respond to any appeal for help made on their behalf, the tenants at +Gweedore naturally became a privileged class. In no other way at least +can I explain the extraordinary fact that tenant rights at Gweedore have +been sold, according to Lord Cowper’s Blue-book of 1886, during the +period of the greatest alleged distress and congestion in this district, +at prices representing from forty to a hundred-and-thirty years’ +purchase of the landlord’s rent!</p> + +<p>In this Blue-book the Rev. Father M‘Fadden appears as receiving no less +than £115 sterling for the tenant-right sold by him of ground, the head +rent of which is £1, 2s. 6d. a year. The worst enemy of Father M‘Fadden +will hardly suspect him, I hope, of taking such a sum as this from <a name="page84" id="page84"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 84] +</span> +a +tenant farmer for the right to starve to death by inches. <a id="footnotetag13" + name="footnotetag13"></a><a href="#footnote13"><sup>13</sup></a></p> + +<p>A shrewd Galway man, now here, who seems to know the region well, and +likes both the scenery and the people, tells me that the troubles which +have now culminated in the arrest of Father M‘Fadden have been +aggravated by the vacillation of Captain Hill, and by the foibles of his +agent, Colonel Dopping, who not long ago brought down Mr. Gladstone with +his unloaded rifle. That the tenants as a body have been, or now are, +unable to pay their rent he does not believe. On the contrary, he thinks +them, as a body, rather well off. Certainly I have seen and spoken with +none of them about the roads to-day who were not hearty-looking men, and +in very good case. Colonel Dopping, according to my Galwegian, is not an +Englishman, but a Longford Irishman of good family, who got his +training in India as an official of the Woods and Forests in Bengal. “He +is not a bad-hearted man, nor <a name="page85" id="page85"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 85] +</span> +unkind,” said my Galwegian, “but he is +too much of a Bengal tiger in his manner. He went into the cottages +personally and lectured the people, and that they never will stand. They +don’t require or expect you to believe what they say—in fact they have +little respect for you if you do—but they like to have the agent +pretend that he believes them, and then go on and show that he don’t. +But he must never lose his temper about it. Colonel Dopping, I have +heard, argued with an old woman one day who was telling him more yarns +than were ever spun into cloth in Gweedore, till she picked up her cup +of tea and threw it in his face. He flounced out of the cottage, and +ordered the police to arrest her. That did him more harm than if he had +shot a dozen boys.” “What with the temper of Colonel Dopping and the +vacillation of Captain Hill, who is always of the mind of the last man +that speaks to him, Father M‘Fadden has had it all his own way. Captain +Hill’s claim was for £1800 of arrears, long arrears too, and £400 of +costs. How much the people paid in under the Plan of Campaign nobody +knows but Father M‘Fadden. But he is a clever <i>padre</i>, and he played +Captain Hill till he finally gave up the costs, and settled for £1450.”</p> + +<p><a name="page86" id="page86"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 86] +</span> +“And this sum represents what?”</p> + +<p>“It represents in round numbers about two years’ income from an estate +in which Captain Hill’s father must have invested, first and last, more +nearly £40,000 than £20,000 of money that never came out of it.”</p> + +<p>“That doesn’t sound like a very good operation. But isn’t the question, +Whether the tenants have earned this sum, such as it is, out of the land +let to them by Captain Hill?”</p> + +<p>“No, not exactly, I think. You must remember there are some twelve +hundred families living here on land bought with Lord George’s money, +and enjoying all the advantages which the place owes to his investment +and his management, much more than to any labour or skill of theirs. You +must look at their rents as accommodation rents. Suppose they earn the +rent in Scotland, or England, or Tyrone, or wherever you like, the +question is, What do they get for it from Captain Hill? They get a +holding with land enough to grow potatoes on, and with as much free fuel +as ever they like, and with free pasture for their beasts, and all this +they get on the average, mind you, for no more than ten shillings a +year! Why, there was a time, I can <a name="page87" id="page87"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 87] +</span> +assure you, when the women here +earned the value of all the Hill rents by knitting stockings and making +woollen stuffs. You see the stuffs lying here in this window that they +make even now, and good stuffs too. But before the League boycotted the +agency here, the agency ten years ago used to pay out £900 in a year, +where it pays less than £100 to the women for their work.”</p> + +<p>“Why did the League do this?”</p> + +<p>“Why? Why, because it wanted to control the work itself, and to know +just what it brings into the place. You must remember Father M‘Fadden is +the President of the League, and the people will do anything for him. I +have heard of one old woman who sat up of nights last year knitting +socks to send up to London, to pay the Christmas dues to the +Father,—six shillings’ worth.”</p> + +<p>“And are these stuffs here in the hotel made for the agency you speak +of?”</p> + +<p>“Oh no; these are just made by women that know the hotel, and Mr. +Robinson here, he kindly takes in the stuffs. You see the name of every +woman on every one of them that made it, and the price. If a stranger +buys some, he pays the money to Mr. Robinson, and so it goes to the +women, and no commission charged.”</p> + +<p><a name="page88" id="page88"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 88] +</span> +The “stuffs” are certainly excellent, very evenly woven; and the +patterns, all devised, I am told, by the women themselves, very simple +and tasteful. The only dyes used are got by the women also from the +sea-weeds and the kelp, which must be counted among the resources of the +place. The browns and ochres thus produced are both soft and vivid; +while nothing can be better than a peculiar warm grey, produced by a +skilful mingling of the undyed wools.</p> + +<p>“What, then, causes the distress for which the name of Gweedore is a +synonym?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“It doesn’t exist,” responded my Galwegian; “that is, there is no such +distress in Gweedore as you find in Connemara, for instance; <a id="footnotetag14" + name="footnotetag14"></a><a href="#footnote14"><sup>14</sup></a> but +what distress there is in Gweedore is due much more to the habits the +people have been getting into of late years, and to the idleness of +them, than to any pressure of the rents you hear about, or <a name="page89" id="page89"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 89] +</span> +even to the +poverty of the soil. Go down to the store at Bunbeg, and see what they +buy and go in debt for! You won’t find in any such place as Bunbeg in +England such things. And even this don’t measure it; for, you see, +two-thirds of them are not free to deal at Bunbeg.”</p> + +<p>“Why not? Is Bunbeg ‘boycotted’?”</p> + +<p>“No, not at all. But they are on the books of the ‘Gombeen man’—Sweeney +of Dungloe and Burtonport. They’re always in debt to him for the meal; +and then he backs the travelling tea-pedlars, and the bakers that carry +around cakes, and all these run up the accounts all the time. Tot up +what these people lay out for tea at four shillings a pound—and they +won’t have cheap tea—and what they pay for meal, and what they pay for +interest, and the ‘testimonials,’—they paid for the monument here to +O’Donnell, the Donegal man that murdered Carey,—and the dues to the +priest, and you’ll find the £700 or so they don’t pay the landlord going +in other directions three and four times over.”</p> + +<p>“Then they are falling back into all the old laziness, the men +sauntering about, or sitting and smoking, while the women do all the +work.”</p> + +<p><a name="page90" id="page90"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 90] +</span> +The maid having told us Mass would be performed at noon, I walked with +Lord Ernest a mile or so up the road to Derrybeg, to see the people +thronging down from the hills; the women in their picturesque fashion +wearing their bright shawls drawn over their heads. But the maid had +deceived us. The Mass was fixed for eleven, and I suspect her of being a +Protestant in disguise.</p> + +<p>On the way back we met Mr. Burke, the resident magistrate. He has a neat +house here, with a garden, and had come over from Dunfanaghy to see his +wife. He meant to return before dark. The country was quiet enough, he +said; but there were some troublesome fellows about, keeping up the +excitement over the arrest at Father M‘Fadden’s trial of Father +Stephens—a young priest recently from Liverpool, who has become the +curate of quite another Father M‘Fadden—the parish priest of +Falcarragh, and is giving his local superior a great deal of trouble by +his activity in connection with the “Plan of Campaign.” Mr. Wybrants +Olphert of Ballyconnell, the chief landlord of Falcarragh, has been +“boycotted,” on suspicion of promoting the arrest of the two priests. +Five policemen have been put into his house. At <a name="page91" id="page91"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 91] +</span> +Falcarragh, where six +policemen are usually stationed, there are now forty. Mr. Burke +evidently thinks, though he did not say so, that Father Stephens has +been spoiled of his sleep by the laurels of Father M‘Fadden of Gweedore. +He is to be tried at Dunfanaghy on Tuesday, and there are now 150 troops +quartered there—Rifles and Hussars.</p> + +<p>“Are they not boycotted?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“No. The people rather enjoy the bustle and the show, not to speak of +the money the soldiers spend.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ernest, who knows Mr. Olphert, sent him over a message by Mr. Burke +that we would drive over to-morrow, and pay our respects to him at +Ballyconnell. From this Mr. Burke tried to dissuade us, but what he told +us naturally increased our wish to go.</p> + +<p>After luncheon I ordered a car, and drove to Derrybeg, to call there on +Father M‘Fadden, Lord Ernest, who has already seen him, agreeing to call +there for me on his return from a walk. We passed much reclaimed +bogland, mostly now in grass, and looking fairly well; many piles of +turf and clusters of cottages, well-built, but not very <a name="page92" id="page92"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 92] +</span> +neatly kept. +From each, as we passed, the inevitable cur rushed out and barked +himself hoarse. Then came a waste of bog and boulders, and then a long, +neat stone wall, well coped with unhewn stone, which announced the +vicinity of Father M‘Fadden’s house, quite the best structure in the +place after the chapel and the hotel. It is of stone, with a neat side +porch, in which, as I drove up, I descried Father M‘Fadden, in his trim +well-fitting clerical costume, standing and talking with an elderly +lady. I passed through a handsome iron wicket, and introduced myself to +him. He received me with much courtesy, and asked me to walk into his +well-furnished comfortable study, where a lady, his sister, to whom he +presented me, sat reading by the fire.</p> + +<p>I told Father M‘Fadden I had come to get his view of methods and things +at Gweedore, and he gave it to me with great freedom and fluency. He is +a typical Celt in appearance, a M‘Fadden Roe, sanguine by temperament, +with an expression at once shrewd and enthusiastic, a most flexible +persuasive voice. All the trouble at Gweedore, he thought, came of the +agents. “Agents had been the curse both of Ireland and of the landlord. +<a name="page93" id="page93"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 93] +</span> +The custom being to pay them by commissions on the sums collected, and +not a regular salary, the more they can screw either out of the soil, or +out of any other resources of the tenants, the better it is for them. At +Gweedore the people earn what they can, not out of the soil, but out of +their labour exported to Scotland, or England, or America. Only +yesterday,” he continued, turning to his neat mahogany desk and taking +up a letter, “I received this with a remittance from America to pay the +rent of one of my people.”</p> + +<p>“This was in connection,” I asked, “with the ‘Plan of Campaign’ and your +contest here?”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” he replied; “and a girl of my parish went over to Scotland +herself and got the money due there for another family, and brought it +back to me here. You see they make me a kind of savings-bank, and have +done so for a long time, long before the ‘Plan of Campaign’ was talked +about as it is now.”</p> + +<p>This was interesting, as I had heard it said by a Nationalist in Dublin +that the “Plan of Campaign” was originally suggested by Father M‘Fadden. +He made no such claim himself, however, and I made no allusion to this +aspect of the matter. “I <a name="page94" id="page94"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 94] +</span> +have been living here for fifteen years, and +they listen to me as to nobody else.”</p> + +<p>In these affairs with the agents, he had always told his people that +“whenever a settlement came to be made, cash alone in the hand of the +person representing them could make it properly.” “Cash I must have,” he +said, “and hold the cash ready for the moment. When I had worked out a +settlement with Captain Hill, I had a good part of the money in my hand +ready to pay down. £1450 was the sum total agreed upon, and after the +further collection, necessitated by the settlement, there was a deficit +of about £200. I wrote to Professor Stuart,” he added, after a pause, +“that I wanted about £200 of the sum-total. But more has come in since +then. This remittance, from America yesterday, for example.”</p> + +<p>“Do they send such remittances without being asked for them?” I +inquired.</p> + +<p>“Yes; they are now and again sending money, and some of them don’t send, +but bring it. Some of them go out to America now as they used to go to +England—just to work and earn some money, and come back.</p> + +<p>“If they get on tolerably well they stay for a <a name="page95" id="page95"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 95] +</span> +while, but they find +America is more expensive than Ireland, and if, for any cause, they get +out of work there, they come back to Ireland to spend what they have. +Naturally, you see,” said Father M‘Fadden, “they find a certain pleasure +to be seen by their old friends in the old place, after borrowing the +four pounds perhaps to take them to America, coming back with the money +jingling in their pockets, and in good clothes, and with a watch and a +chain—and a high hat. And there is in the heart of the Irishman an +eternal longing for his native land constantly luring him back to +Ireland. All do not succeed, though, in your country,” he said. “We hear +of two out of ten perhaps who do very well. They take care we hear of +that. The rest disappear, and are never heard of again.”</p> + +<p>“Then you do not encourage emigration?” I, asked, “even although the +people cannot earn their living from the soil?”</p> + +<p>Father M‘Fadden hesitated a moment, and then replied, “No, for things +should be so arranged that they may earn their living, not out of the +country, but on the soil at home. It is to that I want to bring the +condition of the district.”</p> + +<p>At this point Lord Ernest Hamilton came up <a name="page96" id="page96"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 96] +</span> +and knocked at the door. He +was most courteously received by Father M‘Fadden. To my query why the +Courts could not intervene to save the priests from taking all this +trouble on themselves between the owners and the occupiers of the land, +Father M‘Fadden at first replied that the Courts had no power to +intervene where, as in many cases in Gweedore, the holdings are +subdivided.</p> + +<p>“The Courts,” he said, “may not be, and I do not think they are, all +that could be desired, though they undoubtedly do supply a more or less +impartial arbitrator between the landlord and the tenant. It is an +improvement on the past when the landlords fixed the rents for +themselves.”</p> + +<p>I did not remind him of what Lord George Hill tells us, that in the +olden time at Gweedore the tenants fixed their own rents—and then did +not pay them—but I asked him how this could be said when the tenant +clearly must have accepted the rent, no matter who fixed it. “Oh!” said +Father M‘Fadden, “that may be so, but the tenant was not free, he was +coerced. With all his life and labour represented in the holding and its +improvements, he could not go and give up his holding. It’s a +stand-and-deliver business with him—the landlord puts a pistol to his +head!”</p> + +<p><a name="page97" id="page97"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 97] +</span> +“But is it not true,” I said, “that under the new Land Bill the Land +Commissioner’s Court has power to fix the rents judicially without +regard to landlord or tenant during fifteen years?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, that is so,” said Father M‘Fadden. “Under Mr. Gladstone’s Act of +81, and under the later Act of the present Government, the rents so +fixed from ’81 to ’86 inclusive are subject to revision for three years; +but the people have no confidence in the constitution of the Courts, +and, as a matter of fact, the improvements of the tenants are +confiscated under the Act of ’81, and the reductions allowed under the +Act of ’87 are incommensurate with the fall in prices by 100 per cent. +And there still remains the burden of arrears. I feel that I must stand +between my people and obligations which they are unable to meet. To that +end I take their money, and stand ready to use it to relieve them when +the occasion offers. That is my idea of my work under the ‘Plan of +Campaign’; and, furthermore, I think that by doing it I have secured +money for the landlord which he couldn’t possibly have got in any other +way.”</p> + +<p>This struck me as a very remarkable statement, nor can I see how it can +be interpreted otherwise <a name="page98" id="page98"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 98] +</span> +than as an admission that if the people had +the money to pay their rents, they couldn’t be trusted to use it for +that purpose, unless they put it into the control of the priest or of +some other trustee.</p> + +<p>Reverting to what he had said of the necessity for some change in the +conditions of life and labour here, I asked if, in his opinion, the +people could live out of the land if they got the ownership of it.</p> + +<p>In existing circumstances he thought they could not.</p> + +<p>Was he in favour, then, of Mr. Davitt’s plan of Land Nationalisation?</p> + +<p>“Well, I have not considered the question of Nationalisation of the +land.”</p> + +<p>To my further question, What remedies he would himself propose for a +state of things in which it was impossible for the people to live out of +the land either as occupiers or as owners—emigration being barred, +Father M‘Fadden, without looking at Lord Ernest, replied, “Oh, I think +abler men who draw up Parliamentary Acts and live in public life ought +to devise remedies, and that is a matter which would be best settled by +a Home Government.”</p> + +<p><a name="page99" id="page99"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 99] +</span> +The glove was well delivered, but Lord Ernest did not lift it.</p> + +<p>“But, Father M‘Fadden,” I said, “I am told you are a practical +agriculturist and engineer, and that you have contrived to get excellent +work done by the people here, dividing them off into working squads, and +assigning so many perches to so many—surely then you must understand +better than a dozen members of Parliament what they can be got to do?”</p> + +<p>He smiled at this, and finally admitted that he had a plan of his own. +It was that the Government should advance sums for reclaiming the land. +“The people could live on part of their earnings while thus employed, +and invest the surplus in sheep to be fed on the hill pastures. When the +reclamation was effected the families could be scattered out, and the +holdings increased. In this district alone there are 350 holdings of +reclaimable land of 20 acres each, the reclamation of which, according +to a competent surveyor, ”would pay well.“ And the district could be +improved by creating employment on the spot, establishing factories, +developing fisheries, giving technical education, and encouraging +cottage industries, which are so vigor<a name="page100" id="page100"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 100] +</span> +ously reviving in this district +owing to the benevolent efforts of the Donegal Industrial Fund.”</p> + +<p>Father M‘Fadden spoke freely and without undue heat of his trial, and +gave us a piquant account of his arrest.</p> + +<p>This was effected at Armagh, just as he was getting into an early +morning train. A sergeant of police walked up as the train was about to +start, and asked—</p> + +<p>“Are you not Father M‘Fadden of Gweedore?”</p> + +<p>“What interest have you in my identity?” responded the priest.</p> + +<p>“Only this, sir,” said the officer, politely exhibiting a warrant.</p> + +<p>“I had been in Armagh the previous day,” said Father M‘Fadden, +“attending the month’s memory of the late deceased Primate of All +Ireland, Dr. M‘Gettigan, and stayed at a private residence, that of +Surgeon-Major Lavery, not suspecting that while enjoying the genial +hospitality of the Surgeon-Major my steps were dogged by a detective, +and that gentleman’s house watched by police.”</p> + +<p>Of the trial Father M‘Fadden spoke with more bitterness. His eyes glowed +as he exclaimed, “Can you imagine that they refused me bail, when bail +<a name="page101" id="page101"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 101] +</span> +had been allowed to such a felon as Arthur Orton? Why should I have +been locked up over two Sundays, for ten days, when I offered to pledge +my honour to appear?” He made no other complaint of the magistrate, and +none of the prosecutor, Mr. Ross. He praised his own lawyer, too, but he +strongly denounced the stenographer who took down his speech, or the +parts of it which I told him I had seen in Dublin.</p> + +<p>“Why, just think of it,” he exclaimed; “it took the clerk just eight +minutes to read the report given by that stenographer of a speech which +it took me an hour and twenty minutes to deliver! I do not speak from +the lips, I speak from the heart, and consequently rather rapidly; and a +stenographer who can take down 190 words a minute has told me I run +ahead of him!”</p> + +<p>I suggested that the report, without pretending even to be a full +summary of his speech, might be accurate as to phrases and sentences +pronounced by him.</p> + +<p>“Yes, as to phrases,” he answered, “that might be; but the phrases may +be taken out of their true connection, and strung together in an +untruthful, yet telling way. Even my words were not fully <a name="page102" id="page102"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 102] +</span> +set down,” he +said, with some heat. “I was made to call a man ‘level,’ when I said in +the American way that he was ‘level-headed.’” <i>A propos</i> of this, I am +told that the American word “spree” has become Hibernian, and is used to +describe meetings of the National League and “other political +entertainments.”</p> + +<p>When I told Father M‘Fadden I had just come from Rome, where, as I had +reason to believe, the Vatican was anxious to get evidence from others +than Archbishop Walsh and Monsignore Kirby, of the Irish College, as to +the attitude of the priests in Ireland towards the laws of the United +Kingdom, he said he knew that “some Italian prelates neither understood +nor approved the ‘Plan of Campaign,’ nor is the Irish Land question +understood at Rome;” but this did not seem to disturb him much, as he +was quite sure that in the end the “Plan of Campaign” would be legalised +by the British Government. “I think I see plainly,” he said, “that Lord +Ernest’s government is fast going to pieces, though I can’t expect him +to admit it!” Lord Ernest laughed good-naturedly, and said that Father +M‘Fadden saw more in Donegal than he (Lord Ernest) was able to see <a name="page103" id="page103"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 103] +</span> +in +Westminster. Upon my asking him whether the “Plan of Campaign” did not +in effect abrogate the moral duty of a man to meet the legal obligations +he had voluntarily incurred, Father M‘Fadden advanced his own theory of +the subject, which was that, “if a man can pay a fair year’s rent out of +the produce of his holding, he is bound to pay it. But if the rent be a +rack-rent, imposed on the tenant against his will, or if the holding +does not produce the rent, then I don’t think that is a strict +obligation in conscience.”</p> + +<p>In America, the courts, I fear, would make short work of this theory of +Father M‘Fadden. If a tenant there cannot pay his first quarter’s rent +(they don’t let him darken his soul by a year’s liabilities) they +promptly and mercilessly put him out.</p> + +<p>Interesting as was our conversation with the parish priest of Gweedore, +I felt that we might be trespassing too far upon his kindness and his +time. So we rose to go. He insisted upon our going into the dining-room, +where, as he told us, he had hospitably entertained sundry visiting +statesmen from England, and there offered us a glass of the excellent +wine of the country. He excused <a name="page104" id="page104"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 104] +</span> +himself from joining us as being +“almost a teetotaller.”</p> + +<p>On our return to the hotel I met the Galwegian strolling about. When I +told him of Father M‘Fadden’s courteous hospitality, he said, “I am very +glad you took that glass he offered. I really believe his quarrel with +Captain Hill dates back to Hill’s declining that same courtesy under +Father M‘Fadden’s roof.”</p> + + +<p><span class="diary">GWEEDORE, <i>Monday, Feb. 6.</i></span>—Another very beautiful morning—as a farmer +said with whom I chatted on my morning stroll, “A grand day, sorr!” +Errigal, which in this mountain atmosphere seems almost to hang over our +hotel, but is in reality three or four miles away, stood out superbly +against a clear azure sky, wreaths of soft luminous mist floating like a +divine girdle half way up his bare volcanic peak.</p> + +<p>I walked up to the Bunbeg road with Lord Ernest to call upon some +peasants whom he knows. In one stone cabin, very well built and +plastered, standing sidewise to the road, with doors on either side, we +found the house apparently in charge of a little girl of nine or ten +years, a weird but pretty <a name="page105" id="page105"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 105] +</span> +child with very delicate well-cut features, +who lay couchant upon her doubled-up arm on a low bed in a corner of the +main room, and peered at us over her elbow with sparkling inquisitive +eyes.</p> + +<p>By her side sat a man with his cap on, who might have been the “young +Pretender,” or the “old Kaiser,” so far as his looks went towards +indicating his age. He never rose or welcomed us, being, as we +afterwards found out, only a visitor like ourselves, and a kinsman of +Mrs. M‘Donnell, the head of the house. “Mrs. M‘Donnell,” he said, “is +gone to the store at Bunbeg.”</p> + +<p>This main room rose perhaps ten feet in height to the open roof. It had +one large and well-glazed window. When Lord George Hill came here there +were not ten square feet of window-glass in the whole parish outside of +the Church, the national school, and the residence of the chief +police-officer.</p> + +<p>Windows when there were any were closed with dried sheepskins, through +which the cats ran in and out as freely as through the curious tunnel +which the kindly Master of Blantyre has constructed at Sheba’s Cross for +their special benefit.</p> + +<p>There were two beds in the main room; rather high than low, one of +rushes, on which lay the <a name="page106" id="page106"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 106] +</span> +child of whom I have spoken, and one of +greater pretensions vacant in another corner.</p> + +<p>The door stood wide open, but the cabin was warm and comfortable, and a +peat fire smouldered, sending up, to me, most agreeable odours. An inner +room seemed to be a sort of granary, full of hay and straw. There the +cow is kept at night. “It’s handy if you want a drink of milk,” said the +visitor. In comparison with the dwellings of small farmers in Eastern +France or in Southern Italy this Donegal cabin was not only clean but +attractive. It was more squalid perhaps, but less dreary than the +extemporised and flimsy dwellings of settlers in the extreme Far West of +the United States, and I should say decidedly a more wholesome +habitation than the hermetically sealed and dismal wooden houses of +hundreds of struggling farmers in the older Eastern States. I am sure my +old friend Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, who made the only thorough surveys +of agricultural life in the United States before the Civil War, would +have pronounced it in all respects superior, so far as health and +comfort go, to the average home of the average “poor buccra,” between +the Chesapeake and the Sabine. I am afraid a great deal of not wholly +innocuous non<a name="page107" id="page107"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 107] +</span> +sense has been written and spoken about this part of the +United Kingdom by well-meaning philanthropists who have gauged the +condition of the people here by their own standards of comfort and +enjoyment. Most things in this life of ours are relative. I well +remember hearing an American millionaire, who began life in New York as +the patentee of a mouse-trap, express his profound compassion for a +judge of the Supreme Court condemned to live “upon a pittance of eight +thousand dollars a year.”</p> + +<p>These dwellers in the cabins of Donegal are millionaires, so far as +those essentials of life are concerned, which we call room and air and +freedom to move and breathe, in comparison with hundreds and thousands +of their own race in the slums of New York and Chicago and Liverpool and +London.</p> + +<p>Mrs. M‘Donnell’s cousin, however, took dark views of things. The times +“were no good at all.”</p> + +<p>The potatoes, I had heard, were doing well this year.</p> + +<p>“No! they wouldn’t keep the people; indeed, they wouldn’t. There would +have to be relief.”</p> + +<p>“Why not manure the land?”</p> + +<p><a name="page108" id="page108"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 108] +</span> +“Manure? oh yes, the sea-stuff was good manure, but the people couldn’t +get it. They had no boats; and it cost eighteenpence a load to haul it +from Bunbeg. No! they couldn’t get it off the rocks. At the Rosses they +might; the Rosses were not so badly off as Derrybeg or Gweedore, for all +they might say.”</p> + +<p>“But Father M‘Fadden had urged me,” I said, “to see the Rosses, because +the people there were worse off than any of the people.”</p> + +<p>“Well, Father M‘Fadden was a good man; he was a friend of the people; +and they were bad indeed at the Rosses, but they could get the sea-stuff +there, and hadn’t to pay for cartage. And indeed, if you put the +sea-stuff on the bogland, the land was better in among the rocks’ at the +Rosses than was the bogland, it was indeed: the stuff did no good at all +the first year. The second and the third it gave good crops—but then +you must burn it—and by the fourth year and the fifth it was all ashes, +and no good at all! This was God’s truth, it was; and there must be +relief.”</p> + +<p>“But could the people earn nothing in Scotland or in Tyrone?”</p> + +<p>“Oh no, they could earn nothing at all. They could pay no rent.”</p> + +<p><a name="page109" id="page109"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 109] +</span> +So he sat there, a Jeremiah among the potsherds, quite contented and +miserable—well and hearty in a ragged frieze coat, with his hat over +his eyes.</p> + +<p>While we talked, a tall lusty young beggar-girl wandered in and out +unnoticed. Chickens pecked and fluttered about, and at intervals the +inevitable small dog suddenly barked and yelped.</p> + +<p>On our way back we met the elder daughter of Mrs. M‘Donnell, a girl of +sixteen, the “beauty of Gweedore.” A beauty she certainly is, and of a +type hardly to have been looked for here.</p> + +<p>Her lithe graceful figure, her fine, small, chiselled features, her +shapely little head rather defiantly set on her sloping shoulders, her +fair complexion and clear hazel eyes, her brown golden hair gathered up +behind into a kind of tress, all these were Saxon rather than Celtic. +Her trim neat ankles were bare, after the mountain fashion, but she was +prettily dressed in a well-fitting dark blue gown, wore a smartly +trimmed muslin apron, with lace about her throat, and carried over her +arm a new woollen shawl, very tasteful and quiet in colour. She greeted +us with a self-possessed smile.</p> + +<p>“No,” she had not, been shopping with her <a name="page110" id="page110"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 110] +</span> +mother. The shawl was a +present from one of her cousins. Did we not think it very pretty? She +was only out for a walk, and had no notion where her mother might be. A +stalwart red-bearded man who lounged and loitered behind her on the road +was “only a friend,” she said, “not a relation at all!” Nor did she +show, I am sorry to say, any compassion for the evident uneasiness with +which, from a distance, he regarded her long and affable parley with two +strangers.</p> + +<p>We asked her whether she expected and wished to live in Gweedore, or +would like to follow elsewhere some calling or trade. “Oh yes,” she +unhesitatingly replied, “I should like to be a dress-maker in Deny; +but,” she added pensively, “it’s no use my thinking about it, for I know +I shouldn’t be let!”</p> + +<p>“Wouldn’t you like Dublin as well?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“Perhaps; but I shouldn’t be let go to Dublin either!”</p> + +<p>Would she like to go to America?</p> + +<p>“No!” she didn’t think much of “the Americans who came back,” and +America must be “a very hard country for work, and very cold in the +winter.”</p> + +<p>Now this was a widow’s daughter, living in such <a name="page111" id="page111"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 111] +</span> +a cabin as I have +described, and upon a small holding in a parish reputed to be the most +“distressful” in Donegal! <a id="footnotetag15" + name="footnotetag15"></a><a href="#footnote15"><sup>15</sup></a></p> + +<p>Returning to the hotel we found our car ready for Falcarragh. Our driver +was a quiet, sensible fellow, who did not seem to care sixpence about +the great Nationality question, though he knew the country very well.</p> + +<p>Iron was visible in the rocks as we drove along, and we passed some +abandoned mining works, “lead and silver mines;” he said, “they were +given up long before his time.” We got many fine views of the mountains +Errigal, Aghla More, and Muckish. Lough Altan, a wild tarn, lies between +Errigal and Aghla More.</p> + +<p>The peasants we met stared at us curiously, but, were very civil, even +at a place bearing the ominous name of Bedlam, against which Mr. Burke +had warned us as the most troublesome on the way. All the countryside +was there attending a fair, and we drove through throngs of red-shawled, +barelegged women, ponies, horses, cattle, and sheep. <a name="page112" id="page112"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 112] +</span> +Of Tory Island, +with its famous tower, dating back to the fabled “Fomorians,” we had +some grand glimpses. The white surf, flashing and leaping high in the +air on the nearer islets accented and gave life to the landscape.</p> + +<p>In one glorious landlocked bay, we saw not a single boat riding. Our +driver said, “The fishermen all live on Tory Island, and send their fish +to Sligo. The people on the mainland don’t like going out in the boats.”</p> + +<p>Lord Ernest tells me there is a movement to have a telegraph station set +up on Tory Island, to announce the Canadian steamers coming into Moville +for Deny.</p> + +<p>We found Falcarragh, or “Cross-Roads,” a large clean-looking village, +consisting of one long and broad street, through which horses and cattle +were wandering in numbers, apparently at their own sweet will.</p> + +<p>Ballyconnell House, the seat of Mr. Wybrants Olphert, is the manor house +of the place. As we drew near, no signs appeared of the dreadful +“Boycott.” The great gates of the park stood hospitably open, and we +drove in unchallenged past a pretty ivy-clad lodge, and through low, but +<a name="page113" id="page113"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 113] +</span> +thickly planted groves. A huge boulder, ruddy with iron ore, bears the +uncanny and unspellable name of the “Clockchinnfhaelaidh,” or “Stone of +Kinfaele.” Upon this stone, tradition tells us, Balor, a giant of Tory +Island, chopped off the head of an unreasonable person named +Mackinfeale, for complaining that Balor, under some prehistoric “Plan of +Campaign,” had driven away his favourite cow, Glasgavlan.</p> + +<p>Ballyconnell House, a substantial mansion of the Georgian era, stands +extremely well. Over a fine sloping lawn in front, you have a glorious +view of the sea, and of a very fine headland, known as “the Duke’s +Head,” from the really remarkable resemblance it bears to the profile of +Wellington. The winds have such power here that there are but few +well-grown trees, and those near the house. About them paraded many +game-hens, spirited birds, looking like pheasants. These, as we learned, +never sleep save in the trees.</p> + +<p>The “boycotted” lord of the manor came out to greet us—a handsome, +stalwart man of some seventy years, with a kindly face, and most +charming manners. His family, presumably of Dutch origin, has been +established here since Charles II. <a name="page114" id="page114"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 114] +</span> +He himself holds 18,133 acres here, +valued at £1802 a year; and he is a resident landlord in the fullest +sense of the term. For fifty years he has lived here, during all which +time, as he told us to-day, he has “never slept for a week out of the +country.” His furthest excursions of late years have been to Raphoe, +where he has a married daughter. “Absenteeism” clearly has nothing to do +with the quarrel between Mr. Olphert and his tenants, or with the +“boycotting” of Ballyconnell.</p> + +<p>The dragoons from Dunfanaghy had just ridden away as we came up. They +had come over in full fig to show themselves, and to encourage the +respectable Catholics of Falcarragh, who side with their parish priest, +Father M‘Fadden of Glena, and object to the vehement measures, promoted +by his young curate, Father Stephens, recently of Liverpool. The people +had received them with much satisfaction. “They had never seen the +cavalry before, and were much delighted!”</p> + +<p>Before we sat down to luncheon young Mr. Olphert came in. It was curious +to see this quiet, well-bred young gentleman throw down his belt and his +revolver on the hall table, like his gloves and his umbrella. “Quite +like the Far <a name="page115" id="page115"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 115] +</span> +West,” I said. “And we are as far in the West as we can +get,” he replied laughingly.</p> + +<p>Our luncheon was excellent—so good, in fact, that we felt a kind of +remorse as if we had selfishly quartered ourselves upon a beleaguered +garrison. But Mr. Olphert said he had no fear of being starved out. +Personally he was, and always had been, on the best terms with the +people of Falcarragh. The older tenants, even now, if he met them +walking in the fields when no one was in sight, would come up and salute +him, and say how “disgusted” they were with what was going on. It was +the younger generation who were troublesome—more troublesome, he added, +to their own parish priest than they were to him. Three or four years +ago a returned American Irishman, an avowed unbeliever, but an active +Nationalist and one of Mr. Forster’s “suspects,” had come into the +neighbourhood and done his worst to break up the parish. He used to come +to Falcarragh on a Sunday, and get up on a stone outside the chapel +while Father M‘Fadden was saying Mass or preaching, and harangue such +people as would listen to him, and caricature the priest and the sermon +going on within sound of his own voice. “I am myself <a name="page116" id="page116"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 116] +</span> +a Protestant,” +said Mr. Olphert, “but I have a great respect for priests who do their +duty; and the conduct of Father M‘Fadden of Gweedore, in countenancing +this man, who tried to overthrow the authority of Father M‘Fadden of +Glena, excited my indignation. As to what is going on now,” said Mr. +Olphert, “it is to Father M‘Fadden of Gweedore, and to Father Stephens +here, that the trouble is chiefly to be charged.” This tallies with what +I heard at Gweedore from my Galwegian acquaintance. He thought Mr. +Olphert, and Mr. Hewson, the agent, ought to have made peace on the +terms which Father Stephens said he was willing to accept for the +tenants, these being a reduction of 3s. 4d. in the pound, if Mr. Olphert +would extend the reduction to the whole year. My Galwegian thought this +reasonable, because in this region the rent, it appears, is only +collected once a year. With this impartial temper, my Galwegian still +maintained that but for the two priests—the parish priest of Gweedore +and the curate of Falcarragh—there need have been no trouble at +Falcarragh. There had been no “evictions.” When the tenants first went +to Mr. Olphert they asked a reduction of 4s. in the pound on the +non-judicial rents, and this Mr. <a name="page117" id="page117"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 117] +</span> +Olphert at once agreed to give them. +The tenants had regularly paid their rents for ten years before. That +they are not going down in the world would appear from the fact that the +P.O. Savings Banks’ deposits at Falcarragh, which stood at £62, 15s. +10d. in 1880, rose in 1887 to £494, 10s. 8d. A small number of them had +gone into Court and had judicial rents fixed; and it was on the +contention promoted by the two priests, through these judicial tenants, +he said, that all the difficulty hinged. Father M‘Fadden of Glena, who +thought the quarrel unjustifiable and silly, had an interview with Mr. +Blane, M.P., and with Father Stephens, and tried to arrange it all. He +would have succeeded, my Galwegian thought, had not the agent, Mr. +Hewson, obstinately fought with the obstinate curate, Father Stephens, +over the suggestion made by the latter, that the terms granted on the +fine neighbouring estate of Mr. Stuart of Ards—a man of wealth, who +lives mainly at Brighton, though Ards is one of the loveliest places in +Ireland—should be extended by Mr. Olphert for a whole year to his own +people, who had never asked for anything of the kind!</p> + +<p>Mr. Olphert said he knew Gweedore well. He <a name="page118" id="page118"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 118] +</span> +owns a “townland” <a id="footnotetag16" + name="footnotetag16"></a><a href="#footnote16"><sup>16</sup></a> there, +on which he has thirty-five tenants, none of them on a holding at more +more than £4 a year. Father M‘Fadden of Gweedore, he said, finding that +the people on Mr. Olphert’s townland were going back to the “Rundale” +practices, tried to induce Mr. Olphert to return all these subdivisions +as “tenancies.” This he refused to do. As to the resources of the +peasantry, he thought them greater than they appeared to be. “This comes +to light,” said Mr. Olphert, “whenever there is a tenant-right for sale. +There is never any lack of money to buy it, and at a round good price.” +The people also, he thinks, spend a great deal on what they regard as +luxuries, <a name="page119" id="page119"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 119] +</span> +and particularly on tea. “A cup of tea could not be got for +love or money in Gweedore, when Lord George Hill came there. You might +as well have asked for a glass of Tokay.”</p> + +<p>Now they use and abuse it in the most deleterious way imaginable. They +buy the tea at exorbitant rates, often at five shillings a pound, and +usually on credit, paying a part of one bill on running up another, put +it into a saucepan or an iron pot, and boil, or rather stew, it over the +fire, till they brew a kind of hell-broth, which they imbibe at odd +moments all day long! Oddly enough, this is the way in which they +prepare tea in Cashmere and other parts of India, with this essential +difference, though, that the Orientals mitigate the astringency of the +herb with milk and almonds and divers ingredients, tending to make a +sort of “compote” of it. Taken as it is taken here, it must have a +tremendous effect on the nerves. Mr. Olphert thinks it has had much to +do with the increase of lunacy in Ireland of late years. From his +official connection with the asylum at Letterkenny, he knows that while +it used to accommodate the lunatics of three counties, it is now hardly +adequate to the needs of Donegal alone.</p> + +<p><a name="page120" id="page120"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 120] +</span> +Everything about Ballyconnell House is out of key with the actual +military conditions of life here. It is essentially what Tennyson calls +“an ancient home of ordered peace.” In the ample hall hang old portraits +and trophies of the chase. The large and handsome library, panelled in +rich dark wood, is filled full of well-bound books. Prints, busts, the +thousand and one things of “bigotry and virtue” which mark the +dwelling-place of educated and thoughtful people are to be seen on every +side. Mr. Olphert showed us a cabinet full of bronzes, picked up on the +strand of the sea. Among these were brooches, pins, clasps, buckles, two +very fine bronze swords, and a pair of bronze links engraved with +distinctly Masonic emblems, such as the level, the square, and the +compasses. When were these things made, and by what people?</p> + +<p>So far as I know, Masonry in the British Islands cannot be historically +traced back much, if at all, beyond the Revolution of 1688.</p> + +<p>Mr. Olphert and his son walked about the place with us. They have no +fears of an attack, but think it wise to keep a force of police on the +premises. The only demonstration yet made of any kind against the house +was the march from <a name="page121" id="page121"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 121] +</span> +Falcarragh some time ago of a mob of young men, who +promptly withdrew on catching sight of half-a-dozen policemen within the +park gates. As to getting his work done, some of his people had steadily +refused to acknowledge the “boycott,” and they were now strengthened by +the attitude of those who had surrendered to the pressure, and were now +sullen and angry with the League which had given them nothing to do, and +no supplies.</p> + +<p>At Falcarragh we met a person who knew much about the late Lord Leitrim, +who was murdered in this neighbourhood on the highway some years ago. He +spoke freely of the murderer by name, as if it were matter of common +notoriety. Of the murdered man, he said that he had made himself +extremely unpopular and odious, not so much by certain immoralities +freely alleged at the time of his death, as by vexatious meddling with +the prejudices and whims of his tenants. “He used to go into the houses +and pull down cartoons and placards, if he saw them put up on the +walls.” “No! he had no party feeling in the matter; he used to pull down +William III. and the Pope with an equal hand.” It seems that in this +region, too, a local legend has grown up of the birth at a place called +Cashelmore of a “Queen of France.” The case is worth noting <a name="page122" id="page122"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 122] +</span> +as throwing +light on the genesis and accuracy of local traditions. The “Queen of +France” referred to proves, on inquiry, to have been Miss Patterson, who +married Jerome Bonaparte, brother of the first Emperor, afterwards +created by him King of Westphalia! This Avas the lady so well known in +America as Mrs. Patterson Bonaparte of Baltimore, who died at a great +age only a few years ago. I have no reason to suppose that she was born +at Cashelmore at all or in Ireland. But her father, reputed in the time +of Washington to be the richest man in the United States, who came from +the North of Ireland and settled in Baltimore as a merchant, may very +well have been born there.</p> + +<p>To my great regret Father M‘Fadden of Glena, or Falcarragh, was absent +from home. As we drove homeward we met on the way a young lady on a +smart jaunting-car, with a servant in livery. This was the daughter, our +driver told us, of Mr. Griffiths, the Protestant clergyman, past whose +residence our road lay. His church stands high upon a commanding cliff, +and is a feature in the landscape. We met the parson himself also, +walking with a friend. The road from Bedlam to Derrybeg goes by a region +of the “Rosses,” reputed the <a name="page123" id="page123"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 123] +</span> +most woe-begone part of the Gweedore +district. This is the scene of a curious tale told about Father M‘Fadden +of Gweedore, by his ill-wishers in these parts, to the effect that he +advises English Members of Parliament and other “sympathising” visitors +who come here to make a pilgrimage to “the Bosses,” where, no matter at +what time of day they appear, they invariably find sundry of the people +sitting in their huts and eating stewed seaweed out of iron pots. I +cannot vouch for this tale, but certainly I have seen no people here of +either sex, or of any age, who look as if they lived on stewed seaweed. +Another person at Falcarragh told us, as an illustration of the +influence exerted by Father M‘Fadden of Gweedore, in this parish, over +which he has no proper authority, that, in obedience to an intimation +from him, the persons whose seats in the chapel had been occupied on two +successive Sundays by the policemen now stationed here, yesterday +refused to allow the policemen to occupy them, the only exception being +in the case of a man who had been arrested at the same time with Father +Stephens, and who had been so well treated by the police, that he felt +bound to repay their courtesy by offering one of them his seat. +</p> + + + +<h2><a name="page124" id="page124"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 124] +</span> +CHAPTER III.</h2> + + +<p><span class="diary">DUNGLOE, <i>Tuesday, Feb. 7.</i></span>—We rose early this morning at Gweedore; the +sun shining so brightly that we were forced to drop the window-shades at +breakfast, while I read my letter from Rome, telling me of the bitter +cold there, and of a slight snow-fall last week. Here the birds were +singing, and the air was as soft and exhilarating as that of an April +morning in the Highlands of Mexico or Costa Rica.</p> + +<p>Our host gave us a capital car, with a staunch nag and a wide-awake +jarvey, thanks to all which I found the thirteen miles drive to this +place too short. No doubt it will be a great thing for Donegal when +“light railways” are laid down here. But I pity the traveller of the +future here, if he is never to know the delight of traversing these wild +and picturesque wastes in such weather as we have had to-day, on a car, +well-balanced by a single <a name="page125" id="page125"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 125] +</span> +pleasant companion, drinking, as he goes, +deep draughts of the Atlantic air! Truly on a jaunting-car “two are +company and three are none.” You have almost the free companionship of a +South American journey in the saddle, jumping off to walk, when you +like, more freely still.</p> + +<p>We drove near the house of the “beauty of Gweedore,” but she was not +visible, though we met her mother (by no means a <i>pulchra mater</i>) as we +crossed the Clady at Bryan’s Bridge.</p> + +<p>We soon passed from the bogland into a wilderness of granite. Our +jarvey, however, maintained that there was “better land among the stones +than any bogland could be.” He was a shrewd fellow, and summed up the +economical situation, I thought, better than some of his betters, when +he said of the whole region that “it will fatten four, feed five, and +starve six.”</p> + +<p>It may well fatten six, though, I should say, if the natural wealth of +this vast granite range can be properly turned to account. On every side +of us lay vast blocks of granite of all hues and grades, all absolutely +unworked, but surely not unworkable. We stopped and picked up many +specimens, some of them almost as rich in colour as porphyry. Of <a name="page126" id="page126"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 126] +</span> +lakes +and lakelets supplying water-power the name too, is legion.</p> + +<p>Beyond Annagary we caught a glimpse of the Isle of Arran, the scene, a +few years ago, of so much suffering, and that of a kind I should think +as much beyond the control of legislation as the misery and destruction +which have overtaken successive attempts to establish settlements on +Anticosti in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.</p> + +<p>This town of Dungloe sprawls along the shore of the sea. It is reputed +the most ill-favoured town in Donegal, and it certainly is not a dream +of beauty. But it blooms all over with evidences of the prosperity of +that interesting type of Irish civilisation, the “Gombeen man,” of whom +I had heard so much at Gweedore. Over the doorways of most of the shops +appear the names of various members of the family of Sweeney, all of +them, I am told, brought here and established within a few years past by +the head of the sept, who is not only the great “Gombeen man” of the +region, but a leading local member of the National League, and Her +Majesty’s Postmaster. The Sweeneys, in fact, commercially speaking, +dominate Dungloe, their, only visible rivals being a returned Irish +<a name="page127" id="page127"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 127] +</span> +American, who has built himself a neat two-story house and shop just at +the entrance of the village, and our own host, Mr. Maurice Boyle, whose +extremely neat little inn just faces a large shop, the stronghold of the +Chief of the Sweeneys. I am sorry to find that this important citizen of +Dungloe is not now here. We went into his chief establishment to make +some purchases, and found it full of customers, chiefly women, neatly +dressed after the Donegal fashion, and busily chaffering with the +shopgirls and shopmen, who had their hands full, exhibiting goods such +as certainly would not be found in any New York or New England village +of this sort. When we secured the attention of the chief shopman, a +nattily dressed, dark-haired young man who would not have discredited +the largest “store” in Grand Street or the Bowery of New York, we asked +him to show us some of the home-made woollen goods of the country. +These, he assured us, had no sale in Dungloe, and he did not keep them. +But he showed us piles of handsome Scottish tweeds at much higher +prices. Now as this is an exclusively agricultural region, it is evident +that the tenants must be able to make it worth a trader’s while to keep +on hand such goods <a name="page128" id="page128"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 128] +</span> +as we here found, and therefore that they cannot be +exactly on “the ragged edge” of things.</p> + +<p>Mr. Sweeney is also the proprietor of the chief “hotel” of Dungloe; our +host, Mr. Boyle, being in fact supposed to be “boycotted” for +entertaining officers of the police. This “boycott,” however, has +entailed no practical inconvenience upon us; and Mr. Boyle’s pretty and +plucky daughters, who manage his house for him, laughed scornfully at +the notion of being “bothered” by it.</p> + +<p>After luncheon we took a car and drove out to Burtonport, on the Roads +of Arranmore, to visit the parish priest there, Father Walker, and Mr. +Hammond, the agent of the Conyngham estates.</p> + +<p>We passed near a large inland lake, Lough Meela, and the seaward views +along the coast were very fine. With peace and order this corner of +Ireland might easily become the chosen site of the most delightful +seaside homes in the United Kingdom. The Recorder of Cork has discovered +this, and passes a great part of the year here. This Donegal coast is no +further from the great centres of British wealth and population than are +Mount Desert and the other summer resorts of Maine and New Hampshire +from New York and Philadelphia; and the <a name="page129" id="page129"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 129] +</span> +islands which break the great +roll of the Atlantic here cannot well be more nearly in “a state of +nature” than were the Isles of Shoals, for example, in my college days, +long after Mr. Lowell first wandered there with the transcendental +Thaxters to celebrate the thunders of the surf at Appledore.</p> + +<p>The wonderful granitic formations we had seen on the way from Gweedore +stretch all along the coast to the Roads of Arranmore. At Burtonport +they lie on the very water’s edge. At a place called Lickeena, masses of +beautiful salmon-and rose-coloured granite actually trend into the +tidewater, and at Burtonport proper is a promontory of that +richly-mottled granite which I had supposed to be the peculiar heritage +of Peterhead, and which is now largely exported from Scotland to the +United States. Why should not this Irish granite be shipped directly +from Donegal to America, there to be built up into cathedrals, and +shaped into monuments for the Exiles of Erin? All these formations which +we have seen present themselves in great cubical blocks, so jointed that +they may be detached without blasting, with great comparative ease, and +with little of the waste which results from the squaring of shapeless +masses. At the same <a name="page130" id="page130"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 130] +</span> +time, as we saw while coming from Gweedore, the +many lakes of this region offer all the water-power necessary for +polishing-works, columnar lathes, and the general machinery used in +developing such quarries. Without being an expert in granites, I have +seen enough of the granite works at home to feel quite sure that a +moderate and judiciously managed investment here ought to return a +handsome result. If the National League is as well off as it is reputed +to be, it might go into this business open a new and remunerative +industry to the people of a “congested” district, and earn dividends +large enough to enable it to pay the expenses of the war against England +at Westminster, without drawing on the savings of the servant-girls in +America, The only person likely to suffer would be the “Gombeen man,” if +the peasantry earned enough to pay off their debts to him, and stop the +flow of interest into his coffers.</p> + +<p>At Burtonport we found the “Gombeen man,” of Dungloe, represented by a +very large “store.” He runs steamers between this place and various +ports on the Scottish and Irish coasts, bringing in goods and taking out +the crops which his debtors turn over to him.</p> + +<p><a name="page131" id="page131"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 131] +</span> +This Burtonport “store” towers high above the modest home of the parish +priest, Father Walker. To our great regret he was absent on parochial +duty, but his niece very kindly welcomed us into his modest study, where +we left a note begging him to honour us with his company at dinner in +Dungloe.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hammond, too, was absent, so after paying our respects to his wife, +we drove back to Dungloe, and walked about the village till dark, +chatting with the good-natured, civil people. The local sensation here +they tell us is not the trial of the priests at Dunfanaghy, but a “row” +breeding between the chief of the Sweeneys and one of his brethren over +the possession of Her Majesty’s Post-office. It seems there is an +official regulation or custom that the post-office once established in a +particular building shall not be moved thence without positive cause +shown. The head of the Sweeneys, having completed his new and grand +establishment, wishes to move the post-office thither; but the brother +to whom he confided the office in the older building, where he left it +while making the change of his own business, now desires to keep the +office where it is, and, I suppose, to become postmaster him<a name="page132" id="page132"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 132] +</span> +self! <a id="footnotetag17" + name="footnotetag17"></a><a href="#footnote17"><sup>17</sup></a> A +trivial matter enough, but not without edification for students of the +actual situation in this most curious country.</p> + +<p>About seven o’clock Father Walker made his appearance—a fine-looking, +dignified, most amiable man. He is a teetotaller, which we esteemed a +stroke of good fortune, a bottle of port wine which we obtained, despite +the “boycott,” from the Gombeen shop, proving to be of such a quality +that it might have been concocted in the last century, expressly to +discredit the Methuen treaty.</p> + +<p>Father Walker is the President of the National League branch.</p> + +<p>Like Father M‘Fadden at Gweedore, he speaks of the landlords in this +part of Donegal as really owning, not so much farms as residential +grounds for tenants who export their thews and sinews to Scotland and +other countries, and live by that traffic mainly. It is a common +practice here, he tells me, for the children, who are very sharp and +bright, to be taken by their parents into Tyrone <a name="page133" id="page133"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 133] +</span> +and other parts of the +North, and put out to live with the people there, who prize them, and +pay very good wages. I asked him if he thought the official estimate I +had seen of the proportion of these “migratory labourers” to the whole +population of Ulster, as about one-tenth of one per cent., an +under-statement. He thought it was an under-statement for this part of +the county of Donegal, but to be explained, perhaps, by the fact that so +much of the migration is merely from one county into another, and not +out of the kingdom. He agreed that the practice goes on upon a much more +extensive scale in the County Mayo, where more than thirteen per cent, +of all the adult male population are said to belong to the category of +migratory labourers. The Irish population of England seems to be +recruited at regular seasons in this way, very much as is the Albanian +population of Constantinople.</p> + +<p>Father Walker was full of information about the granite quarries, and +much interested in the prospect of their development. He told us that a +practical engineer from Liverpool had, not long ago, been here seeking a +lease of the quarries—or, in other words, of the quarrying rights over +sixty or <a name="page134" id="page134"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 134] +</span> +seventy miles of Donegal—from the agent of Lord Conyngham. +This engineer had come to Donegal on a sporting expedition last year, +and gone back full of the capabilities of the granite region. Father +Walker had been told by him that similar quarries also exist in the +County Mayo at Belmullet, where preparations are now making, he thinks, +to develop them, though on a smaller scale than would be both +practicable and desirable here.</p> + +<p>In Mayo, as in Donegal, labour must be plentiful enough, and the +comparatively unskilled labour required in such quarries would be +particularly abundant here. It would be a great thing, Father Walker +thought, to introduce here the custom of a regular pay-day, and with it +gradually habits of exactness and economy, not easily developed without +it.</p> + +<p>He gave me also, at my request, some valuable information as to the +stipends of the Catholic clergy, and the sources from which they are +derived. This subject has been agitated in the local press of this part +of Ireland in connection with estimates of Father M‘Fadden’s income at +Gweedore, which Father M‘Fadden declares, I believe, to be greatly +exaggerated. Father Walker has been parish priest <a name="page135" id="page135"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 135] +</span> +at Burtonport for +about nine years. In all that time the highest sum reached in one year +by the stipend has been £560; this sum having to be divided between the +parish priest, who received £280, and two curates receiving £140 each. +The annual stipend, however, has more than once fallen below £480, and +Father Walker thinks £520 a fair average, giving £260 to the parish +priest, and £130 each to his curates. Where there are only two priests +in a parish, as is the case, for example, in each of the parishes of +Gweedore and Falcarragh, the parish priest receives two-thirds, and the +curate one-third of the stipend.</p> + +<p>The sources of this stipend are various, and in speaking upon this point +Father Walker desired me to note that he could only speak positively of +the rules of this particular diocese, as they do not cover in their +entirety the usages of other provinces, or even of other dioceses in +this province of Ireland. One general and invariable rule indeed exists +throughout Ireland, which is that every parish priest is bound to offer +the Holy Sacrifice, <i>pro populo</i>, for the whole people, without fee or +reward, on all Sundays and Holy Days, making in all some eighty-seven +times a year.</p> + +<p><a name="page136" id="page136"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 136] +</span> +In the diocese of Raphoe, to which Burtonport belongs, there are four +recognised methods by which the revenues of the priests are raised. The +first is an annual fixed stipend of four shillings for each household or +family. “Sometimes,” said Father Walker, “but rarely, the better-off +families give more than this; and not unfrequently the poorer families +fail to give anything under this head.” The second is a fixed stipend of +one pound upon the occasion of a marriage. “Sometimes, but not often, +this sum is exceeded by generous and prosperous parishioners.” The third +is a standard stipend of two shillings for a baptism. “This also +suffers, but on rare occasions,” said the good priest, “a favourable +exception. I mention the exceptions as well as the rules,” said the good +Father, “in order to make grateful allusion to the donors.”</p> + +<p>The fourth and last consists of the offerings at interments. “These vary +very much indeed, but they constitute an important, and, I may say, a +necessary item in the incomes of the clergy.”</p> + +<p>Besides these four forms of stipend, the priests derive a revenue from +“those who ask them to offer the Holy Sacrifice ‘for their special +intention.’” In such cases it is customary to offer a sum, usually of +<a name="page137" id="page137"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 137] +</span> +two shillings, but sometimes of half-a-crown, which is intended both as +a remuneration for the priest, and to cover the cost of altar +requisites.</p> + +<p>Father Walker estimates the families in his own parish in round numbers +at about thirteen hundred, and in Gweedore and Falcarragh at about nine +hundred each. We had some conversation about the great fisheries, which +one would think ought to exist, but do not exist, on this coast, such +fishing as is done here by the natives being on a very limited scale. +Father Walker tells me that formerly £80,000 worth of herring were taken +on this coast, though he is not sure that Donegal fishermen took them. +But of late years he thinks the herring have deserted these waters. He +admits, however, that the people have no liking for the sea. “Going over +once,” he said, “to Arranmore from the mainland in a boat with a priest +of the country, the water was a little rough, and the poor man nearly +pinched a piece out of my arm holding on to me!” Father Walker himself +thought the trip across the “sound” to Tory Island rather a ticklish +piece of business. Yet the natives make it sometimes in their little +corraghs or canvas boats, which would seem to show that some of them +must be capable of seamanship. Most of these <a name="page138" id="page138"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 138] +</span> +islands, notably +Arranmore, Father Walker thought quite incapable of supporting the +people who dwell on them, without constant help from the mainland. Is it +not an open question whether an age which countenances the condemnation +of private property in houses declared unfit for human habitation ought +to hesitate at dealing in the same spirit with nurseries of chronic +penury and intermittent famine? On one of these islands, known as Scull +Island, Father Walker tells me great quantities of human bones are found +in circular graves or trenches, very shallow, and going all around the +island. There are legends of great battles fought on the little island, +and of pestilences, to account for these. But it is likely enough that +the island was simply used as a cemetery by the dwellers on the shore at +some early date. Father Walker when he was last, there had brought away +some of these relics. One he showed us, the beautifully formed jawbone +of a young child, apparently ten or twelve years old, with exquisite +pearly teeth. The chin was not in the least prognathous, but very well +formed. In this district of Dungloe, too, the women weave and knit as +well as at Gweedore; and Father Walker, before he left us for his home, +after a most agreeable evening, promised <a name="page139" id="page139"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 139] +</span> +to send me some specimens of +their handiwork. He is sure that with a proper organisation this +industry might be so developed as to materially relieve the people here +from the pressure of their debts to the dealers of all kinds, a pressure +much more severe than that of the rent. According to the dealers +themselves, no tenant really in debt to them can now expect to work +himself free of the burden under four or five years. It is obvious how +much power, political as well as social, is thus lodged in the hands of +the dealers, and especially of the “Gombeen men.”</p> + + +<p><span class="diary">BARON’S COURT, <i>Wednesday, Feb. 8.</i></span>—Since last night I have travelled +from one extreme to the other of Irish life—from the desolation of the +Rosses of Donegal to the grandly wooded, picturesque, and beautiful +demesne of Baron’s Court. We made an early start from Dungloe on a +capital car for Letterkenny, where we were to strike the railway for +Strabane and Newtown-Stewart. The morning was clear, but cold. On +leaving Dungloe we drove directly into a region of reclaimed land, where +improvements of various kinds seemed to be going on. <a name="page140" id="page140"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 140] +</span> +All this our +jarvey informed us, with a knowing look, belonged to Mr. Sweeney.</p> + +<p>“Was he a squire of this country?” I asked innocently.</p> + +<p>“A squire of this country, sorr? He is just Mr. Sweeney, the Gombeen +man; he and his brothers, they all came here from where I don’t know.”</p> + +<p>An energetic man, certainly, Mr. Sweeney, and not likely, I should +think, to allow the National League, to push matters here to the point +of nationalising the land of Donegal, if he can prevent it. In the +highway we met, two or three miles out of Dungloe, a very trim dainty +little lady, in a long, well-fitting London waterproof ulster, with a +natty little umbrella in her hand, walking merrily towards the town. How +weatherwise she was soon appeared, the rain coming up suddenly, and +coming down sharply, in the whirling way it has among the hills +everywhere. The scenery was desolate, but grand. Countless little lochs +give sparkle and life to it. Everywhere the granite. About Doocharry, a +romantic little spot, where Lord Cloncurry has a fishing-box in the +heart of a glorious landscape, masses crop out of a rich red granite, +finer in colour than any we had previously seen. In that <a name="page141" id="page141"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 141] +</span> +neighbourhood +the wastes of Donegal take on an aspect which recalls, though upon quite +a different key in colour, the inimitable beauty of those treeless +North-western highlands of Scotland, upon which Nature has lavished all +the wealth of her palette. Vast spaces of brown and red and gold shimmer +away under the softly luminous mountain atmosphere to the dark blues and +purples of the hills. We passed Glen Veagh again, but from quite a +different point of view, which gave us a beautiful picture of Lough +Veagh in its length, and of the smiling pastoral landscape upon its +further shore.</p> + +<p>As we drew near the eastern boundary of Donegal, hedges and civilised +agriculture reappeared. With these we came upon mud cottages, such as I +had not seen in Donegal, being the huts provided for their labourers by +the tenant-farmers, whose comfortable stone-houses and out-buildings +stood well back under the long ranges of the hills.</p> + +<p>We passed through much striking scenery, perhaps the finest point being +a magnificent Gap in the hills, guarded and defined by three colossal +headlands, one of them a vast long rampart, the other two gigantic +counterscarps. The immediate approach to Letterkenny, too, from the west +is charming, <a name="page142" id="page142"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 142] +</span> +passing in full view of the extensive and beautiful park +and the large mansion of Colonel Stewart of the Guards, and skirting the +well-kept estate of Mr. Boyd, the owner of the ivy-clad cottages which +so took my fancy the other day.</p> + +<p>In the Ulster settlement under King James I. a patent for Letterkenny +was issued to one of the Crawfords. Then, as the records tell us, “Sir +George Marburie dwelt there, and there were forty houses all inhabited +by British tenants. A great market town, and standeth well for the +King’s service.”</p> + +<p>Again we found a fair going on—this time attended by swarms of peddlers +vending old clothes and all sorts of small wares, bread-cartmen, and +tea-vendors. These latter aver that it is easier to sell tea in the +“congested” districts at 4s. 6d. than at 2s. 6d. The people have no test +of its quality but its price!</p> + +<p>The town was gay with soldiers and police—whose advent had created such +a demand for bread and meat, a man told us, that all the butchers and +bakers in Letterkenny and Dunfanaghy were at their wits’ ends to meet +it. “But they don’t complain of that!” We reached Newtown-Stewart by +railway after dark. As we <a name="page143" id="page143"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 143] +</span> +passed Sion the mills were all lighted up, +giving it the look of an English or New England town. A New England +snow-storm, too, awaited us at our journey’s end; and, after a wild +drive of several miles through the whirling white mists, it was a +delectable thing to find ourselves welcomed in a hall full of light and +warmth and flowers by merry children and lively dogs, the guard of +honour of the most gracious and charming of hostesses.</p> + + +<p><span class="diary">BARON’S COURT, <i>Thursday, Feb. 9.</i></span>—Among a batch of letters received +this morning I find one from a most estimable and accomplished priest in +the West of Ireland, to whom I wrote from Dublin announcing my intention +of visiting the counties of Clare and Kerry. “I shall be very glad,” he +says, “to learn that no evil hath befallen you during your visit to that +solitary plague-spot, where dwell the disgraceful and degraded +‘Moonlighters.’ Would not ‘martial law,’ if applied to that particular +spot, suffice to stamp out, these-insensate pests of society?” This +language, strong, but not too strong in view of the hideous murder last +week near Lixnaw of a farmer in the presence of his daughter for the +<a name="page144" id="page144"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 144] +</span> +atrocious crime of taking a farm “boycotted” by the National League, +shows that the open alliance between this organisation and the criminal +classes in certain parts of Ireland is beginning (not a day too soon) to +arouse the better order of priests in Ireland to the peril of playing +with edged tools. For my correspondent is not only a priest, but a +Nationalist. I have sent him in reply a letter received by me, also +to-day, touching the conduct in connection with the Lixnaw murder of a +priest, a curate, I think, comparatively new to the place, who, +standing by the corpse of the murdered man, endeavoured, so my informant +states, to make his unfortunate daughter give up the names of the +murderers, the effect of which would have been to put them on their +guard, and “under the protection of that public conspiracy of silence, +which is the shield of all such criminals in these parts!” Baron’s Court +is a very large, stately mansion, lacking elevation perhaps like +Blenheim, but imposing by its mass and the area it covers. It was +rebuilt almost entirely by the late Duke of Abercorn, who also made +immense plantations here which cover the country for miles around. His +grandfather, the handsome Marquis of the days of <a name="page145" id="page145"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 145] +</span> +the Prince Regent, +came here a great deal towards the end of his life, but did little +towards making the mansion worthy of its site. Two very good portraits +of him here show that he deserved his reputation as the finest-looking +man of his day, a reputation attested by a diamond ring, the history of +which is still preserved in the family. A fine though irregular pearl +given by Philip of Spain to his hapless spouse, Mary Tudor, is another +of the heirlooms of Baron’s Court; but the ring and the note left by +Mary Stuart to Claud Hamilton, Lord Paisley, mysteriously disappeared +during the long minority of the late Duke under the trusteeship of the +fourth Earl of Aberdeen, and have since, it is said, come into the +possession of the Duke of Hamilton.</p> + +<p>Of the three castles given to Lord Claud Hamilton by James I., to enable +him to hold this country, one which stood at Strabaue has disappeared, +the memory of it surviving only in the name of Castle Street in that +town. The ivy-clad ruins of another adorn a height in this beautiful +park. They are “bosomed high in tufted trees,” and overlook one of three +most lovely lakes, stretching in a shining chain through the length of +the demesne.</p> + +<p><a name="page146" id="page146"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 146] +</span> +Another ruined tower of the time of King John stands on an island in +one of these lakes. When the Ulster settlement was made, these lands +with all the countryside were held by the O’Kanes. With the other Celtic +and Catholic inhabitants, they were driven by the masterful invaders +into the mountains and bogs. There still remain their descendants, still +Celtic and still Catholic, and still dreaming of the day when they shall +descend into the low country and drive the Protestant Scotch and English +from the “fat lands” which they occupy. In this way the racial and +religious animosities are kept alive, which have died out in Tipperary +and Waterford, for example, where the Cromwellian English have become +more Irish and often more Catholic than the Irish themselves.</p> + +<p>I took a long drive and walk with Lord Ernest this afternoon through the +park, which rivals Curraghmore in extent. It is nowhere divided from the +lands of the adjoining tenants, and with great liberality is thrown open +to the people, not only of Newtown-Stewart and Strabane, but of all the +country. Parties, sometimes of seven hundred people, from Belfast come +down to pass the day in these sylvan solitudes, and it is to be recorded +to <a name="page147" id="page147"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 147] +</span> +the praise of Ireland that these visitors always behave with perfect +good sense and good feeling.</p> + +<p>The “terrible trippers” of the English midlands, as I once heard an old +verger in a northern Cathedral call them, who chip off relics from +monuments, pull up flowers by the roots, and scatter sandwich papers and +empty gingerbeer bottles broadcast over well-rolled lawns, are not +known, Lord Ernest tells me, in this island. As he neatly puts it, the +Irishman, no matter what his station in life may be, or how great a +blackguard he may really be, always instinctively knows when he ought to +behave like a gentleman, and knows how to do so. In the lakes were +hundreds of wild fowl. The sky was a sky of Constable—silvery-white +clouds, floating athwart a dome of clear Italian blue. The soil here +must be extraordinarily fertile. The woods and groves are dense beyond +belief. Cut down what you like, the growth soon overtakes you, as lush +almost as in the tropics.</p> + +<p>There was a great cyclone here a year or two ago, which prostrated in a +night over a hundred thousand trees. You see the dentated gaps left by +this disaster in the great circle of firs and birches on the surrounding +hills, but they make hardly a serious <a name="page148" id="page148"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 148] +</span> +break in the thoroughly sylvan +character of the landscape. We visited the centre of the devastation, +where I found myself in what seemed to be a backwoods clearing in +America. An enterprising Scot, Kirkpatrick by name, has taken a contract +under the Duke, built himself a neat wooden cabin and stables, set up a +small saw-mill driven by steam, and is hard at work turning the fallen +trees into timber, and making a very good thing of it, both for the Duke +and for himself. He has one or two of his own people with him, but +employs the labour of the country, and has no fear of disturbance. He +thinks, however, that he must get “a good wicked dog” to frighten away +the tramps, who sometimes stray into his woodland, and put the +enterprise in peril by smoking and drowsing under haystacks.</p> + +<p>Near this clearing is a model village, the houses scrupulously neat, +with trees and flowers, and here we met the Duchess with her devoted dog +walking briskly along to visit one of her people, a wonderful old man, +bearing the ancient name of the O’Kanes, and five years older than the +Kaiser William. Until six months ago this veteran was an active +carpenter, coming and going, about his work at ninety-six like a man in +middle age. Then he went <a name="page149" id="page149"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 149] +</span> +to bed with a bad cold, and will probably +never rise again. In all his life he never has touched meat or soup, and +when they are now offered him rejects them angrily. He has lived, and +preferred to live, entirely on oatmeal in the form of cakes and +porridge, and on potatoes; so I make a present of him as a glorious +example to the vegetarians. As in so many other cases, his memory of +recent events is dim and clouded—of events long past, clear and +photographic: the negatives taken in youth quite perfect, the lenses +which now take, dimmed and fractured.</p> + +<p>He perfectly recollects, for example, the assembling here of the +recruits going out to the Continent before the battle of Waterloo, and +can give the names and describe the peculiarities of stalwart lads long +since crumbled into dust around Mont St. Jean. With the curious +unconcern about death which marks his people, this expectant emigrant +into the unknown world chats about his departure as if it were for +Dublin, and his kinsfolk chat with him.</p> + +<p>“Ye’ll be going soon!”</p> + +<p>“Oh yes, I shan’t trouble ye more than an hour or two more.”</p> + +<p>In quite another part of the domain we came <a name="page150" id="page150"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 150] +</span> +upon a Covenanter—a true, +authentic Covenanter, who might have walked out of <i>Old Mortality</i>; the +name of him, Keyes. He greeted Lord Ernest cheerily enough, nodded to me +in a not unfriendly way, and at once broke into exhortation: “It’s a +very short life we live; man that is born of woman is of few days, and +full of trouble. Well for them that are the children of light—if seeing +the light they sin not against it”; and so on with amazing volubility.</p> + +<p>There are eighty-five of these Covenanters here. They touch not nor have +touched the accursed thing. To them all parties and all governments are +alike evil. The Whigs persecuted the Solemn League and Covenant—so did +the Tories. Nationalists and Unionists are to them alike abominable, +sold under sin. Withal they are shrewd, canny, successful farmers—and, +as I inferred from sundry incidents, before Lord Ernest confided the +fact to me, not averse from a “right gude williewaught” now and then.</p> + +<p>Mr. Keyes, I thought, was not a blue-ribbon man, nor a ribbon-man of any +kind.</p> + +<p>The Duchess told me afterwards she had vainly endeavoured more than once +to get these people to vote at elections.</p> + +<p><a name="page151" id="page151"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 151] +</span> +We had a sprinkling of such people, and very good people in quiet times +they were, in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War, to whom +Federals and Confederates were alike anathema.</p> + +<p>We wound up our drive to-day just beyond “the Duke’s seat,” a little +rustic bench put up by the late Duke on a hill range which commands a +magnificent view over the whole domain of hill and forest and lakes, and +far away to the mountains of Munterlony. There, in the bogs and woods +James Hamilton, “lord baron of Strabane,” with “other rebels, unknown, +in his company,” hid himself till, after the fall of Charlemont in +August 1650, he was captured by a party of the Commonwealth’s +men—whereby, as the record here runs, “all and singular his manors, +towns, lands, and so forth were forfeited to the Commonwealth of +England.” Under this pressure he sought “protection,” and got it a +fortnight later from Cromwell’s General, Sir Charles Coote, whose +descendants still nourish in Wicklow. But on the 31st of December 1650 +he “broke the said protection, and joined himself with Sir Phelim +O’Neill, being then in rebellion.”</p> + +<p>Troublous times those, and a “lord baron of Strabane” needed almost the +alacrity in turning <a name="page152" id="page152"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 152] +</span> +his coat of a harlequin or a modern politician! It +is a comfort to know that at last, on the 16th of June 1655, he found +rest, dying at Ballyfathen, “a Roman Catholic and a papist recusant.” As +we came back into the gardens and grounds, Lord Ernest showed me, +imbedded in the earth, a huge anchor presented to the present Duke by +the Corporation of Waterford, as having belonged to the French 28-gun +frigate, on which in 1689 James II. and Lord Abercorn sailed away from +Ireland for Prance. I believe that because of its weight the present +First Lord of the Admiralty avers that it is no anchor at all, but a +buoy fixture. It might have been ten times as heavy, and yet not have +availed to keep James from getting to sea at that particular time.</p> + + +<p><span class="diary">BARON’S COURT, <i>Friday, Feb. 10.</i></span>—Here also, in County Tyrone, the +Irish women show their skill in women’s work. Mrs. Dixon, the English +wife of the house-steward of Baron’s Court, has charge of a woollen +industry founded here, after a discourse on thrift, delivered at a +temperance meeting of the people by the then Marquis of Hamilton, had +stirred the country up to consider whether the peasant women might not +possibly find some better and more profitable way of passing their +winter even<a name="page153" id="page153"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 153] +</span> +ings than in sitting huddled around a peat fire with their +elbows on their knees, gossiping about their neighbours. Lord Hamilton +cited the women of Gweedore as proofs that such a way might by searching +be found.</p> + +<p>The Duke and Duchess found the funds, the stewardess invested them in +buying the necessary yarn and knitting-needles, and the Marchioness of +Hamilton acted as corresponding clerk and business agent of the new +industry. The clothing department of the British army lent a listening +ear to the business proposals made to it, and the work began. From that +time on it has been the main substantial resource against suffering and +starvation of the families of some three hundred labourers in the hill +country near Baron’s Court.</p> + +<p>These labourers work for the small farmers from April to November; and +between the autumn and the spring their wives and daughters knit, and by +the Baron’s Court machinery are enabled to dispose of, nearly twenty +thousand pairs of woollen socks. The yarns are brought from Edinburgh to +the store-house at Baron’s Court. Thither every Wednesday come the +knitters. Mrs. Dixon weighs the hanks of yarn, and gives them out.</p> + +<p><a name="page154" id="page154"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 154] +</span> +On the following Wednesday the knitters reappear, each with her bale of +stockings or socks. These are again weighed, and the knitters receive +their pay according to the weight, quality, and size of the goods. In +some families there are four, five, or six knitters. All these people, +with four or five exceptions, are small cottars living on wretched +little mountain farms, not on the Duke of Abercorn’s property; and but +for this industry they would be absolutely without employment all the +winter through.</p> + +<p>Some of them come from a distance of twelve or fourteen miles, and but +for this resource would literally starve. They are nearly all of them +Catholics, and the Protestants here being Unionists, they are probably +Nationalists. About three hundred knitters in all are employed. In the +year 1886-87 the orders given for Baron’s Court work enabled Mrs. Dixon +to pay out regularly about five pounds a week, not including casual +private orders. For the current year the orders have been much larger, +and the expenditure proportionally greater. Mrs. Dixon’s storehouse was +full of goods to-day. The long knickerbocker stockings which she showed +us were remarkably good, some in “cross-gartered” <a name="page155" id="page155"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 155] +</span> +patterns, handsomer, +I thought, than similar goods in the Scottish Highlands—and all of them +staunch and well-proportioned.</p> + +<p>For socks such as are supplied to the volunteers and the troops the War +Office pays 8-3/4d. a pair.</p> + +<p>It was pleasant to learn from Mrs. Dixon that these people thoroughly +appreciate the spirit which prompted and still directs this enterprise. +Last spring when the Duchess was thought for a time to be hopelessly +ill, a young girl came down to Baron’s Court weeping bitterly. On her +arm was a basket, in which were two young chanticleers crowing lustily. +The poor girl said these were all she had, and she had brought them “to +make soup for the Duchess, for she heard that was what the great people +lived on, and it might save her life.”</p> + +<p>This afternoon I went over by the railway to Derry with Lord Ernest to +attend a meeting there. The “Maiden City” stands picturesquely on the +Foyle, and has a fine, though not large, cathedral of St. Colomb, +restored only last year, of which it may be noteD that the work never +was undertaken while the Protestant Church of Ireland was established by +law, and has been successfully carried out since the disendowment of +that Church. <a name="page156" id="page156"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 156] +</span> +The streets were white with snow, but the meeting in the +old Town Hall was largely attended. It was, in fact, a sort of Orange +symposium—tea being served at long tables, and the platform decorated +with a pianoforte. The Mayor of the city presided, and between the +speeches, songs, mostly in the Pyramus or condoling vein, were sung by a +local tenor of renown. It was very like an American tea-fight in the +country, and the audience were unquestionably enthusiastic. They quite +cheered themselves hoarse when Lord Ernest Hamilton reminded them that +he had made his first political speech in that hall on a “memorable +occasion,” when, being an as yet unfledged Parliamentarian, he had taken +a hand in a successful attempt to prevent the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr. +Dawson, from making a speech in Derry. One of my neighbours, a merchant +in the city, told me that a project is afoot for tearing down the old +hall in which we met “to enlarge the street,” but he added that “the +people of Derry were too proud of their history to allow it!”</p> + +<p>I understood him to say it is one of the very few buildings in Derry +which witnessed the famous siege, and the breaking of the boom.</p> + +<p><a name="page157" id="page157"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 157] +</span> +We left the “revel” early, caught a fast train to Newtown-Stewart, and +returned here an hour ago through a driving snowstorm, most dramatically +arranged to enhance the glow and genial charm of our welcome.</p> + + +<p><span class="diary">BARON’S COURT, <i>Saturday, Feb. 11th.</i></span>—All the world was white with snow +this morning. Alas! for the deluded birds we have been listening to for +days past; thrushes, larks, and as, I believe, blackbirds, though there +is a tradition in these parts that no man ever heard the blackbird sing +before the 15th of February. I suspect it grew out of the date of St. +Valentine’s Day. We had some lovely music, however, within doors this +morning; and, in spite of the snow and the chill wind, a little fairy of +a girl, with her groom, went off like mad across country on her pony, +“Guinea Pig,” to fetch the mails from Newtown-Stewart.</p> + +<p>Not long after breakfast came in from Letterkenny Sergeant Mahony of the +constabulary, on whose testimony Father M‘Fadden was convicted. We had +heard at Letterkenny that he was now on leave at Belfast, and Lord +Ernest had kindly <a name="page158" id="page158"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 158] +</span> +arranged matters so that he should come here and +tell us his story of Gweedore.</p> + +<p>An admirable specimen he is of a most admirable body of men. He is as +thoroughly Celtic in aspect as he is by name—a dark Celt, with a quiet +resolute face, and a wiry well-built frame.</p> + +<p>Nothing could be better than his manner and bearing, at once respectful +and self-respectful: that manner of a natural gentleman one so often +sees in the Irish peasant. He is a devout Catholic, but no admirer of +Father M‘Fadden.</p> + +<p>As to his evidence, he explains very clearly that he was not sent to +report Father M‘Fadden’s speech at all, but to note and take down and +report language used in the speech of a sort to excite the people +against the law. He was selected for this duty for three reasons: he is +a Donegal man who has lived at Gweedore for sixteen years; he is a fair +stenographer; and he speaks Irish, in which language Father M‘Fadden +made his speech.</p> + +<p>“I speak Irish quite as well as he does,” said the Sergeant quietly, +“and he knows I do. What I did was to put down in English words what I +heard said in Irish. This I had to do because I have no stenographic +signs for the Irish words.” He tells me he taught himself stenography.</p> + +<p><a name="page159" id="page159"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 159] +</span> +“As for Father M‘Fadden,” he said, “he told the people that’ he was the +law in Gweedore, and they should heed no other.’ He spoke the truth, +too, for he makes himself the law in Gweedore. He dislikes me because I +am a living proof that he is not the only law in Gweedore!” Of the +business shrewdness and ability of Father M‘Fadden, Sergeant Mahony +expressed a very high opinion, though hardly in terms which would have +gratified such an ecclesiastic as the late Cardinal Barnabo. Possibly +Cardinal Cullen might have relished them no better. “Certainly he has +the finest house in Gweedore, sir, and what’s more he made it the finest +himself.”</p> + +<p>“Do you mean that he built it?”</p> + +<p>“He did, indeed; and did you not notice the beautiful stone fences he is +putting up all about it, and the four farms he has?”</p> + +<p>“Then he is certainly a man of substance?”</p> + +<p>“And of good substance, sir! The Government, they gave him a hundred +pounds towards the house. But it was the flood that was the blessed +thing for him and made a great man of him!”</p> + +<p>“The flood?” I asked, with some natural astonishment; “the flood? What +flood?”</p> + +<p><a name="page160" id="page160"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 160] +</span> +“And did you never hear of the great flood of Gweedore? It was in +August 1880. You will mind the water that comes down behind the chapel? +Well, there was a flood, and it swelled, and it swelled, and it burst +the small pipe there behind the chapel: too small it was entirely for +carrying off the great water, and nobody took notice of it, or that +there was anything wrong, and so the water was piled up behind the +chapel, and at Mass on the Sunday, while the chapel was full, the walls +gave way, and the water rushed in, and was nine feet deep. There were +five people that couldn’t get out in time, and were drowned—two old +people and three children, young people. It was a great flood. And +Father M‘Fadden wrote about it—oh, he is a clever priest with the +pen—and they made a great subscription in London for the poor people +and the chapel. I can’t rightly say how much, but it was in the papers, +a matter of seven hundred pounds, I have heard say. And it was all sent +to Father M‘Fadden.”</p> + +<p>“And it was spent, of course,” I said, “on the repairs of the chapel, or +given to the relatives of the poor people who were drowned.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, no doubt; very likely it was, sir! But the repairs of the +chapel—there isn’t a mason <a name="page161" id="page161"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 161] +</span> +in Donegal but will tell you a hundred +pounds would not be wanted to make the chapel as good as it ever was. +And for the people that were drowned—two of them were old people, as I +said to you, sir, that had no kith or kin to be relieved, and for the +others they were of well-to-do people that would not wish to take +anything from the parish.”</p> + +<p>“What was done with it, then?”</p> + +<p>“Oh! that I can’t tell ye. It was spent for the people some way. You +must ask Father M‘Fadden. He is the fund in Gweedore, just as he is the +law in Gweedore. Oh! they came from all parts to see the great ruin of +the flood at Gweedore. They did, indeed. And some of them, it was poor +sight they had; they couldn’t see the big rift in the walls, when Father +M‘Fadden pointed it out to them. ‘Whisht! there it is!’ he would say, +pointing with his finger. Then they saw it!”</p> + +<p>I asked him at what figure he put the income of Father M‘Fadden from his +parish. Without a moment’s hesitation he answered, “It’s over a thousand +pounds a year, sir, and nearer twelve hundred than eleven.” I expressed +my surprise at this, the whole rental of Captain Hill, the landlord, +falling, as I had understood, below rather than above £700 <a name="page162" id="page162"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 162] +</span> +a year; and +Gweedore, as Father Walker had told me, containing fewer houses than +Burtonport.</p> + +<p>“Fewer houses, mayhap,” said the sergeant, “though I’m not sure of that; +but if fewer they pay more. There’s but one curate—poor man, he does +all the parish work, barring the high masses, and a good man he is, but +he gets £400 a year, and that is but a third of the income!”</p> + +<p>I asked by what special stipends the priest’s income at Gweedore could +be thus enhanced. “Oh, it’s mainly the funeral-money that helps it up,” +he replied. “You see, sir, since Father M‘Fadden came to Gweedore it’s +come to be the fashion.”</p> + +<p>“The fashion?” I said.</p> + +<p>“Yes, sir, the fashion. This is the way it is, you see. When a poor +creature comes to be buried—no matter who it is, a pauper, or a tenant, +or any one—the people all go to the chapel; and every man he walks up +and lays his offering for the priest on the coffin; and the others, they +watch him. And, you see, if a man that thinks a good deal of himself +walks up and puts down five shillings, why, another man that thinks less +of him, and more of himself, he’ll go up and make it a gold ten-shilling +piece, or perhaps even a sovereign! I’ve known Father <a name="page163" id="page163"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 163] +</span> +M‘Fadden, sir, to +take in as much as £15 in a week in that way.”</p> + +<p>Sergeant Mahony told us a curious tale, too, of the way in which Father +M‘Fadden dealt with the people of the neighbouring parish of Falcarragh. +He would go down to the parish boundary, if he wanted to address the +people of Falcarragh, and stand over the line, with one foot in each +parish!</p> + +<p>At our request Sergeant Mahony made some remarks in Irish; very wooing +and winning they were in sound. Before he left Baron’s Court he promised +to make out and send me a schedule of the parochial income at Gweedore, +under the separate heads of the sources whence it is derived.</p> + +<p>Obviously Sergeant Mahony would make a good “devil’s advocate” at the +canonization of Father M‘Fadden. But, all allowances made for this, one +thing would seem to be tolerably clear. Of the three personages who take +tribute of the people of Gweedore, the law intervenes in their behalf +with only one—the landlord. The priest and the “Gombeen man” deal with +them on the old principle of “freedom of contract.” But it is by no +means so clear which of the three exacts and receives the greatest +tribute.</p> + +<p>We leave Baron’s Court in an hour for Dublin, whence I go on alone +to-night into Queen’s County. +</p> + + + +<h2><a name="page164" id="page164"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 164] +</span> +CHAPTER IV.</h2> + + +<p><span class="diary">ABBEYLEIX, <i>Sunday, Feb. 12.</i></span>—Newtown-Stewart, through which I drove +yesterday afternoon with Lord Ernest to the train, is a prettily +situated town, with the ruins of a castle in which James II. slept for a +night on his flight to France. He was cordially received, and by way of +showing his satisfaction left the little town in flames when he +departed. Here appears to be a case, not of rack-renting, but of +absenteeism. The town belongs to a landlord who lives in Paris, and +rarely, if ever, comes here. There are no improvements—no +sanitation—but the inhabitants make no complaint. “Absenteeism” has its +compensations as well as its disadvantages. They pay low rents, and are +little troubled; the landlord drawing, perhaps, £400 a year from the +whole place. The houses are small, though neat enough in appearance, but +the town has a sleepy, inert look. On the railway between Dundalk and +Newry, we passed a spot known by the ominous <a name="page165" id="page165"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 165] +</span> +name of “The Hill of the +Seven Murders,” seven agents having been murdered there since 1840! I +suppose this must be set down to the force of habit. At Newry a cavalry +officer whom Lord Ernest knew got into our carriage. He was full of +hunting, and mentioned a place to which he was going as a “very fine +country.”</p> + +<p>“From the point of view of the picturesque?” I asked.</p> + +<p>“Oh no! from the point of view of falling off your horse!”</p> + +<p>At Maple’s Hotel I found a most hospitable telegram, insisting that I +should give up my intention of spending the night at Maryborough, and +come on to this lovely place in my host’s carriage, which would be sent +to meet me at that station. I left Kingsbridge Station in Dublin about 7 +P.M. We had rather a long train, and I observed a number of people +talking together about one of the carriages before we started; but there +was no crowd at all, and nothing to attract special attention. As we +moved out of the station, some lads at the end of the platform set up a +cheer. We ran on quietly till we reached Kildare. There quite a +gathering awaited our arrival on the platform, and <a name="page166" id="page166"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 166] +</span> +as we slowed up, a +cry went up from among them of, “Hurrah for Mooney! hurrah for Mooney!” +The train stopped just as this cry swelled most loudly, when to my +surprise a tall man in the gathering caught one or two of the people by +the shoulder, shaking them, and called out loudly, “Hurrah for +Gilhooly—you fools, hurrah for Gilhooly!”</p> + +<p>This morning I learned that I had the honour, unwittingly, of travelling +from Dublin to Maryborough with Mr. Gilhooly, M.P., who appears to have +been arrested in London on Friday, brought over yesterday by the day +train, and sent on at once from Dublin to his destined dungeon.</p> + +<p>An hour’s drive through a rolling country, showing white and weird under +its blanket of snow in the night, brought us to this large, rambling, +delightful house, the residence of Viscount de Vesci. Mr. Gladstone came +here from Lord Meath’s on his one visit to Ireland some years ago. I +find the house full of agreeable and interesting people; and the chill +of the drive soon vanished under the genial influences of a light +supper, and of pleasant chat in the smoking-room. A good story was told +there, by the way, of Archbishop Walsh, who being <a name="page167" id="page167"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 167] +</span> +rather indiscreetly +importuned to put his autograph on a fan of a certain Conservative lady +well known in London, and not a little addicted to lion-hunting, +peremptorily refused, saying, “no, nor any of the likes of her!” And +another of Father Nolan, a well-known priest, who died at the age of +ninety-seven. When someone remonstrated with him on his association with +an avowed unbeliever in Christianity, like Mr. Morley, Father Nolan +replied, “Oh, faith will come with time!” The same excellent priest, +when he came to call on Mr. Gladstone, here at Abbeyleix, on his arrival +from the Earl of Meath’s, pathetically and patriarchally adjured him, on +his next visit to Ireland, “not to go from one lord’s house to another, +but to stay with the people.” This was better than the Irish journal +which, finding itself obliged to chronicle the fact that Mr. Gladstone, +with his wife and daughter, was visiting Abbeyleix, gracefully observed +that he “had been entrapped into going there!” Some one lamenting the +lack of Irish humour and spirit in the present Nationalist movement, as +compared with the earlier movements, Lord de Vesci cited as a solitary +but refreshing instance of it, the incident which occurred the other day +at an eviction in <a name="page168" id="page168"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 168] +</span> +Kerry, <a id="footnotetag18" + name="footnotetag18"></a><a href="#footnote18"><sup>18</sup></a> of a patriotic priest who chained himself +to a door, and put it across the entrance of the cabin to keep out the +bailiffs!</p> + +<p>It is discouraging to know that this delightful act was bitterly +denounced by some worthy and well-meaning Tory in Parliament as an +“outrage”!</p> + +<p>Despite the snow the air this morning, in this beautiful region, is soft +and almost warm, and all the birds are singing again. The park borders +upon and opens into the pretty town of Abbeyleix, the broad and +picturesque main thoroughfare of which, rather a rural road than a +street, is adorned with a fountain and cross, erected in memory of the +late Lord de Vesci. There is a good Catholic chapel here (the ancient +abbey which gave the place its name stood in the grounds of the present +mansion), and a very handsome Protestant Church.</p> + +<p>It is a curious fact that two of the men implicated in the Phoenix Park +murders had been employed, one, I believe, as a mason, and one as a +carver, in the construction of this church. Both the chapel and the +church to-day were well attended. I am told there has been little real +trouble here, nor has the Plan of Campaign been adopted here. Sometimes +<a name="page169" id="page169"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 169] +</span> +Lord de Vesci finds threatening images of coffins and guns scratched in +the soil, with portraits indicating his agent or himself; but these mean +little or nothing. Lady de Vesci, who loves her Irish home, and has done +and is doing a good deal for the people here, tells me, as an amusing +illustration of the sort of terrorism formerly established by the local +organisations, that when she met two of the labourers on the place +together, they used to pretend to be very busy and not to see her. But +if she met one alone, he greeted her just as respectfully as ever.</p> + +<p>The women here do a great deal of embroidery and lace work, in which she +encourages them, but this industry has suffered what can only be a +temporary check, from the change of fashion in regard to the wearing of +laces. Why the loveliest of all fabrics made for the adornment of women +should ever go “out of fashion” would be amazing if anything in the +vagaries of that occult and omnipotent influence could be. The Irish +ladies ought to circulate Madame de Piavigny’s exquisite <i>Lime +d’Heures</i>, with its incomparable illustrations by Carot and Meaulle, +drawn from the lace work of all ages and countries, as a tonic against +despair in respect to this industry. In one of <a name="page170" id="page170"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 170] +</span> +the large rooms of her +own house, Lady de Vesci has established and superintends a school of +carving for the children of poor tenants. It has proved a school of +civilisation also. The lads show a remarkable aptitude for the arts of +design, and of their own accord make themselves neat and trim as soon as +they begin to understand what it is they are doing. They are always busy +at home with their drawings and their blocks, and some of them are +already beginning to earn money by their work.</p> + +<p>What I have seen at Adare Manor near Limerick, where the late Earl of +Dunraven educated all the workmen employed on that mansion as +stone-cutters and carvers, suffices to show that the people of this +country have not lost the aptitudes of which we see so many proofs in +the relics of early Irish art.</p> + +<p>Among the guests in the house is a distinguished officer, Colonel +Talbot, who saw hard service in Egypt, and in the advance on Khartoum, +with camels across the desert—a marvellous piece of military work. I +find that he was in America in 1864-65, with Meade and Hunt and Grant +before Petersburg, being in fact the only foreign officer then present. +He there formed what seem to me very sound and <a name="page171" id="page171"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 171] +</span> +just views as to the +ability of the Federal commanders in that closing campaign of the Civil +War, and spoke of Hunt particularly with much admiration. Of General +Grant he told me a story so illustrative of the simplicity and modesty +which were a keynote in his character that I must note it. The day +before the evacuation of Petersburg by the Con federates, Grant was +urged to order an attack upon the Confederate positions. He refused to +do so. The next day the Confederates were seen hastily abandoning them. +Grant watched them quietly for a while, and then putting down his glass, +said to one of the officers who had urged the assault, “You were right, +and I was wrong. I ought to have attacked them.”</p> + +<p>It is provoking to know that the notes taken by this British officer at +that time, being sent through the Post Office by him some years ago to +Edinburgh for publication, were lost in the transmission, and have never +been recovered. Curiously enough, however, he thinks he has now and then +discerned indications in articles upon the American War, published in a +newspaper which he named, going to show that his manuscripts are in +existence somewhere.</p> + +<p><a name="page172" id="page172"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 172] +</span> +<span class="diary">ABBEYLEIX, <i>Monday, Feb. 13.</i></span>—To-day, in company with Lord de Vesci +and a lady, I went over to Kilkenny. We left and arrived in a snowstorm, +but the trip was most interesting. Kilkenny, chiefly known in America, I +fear, as the city of the cats, is a very picturesque place, thanks to +its turrets and towers. It has two cathedrals, a Bound Tower (one of +these in Dublin was demolished in the last century!), a Town Hall with a +belfry, and looming square and high above the town, the Norman keep of +its castle. The snow enlivened rather than diminished the scenic effect +of the place. Bits of old architecture here and there give character to +the otherwise commonplace streets. Notable on the way to the castle is a +bit of mediaeval wall with Gothic windows, and fretted with the +scutcheon in stone of the O’Sheas. The connection of a gentleman of this +family with the secret as well as the public story of the Parnellite +movement may one day make what Horace Greeley used to call “mighty +interestin’ reading.” A dealer in spirits now occupies what is left of +the old Parliament House of Kilkenny, in which the rival partisans of +Preston and O’Neill outfought the legendary cats, to the final ruin of +the cause of the <a name="page173" id="page173"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 173] +</span> +Irish confederates, and the despair of the loyal +legate of Pope Innocent.</p> + +<p>Of Kilkenny Castle, founded by Strongbow, but two or three towers +remain. The great quadrangle was rebuilt in 1825, and much of it again +so late as in 1860. There is little, therefore, to recall the image of +the great Marquis who, if Rinuccini read him aright, played so +resolutely here two centuries and a half ago for the stakes which Edward +Bruce won and lost at Dundalk. The castle of the Butlers is now really a +great modern house.</p> + +<p>The town crowds too closely upon it, but the position is superb. The +castle windows look clown upon the Nore, spanned by a narrow ancient +bridge, and command, not only all that is worth seeing in the town, but +a wide and glorious prospect over a region which is even now beautiful, +and in summer must be charming.</p> + +<p>Over the ancient bridge the enterprise of a modern brewer last week +brought a huge iron vat, so menacingly ponderous that the authorities +made him insure the bridge for a day.</p> + +<p>Within the castle, near the main entrance, are displayed some +tapestries, which are hardly shown to due advantage in that position. +They were made <a name="page174" id="page174"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 174] +</span> +here at Kilkenny in a factory established by Piers +Butler, Earl of Ormonde, in the sixteenth century, and they ought to be +sent to the Irish Exhibition of this year in London, as proving what +Irish art and industry well directed could then achieve. They are +equally bold in design and rich in colour. The blues are especially +fine.</p> + +<p>The grand gallery of the castle, the finest in the kingdom, though a +trifle narrow for its length, is hung with pictures and family +portraits. One of the most interesting of these is a portrait of the +black Earl of Ormon’de, a handsome swarthy man, evidently careful of his +person, who was led by that political flirt, Queen Elizabeth, to believe +that she meant to make him a visit in Ireland, and, perhaps, to honour +him with her hand. He went to great expenses thereupon. At a parley with +his kinsman, the Irish chieftain O’Moore of Abbeyleix, this black earl +was traitorously captured, and an ancient drawing representing this +event hangs beneath his portrait.</p> + +<p>The muniment room, where, thanks to Lord Ormonde’s courtesy, we found +everything prepared to receive us, is a large, airy, and fire-proof +chamber, with well-arranged shelves and tables for consult<a name="page175" id="page175"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 175] +</span> +ing the +records. These go back to the early Norrnan days, long before Edward +III. made James Butler Earl of Ormonde, upon his marriage with Alianore +of England, granddaughter of Edward I. The Butlers came into Ireland +with Henry II., and John gave them estates, the charters of some of +which, with the seals annexed, are here preserved. There are fine +specimens of the great seals also of Henry III., and of his sons Edward +I. and Edmund Crouchback, and of the Tudor sovereigns, as well as many +private seals of great interest. The wax of the early seals was +obviously stronger and better than the wax since used. Of Elizabeth, who +came of the Butler blood through her mother, one large seal in yellow +wax, attached to a charter dated Oct. 24, 1565, is remarkable for the +beauty of the die. The Queen sits on the obverse under a canopy; on the +reverse she rides in state on a pacing steed as in her effigy at the +Tower of London. The seals of James I. follow the design of this die. +Two of these are particularly fine. At the Restoration something +disappears of the old stateliness. A seal of Charles II., of 1660, very +large and florid in style, shows the monarch sitting very much at his +ease, with one knee thrown negligently over the other. <a name="page176" id="page176"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 176] +</span> +Many of the +private letters and papers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth +centuries, during which Kilkenny, as it had been often before, was a +great centre of Irish politics and intrigues, have been bound up in +volumes, and the collection has been freely drawn upon by historians. +But it would obviously bear and reward a more thorough co-ordination and +examination than it has ever yet received.</p> + +<p>There is a curious Table Book here preserved of Charles I. while at +Oxford in 1644, from which it appears that while the colleges were +melting up their plate for the King, his Majesty fared better than might +have been expected. His table was served with sixty pounds of mutton a +day; and he wound up his dinner regularly with “sparaguss” so long as it +lasted, and after it went out with artichokes.</p> + +<p>An Expense Book, too, of the great Marquis, after he became the first +Duke of Ormonde, Colonel Blood’s Duke, kept at Kilkenny in 1668 throws +some interesting light on the cost of living and the customs of great +houses at that time. The Duke, who was in some respects the greatest +personage in the realm, kept up his state here at a weekly cost of +<a name="page177" id="page177"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 177] +</span> +about £50, a good deal less—allowing for the fall in the power of the +pound sterling—than it would now cost him to live at a fashionable +London hotel. He paid £9, 10s. a week for the keep of nineteen horses, +18 shillings board wages for three laundry-maids, and £1, 17s. 4d. for +seven dozen of tallow-candles. The wines served at the ducal table were +Burgundy, Bordeaux, “Shampane,” Canary, “Renish,” and Portaport, the +last named at a shilling a bottle, while he paid no more than £3, 18s. +for six dozen bottles of Bordeaux, and £1, 1s. for a dozen and a half of +“Shampane.” This of course was not the sparkling beverage which in our +times is the only contribution of Champagne to the wine markets of the +world, for the <i>Ay Mousseux</i> first appears in history at the beginning +of the eighteenth century. It was the red wine of Champagne, which so +long contested the palm with the vintages of Burgundy. St. Evremond, who +with the Comte d’Olonne and the great <i>gourmets</i> of the seventeenth +century thought Champagne the best, as the Faculty of Paris also +pronounced it the most wholesome of wines, doubtless introduced his own +religion on the subject into England—but the entry in the Duke’s +Expense Book of 1668 is an interesting proof that <a name="page178" id="page178"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 178] +</span> +the duel of the +vintages was even then going as it finally went in favour of Burgundy. +While the Duke got his Champagne for 1s. 2d. a bottle, he had to pay +twenty shillings a dozen, or 1s. 8d. a bottle, for five dozen of +Burgundy. He got his wines from Dublin, which then, as long before, was +the most noteD wine mart of Britain. The English princes drew their best +supplies thence in the time of Richard II.</p> + +<p>From the castle we drove through the snow to the Cathedral of St. +Canice, a grand and simple Norman edifice of the twelfth century, now +the Church of the Protestant bishop. An ancient Round Tower of much +earlier date stands beside it like a campanile, nearly a hundred feet in +height.</p> + +<p>There is a legend that Rinuccini wanted to buy and carry away one of the +great windows of this Cathedral, in which mass was celebrated while he +was here. The Cathedral contains some interesting monuments of the +Butlers, and there are many curiously channelled burial slabs in the +floor, like some still preserved in the ruins of Abbeyleix. Lord de +Vesci pointed out to me several tombs of families of English origin once +powerful here, but now sunk into the farmer class. <a name="page179" id="page179"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 179] +</span> +On one of these I +think it was that we saw a remarkably well-preserved effigy of a lady, +wearing a plaited cap under a “Waterford cloak”—one of the neatest +varieties of the Irish women’s cloak—garment so picturesque at once, +and so well adapted to the climate, that I am not surprised to learn +from Lady de Vesci that it is very fast going out of fashion. This +morning before we left Abbeyleix she showed us two such cloaks, types +from two different provinces, each in its way admirable. Put on and worn +about the room by two singularly stately and graceful ladies, they fell +into lines and folds which recalled the most exquisitely beautiful +statuettes of Tanagra; and all allowance made for the glamour lent them +by these two “daughters of the gods, divinely tall,” it was impossible +not to see that no woman could possibly look commonplace and +insignificant in such a garment. Yet Lady de Vesci says that more than +once she has known peasant women, to whom such cloaks had been +presented, cut off the characteristic and useful hood, and trim the +mangled robe with tawdry lace. So it is all over the world! Women who +are models for an artist when they wear some garment indigenous to their +country and appropriate <a name="page180" id="page180"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 180] +</span> +to its conditions, prefer to make guys of +themselves in grotesque travesties of the latest “styles” from London +and Paris and Dublin!</p> + +<p>Kilkenny boasts that its streets are paved with marble. It is in fact +limestone, but none the worse for that. The snow did not improve them. +So without going on a pilgrimage to the Kilkenny College, at which +Swift, Congreve, and Farquhar,—an odd concatenation of +celebrities—were more or less educated, we made our way to the Imperial +Hotel for luncheon. The waiter was a delightful Celt. Upon my asking him +whether the house could furnish anything distantly resembling good Irish +whisky, he produced a bottle of alleged Scotch whisky, which he put upon +the table with a decisive air, exclaiming, “And this, yer honour, is the +most excellent whisky in the whole world, or I’m not an Irishman!”</p> + +<p>Urged by the cold we tempered it with hot water and tasted it. It shut +us up at once to believe the waiter a Calmuck or a Portuguese—anything, +in short, but an Irishman. It is an extraordinary fact that, so far, the +whisky I have found at Irish hotels has been uniformly quite execrable. +I am almost tempted to think that the priests <a name="page181" id="page181"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 181] +</span> +sequestrate all the good +whisky in order to discourage the public abuse of it, for the “wine of +the country” which they offer one is as uniformly excellent.</p> + +<p>Kilkenny ought to be and long was a prosperous town. In 1702, the second +Duke of Ormonde made grants (at almost nominal ground-rents) of the +ground upon which a large portion of the city of Kilkenny was then +standing, or upon which houses have since been built.</p> + +<p>These grants have passed from hand to hand, and form the “root of title” +of very many owners of house property in Kilkenny. The city is the +centre of an extensive agricultural region, famous, according to an +ancient ditty, for “fire without smoke, air without fog, water without +mud, and land without bog”; but of late it has been undeniably +declining. For this there are many reasons. The railways and the +parcel-post diminish its importance as a local emporium. The almost +complete disappearance of the woollen manufacture, the agricultural +depression which has made the banks and wholesale houses “come down” +upon the small dealers, and the “agitation,” bankrupting or exiling the +local gentry, have all conspired to the same result.</p> + +<p><a name="page182" id="page182"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 182] +</span> +From Abbeyleix station we walked back to the house through the park +under trees beautifully silvered with the snow. At dinner the party was +joined by several residents of the county. One of them gave me his views +of the working of the “Plan of Campaign.” It is a plan, he maintains, +not of defence as against unjust and exacting landlords, but of offence +against “landlordism,” not really promoted, as it appears to be, in the +interest of the tenants to whose cupidity it appeals, but worked from +Dublin as a battering engine against law and order in Ireland. Every +case in which it is applied needs, he thinks, to be looked into on its +own merits. It will then be found precisely why this or that spot has +bees selected by the League for attack. At Luggacurren, for instance, +the “Plan of Campaign” has been imposed upon the tenants because the +property belongs to the Marquis of Lansdowne, who happens to be +Governor-General of Canada, so that to attack him is to attack the +Government. The rents of the Lansdowne property at Luggacurren, this +gentleman offers to prove to me, are not and never have been excessive; +and Lord Lansdowne has expended very large sums on improving the +property, and for the benefit of <a name="page183" id="page183"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 183] +</span> +the tenants. Two of the largest +tenants having got into difficulties through reckless racing and other +forms of extravagance found it convenient to invite the league into +Luggacurren, and compel other tenants in less embarrassed circumstances +to sacrifice their holdings by refusing to pay rents which they knew to +be fair, and were abundantly able and eager to pay. At Mitchelstown the +“Plan of Campaign” was aimed again, not at the Countess of Kingston, the +owner, but at the Disestablished Protestant Church of Ireland, the +trustees of which hold a mortgage of a quarter of a million sterling on +the estates. On the Clanricarde property in Galway the “Plan of +Campaign” has been introduced, my informant says, because Lord +Clanricarde happens to be personally unpopular. “Go down to Portumna and +Woodford,” he said, “and look into the matter for yourself. You will +find that the rents on the Clanricarde estates are in the main +exceptionally fair, and even low. The present Marquis has almost never +visited Ireland, I believe, and he is not much known even in London. +People who dislike him for one reason or another readily believe +anything that is said to his disadvantage as a landlord. Most people who +don’t like the cut of <a name="page184" id="page184"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 184] +</span> +Dr. Fell’s whiskers, or the way in which he takes +soup, are quite disposed to listen to you if you tell them he beats his +wife or plays cards too well. The campaigners are shrewd fellows, and +they know this, so they start the ‘Plan of Campaign’ on the Portumna +properties, and get a lot of English windbags to come there and hobnob +with some of the most mischievous and pestilent parish priests in all +Ireland—and then you have the dreadful story of the ‘evictions,’ and +all the rest of it. Lord Clanricarde, or his agent, or both of them, +getting out of temper, will sit down and do some hasty or crabbed or +injudicious thing, or write a provoking letter, and forthwith it is +enough to say ‘Clanricarde,’ and all common sense goes out of the +question, to the great damage, not so much of Lord Clanricarde—for he +lives in London, and is a rich man, and, I suppose, don’t mind the +row—but of landlords all over Ireland, and therefore, in the long-run, +of the tenants of Ireland as well.”</p> + +<p>At Luggacurren, this gentleman thinks, the League is beaten. There are +eighty-two tenants there, evicted and living dismally in what is called +the Land League village, a set of huts erected near the roadside, while +their farms are carried on for <a name="page185" id="page185"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 185] +</span> +the owner by the Land Corporation. As +they were most of them unwilling to accept the Plan, and were +intimidated into it for the benefit of the League, and of the two chief +tenants, Mr. Dunn and Mr. Kilbride, men of substance who had squandered +their resources, the majority of the evicted are sore and angry.</p> + +<p>“At first each man was allowed £3 a month by the League for himself and +his family. But they found that Mr. Kilbride, who has been put into +Parliament by Mr. Parnell for Kerry, a county with which he has no more +to do than I have with the Isle of Skye, was getting £5 a week, and so +they revolted, and threatened to bolt if their subsidy was not raised to +£4 a month.”</p> + +<p>“And this they get now? Out of what funds?”</p> + +<p>“Out of the League funds, or, in other words, out of their own and other +people’s money, foolishly put by the tenants into the keeping of the +League to ‘protect’ it! They give it the kind of ‘protection’ that +Oliver gave the liberties of England: once they get hold of it, they +never let go!”</p> + +<p>I submitted that at Gweedore Father M‘Fadden had paid over to Captain +Hill the funds confided to him.</p> + +<p><a name="page186" id="page186"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 186] +</span> +“No doubt; but there the landlord gave in, and the more fool he!”</p> + +<p>With another guest I had an interesting conversation about the Ulster +tenant-right, which got itself more or less enacted into British law +only in 1870, and of which Mr. Froude tells me he sought in vain to +discover the definite origin. “The best lawyers in Ireland” could give +him no light on this point. He could only find that it did not exist +apparently in 1770, but did exist apparently twenty years later. The +gentleman with whom I talked to-night tells me that the custom of Ulster +was really once general throughout Ireland, and is called the “Ulster” +custom, only because it survived there after disappearing elsewhere. +There is a tradition too, he says, in Ulster that the recognition of +this tenant-right as a binding custom there is really due to Lord +Castlereagh. It would be a curious thing, could this be verified, to +find Lord Castlereagh, whose name has been execrated in Ireland for +fourscore years, recommending and securing a century ago that +recognition of the interest of the Irish tenant in his holding, which, +in our time, Mr. Gladstone, just now the object of Irish adulation, was, +with much difficulty and <a name="page187" id="page187"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 187] +</span> +reluctance, brought to accord in the +Compensation for Disturbances clause of his Act of 1870!</p> + +<p>Of this clause, too, I am told to-night that the scale of compensation +fixed for the awards of the Court in the third section of it was devised +(though Mr. Gladstone did not know this) by an Irish member in the +interest of the “strong farmers,” who wish to root out the small +farmers. There is an apparent confirmation of this story in the fact +that under this section the small farmers, under £10, may be awarded +against the landlord seven years’ rent as compensation for disturbance, +while the number of years to be accounted for in the award diminishes as +the rental increases, a discrimination not unlikely to strengthen the +preference of the landlords for the large farm system.</p> + + + +<h2><a name="page188" id="page188"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 188] +</span> +CHAPTER V.</h2> + +<p><span class="diary">DUBLIN, <i>Tuesday, Feb. 14th.</i></span>—I left Abbeyleix this morning for Dublin, +in company with Mr. and Mrs. Henry Doyle. Mr. Doyle, C.B., a brother of +that inimitable master of the pencil, and most delightful of men, +Richard Doyle, is the Director of the Irish National Gallery. He was +kind enough to come and lunch with me at Maple’s, after which we went +together to the Gallery. It occupies the upper floors of a stately and +handsome building in Merrion Square, in front of which stands a statue +of the founder, Mr. William Dargan, who defrayed all the expenses of the +Dublin Exhibition in 1853, and declined all the honours offered to him +in recognition of his public spirited liberality, save a visit paid to +his wife by Queen Victoria. The collection now under Mr. Doyle’s charge +was begun only in 1864, and the Government makes it an annual grant of +no more than £2500, or about one-half the current <a name="page189" id="page189"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 189] +</span> +price, in these days, +of a fine Gainsborough or Sir Joshua! “They manage these things better +in France,” was evidently the impression of a recent French tourist in +Ireland, M. Daryl, whose book I picked up the other day in Paris, for +after mentioning three or four of the pictures, and gravely affirming +that the existence here of a gallery of Irish portraits proves the +passionate devotion of Dublin to Home Rule, he dismisses the collection +with the verdict that “<i>ce ne vaut pas le diable</i>.” Nevertheless it +already contains more really good pictures than the Musée either of +Lyons or of Marseilles, both of them much larger and wealthier cities +than Dublin. Leaving out the Three Maries of Perugino at Marseilles, and +at Lyons the Ascension, which was once the glory of San Pietro di +Perugia, the Moses of Paul Veronese, and Palma Giovanni’s Flagellation, +these two galleries put together cannot match Dublin with its Jan Steen, +most characteristic without being coarse, its Terburg, a life-size +portrait of the painter’s favourite model, a young Flemish gentleman, +presented to him as a token of regard, its portrait of a Venetian +personage by Giorgione, with a companion portrait by Gian Bellini, its +beautiful Italian landscape by <a name="page190" id="page190"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 190] +</span> +Jan Both, its flower-wreathed head of a +white bull by Paul Potter, its exquisitely finished “Vocalists” by +Cornells Begyn, its admirable portrait of a Dutch gentleman by Murillo, +and its two excellent Jacob Ruysdaels. A good collection is making, too, +of original drawings, and engravings, and a special room is devoted to +modern Irish art. I wish the Corcoran Gallery (founded, too, by an +Irishman!) were half as worthy of Washington, or the Metropolitan Museum +one-tenth part as worthy of New York!</p> + +<p>The National Gallery in London has loaned some pictures to Dublin, and +Mr. Doyle is getting together, from private owners, a most interesting +gallery of portraits of men and women famous in connection with Irish +history. The beautiful Gunnings of the last century, the not less +beautiful and much more brilliant Sheridans of our own, Burke, Grattan, +Tom Moore, Wellington, Curran, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, O’Connell, Peg +Woffington, Canning, and Castlereagh, Dean Swift, Laurence Sterne are +all here—wits and statesmen, soldiers and belles, rebels and royalists, +orators and poets. Two things strike one in this gallery of the “glories +of Ireland.” The great majority of the faces are of the <a name="page191" id="page191"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 191] +</span> +Anglo-Irish or +Scoto-Irish type; and the collection owes its existence to an +accomplished public officer, who bears an Irish name, who is a devout +Catholic, and who is also an outspoken opponent of the Home Rule +contention as now carried on.</p> + +<p>The gallery is open on liberal conditions to students. Mr. Doyle tells +me that a young sister of Mr. Parnell was at one time an assiduous +student here. He used to stop and chat with her about her work as he +passed through the gallery. One day he met her coming out. “Mr. Doyle,” +she said, “are you a Home Ruler?” “Certainly not,” he replied +good-naturedly. Whereupon, with an air of melancholy resignation, the +young lady said, “Then we can never more be friends!” and therewith +flitted forth.</p> + +<p>A small room contains some admirable bits of the work of Richard Doyle, +among other things a weird and grotesque, but charming cartoon of an +elfish procession passing through a quaint and picturesque mediaeval +city. It is a <i>conte fantastique</i> in colour—a marvel of affluent fancy +and masterly skill.</p> + +<p>I found here this morning letters calling me over to Paris for a short +time, and one also from Mr. Davitt, in London, explaining that my note +to him <a name="page192" id="page192"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 192] +</span> +through the National League had never reached him, and that he +had gone to London on his woollen business. I have written asking him to +meet me to-morrow in London, and I shall cross over to-night.</p> + + +<p><span class="diary">LONDON, <i>Wednesday, Feb. 15th.</i></span>—Mr. Davitt spent an hour with me +to-day, and we had a most interesting conversation. His mind is just now +full of the woollen enterprise he is managing, which promises, he +thinks, in spite of our tariff, to open the American markets to the +excellent woollen goods of Ireland. He has gone into it with all his +usual earnestness and ability. This is not a matter of politics with +him, but of patriotism and of business. He tells me he has already +secured very large orders from the United States. I hope he is not +surprised, as I certainly am not, to find that the Parliamentarian Irish +party give but a half-hearted and lukewarm support to such enterprises +as this. Perhaps he has forgotten, as I have not, the efforts which a +certain member of that party made in 1886 to persuade an Irish gentleman +from St. Louis, who had brought over a considerable sum of money for the +relief of the distress in North-Western Ireland, into turning <a name="page193" id="page193"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 193] +</span> +it over +to the League, on the express ground that the more the people were made +to feel the pinch of the existing order of things, the better it would +be for the revolutionary movement.</p> + +<p>The Irish Woollen Company will, nevertheless, be a success, I believe, +and a success of considerably more value to Ireland than the election of +Mr. Wilfrid Blunt as M.P. for Deptford would be.</p> + +<p>As to this election, Mr. Davitt seems to feel no great confidence. He +has spoken in support of Mr. Blunt’s candidacy, and is hard at work now +to promote it. But he is not sanguine as to the result, as on all +questions, save Home Rule for Ireland, Mr. Blunt’s views and ideas, he +thinks, antagonise the record of Mr. Evelyn and the local feeling at +Deptford. I was almost astonished to learn from Mr. Davitt that Mr. +Blunt, by the way, had told him at Ballybrack, long before he was locked +up, how Mr. Balfour meant to lock up and kill four men, the “pivots” of +the Irish movement, to wit, Mr. O’Brien, Mr. Harrington, Mr. Dillon, and +Mr. Davitt himself. But I was not at all astonished to learn that Mr. +Blunt told him all this most seriously, and evidently believed it.</p> + +<p>“How did you take it?” I asked.</p> + +<p><a name="page194" id="page194"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 194] +</span> +“Oh, I only laughed,” said Mr. Davitt, “and told him it would take more +than Mr. Balfour to kill me, at any rate by putting me in prison. As for +being locked up, I prefer Cuninghame Graham’s way of taking it, that he +meant ‘to beat the record on oakum!’”</p> + +<p>If all the Irish “leaders” were made of the same stuff with Mr. Davitt, +the day of a great Democratic revolution, not in Ireland only, but in +Great Britain, might be a good deal nearer than anything in the signs of +the times now shows it to be. Mr. Parnell and the National League are +really nothing but the mask of Mr. Davitt and the Land League. Mr. +Forster knew what he was about when he proclaimed the Land League in +October 1881, six months or more after he had arrested and locked up Mr. +Davitt in Portland prison. This was shown by the foolish No-Rent +manifesto which Mr. Parnell and his associates issued from Kilmainham +shortly after their incarceration, and without the counsel or consent at +that time of Mr. Davitt—a manifesto which the Archbishop of Cashel, +despite his early sympathies and connection with the agrarian agitation +of 1848, found it expedient promptly to disavow. It would have been +still more clearly shown had not Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Forster parted +company under <a name="page195" id="page195"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 195] +</span> +the restiveness of Mr. Gladstone’s Radical followers, and +the pressure of the United States Government in the spring of 1882. But +after the withdrawal of Mr. Forster, and the release of Mr. Davitt, the +English lawyers and politicians who led Lord Spencer and Sir George +Trevelyan into allowing the Land League to be revived under the +transparent alias of the National League, gave Mr. Davitt an +opportunity, of which he promptly availed himself, to regain the ground +lost by the blundering of the men of Kilmainham. From that time forth I +have always regarded him as the soul of the Irish agitation, of the war +against “landlordism” (which is incidentally, of course, a war against +the English influence in Ireland), and of the movement towards Irish +independence. Whether the agitation, the war, and the movement have gone +entirely in accordance with his views and wishes is quite another +matter.</p> + +<p>I have too good an opinion of his capacity to believe that they have; +and when the secret history of the Chicago Convention comes to be +written, I expect to find such confirmation therein of my notions on +this subject as I could neither ask nor, if I asked, could expect to get +from him.</p> + +<p><a name="page196" id="page196"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 196] +</span> +Meanwhile the manliness and courage of the man must always command for +him the respect, not to say the admiration, even of those who most +sternly condemn his course and oppose his policy.</p> + +<p>Born the child of an evicted tenant, in the times when an eviction meant +such misery and suffering as are seldom, if ever, now caused by the +process—bred and maimed for life in an English factory—captured when +hardly more than a lad in Captain M‘Cafferty’s daring attempt to seize +Chester Castle, and sent for fifteen years by Lord Chief-Justice +Cockburn into penal servitude of the most rigorous kind, Michael Davitt +might have been expected to be an apostle of hate not against the +English Government of Ireland alone, but against England and the English +people. The truculent talk of too many of his countrymen presents +Ireland to the minds of thoughtful men as a flagrant illustration of the +truth so admirably put by Aubrey de Vere that “worse than wasted weal is +wasted woe.” But woe has not been wasted upon Michael Davitt, in this, +that, so far as I know (and I have watched his course now with lively +personal interest ever since I made his acquaintance on his first visit +to America), he has never made revenge and retaliation upon Eng<a name="page197" id="page197"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 197] +</span> +land +either the inspiration or the aim of his revolutionary policy. I have +never heard him utter, and never heard of his uttering, in America, such +malignant misrepresentations of the conduct of the English people and +their sovereign during the great famine of 1847, for example, as those +which earned for Mr. Parnell in 1880 the pretty unanimous condemnation +of the American press. How far he went with Mr. Parnell on the lines of +that speech at New Ross, in which murder was delicately mentioned as “an +unnecessary and prejudicial measure of procedure” in certain +circumstances, I do not know. But he can hardly have gone further than +certain persons calling themselves English Liberals went when the +assassins of Napoleon III. escaped to England. And he has a capacity of +being just to opponents, which certainly all his associates do not +possess. I was much struck to-day by the candour and respect with which +he spoke of John Bright, whose name came incidentally into our +conversation. He seemed to feel personally annoyed and hurt as an +Irishman, that Irishmen should permit themselves to revile and abuse Mr. +Bright because he will not go with them on the question of Home Rule, in +utter oblivion of the great services <a name="page198" id="page198"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 198] +</span> +rendered by him to the cause of +the Irish people “years before many of those whose tongues now wag +against him had tongues to wag.” I was tempted to remind him that not +with Irishmen only is gratitude a lively sense of favours to come.</p> + +<p>I find Mr. Davitt quite awake to the great importance of the granite +quarries of Donegal. He is bestirring himself in connection with some +men of Manchester, in behalf of the quarries at Belmullet in Mayo, +which, if I am not mistaken, is his native county. This bent of his mind +towards the material improvement of the condition of the Irish people, +and the development of the resources of Ireland, is not only a mark of +his superiority to the rank and file of the Irish politicians—it goes +far to explain the stronger hold which he undoubtedly has on the people +in Ireland. “Home Rule,” as now urged by the Irish politicians, +certainly excites much more attention and emotion in America and England +than it seems to do in Ireland. It seems so simple and elementary to +John Bull and Brother Jonathan that people should be suffered to manage +their own affairs! Yet the North would not suffer the South to do +this—and what would become of India if England turned it over in +fragments to the native races? The Land <a name="page199" id="page199"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 199] +</span> +Question, on the contrary, +touches the “business and bosom” of every Irishman in Ireland, while it +is so complicated with historical conditions and incidents as to be +troublesome and therefore uninteresting to people not immediately +affected by it. If I am right in my impressions the collapse of the +National League will hardly weaken the hold of Mr. Davitt on the Irish +people in Ireland, and it may even strengthen his hold on the agrarian +movement in Wales, England, and Scotland, unless he identifies himself +too completely in that collapse with his Parliamentary instruments. On +the other hand, the triumph of the National League on its present lines +of action would diminish the value for good or evil of any man’s hold +upon the Irish people, for the obvious reason that by driving out of +Ireland, and ruining, the class of “landlords” and capitalists, it would +leave the country reduced to a dead level of peasant-holdings, saddled +with a system of poor-rates beyond the ability of the peasant-holders to +carry, and at the mercy, therefore, of the first bad year. The “war +against the landlords,” as conducted by the National League, would end +where the Irish difficulty began, in a general surrender of the people +to “poverty and potatoes.”</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page200" id="page200"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 200] +</span> +CHAPTER VI.</h2> + + +<p><span class="diary">ENNIS, <i>Saturday, Feb. 18.</i></span>—I found it unnecessary to go on to Paris, +and so returned to Ireland on Thursday night; we had a passage as over a +lake. In the train I met a lively Nationalist friend, whose acquaintance +I made in America. He is a man of substance, but not overburdened with +respect for the public men, either of his own party or of the Unionist +side. When I asked him whether he still thought it would be safe to turn +over Ireland to a Parliament made up of the Westminster members, of whom +he gave me such an amusing but by no means complimentary account, he +looked at me with astonishment:—</p> + +<p>“Do you suppose for a moment we would send these fellows to a Parliament +in Dublin?”</p> + +<p>He told me some very entertaining tales of the methods used by certain +well-meaning occupants of the Castle in former days to capture Irish +popularity, <a name="page201" id="page201"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 201] +</span> +as, for example, one of a Vice-Queen who gave a fancy dress +ball for the children of the local Dublin people of importance, and had +a beautiful supper of tea and comfits, and cakes served to them, after +which she made her appearance, followed by servants bearing huge bowls +of steaming hot Irish potatoes, which she pressed upon the horrified and +overstuffed infants as “the true food of the country,” setting them +herself the example of eating one with much apparent gusto, and a pinch +of salt!</p> + +<p>“Now, fancy that!” he exclaimed; “for the Dublin aristocracy who think +the praties only fit for the peasants!”</p> + +<p>Of a well-known and popular personage in politics, he told me that he +once went with him on a canvassing tour. It was in a county the +candidate had never before visited. “When we came to a place, and the +people were all out crying and cheering, he would whisper to me, ‘Now +what is the name of this confounded hole?’ And I would whisper back, +‘Ballylahnich,’ or whatever it was. Then he would draw himself up to the +height of a round tower, and begin, ‘Men of Ballylahnich, I rejoice to +meet you! Often has the great Liberator said to me, with tears in his +voice, ‘Oh <a name="page202" id="page202"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 202] +</span> +would I might find myself face to face with the noble men of +Ballylahnich!’’”</p> + +<p>“A great man he is, a great man!</p> + +<p>“Did you ever hear how he courted the heiress? He walked up and down in +front of her house, and threatened to fight every man that came to call, +till he drove them all away!”</p> + +<p>A good story of more recent date, I must also note, of a well-known +priest in Dublin, who being asked by Mr. Balfour one day whether the +people under his charge took for gospel all the rawhead and bloody-bones +tales about himself, replied, “Indeed, I wish they only feared and hated +the devil half as much as they do you!”</p> + +<p>In a more serious vein my Nationalist friend explained to me that for +him “Home Rule” really meant an opportunity of developing the resources +of Ireland under “the American system of Protection.” About this he was +quite in earnest, and recalled to me the impassioned protests made by +the then Mayor of Chicago, Mr. Carter Harrison, against the Revenue +Reform doctrines which I had thought it right to set forth at the great +meeting of the Iroquois Club in that city in 1883. “Of course,” he +said, “you know that Mr. Harrison was then <a name="page203" id="page203"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 203] +</span> +speaking not only for +himself, but for the whole Irish vote of Chicago which was solidly +behind him? And not of Chicago only! All our people on your side of the +water moved against your party in 1884, and will move against it again, +only much more generally, this year, because they know that the real +hope of Ireland lies in our shaking ourselves free of the British Free +Trade that has been fastened upon us, and is taking our life.” I could +only say that this was a more respectable, if not a more reasonable, +explanation of Mr. Alexander Sullivan’s devotion to Mr. Blaine and the +Republicans, and of the Irish defection from the Democratic party than +had ever been given to me in America, but I firmly refused to spend the +night between London and Dublin in debating the question whether Meath +could be made as prosperous as Massachusetts by levying forty per cent. +duties on Manchester goods imported into Ireland.</p> + +<p>He had seen the reception of Mr. Sullivan, M.P., in London. “I believe, +on my soul,” he said, “the people were angry with him because he didn’t +come in a Lord Mayor’s coach!”</p> + +<p>When I told him I meant to visit Luggacurren, he said, a little to my +surprise, “That is a bad job <a name="page204" id="page204"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 204] +</span> +for us, and all because of William +O’Brien’s foolishness! He always thinks everybody takes note of whatever +he says, and that ruins any man! He made a silly threat at Luggacurren, +that he would go and take Lansdowne by the throat in Canada, and then he +was weak enough to suppose that he was bound to carry it out. He +couldn’t be prevented! And what was the upshot of it? But for the +Orangemen in Canada, that were bigger fools than he is, he would have +been just ruined completely! It was the Orangemen saved him!”</p> + +<p>I left Dublin this morning at 7.40 A.M. The day was fine, and the +railway journey most interesting. Before reaching Limerick we passed +through so much really beautiful country that I could not help +expressing my admiration of it to my only fellow-traveller, a most +courteous and lively gentleman, who, but for a very positive brogue, +might have been taken for an English guardsman.</p> + +<p>“Yes, it is a beautiful country,” he said, “or would be if they would +let it alone!”</p> + +<p>I asked him what he specially objected to in the recent action of +Parliament as respects Ireland?</p> + +<p>“Object?” he responded; “I object to everything. The only thing that +will do Ireland any <a name="page205" id="page205"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 205] +</span> +good will be to shut up that talking-mill at +Westminster for a good long while!”</p> + +<p>This, I told him, was the remedy proposed by Earl Grey in his recent +volume on Ireland.</p> + +<p>“Is it indeed? I shall read the book. But what’s the use? ‘For judgment +it is fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.’”</p> + +<p>This he said most cheerily, as if it really didn’t matter much; and, +bidding me good-bye, disappeared at Limerick, where several friends met +him. In his place came a good-natured optimistic squire, who thinks +“things are settling down.” There is a rise in the price of cattle. +“Beasts I gave £8 for three mouths ago,” he said, “I have just sold for +£12. I call that a healthy state of things.” And with this he also left +me at Ardsollus, the station nearest the famous old monastery of Quin.</p> + +<p>At Ennis I was met by Colonel Turner, to whom I had written, enclosing a +note of introduction to him. With him were Mr. Roche, one of the local +magistrates, and Mr. Richard Stacpoole, a gentleman of position and +estate near Ennis, about whom, through no provocation of his, a great +deal has been said and written of late years. Mr. Stacpoole at once +insisted that I <a name="page206" id="page206"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 206] +</span> +should let him take me out to stay at his house at +Edenvale, which is, so to speak, at the gates of Ennis. Certainly the +fame of Irish hospitality is well-founded! Meanwhile my traps were +deposited at the County Club, and I went about the town. I walked up to +the Court-house with. Mr. Roche, in the hope of hearing a case set down +for trial to-day, in which a publican named Harding, at Ennis—an +Englishman, by the way—is prosecuted for boycotting. The parties were +in Court; and the defendant’s counsel, a keen-looking Irish lawyer, Mr. +Leamy, once a Nationalist member, was ready for action; but for some +technical reason the hearing was postponed. There were few people in +Court, and little interest seemed to be felt in the matter. The +Court-house is a good building, not unlike the White House at Washington +in style. This is natural enough, the White House having been built, I +believe, by an Irish architect, who must have had the Duke of Leinster’s +house of Carton, in Kildare, in his mind when he planned it. Carton was +thought a model mansion at the beginning of this century; and Mr. +Whetstone, a local architect of repute, built the Ennis Court-house some +fifty years ago. It is of white lime<a name="page207" id="page207"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 207] +</span> +stone from quarries belonging to +Mr. Stacpoole, and cost when built about £12,000. To build it now would +cost nearly three times as much. In fact, a recent and smaller +Court-house at Carlow has actually cost £36,000 within the last few +years.</p> + +<p>I was struck by the extraordinary number of public-houses in Ennis. A +sergeant of police said to me, “It is so all over the country.” Mr. +Roche sent for the statistics, from which it appears that Ennis, with a +population of 6307, rejoices in no fewer than 100 “publics”; Ennistymon, +with a population of 1331, has 25; and Milltown Malbay, with a +population of 1400, has 36. At Castle Island the proportion is still +more astounding—51 public-houses in a population of 800. In Kiltimagh +every second house is a public-house! These houses are perhaps a legacy +of the old days of political jobbery. <a id="footnotetag19" + name="footnotetag19"></a><a href="#footnote19"><sup>19</sup></a> No matter when or why granted, +the licence appears to be regarded as a hereditary “right” not lightly +to be tampered with; and of course the publicans are persons of +consequence in their neighbourhood, no matter how <a name="page208" id="page208"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 208] +</span> +wretched it may be, +or how trifling their legitimate business. Three police convictions are +required to make the resident magistrates refuse the usual yearly +renewal of a licence; and if an application is made against such a +renewal, cause must be shown. The “publics” are naturally centres of +local agitation, and the publicans are sharp enough to see the advantage +to them of this. The sergeant told me of a publican here in Ennis, into +whose public came three Nationalists, bent not upon drinking, but upon +talking. The publican said nothing for a while, but finally, in a +careless way, mentioned “a letter he had just received from Mr. Parnell +on a very private matter.” Instantly the politicians were eager to see +it. The publican hesitated. The politicians immediately called for +drinks, which were served, and after this operation had been three times +repeated, the publican produced the letter, began with a line or two, +and then said, “Ah, no! it can’t be done. It would be a betrayal of +confidence; and you know you wouldn’t have that! But it’s a very +important letter you have seen!” So they went away tipsy and happy.</p> + +<p>Only yesterday no fewer than twenty-three of these publicans from +Milltown Malbay appeared <a name="page209" id="page209"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 209] +</span> +at Ennis here to be tried for “boycotting” the +police. One of them was acquitted; another, a woman, was discharged. Ten +of them signed, in open court, a guarantee not further to conspire, and +were thereupon discharged upon their own recognisances, after having +been sentenced with their companions to a month’s imprisonment with hard +labour. The magistrate tells me that when the ten who signed (and who +were the most prosperous of the publicans) were preparing to sign, the +only representative of the press who was present, a reporter for <i>United +Ireland</i>, approached them in a threatening manner, with such an obvious +purpose of intimidation, that he was ordered out of the court-room by +the police. The eleven who refused to sign the guarantee (and who were +the poorest of the publicans, with least to lose) were sent to gaol.</p> + +<p>An important feature of this case is the conduct of Father White, the +parish priest of Milltown Malbay. In the open court, Colonel Turner +tells me, Father White admitted that he was the moving spirit of all +this local “boycott.” While the court was sitting yesterday all the +shops in Milltown Malbay were closed, Father White having publicly +ordered the people to make the town “as a city of the <a name="page210" id="page210"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 210] +</span> +dead.” After the +trial was over, and the eleven who elected to be locked up had left in +the train, Father White visited all their houses to encourage the +families, which, from his point of view, was no doubt proper enough; but +one of the sergeants reports that the Father went by mistake into the +house of one of the ten who had signed the guarantee, and immediately +reappeared, using rather unclerical language. All this to an American +resembles a tempest in a tea-pot. But it is a serious matter to see a +priest of the Church assisting laymen to put their fellow-men under a +social interdict, which is obviously a parody on one of the gravest +steps the Church itself can take to maintain the doctrine and the +discipline of the Faith. What Catholics, if honest, must think of this +whole business, I saw curiously illustrated by some marginal notes +pencilled in a copy of Sir Francis Head’s <i>Fortnight in Ireland</i>, at the +hotel in Gweedore. The author of the <i>Bubbles from the Brunnen</i> +published this book in 1852. At page 152 he tells a story, apparently on +hearsay, of “boycotting” long before Boycott. It is to the effect that, +in order to check the proselyting of Catholics by a combination of +Protestant missionary zeal with Protestant <a name="page211" id="page211"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 211] +</span> +donations of “meal,” certain +priests and sisters in the south of Ireland personally instructed the +people to avoid all intercourse of any sort with any Roman Catholic who +“listened to a Protestant clergyman or a Scripture Reader”; and Sir +Francis cites an instance—still apparently on hearsay—of a “shoemaker +at Westport,” who, having seceded from the Church, found that not a +single “journeyman dared work for him”; that only “one person would sell +him leather”; and, “in short, lost his custom, and rapidly came to a +state of starvation.”</p> + +<p>On the margin of the pages which record these statements, certain +indignant Catholics have pencilled comments, the mildest of which is to +the effect that Sir Francis was “a most damnable liar.” It is certainly +most unlikely that Catholics should have arrogated to themselves the +Church’s function of combating heresy and schism in the fashion +described by Sir Francis. But without mooting that question, these +expressions are noteworthy as showing how just such proceedings, as are +involved in the political “boycottings” of the present day, must be +regarded by all honest and clear-headed people who call themselves +Catholics; and it is a serious scandal that a parish priest should lay +him<a name="page212" id="page212"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 212] +</span> +self open to the imputation of acting in concert with any political +body whatever, on any pretext whatever, to encourage such proceedings.</p> + +<p>I asked one of the sergeants how the publicans who had signed the +guarantee would probably be treated by their townspeople. He replied, +there was some talk of their being “boycotted” in their turn by the +butchers and bakers. “But it’s all nonsense,” he said, “they are the +snuggest (the most prosperous) publicans in this part of the country, +and nobody will want to vex them. They have many friends, and the best +friend they have is that they can afford to give credit to the country +people. There’ll be no trouble with them at all at all!”</p> + +<p>Walking about the town, I saw many placards calling for subscriptions in +aid of a newsvendor who has been impounded for selling <i>United Ireland</i>. +“It’ll be a good thing for him,” said a cynical citizen, to whom I spoke +of it, “a good deal better than he’d be by selling the papers.” And, in +fact, it is noticeable all over Ireland how small the sales of the +papers appear to be. The people about the streets in Ennis, however, +seemed to me much more effervescent and hot in tone than the <a name="page213" id="page213"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 213] +</span> +Dublin +people are—and this on both sides of the question. One very decent and +substantial-looking man, when I told him I was an American, assured me +that “if it was not for the soldiers, the people of Ennis would clear +the police out of the place.” He told me, too, that not long ago the +soldiers of an Irish regiment here cheered for Home Rule in the +Court-house, “but they were soon sent away for that same.” On the other +hand, a Protestant man of business, of whom I made some inquiries about +the transmission of an important paper to the United States in time to +catch to-morrow’s steamer from Queenstown, spoke of the Home Rulers +almost with ferocity, and thought the “Coercion” Government at Dublin +ought to be called the “Concession” Government. He was quite indignant +that the Morley and Ripon procession through the streets of Dublin +should not have been “forbidden.”</p> + +<p>There are some considerable shops in Ennis, but the proprietor of one of +the best of them says all this agitation has “killed the trade of the +place.” I am not surprised to learn that the farmers and their families +are beginning seriously to demand that the “reduction screw” shall be +applied to other things besides rent. “A very decent farmer,” <a name="page214" id="page214"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 214] +</span> +he says, +“only last week stood up in the shop and said it was ‘a shame the +shopkeepers were not made to reduce the tenpence muslin goods to +sixpence!’”</p> + +<p>This shopkeeper finds some dreary consolation for the present state of +things in standing at his deserted shop-door and watching the doors of +his brethren. He finds them equally deserted. In his own he has had to +dismiss a number of his attendants. “When a man finds he is taking in +ten shillings a day, and laying out three pounds ten, what can he do but +pull up pretty short?” As with the shopkeepers, so it is with the +mechanics. “They are losing custom all the time. You see the tenants are +expecting to come into the properties, so they spend nothing now on +painting or improvements. The money goes into the bank. It don’t go to +the landlords, or to the shopkeepers, or the mechanics; and then we that +have been selling on credit, and long credit too, where are we? +Formerly, from one place, Dromoland, Lord Inchiquin’s house, we used +regularly to make a bill of a hundred pounds at Christmas, for blankets +and other things given away. Now the house is shut up and we make +nothing!”</p> + +<p>It is a short but very pleasant drive from Ennis <a name="page215" id="page215"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 215] +</span> +to Edenvale—and +Edenvale itself is not ill-named. The park is a true park, with fine +wide spaces and views, and beautiful clumps of trees. A swift river +flows beyond the lawn in front of the spacious goodly house—a river +alive with wild fowl, and overhung by lofty trees, in which many pairs +of herons build. A famous heronry has existed here for many years, and +the birds are held now by Mr. and Mrs. Stacpoole as sacred as are the +storks in Holland. Where the river widens to a lake, fine terraced +gardens and espalier walls, on which nectarines, apricots, and peaches +ripen in the sun, stretch along the shore. Deer come down to the further +bank to drink, and in every direction the eye is charmed and the mind is +soothed by the loveliest imaginable sylvan landscapes.</p> + + +<p><span class="diary">EDENVALE, <i>Sunday, Feb. 19.</i></span>—I was awakened at dawn by the clamour of +countless wild ducks, to a day of sunshine as brilliant and almost as +warm as one sees at this season in the south of France. Mrs. Stacpoole +speaks of this place with a kind of passion, and I can quite understand +it. Clearly this, again, is not a case of the absentee landlord draining +the lifeblood of the land to lavish it upon an alien <a name="page216" id="page216"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 216] +</span> +soil! The demesne +is a sylvan sanctuary for the wild creatures of the air and the wood, +and they congregate here almost as they did at Walton Hall in the days +of that most delightful of naturalists and travellers, whose adventurous +gallop on the back of a cayman was the delight of all English-reading +children forty years ago, or as they do now at Gosford. Yet the crack of +the gun, forbidden in the precincts of Walton Hall, is here by no means +unknown—the whole family being noteD as dead shots. I asked Mr. +Stacpoole this morning whether the park had been invaded by trespassers +since the local Nationalists declared war upon him. He said that his +only experience of anything like an attack befell not very long ago, +when his people came to the house on a Sunday afternoon and told him +that a crowd of men from Ennis, with dogs, were coming towards the park +with a loudly proclaimed intent to enter it, and go hunting upon the +property.</p> + +<p>Upon this Mr. Stacpoole left the house with his brother and another +person, and walked down to the park entrance. Presently the men of Ennis +made their appearance on the highway. A very brief parley followed. The +men of Ennis announced <a name="page217" id="page217"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 217] +</span> +their intention of marching across the park, and +occupying it.</p> + +<p>“I think not,” the proprietor responded quietly. “I think you will go +back the way you came. For you may be sure of one thing: the first man +who crosses that park wall, or enters that gate, is a dead man.”</p> + +<p>There was no show of weapons, but the revolvers were there, and this the +men of Ennis knew. They also knew that it rested with themselves to +create the right and the occasion to use the revolvers, and that if the +revolvers were used they would be used to some purpose. To their credit, +be it said, as men of sense, they suddenly experienced an almost +Caledonian respect for the “Sabbath-day,” and after expressing their +discontent with Mr. Stacpoole’s inhospitable reception, turned about and +went back whence they had come.</p> + +<p>This morning an orderly from Ennis brought out news of the arrest +yesterday, at the Clare Road, of Mr. Lloyd, a Labour delegate from +London, on his return from an agitation meeting at Kildysart. Harding, +the Englishman I saw awaiting his trial yesterday, became bail for +Lloyd.</p> + +<p>In the afternoon we took a delightful walk to <a name="page218" id="page218"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 218] +</span> +Killone Abbey, a pile of +monastic ruins on a lovely site near a very picturesque lake. The ruins +have been used as a quarry by all the country, and are now by no means +extensive. But the precincts are used as a graveyard, not only by the +people of Ennis, but by the farmers and villagers for many miles around. +Nothing can be imagined more painful than the appearance of these +precincts. The graves are, for the most part, shallow, and closely +huddled together. The cemetery, in truth, is a ghastly slum, a +“tenement-house” of the dead. The dead of to-day literally elbow the +dead of yesterday out of their resting-places, to be in their turn +displaced by the dead of to-morrow. Instead of the crosses and the fresh +garlands, and the inscriptions full of loving thoughtfulness, which lend +a pathetic charm to the German “courts of peace”—instead of the +carefully tended hillocks and flower-studded turf which make the +churchyard of a typical old English village beautiful,—all here is +confusion, squalor, and neglect. Fragments of coffins and bones lie +scattered among the sunken and shattered stones. We picked up a skull +lying quite apart in a corner of the enclosure. A clean round bullet +hole in the very centre of the frontal <a name="page219" id="page219"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 219] +</span> +bone was dumbly and grimly +eloquent. Was it the skull of a patriot or of a policeman? of a +“White-boy” or of a “landlord”?</p> + +<p>One thing only was apparent from the conformation of the grisly relic. +It was the skull of a Celt. Probably, therefore, not of a land agent, +shot to repress his fiduciary zeal, but perhaps of some peasant +selfishly and recklessly bent on paying his rent.</p> + +<p>While we wandered amid the ruins we came suddenly upon a woman wearing a +long Irish cloak, and accompanied by two well-dressed men. One of the +men started upon catching sight of Colonel Turner, who was of our party, +grew quite red for a moment, and then very civilly exchanged salutations +with him. The party walked quietly away on a lower road leading to +Ennis. When they had gone Colonel Turner told us that the man who had +spoken to him was a local Nationalist of repute and influence in Ennis. +“He would never have ventured to be civil to me in the town,” he said. A +discussion arose as to the probable object of the party in visiting +these ruins. A gentleman who was with us half-laughingly suggested that +they might have been putting away dynamite bombs for an <a name="page220" id="page220"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 220] +</span> +attack on +Edenvale. Colonel Turner’s more practical and probable theory was that +they were looking about for a site for the grave of the Fenian veteran, +Stephen J. Meany, who died in America not long ago. He was a native, I +believe, of Ennis, and his remains are now on their way across the +Atlantic for interment in his birth-place. “Would a processional funeral +be allowed for him?” I asked. Colonel Turner could see no reason why it +should not be.</p> + +<p>One exception I noteD to the general slovenliness of the graves. A new +and handsome monument had just been set up by a man of Ennis, living in +Australia, to the memory of his father and mother, buried here twenty +years ago. But this touching symbol of a heart untravelled, fondly +turning to its home, had been so placed, either by accident or by +design, as to block the entrance way to the vault of a family living, or +rather owning property, in this neighbourhood. Until within a year or +two past this family had occupied a very handsome mansion in a park +adjoining the park of Edenvale. But the heir, worn out with local +hostilities, and reduced in fortune by the pressure of the times and of +the League, has now thrown up the sponge. His <a name="page221" id="page221"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 221] +</span> +ancestral acres have been +turned over for cultivation to Mr. Stacpoole. His house, a large fine +building, apparently of the time of James II., containing, I am told, +some good pictures and old furniture, is shut up, as are the model +stables, ample enough for a great stud; and so another centre of local +industry and activity is made sterile.</p> + +<p>Near the ruins of Killone is a curious ancient shrine of St. John, +beside a spring known as the Holy Well. All about the rude little altar +in the open air simple votive offerings were displayed, and Mrs. +Stacpoole tells me pilgrims come here from Galway and Connemara to climb +the hill upon their knees, and drink of the water. Last year for the +first time within the memory of man the well went dry. Such was the +distress caused in Ennis by this news, that on the eve of St. John +certain pious persons came out from the town, drew water from the lake, +and poured it into the well!</p> + +<p>As we walked away one of the party pointed to a rabbit fleeing swiftly +into a hole in one of the graves. “I was on this hill,” he said, “one +day not very long ago when a funeral train came out from Ennis. As it +entered the precincts a rabbit ran rapidly across the grounds. Instantly +the proces<a name="page222" id="page222"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 222] +</span> +sion broke up; the coffin was literally dropped to the +ground, and the bearers, the mourners, and the whole company united in a +hot and general chase of bunny. Of course, I need not say,” he added, +“that there was no priest with them. The fixed charge of the priest for +a burial is twenty shillings, but there is usually no service at the +grave whatever.”</p> + +<p>This may possibly be a trace of the practices which grew up under the +Penal Laws against Catholics. When Rinuccini came to Ireland in the time +of the Civil War, he found the observances of the Church all fallen into +degradation through these laws. The Holy Sacrifice was celebrated in the +cabins, and not unfrequently on tables which had been covered +half-an-hour before with the remains of the last night’s supper, and +would be cleared half-an-hour afterwards for the midday meal, and +perhaps for a game of cards.</p> + +<p>Several guests joined us at dinner. One gentleman, a magistrate familiar +with Gweedore, told me he believed the statements of Sergeant Mahony as +to the income of Father M‘Fadden to fall within the truth. While he +believes that many people in that region live, as he put it, “constantly +within a hair’s-breadth of famine,” he thinks that the great body of +<a name="page223" id="page223"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 223] +</span> +the peasants there are in a position, “with industry and thrift, not +only to make both ends meet, but to make them overlap.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Stacpoole told us some of his own experiences nearer home. Not long +ago he was informed that the National League had ordered some decent +people, who hold the demesne lands of his neighbour, Mr. Macdonald +(already alluded to) at a very low rental, to make a demand for a +reduction, which would have left Mr. Macdonald without a penny of +income. To counter this Mr. Stacpoole offered to take the lands over for +pasture at the existing rental, whereupon the tenants promptly made up +their minds to keep their holdings in defiance of the League.</p> + +<p>Last year a man, whom Mr. Stacpoole had regarded as a “good” tenant, +came to him, bringing the money to pay his rent. “I have the rint, +sorr,” the man said, “but it is God’s truth I dare not pay it to ye!” +Other tenants were waiting outside. “Are you such a coward that you +don’t dare be honest?” said Mr. Stacpoole. The man turned rather red, +went and looked out of all the windows, one after another, lifted up the +heavy cloth of the large table in the room, and peeped under it +nervously, and finally walked up to Mr. Stacpoole and <a name="page224" id="page224"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 224] +</span> +paid the money. +The receipt being handed to him, he put it back with his hand, eyed it +askance as if it were a bomb, and finally took it, and carefully put it +into the lining of his hat, after which, opening the door with a great +noise, he exclaimed as he went out, “I’m very, very sorry, master, that +I can’t meet you about it!” This man is now as loud in protestation of +his “inability” to pay his rent as any of the “Campaigners.” Mr. +Stacpoole thinks one great danger of the actual situation is that men +who were originally “coerced” by intimidation into dishonestly refusing +to pay just rents, which they were abundantly able to pay, are beginning +now to think that they will be, and ought to be, relieved by the law of +the land from any obligation to pay these rents.</p> + +<p>It seems to be his impression that things look better, however, of late +for law and order. On Monday of last week at Ennis an example was made +of a local official, which, he thinks, will do good. This was a Poor-Law +Guardian named Grogan. He was bound over on Monday last to keep the +peace for twelve months towards one George Pilkington. Pilkington, it +appears, in contempt of the League, took and occupied, in 1886, a +certain farm in Tarmon <a name="page225" id="page225"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 225] +</span> +West. For this he was “boycotted” from that time +forth. In December last he was summoned, with others, before the Board +of Guardians at Kilrush, to fix the rents of certain labourers’ +cottages. While he sat in the room awaiting the action of the Board, +Grogan, one of its members, rose up, and, looking at Pilkington, said in +a loud voice, “There’s an obnoxious person here present that should not +be here, a land-grabber named Pilkington.” There was a stir in the room, +and Pilkington, standing up, said, “I am here because I have had notice +from the Guardians. If I am asked to leave the place, I shall not come +back.” The Chairman of the Board upon this declared that “while the +ordinary business of the Board was transacting, Mr. Pilkington would be +there only by the courtesy of the Board;” and treating the allusions of +Grogan to Pilkington as a part of the business of the Board, he said, “A +motion is before the Board, does any one second it?” Another guardian, +Collins, got up, and said “I do.” Thereupon the Chairman put it to the +vote whether Pilkington should be requested to leave. The ayes had it, +and the Chairman of the Board thereupon invited Pilkington to leave the +meeting which the Board had invited him to attend!</p> + +<p><a name="page226" id="page226"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 226] +</span> +Grogan has now been prosecuted for the offence of “wrongfully, and +without legal authority, using violence and intimidation to and towards +George Pilkington of Tarmon West, with a view to cause the said +Pilkington to abstain from doing an act which he had a legal right to +do, namely, to hold, occupy, and work on a certain farm of land at +Tarmon West.”</p> + +<p>Plainly this case is one of a grapple between the two Governments which +have been and are now contending for the control of Ireland: the +Government of the Queen of Ireland, which authorises Pilkington to take +and farm a piece of land, and the Government of the National League, +which forbids him to do this. Is it possible to doubt which of the two +is the government of Liberty, as well as the government of Law?</p> + +<p>It illustrates the demoralising influence upon society in Ireland of the +protracted toleration of such a contest as has been waging between the +authority of the Law and the authority of the League, that, when this +case came up for consideration ten days ago, an official here actually +thought it ought to be put off. Colonel Turner insisted it should be +dealt with at once; and so <a name="page227" id="page227"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 227] +</span> +Mr. Grogan was proceeded against, with the +result I have stated.</p> + +<p>The trees on this demesne are the finest I have so far seen in Ireland, +beautiful and vigorous pencil-cedars, ilexes, Scotch firs, and Irish +yews. There is one noble cedar of Lebanon here worth a special trip to +see. In conversation about the country to-night, Mr. Stacpoole mentioned +that tobacco was grown here, strong and of good quality, and he was much +interested, as I remember were also the charming châtelaine of Newtown +Anner and Mr. Le Poer of Gurteen four or five years ago, to learn how +immensely successful has been the tobacco-culture introduced into +Pennsylvania only a quarter of a century ago, as a consequence of the +Civil War. The climatic conditions here are certainly not more +unfavourable to such an experiment in agriculture than they were at +first supposed to be in the Pennsylvanian counties of York and +Lancaster. Of course the Imperial excise would deal with it as harshly +as it is now dealing with a similar experiment in England. But the Irish +tobacco-growers would not now have to fear such hostile legislation as +ruined the Irish linen industries in the last century. The +“Moonlighters” of 1888 lineally represent, if they <a name="page228" id="page228"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 228] +</span> +do not simply +reproduce, the “Whiteboys” of 1760; and the domination of the “uncrowned +king” constantly reminds one of Froude’s vivid and vigorous sketch of +the sway wielded by “Captain Dwyer” and “Joanna Maskell” from Mallow to +Westmeath, between the years 1762 and 1765. On that side of the quarrel +there seems to be nothing very new under the sun in Ireland. But the +spirit and the forms of the Imperial authority over the country have +unquestionably undergone a great change for the better, not only since +the last century, but since the accession of Queen Victoria.</p> + +<p>Upon the question of land improvements, Mr. Stacpoole told me, to-night, +that he borrowed £1000 of the Government for drainage improvements on +his property here, the object of which was to better the holdings of +tenants. Of this sum he had to leave £400 undrawn, as he could not get +the men to work at the improvements, even for their own good. They all +wanted to be gangers or chiefs. It reminded me of Berlioz’s reply to the +bourgeois who wanted his son to be made a “great composer.” “Let him go +into the army,” said Berlioz, “and join the only regiment he is fit +for.” “What regiment is that?” “The regiment of colonels.”</p> + +<p><a name="page229" id="page229"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 229] +</span> +In the course of the evening a report was brought out from Ennis to +Colonel Turner. He read it, and then handed it to me, with an +accompanying document. The latter, at my request, he allowed me to keep, +and I must reproduce it here. It tells its own tale.</p> + +<p>A peasant came to the authorities and complained that he was “tormented” +to make a subscription to a “testimonial” for one Austen Mackay of +Kilshanny, in the County Clare, producing at the same time a copy of the +circular which had been sent about to the people. It is a +cheaply-printed leaflet, not unlike a penny ballad in appearance, and +thus it runs:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<p class="center">“<i>Testimonial to</i> Mr. AUSTEN MACKAY,<br /> <i>Kilshanny</i>, <i>County Clare</i>.</p> + +<p>“We, the Nationalists and friends of Mr. Austen Mackay, at a meeting +held in March 1887, agreed and resolved on presenting the long-tried and +trusted friend—the persecuted widow’s son—with a testimonial worthy of +the fearless hero who on several occasions had to hide his head in the +caves and caverns of the mountains, with a price set on his body. First, +for firing at and wounding a spy <a name="page230" id="page230"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 230] +</span> +in his neighbourhood, as was alleged +in ’65, for which he had to stand his trial at Clare Assizes. Again, for +firing at and wounding his mother’s agent and under-strapper while in +the act of evicting his widowed mother in the broad daylight of Heaven, +thus saved his mother’s home from being wrecked by the robber agent, the +shock of which saved other hearths from being quenched; but the noble +widow’s son was chased to the mountains, where he had to seek shelter +from a thousand bloodhounds.</p> + +<p>“The same true widow’s son nobly guarded his mother’s homestead and that +of others from the foul hands of the exterminators. This is the same +widow’s son who bravely reinstated the evicted, and helped to rebuild +the levelled houses of many; for this he was persecuted and convicted at +Cork Assizes, and flung into prison to sleep on the cold plank beds of +Cork and Limerick gaols. Many other manly and noble services did he +which cannot be made known to the public. At that meeting you were +appointed collector with other Nationalists of Clare at home and abroad. +This is the widow’s son, Austen Mackay, whom we, the Committee to this +testimonial, hope and trust every Irishman in Clare will cheerfully +subscribe, that he may be <a name="page231" id="page231"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 231] +</span> +enabled in his present state of health to get +into some business under the protection of the Stars and Stripes, where +he is a citizen of.”</p> + +<p>“Subscriptions to be sent to Henry Higgins, Ennis.</p> + +<p>“Treasurers: Daniel O’Loghlen, Lisdoonvarna; James Kennedy, Ennistymon.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Then follow, with the name of the Society, the names of the committee.</p> + +<p>In behalf of the Stars and Stripes, “where he is a citizen of,” I thanked +Colonel Turner for this interesting contribution to the possible future +history of my country, there being nothing to prevent the election of +any heir of this illustrious “widow’s son,” born to him in America, to +the Presidency of the Republic. The use of this phrase, the “widow’s +son,” by the way, gives a semi-masonic character to this curious +circular.</p> + +<p>One officer says in his report upon this Committee: “All the persons +named are well known to their respective local police, and, except one, +have little or no following or influence in their respective localities. +They are all members of the National League.” The same officer subjoins +this instructive observation: “I beg to add that I find <a name="page232" id="page232"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 232] +</span> +no matter how +popular a man may be in Clare, start a testimonial for him, and from +that time forth his influence is gone.”</p> + +<p>Can it be possible that the “testimonial,” which, as the papers tell me, +is getting up all over Ireland for Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, can have been +“started” with a sinister eye to this effect, by local patriots jealous +of any alien intrusion into their bailiwick? I am almost tempted to +suspect this, remembering that a Nationalist with whom I talked about +Mr. Blunt in Dublin, after lavishing much praise upon his disinterested +devotion to the cause of Ireland, moodily remarked, “For all that, I +don’t believe he will do us any good, for he comes of the blood of +Mountjoy, I am told!”</p> + + + +<p><span class="diary">EDENVALE, <i>Monday, Feb. 20.</i></span>—This morning Colonel Turner called my +attention to the report in the papers of a colloquy between the Chief +Secretary for Ireland and Mr. J. Redmond, M.P., in the House, on the +subject of last week’s trials at Ennis. In speaking of the boycotting at +Milltown Malbay of a certain Mrs. Connell, Mr. Balfour described the +case as one of barbarous inhumanity shown to a helpless old woman. Mr. +Redmond denying this, <a name="page233" id="page233"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 233] +</span> +asserted that he had seen the woman Connell a +fortnight ago in Court, and that so far from her being a decrepit old +woman, she was only fifty years of age, hale and hearty, but +disreputable and given to drink; he also said she was drunk at the +trial, so drunk that the Crown prosecutor, Mr. Otter, was obliged to +order her down from the table.</p> + +<p>“What are the facts?” I asked. “Mr. Balfour speaks from report and +belief, Mr. Redmond asserts that he speaks from actual observation.”</p> + +<p>“The facts,” said Colonel Turner quietly, “are that Mr. Balfour’s +statement is accurate, and that Mr. Redmond, speaking from actual +observation, asserts the thing that is not.”</p> + +<p>“Where is this old woman?” I asked. “Would it be possible for me to see +her?”</p> + +<p>“Certainly; she is at no great distance, and I will with pleasure send a +car with an officer to bring her here this afternoon!”</p> + +<p>“Meanwhile, how came the old woman into Court? and what is her +connection with the cases of boycotting last week tried?”</p> + +<p>“Those cases arose out of her case,“ said Colonel Turner; ”the publicans +last week arraigned, ‘boy<a name="page234" id="page234"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 234] +</span> +cotted’ a fortnight ago the police and +soldiers who were called in to keep the peace during the trial of the +dealers who ‘boycotted’ her.</p> + +<p>“Her case was first publicly made known by a letter which appeared in +the Dublin <i>Express</i> on the 28th of January. That day a line was sent to +me from Dublin ordering an inquiry into it. I endorsed upon the order, +‘Please report. I imagine this is greatly exaggerated.’ This was on +January 30th. The next day, January 31st, I received a full report from +Milltown Malbay. Here it is,”—taking a document from a portfolio and +handing it to me—“and you may make what use you like of it.”</p> + +<p>It is worth giving at length:—</p> + +<blockquote><p> “James Connell, ex-soldier, and his mother, Hannah Connell, of + Fintamore, in this sub-district are boycotted, and have been since + July last. James Connell held a farm and a garden from one Michael + Carroll, a farmer, who was evicted from his holding for non-payment + of three years’ rent, July 14, 1886. After the period of + redemption, six months, had passed, the agent made Connell a tenant + for his house and garden, giving him in addition about half an acre + (Irish) of the evicted farm which adjoins his house. In consequence + Connell was regarded by the National League here as a + ‘land-grabber.’ About the same time the agent also appointed him a + rent-warner.</p> + +<p> “On the 22d June last Connell received a letter through the + Post-Office threatening him if he did not give up his place as a + rent-warner. I have no doubt the letter was written by (here a + resident was named). On the 10th, and again on the 17th, of July, + Connell was brought before indoor meetings of the <a name="page235" id="page235"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 235] +</span> +National League + here for having taken the half acre of land, when he through fear + declared he had not done it.</p> + +<p> “At the first meeting the Rev. J.S. White, P.P., suggested that in + order to test whether Connell had taken the land, Carroll, the + evicted tenant, should go and cut the meadowing on it, which he + did, when Connell interfered and prevented him. At the next meeting + Carroll brought this under notice, and Connell was thereupon + boycotted. Immediately afterwards the men who had been engaged + fishing for Connell refused to fish, saying that if they fished for + him the sale of the fish would be boycotted, which was true.</p> + +<p> “Since then Connell has been deprived of his means of livelihood, + and no one dare employ him. He, however, through his mother, was + able to procure the necessaries of life until about the 22d of + November last, when his mother was refused goods by the tradesmen + with whom she had dealt, owing to a resolution passed at a meeting + of the ‘suppressed’ branch of the League here, to the effect that + any person supplying her would be boycotted. December 23d she came + into Milltown Malbay for goods, and was refused. The police + accompanied her, but no person would supply her. On the 2d of + January she came again, when one trader supplied her with some + bread, but refused groceries. The police accompanied her to several + traders, who all refused. Ultimately she was supplied by the + post-mistress. On the 7th of January she came, and the police + accompanied her to several traders, all of whom refused her even + bread. Believing she wanted it badly, we, the police, supplied her + with some. On these three occasions she was followed by large + numbers of young people about the street, evidently to frighten and + intimidate her, and their demeanour was so hostile that we were + obliged to disperse them and protect her home. On a subsequent + occasion she stated that stones were thrown at her. Since then she + has not come here for goods, and, in my opinion, it would not be + safe for her to do so without protection. She and her son are now + getting goods from Mrs. Moroney’s shop at Spanish Point, which she + opened a few years ago to supply boycotted persons.</p> + +<p> <a name="page236" id="page236"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 236] +</span> +“The Connells find it hard to get turf, and are obliged to bring + it a distance in bags so that it may not be observed. As for milk, + the person who did supply them privately for a considerable time + declined some weeks ago to do so any longer. They are now really + destitute, as any little money Connell had saved is spent, and, + although willing and anxious to work, no person will employ him. + Summonses have been issued against the tradesmen for refusing to + supply Hannah Connell on the occasions already referred to. I have + only to add that I have from time to time reported fully the + foregoing facts with regard to the persecution of this poor man and + his aged mother; and I regret to say that boycotting and + intimidation never prevailed to a greater extent here than at + present. Connell’s safety is being looked after by patrols from + this and Spanish Point station.” </p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Three things seem to me specially noteworthy in this tale of cowardly +and malignant tyranny. The victims of this vulgar Vehmgericht are +neither landlords nor agents. They are a poor Irish labourer and his +aged mother. The “crime” for which these poor creatures are thus +persecuted is simply that one of them—the man—chose to obey the law of +the land in which he lives, and to work for his livelihood and that of +his mother. And the priest of the parish, instead of sheltering and +protecting these hunted creatures, is presented as joining in the hunt, +and actually devising a trap to catch the poor frightened man in a +falsehood.</p> + +<p>Upon this third point, a correspondence which <a name="page237" id="page237"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 237] +</span> +passed between Father +White and Colonel Turner, after the conviction of the boycotters of Mrs. +Connell, and copies of which the latter has handed to me at my request, +throws an instructive light.</p> + +<p>When the report of January 31st reached him, Colonel Turner ordered the +tradespeople implicated in the persecution to be proceeded against. Six +of them were put on their trials on the 3d and 4th of February. All the +shops in Milltown Malbay were closed, by order of the local League, +during the trial, and the police and the soldiers called in were refused +all supplies.</p> + +<p>On the 4th, one of the persons arraigned was bound over for +intimidation, and the five others were sentenced to three months’ +imprisonment with hard labour.</p> + +<p>A week later, February 11th, Colonel Turner addressed the following +letter to Father White, twenty-six publicans of Milltown Malbay having +meanwhile been prosecuted for boycotting the police and the soldiers:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<p> “DEAR SIR,—I write to you as a clergyman who possesses great + influence with the people in your part of the country, to put it to + you whether it would not be better for the interests of all + concerned if the contemptible system of petty persecution, called + boycotting, were put an end to in and about <a name="page238" id="page238"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 238] +</span> +Milltown Malbay, which + would enable me to drop prosecutions. If it is not put a stop to, I + am determined to stamp it out, and restore to all the ordinary + rights of citizenship.</p> + +<p> “But I should very greatly prefer that the people should stop it + themselves, and save me from taking strong measures, which I should + deplore. The story of a number of men combining to persecute a poor + old woman is one of the most pitiful I ever heard.—I am, sir, + yours truly,</p> + +<p class="signed">ALFRED TURNER.” </p> +</blockquote> +<p>As the cost of the extra policemen sent to Milltown Malbay at this time +falls upon the people there, this letter in effect offered the priest an +opportunity to relieve his parish of a burden as well as to redeem its +character.</p> + +<p class="i0">The next day Father White replied:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<p> “DEAR SIR,—No one living is more anxious for peace in this + district than I. During very exciting times I have done my best to + keep it free from outrage, and with success, except in one + mysterious instance. <a id="footnotetag20" + name="footnotetag20"></a><a href="#footnote20"><sup>20</sup></a> There is but one obstacle to it now. If + ever you can advise Mrs. Moroney to restore the evicted tenant, + whose rent you admitted was as high as Colonel O’Callaghan’s, I can + guarantee on the part of the people the return of good feelings; + or, failing that, if she and her employees are content with the + goods which she has of all kinds in her own shop, there need be no + further trouble.</p> + +<p>“I have a promise from the people that the police will be supplied + for the future. This being so, if you will kindly have + <a name="page239" id="page239"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 239] +</span> +prosecutions withdrawn, or even postponed for say a month, it will + very much strengthen me in the effort I am making to calm down the + feeling. Regarding Mrs. Connell, the head-constable was told by me + that she was to get goods, and she did get bread, till the police + went round with her. This upset my arrangements, as I had induced + the people to give her what she might really want. In fact she was + a convenience to Mrs. Moroney for obvious reasons, and her son is + now in her employment in place of Kelly, who has been dismissed + since his very inconvenient evidence. It is, and was, well known + they were not starving as they said, they having a full supply of + their accustomed food.—Thanking you for your great courtesy, I am, + dear sir, truly yours,</p> + +<p class="signed">“J. White.” </p> +</blockquote> + +<p class="i0">On the 14th Colonel Turner replied:—</p> + +<blockquote> + +<p> “My dear Sir,—We cannot adjourn the cases. But if those who are + prosecuted are prepared to make reparation by promising future good + conduct in Court, I can then see my way to interfere, and to + prevent them from suffering imprisonment.</p> + +<p> “These cases have nothing whatever to do with Mrs. Moroney. <a id="footnotetag21" + name="footnotetag21"></a><a href="#footnote21"><sup>21</sup></a> + They are simply between the defendants and the police and other + officials, who were at Milltown Malbay that day. I am greatly + pleased at your evident wish to co-operate with me in calming down + the ill-feeling which unfortunately exists, and I am satisfied that + success will attend our efforts.” </p> +</blockquote> +<p class="i0">On Thursday and Friday last, as I have recorded, the cases came on of +the twenty-six publicans charged. Between February 4th, when the +offences were committed, and the 17th of February, one of <a name="page240" id="page240"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 240] +</span> +these +publicans had died, one had fled to America, and there proved to be an +informality in the summons issued against a third. Twenty-three only +were put upon their trial. As I have stated, one was acquitted and the +others were found guilty, and sentenced to be imprisoned. In accordance +with his promise made to Father White, Colonel Turner offered to relieve +them all of the imprisonment if they would sign an undertaking in Court +not to repeat the offence. Ten, the most prosperous and substantial of +the accused, accepted this offer and signed, as has been already stated. +One, a woman, was discharged without being required to sign the +guarantee, the other eleven refused to sign, and were sent to prison. +Father White, whose own evidence given at the trial, as his letter to +Colonel Turner would lead one to expect, had gone far to prove the +existence of the conspiracy, encouraged the eleven in their attitude.</p> + +<p>This was his way of “co-operating” with Colonel Turner to “calm down the +ill-feeling which exists”!</p> + +<p>During the morning Mrs. Stacpoole sent for the clerk and manager of the +estate, and asked him to show me the books. He is a native of these +parts, by name Considine, and has lived at Edenvale for <a name="page241" id="page241"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 241] +</span> +eighteen years. +In his youth he went out to America, but there found out that he had a +“liver,” an unpleasant discovery, which led him to return to the land of +his birth, and to the service of Mr. Stacpoole. He is perfectly familiar +with the condition of the country here, and as the accounts of this +estate are kept minutely and carefully from week to week, he was able +this morning to show me the current prices of all kinds of farm produce +and of supplies in and about Ennis—not estimated prices, but prices +actually paid or received in actual transactions during the last ten +years. I am surprised to see how narrow has been the range of local +variations during that time; and I find Mr. Considine inclined to think +that the farmers here have suffered very little, if at all, from these +fluctuations, making up from time to time on their reduced expenses what +they have lost through lessened receipts. The expenses of the landlord +have however increased, while his receipts have fallen off. In 1881 +Edenvale paid out for labour £466, 0s. 1-1/2d., in 1887 £560, 6s. +3-1/2d., though less labour was employed in 1887 than in 1881. The wages +of servants, where any change appears, have risen. In 1881 a gardener +received £14 a year, in 1888 he <a name="page242" id="page242"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 242] +</span> +receives 15s. a week, or at the rate of +£39 a year. A housemaid receiving £12 a year in 1881, receives now £17 a +year. A butler receiving in 1881 £26 a year, now receives £40 a year. A +kitchen maid receiving in 1881 £6, now receives £10, 10s. a year. +Meanwhile, the Sub-Commissioners are at this moment cutting down the +Edenvale rents again by £190, 3s. 2d., after a walk over the property in +the winter. Yet in July 1883 Mr. Reeves, for the Sub-Commission, +“thought it right to say there was no estate in the County Clare so +fairly rented, to their knowledge, or where the tenants had less cause +for complaint.” In but one case was a reduction of any magnitude made by +the Commission of 1883, and in one case that Commission actually +increased the rent from £11, 10s. to £16. In January 1883 the rental of +this property was £4065, 5s. 1d. The net reduction made by the +Commissioners in July 1883 was £296, 14s. 0-1/2d.</p> + +<p>After luncheon a car came up to the mansion, bringing a stalwart, +good-natured-looking sergeant of police, and with him the boycotted old +woman Mrs. Connell and her son. The sergeant helped the old woman down +very tenderly, and supported her into the house. She came in with some +trepidation and uneasiness, glancing furtively all about <a name="page243" id="page243"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 243] +</span> +her, with the +look of a hunted creature in her eyes. Her son, who followed her, was +more at his ease, but he also had a worried and careworn look. Both were +warmly but very poorly clad, and both worn and weatherbeaten of aspect. +The old woman might have passed anywhere for a witch, so wizened and +weird she was, of small stature, and bent nearly double by years and +rheumatism. Her small hands were withered away into claws, and her head +was covered with a thick and tangled mat of hair, half dark, half grey, +which gave her the look almost of the Fuegian savages who come off from +the shore in their flat rafts and clamour to you for “rum” in the +Straits of Magellan. Her eyes were intensely bright, and shone like hot +coals in her dusky, wrinkled face. It was a raw day, and she came in +shivering with the cold. It was pathetic to see how she positively +gloated with extended palms over the bright warm, fire in the +drawing-room, and clutched at the cup of hot tea which my kind hostess +instantly ordered in for her.</p> + +<p>This was the woman of whom Mr. Redmond wrote to Mr. Parnell that she was +“an active strong dame of about fifty.” When Mr. Balfour, in Parliament, +described her truly as a “decrepit old woman of eighty,” Mr. Redmond +contradicted him, and <a name="page244" id="page244"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 244] +</span> +accused her of being “the worse for liquor” in a +public court.</p> + +<p>“How old is your mother?” I asked her son.</p> + +<p>“I am not rightly sure, sir,” he replied, “but she is more than eighty.”</p> + +<p>“The man himself is about fifty,” said the sergeant; “he volunteered to +go to the Crimean War, and that was more than thirty years ago!”</p> + +<p>“I did indeed, sir,” broke in the man, “and it was from Cork I went. And +I’d be a corpse now if it wasn’t for the mercy of God and the +protection. God bless the police, sir, that protected my old mother, +sir, and me. That Mr. Redmond, sir, they read me what he said, and sure +he should be ashamed of his shadow, to get up there in Parliament, and +tell those lies, sir, about my old mother!” I questioned Connell as to +his relations with Carroll, the man who brought him before the League. +He was a labourer holding a bit of ground under Carroll. Carroll refused +to pay his own rent to the landlord. But he compelled Connell to pay +rent to him. When Carroll was evicted, the landlord offered to let +Connell have half an acre more of land. He took it to better himself, +and “how did he injure Carroll by taking it?” How indeed, poor man! Was +he a rent-warner? Yes; he <a name="page245" id="page245"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 245] +</span> +earned something that way two or three times +a year; and for that he had to ask the protection of the police—“they +would kill him else.” What with worry and fright, and the loss of his +livelihood, this unfortunate labourer has evidently been broken down +morally and physically. It is impossible to come into contact with such +living proofs of the ineffable cowardice and brutality of this business +of “boycotting” without indignation and disgust.</p> + +<p>While Connell was telling his pitiful tale a happy thought occurred to +the charming daughter of the house. Mrs. Stacpoole is a clever amateur +in photography. “Why not photograph this ‘hale and hearty woman of +fifty,’ with her son of fifty-three?” Mrs. Stacpoole clapped her hands +at the idea, and went off at once to prepare her apparatus.</p> + +<p>While she was gone the sergeant gave me an account of the trial, which +Mr. Redmond, M.P., witnessed. He was painfully explicit. “Mr. Redmond +knew the woman was sober,” he said; “she was lifted up on the table at +Mr. Redmond’s express request, because she was so small and old, and +spoke in such a low voice that he could not hear what she said. Connell +had always been a decent, industrious fellow—a fisherman. But for the +lady, <a name="page246" id="page246"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 246] +</span> +Mrs. Moroney, he and his mother would have starved, and would +starve now. As for the priest, Father White, Connell went to him to ask +his intercession and help, but he could get neither.”</p> + +<p>The sergeant had heard Father White preach yesterday. “It was a curious +sermon. He counselled peace and forbearance to the people, because they +might be sure the wicked Tory Government would very soon fall!”</p> + +<p>Presently the sun came out with golden glow, and with the sun came out +Mrs. Stacpoole. It was a job to “pose” the subjects, the old woman +evidently suspecting some surgical or legal significance in the +machinery displayed, and her son finding some trouble in making her +understand what it meant. But finally we got the tall, personable +sergeant, with his frank, shrewd, sensible face, to put himself between +the two, in the attitude as of a guardian angel; the camera was nimbly +adjusted, and lo! the thing was done.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stacpoole thinks the operation promises a success. I suppose it +would hardly be civil to send a finished proof of the group to Mr. J. +Redmond, M.P.<a name="page248" id="page248"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 248] +</span> +<a name="page247" id="page247"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 247] +</span> +</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="page249" id="page249"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 249] +</span> +APPENDIX.</h2> + + +<h3><a name="noteA" id="noteA" />NOTE A. +<br />MR. GLADSTONE AND THE AMERICAN WAR. +<br />(Prologue, p. <a href="#pagexxix">xxix</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>This statement as to the action of Lord Palmerston in connection with +Mr. Gladstone’s Newcastle speech of October 7th, 1862, made upon the +authority of a British public man whose years and position entitle him +to speak with confidence on such a subject, appeared to me of so much +interest, that after sending it to the printer I caused search to be +made for the speech referred to as made by Sir George Cornewall Lewis. +My informant’s statement was that Lord Palmerston insisted that Sir +George Lewis should find or make an immediate opportunity of covering +what Mr. Gladstone had said at Newcastle. He was angry about it, and his +anger was increased by an article which Mr. Delane printed in the +<i>Times</i>, intimating that Mr. Gladstone’s speech was considered by many +people to be a betrayal of Cabinet secrets. Sir George Lewis was far +from well (he died the next spring), and reluctant to do what his chief +wished; but he did it on the 17th of October 1862 in a speech at +Hereford. Mr. Milner-Gibson was also put forward to the same end, and +after <a name="page250" id="page250"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 250] +</span> +Parliament met, in February 1863, Mr. Disraeli gave the +Government a sharp lashing for sending one or two Ministers into the +country in the recess to announce that the Southern States would be +recognised, and then putting forward the President of the Board of Trade +(Milner-Gibson) to attack the Southern States and the pestilent +institution of slavery. Mr. Gladstone’s speech at Newcastle, coming as +it did from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, after the close of a +session during which everybody knew that the Emperor of the French had +been urging upon England the recognition of the Confederate States, and +that Mr. Mason had been in active correspondence on that subject with +Lord Russell, was taken at Newcastle, and throughout the country, to +mean that the recognition was imminent. Mr. Gladstone even went so far +as to say he rather rejoiced that the Confederates had not been able to +hold Maryland, as that might have made them aggressive, and so made a +settlement more difficult, it being, he said, as certain as anything in +the future could be that the South must succeed in separating itself +from the Union. This remark about Maryland distinctly indicated +consultation as to what limits and boundaries between the South and the +North should be recognised in the recognition, and on that account, it +seems, was particularly resented by Earl Russell as well as by Lord +Palmerston.</p> + +<p>Sir George Cornewall Lewis’s speech of October 17, 1862, was a most +skilful and masterly attempt to protect the Cabinet against the +consequences of what the <i>Times</i>, on the 9th of October, had treated as +the “indiscretion or treason” of his colleague. But it did not save the +Government from the scourge of Mr. Disraeli, or much mitigate the effect +in America of Mr. Gladstone’s performance at Newcastle, which was a much +more serious matter from the American point of view than any of the +speeches recently delivered <a name="page251" id="page251"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 251] +</span> +about “Home Rule” in the American Senate +can be fairly said to be from the British point of view.</p> + + + +<h3><a name="noteB" id="noteB" />NOTE B. + +<br />MR. PARNELL AND THE DYNAMITERS. +<br /> (Prologue, p. <a href="#pagexxxiii">xxxiii</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>The relation of Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates to what is +called the extreme and “criminal” section of the Irish American +Revolutionary Party can only be understood by those who understand that +it is the ultimate object of this party not to effect reforms in the +administration of Ireland as an integral part of the British Empire, but +to sever absolutely the political connection between Ireland and the +British Empire. Loyal British subjects necessarily consider this object +a “criminal” object, just as loyal Austrian subjects considered the +object of the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 to be a “criminal” object. +But the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 did not accept this view of their +object. On the contrary, they held their end to be so high and holy that +it more or less sanctified even assassination when planned as a means to +that end. Why should the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 be judged by one +standard and the Irish Revolutionists of 1888 by another?</p> + +<p>If Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates were to declare in +unequivocal terms their absolute loyalty to the British Crown, and their +determination to maintain in all circumstances the political connection +between Great Britain and Ireland, they might or might not retain their +hold upon Mr. Davitt and upon their constituents in Ireland, but they +would certainly <a name="page252" id="page252"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 252] +</span> +put themselves beyond the pale of support by the great +Irish American organisations. Nor do I believe they could retain the +confidence of those organisations if it were supposed that they really +regarded the most extreme and violent of the Irish Revolutionists, the +“Invincibles” and the “dynamiters” as “criminals,” in the sense in which +the “Invincibles” and the “dynamiters” are so regarded by the rest of +the civilised world. Can it, for example, be doubted that any English or +Scottish public man who co-operates with Mr. Parnell and his +Parliamentary associates would instantly hand over to the police any +“Invincible” or “dynamiter” who might come within his reach? And can it +for a moment be believed that Mr. Parnell, or any one of his +Parliamentary associates, would do this? There are thousands of Irish +citizens in the United States who felt all the horror and indignation +expressed by Mr. Parnell at the murders in the Phoenix Park, but I +should be very much surprised to learn that any one of them all ever +did, or ever would do, anything likely to bring any one of the authors +of these murders to the bar of justice. Mr. Parnell and his +Parliamentary associates are held and bound by the essential conditions +of their political existence to treat with complaisance the most extreme +and violent men of their party. Nor is this true of them alone.</p> + +<p>There is no more respectable body of men in the United States than the +Hibernian Society of Philadelphia. This society was instituted in 1771, +five years before the declaration of American Independence. It is a +charitable and social organisation only, with no political object or +colour. It is made up of men of character and substance. Its custom has +always been to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by a banquet, to which the +most distinguished men of the country have repeatedly been bidden. +Immediately after the inaugu<a name="page253" id="page253"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 253] +</span> +ration of Mr. Cleveland as President, on +the 4th of March 1885, Mr. Bayard, the new Secretary of State of the +United States, was invited by this Society to attend its one hundred and +fourteenth banquet. It will be remembered that, on the 30th of May 1884, +London had been startled and shocked by an explosion of dynamite in St. +James’s Square, which shattered many houses and inflicted cruel injuries +upon several innocent people. It was not so fatal to life as that +explosion at the Salford Barracks, which Mr. Parnell treated as a +“practical joke.” But it excited lively indignation on both sides of the +Atlantic, and Mr. Bayard, who at that time was a Senator of the United +States, sternly denounced it and its authors on the floor of the +American Senate. What he had said as a Senator he thought it right to +repeat as the Foreign Secretary of the United States in his reply to the +invitation of the Hibernian Society in March 1885. This reply ran as +follows:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p class="dateline">“WASHINGTON, D.C., <i>March</i> 9, 1885.</p> + +<p> “NICHOLAS J. GRIFFIN, Esq., <i>Secretary of the<br /> + Hibernian Society of Philadelphia.</i></p> + +<p> “Dear Sir,—I have your personal note accompanying the card of + invitation to dine with your ancient and honourable Society on + their one hundred and fourteenth anniversary, St. Patrick’s Day, + and I sincerely regret that I cannot accept it. The obvious and + many duties of my public office here speak for themselves, and to + none with more force than to American citizens of Irish blood or + birth who are honestly endeavouring to secure liberty by + maintaining a government of laws, and who realise the constant + attention that is needful.</p> + +<p> “In the midst of anarchical demonstrations which we witness in + other lands, and the echoes of which we can detect even here in our + own free country, where base and silly individuals seek to stain + the name of Ireland by associating the honest struggle for just + government with senseless and wicked crimes, there are none of our + citizens from whom honest reprobation can be more confidently + expected than from such as compose <a name="page254" id="page254"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 254] +</span> +your respected and benevolent + Society. Those who worthily celebrate the birthday of St. + Patrick will not forget that he drove out of Ireland the reptiles + that creep and sting.</p> + +<p> “The Hibernian Society can contain no member who will not resent + the implication that sympathy with assassins can dwell in a genuine + Irish heart, which will ever be opposed to cruelty and cowardice, + whatever form either may take.</p> + +<p> “Present to your Society my thanks for the kind remembrance, and + assure them of the good-will and respect with which I am—Your + obedient servant, </p> +<p class="signed"> T.F. BAYARD.“ </p> +</blockquote> +<p class="i0">What was the response of this Society, representing all the best +elements of the Irish American population of the United States, to this +letter of the Secretary of State, the highest executive officer of the +American Government after the President, upon whom under an existing law +the succession of the chief magistracy now devolves in the event of the +death or disability of the President and the Vice-President?</p> + +<p><i>The letter was not read at the banquet.</i></p> + +<p>But it was given to the press by the officers of the Society, and the +most influential Irish American newspaper in the United States did not +hesitate to describe it as an “insulting letter,” going to show that its +author was “an Englishman in spirit who will not allow any opportunity +to go by, however slight, without testifying his sympathy with the +British Empire and his antipathy for its foes.”</p> + +<p>This was capped by an American political journal which used the +following language: “Lord Granville himself would hardly strike a more +violent attitude against the dynamite section of the Irish people. When +Lord Wolseley, whom it is proposed to make Governor-General of the +Soudan, is offering a reward for the head of Ollivier Pain, it is hardly +in good taste <a name="page255" id="page255"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 255] +</span> +for an American Secretary of State to condemn so bitterly +a class of Irishmen which, while it includes bad men no doubt, also +includes men who are moved by as worthy motives as Lord Wolseley.”</p> + +<p>In the face of this testimony to the “solidarity” of all branches of the +Irish revolutionary movement in America, how can Mr. Parnell, or any +other Parliamentary Irishman who depends upon Irish American support, be +expected by men of sense to condemn in earnest “the dynamite section of +the Irish people”?</p> + + + +<h3><a name="noteC" id="noteC" />NOTE C. +<br />THE AMERICAN “SUSPECTS” OF 1881. +<br />(Prologue, p. <a href="#pagexlvii">xlvii</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>In his recently published and very interesting <i>Life of Mr. Forster</i>, +Mr. Wemyss Reid alludes to some action taken by the United States +Government in the spring of 1882 as one of the determining forces which +brought about the abandonment at that time by Mr. Gladstone of Mr. +Forster’s policy in Ireland. Without pretending to concern myself here +with what is an essentially British question as between Mr. Forster and +Mr. Gladstone, it may be both proper and useful for me to throw some +light, not, perhaps, in the possession of Mr. Reid, upon the part taken +in this matter by the American Government. Sir William Harcourt’s +“Coercion Bill” was passed on the 2d of March 1881, two days before the +inauguration of General Garfield as President of the United States. Mr. +Blaine, who was appointed by the new President to take charge of the +Foreign Relations of the American Government, received, on the 10th of +March, at Washington, a despatch written by Mr. Lowell, the American +Minister <a name="page256" id="page256"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 256] +</span> +in London, on the 26th of February, being the day after the +third reading in the Commons of the “Coercion Bill.” In this despatch +Mr. Lowell called the attention of the American State Department to a +letter from Mr. Parnell to the Irish National Land League, dated at +Paris, February 13, 1881, in which Mr. Parnell attempted to make what +Mr. Lowell accurately enough described as an “extraordinary” distinction +between “the American people” and “the Irish nation in America.”</p> + +<p>“This double nationality,” said Mr. Lowell, “is likely to be of great +practical inconvenience whenever the ‘Coercion Bill’ becomes law.” By +“this double nationality” in this passage, the American Minister, of +course, meant “this claim of a double nationality;” for neither by Great +Britain nor by the United States is any man permitted to consider +himself at one and the same time a citizen of the American republic and +a subject of the British monarchy. Nor was he quite right in +anticipating “great practical inconvenience” from this “claim,” upon +which neither the British nor the American Government for a moment +bestowed, or could bestow, the slightest attention.</p> + +<p>The “great practical inconvenience” which, first to the American +Legation in England, then to the United States Government at Washington, +and finally to the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone, did, however, arise from +the application of Sir William Harcourt’s Coercion Act of 1881 to +American citizens in Ireland, had its origin not in Mr. Parnell’s +preposterous idea of an Irish nationality existing in the United States, +but in the failure of the authorities of the United States to deal +promptly and firmly with the situation created for American citizens in +Ireland by the administration of Sir William Harcourt’s Act.</p> + +<p>As I have said, Sir William Harcourt’s Act became <a name="page257" id="page257"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 257] +</span> +law on the 2d of +March 1881, two days before the inauguration of President Garfield at +Washington. Without touching the question of the relations between Great +Britain and Ireland, and between the British Parliament and the Irish +National Land League, it was clearly incumbent upon the Secretary of +State of the United States, who entered upon his duties three days after +Sir William Harcourt’s Bill went into force in Ireland, to inform +himself minutely and exactly as to the possible effects of that Bill +upon the rights and interests of American citizens travelling or +sojourning in that country. This was due not only to his own Government +and to its citizens, but to the relations which ought to exist between +his own Government and the Government of Great Britain. It was no affair +of an American Secretary of State either to impede or to further the +execution of “Coercion Acts” in Ireland against British subjects. But it +was his affair to ascertain without delay the nature and the measure of +any new and unusual perils, or “inconveniences,” to which American +citizens in Ireland might be exposed in the execution there by the +British authorities of such Acts.</p> + +<p>And it is on record, under his own hand, in a despatch to the American +Minister in London, dated May 26, 1881, that Mr. Blaine had not so much +as seen a copy of Sir William Harcourt’s Coercion Act at that date, +three months after it had gone into effect; three months after many +persons claiming American citizenship had been arrested and imprisoned +under it; and two months after his own official attention had been +called by the American Minister in London, in an elaborate despatch, to +the arrest under it of one such person, a man of Irish birth, who based +his claim of American citizenship upon allegations of military service +during the Civil War, of residence and citizen<a name="page258" id="page258"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 258] +</span> +ship in New York, and of +the granting to him, by an American Secretary of State, of a citizen’s +passport. And when he did finally take the trouble to look at this Act, +Mr. Elaine seems to have examined it so cursorily, and with such slight +attention, that he overlooked a provision made in it, under which, had +its true force and meaning been perceived by him, the State Department +of the United States might, in the early summer of 1881, have secured +for American citizens in Ireland the consideration due to them as the +citizens of a friendly State. A curious despatch from Mr. Sackville +West, the British Minister at Washington, to Earl Granville, published +in a British Blue-book now in my possession, plainly intimates that in +the summer of 1881 the American Secretary of State had given the British +Minister to understand that no representations made to him or to his +Government by the Government of the United States touching +American-Irish “suspects” need be taken at all seriously. The whole +diplomatic correspondence on this subject which went on between the two +Governments while Mr. Blaine was Secretary of State, from the 4th of +March 1881 to the 20th of December 1881, was of a sort to lull the +British Government into the belief that “suspects” might be freely and +safely arrested and locked up all over Ireland, with no more question of +their nationality than of any evidence to establish their guilt or their +innocence. During the whole of that time the State Department at +Washington seems to have substantially remained content with the +declaration of Earl Granville, in a letter sent to the American Legation +on the 8th of July 1881, four months after the Coercion Act went into +effect, that “no distinction could be made in the circumstances between +foreigners and British subjects, and that in the case of British +subjects the only information given was that contained in the warrant.”</p> + +<p><a name="page259" id="page259"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 259] +</span> +No fault can be found with the British Government for standing by this +declaration so long as it thus seemed to command the assent of the +Government of the United States.</p> + +<p>But when Mr. Frelinghuysen was called into the State Department by +President Arthur in December 1881, to overhaul the condition into which +our foreign relations had been brought by his predecessor, he found that +in no single instance had Mr. Blaine succeeded in inducing the British +Government, either to release any American citizen arrested under a +general warrant without specific charges of criminal conduct, and on +“suspicion” in Ireland, or to order the examination of any such citizen. +The one case in which an American citizen arrested under the Coercion +Act in Ireland during Mr. Blaine’s tenure of office had been liberated +when Mr. Frelinghuysen took charge of the State Department, was that of +Mr. Joseph B. Walsh, arrested at Castlebar, in Mayo, March 8, 1881, and +discharged by order of the Lord-Lieutenant, October 21, 1881, not +because he was an American citizen, nor after any examination, but +expressly and solely on the ground of ill-health.</p> + +<p>When Mr. Frelinghuysen became Secretary of State in December 1881 the +Congress of the United States was in session. So numerous were the +American “suspects” then lying in prison in Ireland, some of whom had +been so confined for many months, that the doors of Congress were soon +besieged by angry demands for an inquiry into the subject. A resolution +in this sense was adopted by the House of Representatives, and +forwarded, through the American Legation in London, to the British +Foreign Office. Memorials touching particular cases were laid before +both Houses of the American Congress. On the 10th of February 1882, Mr. +Bancroft Davis, the Assistant-<a name="page260" id="page260"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 260] +</span> +Secretary of State, instructed the +American Minister at London to take action concerning one such case, and +to report upon it. The Minister not moving more rapidly than he had been +accustomed to do under Mr. Blaine, Mr. Davis grew impatient, and on the +2d of March 1882 (being the anniversary of the adoption of the Coercion +Act in England) the American Secretary of State cabled to the Minister +in London significantly enough, “Use all diligence in regard to the late +cases, especially of Hart and M‘Sweeney, and report by cable.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Lowell replied the next day, giving the views in regard to Hart of +the American Vice-Consul, and of the British Inspector of Police at +Queenstown, and adding an expression of his own opinion that neither +Hart nor M‘Sweeney was “more innocent than the majority of those under +arrest.”</p> + +<p>This was an unfortunate despatch. It roused the American Secretary of +State into responding instantly by cable in the following explicit and +emphatic terms: “Referring to the cases of O’Connor, Hart, M‘Sweeney, +M‘Enery, and D’Alton, American citizens imprisoned in Ireland, say to +Lord Granville that, without discussing whether the provisions of the +Force Act can be applied to American citizens, the President hopes that +the Lord-Lieutenant will be instructed to exercise the powers intrusted +to him by the first section to order early trials in these and all other +cases in which Americans may be arrested.”</p> + +<p>There was no mistaking the tone of this despatch. It was instantly +transmitted to the British Foreign Secretary, who replied the same day +that “the matter would receive the immediate attention of Her Majesty’s +Government.”</p> + +<p>The reference made to the Coercion Act by Mr. Frelinghuysen touched a +plain and precise provision, <a name="page261" id="page261"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 261] +</span> +that persons detained under the Act +“should not be discharged or tried by any court without the direction of +the Lord-Lieutenant.” Had the Coercion Act received from Mr. Blaine in +March 1881 the attention bestowed upon it in March 1882 by Mr. +Frelinghuysen, this provision might have been used to obviate the +dangerous accumulation of injustice to individuals, and of international +irritation, resulting from the application to possibly innocent foreign +citizens in Ireland of the despotic powers conferred by that Act upon +Mr. Gladstone’s Government, powers as nearly as possible analogous with +those which Mr. Gladstone himself, years before, had denounced in +unmeasured terms when they were claimed and exercised by the Government +of Naples in dealing with its own subjects.</p> + +<p>After the consideration by Her Majesty’s Government of this despatch of +the United States Government, it is understood in America that Mr. +Forster, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, was invited to communicate with +the Lord-Lieutenant, and request him to exercise his discretion in the +sense desired, and that Mr. Forster positively refused to do this.</p> + +<p>How this may be I do not pretend to say. But as no satisfactory reply +was made to the American despatch, and as public feeling in the United +States grew daily more and more determined that a stop should be put to +the unexplained arrest and the indefinite detention of American citizens +in Ireland, the American Secretary of State made up his mind towards the +end of the month of March to repeat his despatch of March 3d in a more +terse and peremptory form. As a final preliminary to this step, however, +Mr. Frelinghuysen was induced to avail himself of the unusual and +officious intervention of his most distinguished living predecessor in +the State Department, Mr. Hamilton Fish. After measuring the gravity of +<a name="page262" id="page262"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 262] +</span> +the situation, Mr. Fish at the end of March sent a despatch to an +eminent public man, well known on both sides of the Atlantic, and now +resident in London, with authority to show it personally to Mr. +Gladstone, to the effect that if any further delay occurred in complying +with the moderate and reasonable demand of the American Government for +the immediate release or the immediate trial of the American “suspects,” +the relations between Great Britain and the United States would be very +seriously “strained.”</p> + +<p>This despatch was at once communicated to Mr. Gladstone. Within the +week, the liberation was announced of six American “suspects.” Within a +fortnight, Mr. Parnell, Mr. O’Kelly, and Mr. Dillon, it is understood, +imprisoned members of Parliament, were offered their liberty if they +would consent to a sham exile on the Continent for a few weeks, or even +days; and within a month Mr. Forster, in his place in Parliament, was +imputing to his late chief and Premier the negotiation of that +celebrated “Treaty of Kilmainham,” which was repudiated with equal +warmth by the three Irish members already named, and by Mr. Gladstone.</p> + + + +<h3><a name="noteD" id="noteD" />NOTE D. + +<br />THE PARNELLITES AND THE ENGLISH PARTIES. + +<br />(Prologue, p. <a href="#pagel">l</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>As I am not writing a history of English parties, I need not discuss +here the truth or falsehood of this contention. But I cannot let it pass +without a word as to two cases which came under my own observation, and +which aggravate the inherent improbability of the tale. In November 1885 +I went to America, and on my way passed through Stockport, where my +friend, <a name="page263" id="page263"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 263] +</span> +Mr. Jennings, long my correspondent in England, was then +standing as a Conservative candidate. I attended one of his meetings and +heard him make an effective speech, much applauded, which turned +exclusively upon imperial and financial issues. That he had no +understanding whatever with the “managers” of the Irish vote in +Stockport, I have the best reason to believe. But he was assured by them +that the Irish intended to vote for him; and at a subsequent time he was +rashly assailed in the House of Commons by an Irish member with the +charge that he had broken faith with the Irish who elected him. It was +an unlucky assault for the assailant, as it gave Mr. Jennings an +opportunity, which he promptly improved, to show that he owed nothing to +the Irish voters of Stockport. Whether they voted for him in any number +in 1885 was more than doubtful; while in 1886 they voted solidly against +him, with the result of swelling his majority from 369 to 518 votes.</p> + +<p>In January 1886 I returned to Europe, and going on a visit into +Yorkshire, there met a prominent Irish Nationalist, who told me that he +had come into the north of England expressly to regiment the Irish +voters, and throw their votes for the Conservative candidates, on the +ground that it was necessary to make the Liberals fully understand their +power. He had fully expected in this way to elect a Conservative member +for the city of York. Great was his chagrin, therefore, when he found +the Liberal candidate returned. Upon investigation he discovered, as he +told me, that the catastrophe was due to the activity of a local Irish +priest, <i>who was a devoted Fenian</i>, utterly opposed to the Parliamentary +programme, and who had exerted his authority over the local Irish to +bring them to the polls for the Liberal candidate.</p> + +<p>Sir Frederick Milner, Bart., the defeated Conserva<a name="page264" id="page264"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 264] +</span> +tive candidate for +York, afterwards told me that the local priest referred to here was a +most excellent man, and that so far from playing the part thus ascribed +to him, he took the trouble, as a matter of fair dealing, to see his +parishioners on the morning of the election and warn them against +believing a pamphlet which was sedulously circulated among the Irish +voters on the night before the polling, with a message to the effect +that Sir Frederick despised the Irish, and wanted nothing to do with +them or their votes. Sir Frederick has no doubt, from his knowledge of +what occurred during the canvass, that direct instructions were sent by +Mr. Parnell or his agents to the Irish voters in York to throw their +votes against the Radical candidates. These latter brought down a Home +Rule lecturer to counteract the effect of these instructions, and the +pamphlet above referred to was an eleventh-hour blow in the same +interest. It was successful; the Irish votes, some 500 in number, being +polled early in the morning under the impression produced by it. The +moral of this incident would seem to be, not that there was any real +understanding in 1885 between the Parnellites and the English +Conservatives at all, but simply that the English Radical wirepullers +are more alert and active than either the Irish Parnellites or the +English Conservatives. It is interesting, too, as it illustrates the +deep dread and distrust of the “Fenians” in which the Parnellites +habitually go.</p> + + + +<h3><a name="noteE" id="noteE" />NOTE E. +<br />THE “BOYCOTT” AT MILTOWN-MALBAY.<br /> + +(Vol. i. p. <a href="#page209">209</a>.)</h3> + + +<p>Father White of Miltown-Malbay, taking exception to the statement made +by me, upon the authority of <a name="page265" id="page265"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 265] +</span> +Colonel Turner, that he was “the moving +spirit” of the local “boycott” of policemen and soldiers at that place, +addressed a note to Colonel Turner on the 5th of September, in which he +desired to know whether Colonel Turner, had given me grounds for making +this statement. To this note Colonel Turner tells me he returned at once +the following reply, which he kindly forwards to me for publication:—</p> +<blockquote> +<p class="dateline">“ENNIS, <i>6th September</i> 1888.</p> + +<p> “REV. SIR,—I am in receipt of your letter of yesterday, and in + reply thereto beg to state that I informed Mr. Hurlbert that you + said ‘in open court’ that you had directed (I believe from the + altar) that the town was to be ‘made as a city of the dead’ during + the trials of 23 publicans who were charged for conspiracy in + boycotting the forces of the Crown who had been employed in + preserving the peace on the occasion of a former trial—this you + said you did in the interests of peace. The magistrates, however, + took a different view, viz., that it was done with the object of + preventing the military and police from obtaining any supplies, + which they were unable to do; and that their view was the correct + one was proved by the fact that half of the accused pleaded guilty + to the offence, and on promise of future good behaviour were + allowed out on their own recognisances. That the people followed + your instructions on that day, coupled with the fact that in your + letter to the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i>, dated 17th March of this year, + you stated that you offered me peace all round on certain + conditions, thereby showing that at least you consider yourself + possessed of authority to bring about a state of peace or + otherwise, probably led Mr. Hurlbert, to whom I showed a copy of + this letter, to infer that you admitted that you were the moving + spirit of all this ‘local boycott,’ while you only did so in the + particular case above mentioned. Whether Mr. Hurlbert is correct in + drawing the inference he does as to your being the moving spirit, + and as to your conduct, may perhaps be gathered from the numerous + numbers of <i>United Ireland</i> and other papers which he saw giving + reports of illegal meetings of the suppressed branch of the + Miltown-Malbay National League, at which you were stated to have + presided, and at some of which condemnatory resolutions were + passed, and also from the fact that you are reported to have + presided at a meeting <a name="page266" id="page266"></a> +<span class="pagenum">[pg 266] +</span> +on Sunday, April 8, which was held at + Miltown-Malbay in defiance of Government proclamation.—I am, dear + Sir, yours faithfully,</p> + +<p class="signed">ALFRED E. TURNER.</p> +<p class="i2"> “Rev. P. White, P.P.,<br /> + Miltown-Malbay.”</p> +</blockquote> + +<p class="i0">On further investigation of his records, Colonel Turner found it +necessary to follow up this letter with another, a copy of which, +through his courtesy, I subjoin:—</p> + + + +<blockquote> +<p class="dateline">“ENNIS, <i>10th September</i> 1888.</p> +<p>“REV. SIR,—A slight inaccuracy has been pointed out to me in my + letter to you of the 6th inst., which I hasten to correct. It + occurred in transcribing my letter from the original draft. I + should have said that I told Mr. Hurlbert that you stated in open + court, at the trial of 23 publicans charged with boycotting the + forces of the Crown on the occasion of a former trial, that you had + told the people (I believe from the altar) that the town was to be + made as a city of the dead during the former trial; and that in + consequence the soldiers and police could get nothing to eat or + drink in Miltown that day.</p> + +<p> “I also told him that this boycotting of the police was by no means + new, since on the 13th March 1887, at a meeting of the + Miltown-Malbay branch of the League at which you are reported to + have presided, in <i>United Ireland</i> of 19/3/87, the following + resolution was unanimously adopted:—</p> + +<blockquote> “‘That from this day any person who supplies the police while + engaged in work which is opposed to the wishes of the people with + drink, food, or cars, be censured by this branch, and that no + further intercourse be held with them.’</blockquote> + + <p>“I regret that through inadvertence I have had to trouble you with + a second letter.—I am, Rev. Sir, yours faithfully,</p> + +<p class="signed">“ALFRED E. TURNER.</p> +<p class="i0"> “Rev. P. White, P.P.”</p> +</blockquote> + + + +<h2>FOOTNOTES:</h2> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote1" + name="footnote1"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 1:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag1">(return)</a><p> Vol. ii. p. 376.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote2" + name="footnote2"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 2:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag2">(return)</a><p> Vol. ii. p. 364-370.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote3" + name="footnote3"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 3:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag3">(return)</a><p> The exasperation of the local agitators under the cool and +determined treatment of Mr. Tener may be measured by the facts stated in +the following communication received by me from Mr. Tener on the 20th of +September. I leave them to speak for themselves:—</p> + + +<p class="dateline">“POLICE BARRACKS, WOODFORD,<br /> +<i>17th Sept.</i> 1888.</p> + +<p>“DEAR MR. HURLBERT,—I enclose you <i>a printed</i> placard found posted up +in Woodford district on Sunday morning the 9th inst. It alludes to +<i>tenants</i> who had paid me their rent,—and broken the ‘unwritten law of +the League.’ All the men named are now in great danger. The police force +of the district has been increased—for their protection; but the police +are very anxious about their safety!</p> + +<p>“I send you also a <i>pencil</i> copy taken from a more <i>perfect</i> placard +which the police preserve. John White or Whyte is the tenant whose name +I already have given you. He is the tall dark man whom you saw (with an +ex-bailiff) at Portumna. He was then an “Evicted Tenant.” He has since +been, on payment of his rent, restored to his farm by me. And now, as +you see in the placard, he is held up to the vengeance of the “League of +Hell,” as P.J. Smyth called it.—Yours, etc.</p> + +<p class="signed">“ED. TENER.</p> + +<p>“<i>P.S.</i>—The evictions were finished on the 1st of September, and on the +9th (<i>after</i> it became known that the men whose names are in the placard +had paid) the placard was issued.”</p> + + +<h4><i>(Placard.)</i></h4> +<div class="placard"> +<p>“IRISHMEN!—Need we say in the face of the desperate Battle the People +are making for their Hearths and Homes that the time has come for every +HONEST MAN, trader and otherwise, to extend a helping hand to the MEN in +the GAP. You may ask, How will that be done? The answer is plain.</p> + +<p>“Let those who have become traitors to their neighbours and their +Country be shunned as if they were possessed by a devil. Let no man buy +from them or sell to them, let no man work for them. Leave them to Tener +and his Emergency gang. The following are a few of the greatest traitors +and meanest creatures that ever walked—John Whyte, of Dooras; Fahey (of +the hill) of Dooras; big Anthony Hackett, of Rossmore; Tom Moran, of +Rossmore! Your Country calls on you to treat them as they deserve. Bravo +Woodford! Remember Tom Larkin!— ‘GOD SAVE IRELAND’” +</p> +</div> </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote4" + name="footnote4"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 4:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag4">(return)</a><p> Appendix, <a href="#noteA">Note A.</a></p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote5" + name="footnote5"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 5:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag5">(return)</a><p> Appendix, <a href="#noteB">Note B.</a></p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote6" + name="footnote6"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 6:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag6">(return)</a><p> Appendix, <a href="#noteC">Note C.</a></p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote7" + name="footnote7"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 7:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag7">(return)</a><p> Appendix, <a href="#noteD">Note D.</a></p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote8" + name="footnote8"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 8:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag8">(return)</a><p> Since this was written fifteen Catholic bishops in England, +headed by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, have united (April 12, +1888) in a public protest against the Optional Oaths Bill, in which they +say: “To efface the recognition of God in our public legislature is an +act which will surely bring evil consequences.” Yet how can the +recognition of God be more effectually “effaced” than by the unqualified +assertion that the will of the people, or of a majority, is the one +legitimate source of political authority?</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote9" + name="footnote9"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 9:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag9">(return)</a><p> Mr. Blair was then a member of the Lincoln Cabinet, and its +“fighting member.”</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote10" + name="footnote10"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 10:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag10">(return)</a><p> Mr. Quill stated that the Savings-Banks deposits increased +in Ireland during 1887 eight per cent. more than in thrifty Scotland, +and <i>forty per cent.</i> more than in England and Wales!</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote11" + name="footnote11"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 11:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag11">(return)</a><p> This was the Provost’s last appearance in public. He died +rather suddenly a few weeks afterwards.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote12" + name="footnote12"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 12:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag12">(return)</a><p> In the Census of 1880 it appears that of 255,741 farms in +Illinois, 59,624 were held on the métayer system, pronounced by Toubeau +the worst of systems, and 20,620 on a money rental.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote13" + name="footnote13"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 13:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag13">(return)</a><p> I have since learned that Father M‘Fadden sold another +holding, rental 6s. 8d., for £80. He has three more holdings from +Captain Hill, at 15s., 6s. 8d., and 11s. 2d., for which he was in +arrears for two years in April 1887, when ejectment decrees were +obtained against him. For his house holding he pays 2s. a year! So he +was really fighting his own battle as a tenant in the Plan of Campaign.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote14" + name="footnote14"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 14:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag14">(return)</a><p> Yet of Connemara, Cardinal Manning, in his letter to the +Archbishop of Armagh, August 31, 1873, cites the “trust-worthy” evidence +of “an Englishman who had raised himself from the plough’s tail,” and +who had gone “to see with his own eyes the material condition of the +peasantry in Ireland.” It was to the effect that in abundance and +quality of food, in rate of wages, and even if the comfort of their +dwellings, the working men of Connemara were better off than the +agricultural labourers of certain English counties.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote15" + name="footnote15"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 15:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag15">(return)</a><p> For this holding, of 10 Irish acres, I have since learned +the widow O’Donnell pays 10s. a year. She is in the receipt of outdoor +relief, there being fever in the house (May 1888).</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote16" + name="footnote16"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 16:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag16">(return)</a><p> This “townland” is a curious use of a Saxon term to +describe a Celtic fact. The territory of an Irish sept seems to have +been divided up into “townlands,” each townland consisting of four, or +in some cases six, groups of holdings, occupied by as many families of +the “sept.” The chief of the “sept” divided up each “townland” +periodically among these groups, while the common fields were cut up +among the families as they increased and multiplied according to the +system—against which Lord George Hill battled at Gweedore—known as +“rimdale” or “rundeal,” from the Celtic, “ruindioll,” a “partition” or +“man’s share.” This is quite unlike the Russian “mir” or collective +village, and not more like the South Slav “zadruga” which makes each +family a community, the land belonging to all, as, according to M. +Eugene Simon, it does in China. But it is as inconsistent with Henry +George’s State ownership of the land or the rents as either of those +systems.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote17" + name="footnote17"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 17:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag17">(return)</a><p> From a question just asked (July 12) in the House of +Commons, and answered by the Postmaster-General, I gather that this +“local question” has been further complicated by the removal of Mr. +Sweeney, the sub-postmaster, under an official regulation.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote18" + name="footnote18"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 18:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag18">(return)</a><p> The incident occurred in Clare. See p. <a href="#page45">45</a>.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote19" + name="footnote19"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 19:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag19">(return)</a><p> Or they may date back to the Parliament of Grattan, who +wrote to Mr. Guinness that he regarded the brewery of Ireland as “the +actual nurse of the people, and entitled to every encouragement, favour, +and exemption.”</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote20" + name="footnote20"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 20:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag20">(return)</a><p> This refers, I am told, to the murder, in open daylight, +in 1881, of an old man, Linnane, who acted as a “caretaker” for Mrs. +Moroney. It should gratify Father White to know that, as I am now +informed (May 21, 1888), a clue has just been found to the assassins, +who appear to have received the same price for doing their work that was +paid the murderers of Fitzmaurice.</p> + </blockquote> + + <blockquote class="footnote"> + <a id="footnote21" + name="footnote21"></a><span class='fnheader'>Footnote 21:</span> + <a href="#footnotetag21">(return)</a><p> Mrs. Moroney, so often referred to here, is the widow of a +gentleman formerly High Sheriff and Deputy-Lieutenant for the County +Clare, who died in 1870. She lives at Milton House, and has fought the +local League steadily and successfully.</p> + </blockquote> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) 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(1 of 2) +(1888), by William Henry Hurlbert + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) + +Author: William Henry Hurlbert + +Release Date: December 29, 2004 [EBook #14510] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRELAND, VOL. 1 *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Robert Ledger and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + +[Illustration: MAP TO ILLUSTRATE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN.] + + + + +IRELAND UNDER COERCION + +THE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN + + +BY + +WILLIAM HENRY HURLBERT + + +VOL. I. + +_SECOND EDITION_. + +1888 + + +"Upon the future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire." +CARDINAL MANNING TO EARL GREY, 1868 + + + + +PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. + + +Although barely a month has elapsed since the publication of these +volumes, events of more or less general notoriety have so far confirmed +the views taken in them of the actual state and outlook of affairs in +Ireland, that I gladly comply with the request of my publisher for a +Preface to this Second Edition. + +Upon one most important point--the progressive demoralisation of the +Irish people by the methods of the so-called political combinations, +which are doing the work of the Agrarian and Anti-Social Revolution in +Ireland, some passages, from a remarkable sermon delivered in August in +the Cathedral of Waterford by the Catholic bishop of that diocese, will +be found to echo almost to the letter the statement given to me in June +by a strong Protestant Home Ruler, that "the Nationalists are stripping +Irishmen as bare of moral sense as the bushmen of South Africa." + +Speaking of what he had personally witnessed in one of the lanes of +Waterford, the Bishop says, in the report which I have seen of his +sermon, "the most barbarous tribes of Africa would justly feel ashamed +if they were guilty of what I saw, or approached to the guilt I +witnessed, on that occasion." As a faithful shepherd of his people, he +is not content with general denunciations of their misconduct, but goes +on to analyse the influences which are thus reducing a Christian people +to a level below that of the savages whom Cardinal Lavigerie is now +organising a great missionary crusade to rescue from their degradation. + +He agrees with Archbishop Croke in attributing much of this +demoralisation to the excessive and increasing use of strong drink, +striking evidences of which came under my own observation at more than +one point of my Irish journeys. But I fear Archbishop Croke would +scarcely agree with the Bishop of Waterford in his diagnosis of the +effects upon the popular character of what has now come to pass current +in many parts of Ireland as "patriotism." + +The Bishop says, "The women as well as the men were fighting, and when +we sought to bring them to order, one man threatened to take up a weapon +and drive bishop, priests, and police from the place! On the Quay, I +understand, it was one scene of riot and disorder, and what made matters +worse was that when the police went to discharge their duty for the +protection of the people, the moment they interfered the people turned +on them and maltreated them in a shocking way. I understand that some +police who were in coloured clothes were picked out for the worst +treatment--knocked down and kicked brutally. One police officer, I +learn, had his fingers broken. This is a state of things that nothing at +all would justify. It is not to be justified or excused on any principle +of reason or religion. What is still worse, sympathy was shown for those +who had obstructed and attacked the police. The only excuse I could find +that was urged for this shameful misconduct was that it was dignified +with the name of 'patriotism'! All I can say is, that if rowdyism like +this be an indication of the patriotism of the people, as far as I am +concerned, I say, better our poor country were for ever in political +slavery than attain to liberty by such means." + +This is the language of a good Catholic, of a good Irishman, and of a +faithful Bishop. Were it more often heard from the lips of the Irish +Episcopate the true friends of Ireland might look forward to her future +with more hope and confidence than many of the best and ablest of them +are now able to feel. As things actually are, not even the Papal Decree +has yet sufficed to restrain ecclesiastics, not always of the lowest +degree, from encouraging by their words and their conduct "patriotism" +of the type commemorated by the late Colonel Prentiss of Louisville, in +a story which he used to tell of a tipsy giant in butternut garments, +armed with a long rifle, who came upon him in his office on a certain +Fourth of July demanding the loan of a dollar on the ground that he felt +"so confoundedly patriotic!" + +The Colonel judiciously handed the man a dollar, and then asked, "Pray, +how do you feel when you feel confoundedly patriotic?" + +"I feel," responded the man gravely, "as if I should like to kill +somebody or steal something." + +It is "patriotism" of this sort which the Papal Decree was issued to +expel from within the pale of the Catholic Church. And it is really, in +the last analysis of the facts of the case, to the suppression of +"patriotism" of this sort that many well-intentioned, but certainly not +well-informed, "sympathisers" with what they suppose to be the cause of +Ireland, object, in my own country and in Great Britain, when they +denounce as "Coercion" the imprisonment of members of Parliament and +other rhetorical persons who go about encouraging or compelling ignorant +people to support "boycotting" and the "Plan of Campaign." + +Yet it would seem to be sufficiently obvious that "patriotism" of this +sort, once full-blown and flourishing on the soil of Ireland, must tend +to propagate itself far beyond the confines of that island, and to +diversify with its blood-red flowers and its explosive fruits the social +order of countries in which it has not yet been found necessary for the +Head of the Catholic Church to reaffirm the fundamental principles of +Law and of Liberty. + +Since these volumes were published, too, the Agrarian Revolution in +Ireland has been brought into open and defiant collision with the +Catholic Church by its leader, Mr. Davitt, the founder of the Land +League. In the face of Mr. Davitt's contemptuous and angry repudiation +of any binding force in the Papal Decree, it will be difficult even for +the Cardinal-Archbishop of Sydney to devise an understanding between the +Church and any organisation fashioned or led by him. It may be inferred +from Mr. Davitt's contemporaneous and not less angry intimation, that +the methods of the Parnellite party are inadequate to the liberation of +Ireland from the curse of landlordism, that he is prepared to go further +than Mr. George, who still clings in America to the shadowy countenance +given him by the Cardinal-Archbishop of Baltimore, and that the +Nationalisation of the Land will ere long be urged both in Ireland and +in Great Britain by organisations frankly Anti-Catholic as well as +Anti-Social. + +This is to be desired on many accounts. It will bring the clergy in +Ireland face to face with the situation, which will be a good thing +both for them and for the people; and it should result in making an end +of the pernicious influence upon the popular mind of such extraordinary +theological outgivings; for example, as the circular issued in 1881 to +the clergy and laity of Meath by the Bishop of that diocese, in which it +was laid down that "the land of every country is the common property of +the people of that country, because its real owner, the Creator who made +it, has transferred it as a voluntary gift to them." + +Language of this sort addressed to ignorant multitudes must do harm of +course whenever and by whomsoever used. It must tend to evil if +addressed by demagogues to the Congress of a Trade Union. But it must do +much more harm when uttered with the seeming sanction of the Church by a +mitred bishop to congregations already solicited to greed, cunning, and +dishonesty, by an unscrupulous and well-organised "agitation." + +Not less instructive than Mr. Davitt's outburst from the Church is his +almost furious denunciation of the Irish tenants who obeyed an instinct, +thought honourable to mankind in most ages and countries, by agreeing +together to present to their landlord, Earl Fitzwilliam, a token of +their respect and regard on the celebration of his golden wedding day. + +These tenants are denounced, not because they were paying homage to a +tyrannical or an unworthy landlord, though Mr. Davitt was so transported +beyond his ordinary and cooler self with rage at their action that he +actually stooped to something like an insinuation of disbelief in the +excellence of Lord Fitzwilliam's character. The true and avowed burden +of his diatribe was that no landlord could possibly deserve well of his +tenants. The better he is as a man, the more they ought to hate him as a +landlord. + +The ownership of land, in other words, is of itself in the eyes of Mr. +Davitt what the ownership of a slave was in the eyes of the earlier +Abolitionists--crime so monstrous as to be beyond pardon or endurance. +If this be true of Great Britain and Ireland, where no allodial tenure +exists, how much more true must it be of New York? And if true of the +man who owns a thousand acres, it must be equally true of the man who +owns an acre. There could not be a better illustration than Mr. Davitt +has given in his attack on the Fitzwilliam tenants of the precise +accuracy of what I have had occasion to say in these volumes of the +"irrepressible conflict" between his schemes and the establishment of a +peasant proprietorship in Ireland. It is more than this. It is a +distinct warning served upon the smallest tenants as well as upon the +greatest landlords in the United Kingdom that fixity of any form of +individual tenure is irreconcilable with the Agrarian agitations. + +I anticipated this demonstration, but I did not anticipate that it would +come so fully or so soon. + +I anticipated also abundant proof from my own side of the water of the +accuracy of my impressions as to the drift of the American-Irish towards +Protection and Republicanism in American politics. This, too, has come +earlier and not less fully than I had expected. Mr. Patrick Ford, the +most influential leader of the American-Irish, issued early in August a +statement of his views as to the impending Presidential election. "The +issue to-day," he says, "is the Tariff. It is the American system +_versus_ the British Colonial system. The Irish are instinctively +Protectionists." And why? Mr. Ford goes on to explain. "The fact," he +observes, "that the Lion and the Unicorn have taken the stump for +Cleveland and Thurnan is not calculated to hurt Harrison and Morton in +the estimation of the Irish, who will, I promise, give a good account of +themselves in the coming Presidential election." Hatred of England, in +other words, is an axiom in their Political Economy! + +Mr. Davitt's menacing allusion to Parnell as a landlord, and Mr. +O'Leary's scornful treatment in a letter to me of the small-fry English +Radicals,[1] when taken together, distinctly prefigure an imminent +rupture between the Parnellite party and the two wings--Agrarian and +Fenian--of the real revolutionary movement in Ireland. It is clear that +clerical agitators, high and low, must soon elect between following Mr. +George, Dr. M'Glynn, and Mr. Davitt, and obeying fully the Papal Decree. + +It is a most curious feature of the situation in Ireland that much more +discontent with the actual conditions of life in that country seems to +be felt by people who do not than by people who do live in Ireland. It +is the Irish in America and Australia, who neither sow nor reap in +Ireland, pay no taxes there, and bear no burdens, who find the alien +oppression most intolerable. This explains the extreme bitterness with +which Mr. Davitt in some recent speeches and letters denounces the +tameness of the Irish people, and rather amusingly berates the British +allies of his Parnellite associates for their failure to develop any +striking and sensational resistance to the administration of law in +Ireland. I have printed in this edition[2] an instructive account, +furnished to me by Mr. Tener, of some recent evictions on the +Clanricarde property in Galway, which shows how hard it is for the most +determined "agitators" to keep the Irish tenants up to that high concert +pitch of resistance to the law which alone would meet the wishes of the +true agrarian leaders; and how comparatively easy it is for a just and +resolute man, armed with the power of the law resolutely enforced, to +break up an illegal combination even in some of the most disturbed +regions of Ireland.[3] While this is encouraging to the friends of law +and order in Ireland, it must not be forgotten that it involves also a +certain peril for them. The more successfully the law is enforced in +Ireland, the greater perhaps is the danger that the British +constituencies, upon which, of course, the administrators of the law +depend for their authority, may lose sight and sense of the +Revolutionary forces at work there. History shows that this has more +than once happened in the past. Englishmen and Scotchmen will be better +able than I am to judge how far it is unlikely that it should happen +again in the future. + +As to one matter of great moment--the effect of Lord Ashbourne's Act--a +correspondent sends me a statement, which I reproduce here, as it gives +a very satisfactory account of the automatic financial machinery upon +which that Act must depend for success:-- + + "Out of L90,630 of instalments due last May, less than L4000 is + unpaid at the present moment, on transactions extending over three + years with all classes of tenants. The total amount which accrued, + due to the Land Commission in respect of instalments since the + passing of the Act to the 1st November 1887, was L50,910. Of this + there is only now unpaid L731, 17s. 9d. There accrued a further + amount to the 1st May 1888 of L39,720, in respect of which only + L4071, 16s. 11d. is now unpaid, making in all only L4803, 14s. 8d. + unpaid, out of a total sum of L90,630 due up to last gale day, some + of which by this time has been paid off." + +This would seem to be worth considering in connection with the objection +made to any serious extension of Lord Ashbourne's Act by Mr. Chamberlain +in his extremely clear and able preface to a programme of "Unionist +Policy for Ireland" just issued by the "National Radical Union." + +LONDON, _21st Sept_. 1888. + + + + +CONTENTS OF VOL. I. + + +CLUE MAP _Frontispiece_ +PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION v +PROLOGUE xxi-lxvii + +CHAPTER I. + London to Dublin, Jan. 20, 1888, 1 + Irish Jacobite, 1 + Proposed Mass in memory of Charles Edward, 2 + Cardinal Manning, 3 + President Cleveland's Jubilee Gift to Leo XIII, 4 + Arrival at Kingstown, 5 + Admirable Mail Service, 5 + "Davy," the newsvendor, 6 + Mr. Davitt, 7 + Coercion in America and Ireland, 8 + Montgomery Blair's maxim, 8 + Irish cars, 9 + Maple's Hotel, 9 + Father Burke of Tallaght, 10, 11 + Peculiarities of Post-offices, 12, 13 + National League Office, 13 + The Dublin National Reception, 14 + Mr. T.D. Sullivan, M.P., 14 + Dublin Castle, 15 + Mr. O'Brien, Attorney-General, 16 + The Chief-Secretary, Mr. Balfour, 17-24 + Fathers M'Fadden and M'Glynn, 18 + Come-outers of New England, 18 + Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, 19, 20 + Sir West Ridgway, 24 + Divisional Magistrates, 24 + Colonel Turner, 25 + The Castle Service, 25-29 + Visit of the Prince of Wales, 27 + Lord Chief-Justice Morris, 29-37 + An Irish Catholic on Mr. Parnell, 31-33 + Mr. Justice Murphy, 36 + Lord Ashbourne, 37, 38 + Unionist meeting, 39 + Old Middle State type of American-Irish Protestant, 39 + Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in America, 41 + Difficulties of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 43 + Dr. Jellett, 43 + Dinner at the Attorney-General's, 43-46 + Sir Bernard Burke, 46-49 + Irish Landlords at Kildare Street Club, 49-52 + The people and the procession, 53-55 + Ripon and Morley, 54, 55 + +CHAPTER II. + Dublin to Sion, Feb 3, 56 + Poor of the city, 57 + Strabane, 58-60 + Sion flax-mills, 60-62 + Dr. Webb, 63-65 + Gweedore, Feb 4, 65 + A good day's work, 65 + Strabane, 66 + Names of the people, 66 + Bad weather judges, 67 + Letterkenny, p 67, 68 + Picturesque cottages, 67 + Communicative gentleman, 68 + Donegal Highlands, 68-70 + Glen Veagh, 71 + Errigal, 72 + Dunlewy and the Clady, 72 + Gweedore, Feb 5, 73 + Lord George Hill, 74 + Gweedore 1838 to 1879, 75-81 + Gweedore 1879 to 1888, 81-91 + Father M'Fadden, 83-104 + A Galway man's opinions, 84-89 + Value of tenant-right, 83 + Condition of tenantry, 84 + Woollen stuffs, 87, 88 + Distress in Gweedore, 88, + Do. in Connemara, 88 + Mr Burke, 90 + Plan of Campaign, 93 + Emigration, 94, 95 + Settlement with Captain Hill, 94 + Landlord and tenant, 96-98 + Land Nationalisation, 98 + Father M'Fadden's plan, 98 + Gweedore, Feb 6, 104 + On the Bunbeg road, 104-110 + Falcarragh, 111-123 + Ballyconnell House, 112-123 + Townland and Rundale, 118 + Use and abuse of tea, 119 + Lord Leitrim, 121 + A "Queen of France," 121 + The Rosses, 123 + +CHAPTER III. + Dungloe, Feb. 7, 124 + From Gweedore, 124 + Irish "jaunting car," 125 + "It will fatten four, feed five, and starve six," 125 + Natural wealth of the country, 125 + Isle of Arran and Anticosti, p 12 + The Gombeen man, 126-130 + Dungloe, 126-131 + Burtonport, 129 + Lough Meela, 128 + Attractions of the Donegal coast, 128 + Compared with Isles of Shoals and Appledore, 129 + Wonderful granite formations, 129 + Material for a new industry, 129 + Father Walker, 131 + Migratory labourers, 133 + Granite quarries, 133 + Stipends of the Roman Catholic clergy, 134-137 + Herring Fisheries, 137 + Arranmore, 137 + Dungloe woollen work, 138 + Baron's Court, Feb 8, 139 + Dungloe to Letterkenny, 139-141 + Doocharry Red Granite, 140 + Fair at Letterkenny, 142 + Feb 9, 143 + On Clare and Kerry, 143 + A Priest's opinion on Moonlighters, 143 + The Lixnaw murder, 143 + Baron's Court, 144 + James I.'s three castles, 145 + Ulster Settlement, 146 + Descendants of the old Celtic stock, 146 + The park at Baron's Court, 146 + A nonogenarian O'Kane, 148 + Irish "Covenanters," 150 + Shenandoah Valley people, 151 + The murderers of Munterlony, 151 + A relic of 1689, 152 + Woollen industry, 152-155 + Londonderry Orange symposium, 156 + February 11, 157 + Sergeant Mahony on Father M'Fadden, 157-163 + +CHAPTER IV. + Abbeyleix, Feb. 12, 164 + Newtown-Stewart, 164 + An absentee landlord, 164 + "The hill of the seven murders," 165 + Newry, Dublin, Maple's Hotel, Maryborough, 165 + "Hurrah for Gilhooly," 166 + Abbeyleix town, chapel, and church, 168 + Embroidery and lace work, 169 + Wood-carving, 170 + General Grant, 171 + Kilkenny, 172 + Kilkenny Castle, 173 + Muniment-room, 174 + Table and Expense Books, 176 + Dublin once the most noted wine-mart of Britain, 177, 178 + Cathedral of St. Canice, 178 + The Waterford cloak, 179 + The College, 180 + Irish and Scotch whisky, 180 + Duke of Ormonde's grants, 181 + The Plan of Campaign, 182-186 + Ulster tenant-right, 186, 187 + +CHAPTER V. + Dublin, Feb. 14, 188 + The Irish National Gallery, 188-191 + Feb. 15, 192 + London: Mr. Davitt, 192 + Irish Woollen Company, 193 + Mr. Davitt and Mr. Blunt, 193 + Mr. Davitt's character and position, 192-199 + +CHAPTER VI. + Ennis, Feb. 18, 200 + Return to Ireland, 200 + Irish Nationalists, 200, 201 + Home Rule and Protection, 202 + Luggacurren and Mr. O'Brien, 204 + Dublin to Limerick and Ennis, 204, 205 + Colonel Turner, 205 + Architecture of Ennis Courthouse--Resemblance + to White House, Washington, 206 + Number of public-houses in Ennis, and in Ireland, 207, 208 + Innkeepers of Milltown Malbay, 208,209 + Father White (see Note E), 209 + Sir Francis Head, 210, 211 + Different opinions in Ennis, 212, 213 + State of trade in Ennis, 213, 214 + Edenvale, Heronry, 215 _seq._ + Feb. 19, 215 + The men of Ennis at Edenvale, 216 + Killone Abbey, 218-221 + Stephen J. Meany, 220 + "Holy Well" of St. John, 221 + Superstition as to rabbits, 222 + Religious practices under Penal Laws, 222 + Experiences under National League, 223, 224 + Case of George Pilkington, 224-226 + Trees at Edenvale, 227 + Moonlighters, a reproduction of Whiteboys, 227, 228 + Difficulty in getting men to work, 228 + A testimonial to Mr. Austen Mackay, 229-232 + Effect of testimonials, 232 + Feb. 20, 232 + The case of Mrs. Connell at Milltown Malbay, 232 _seq._ + Estate accounts and prices, 240 + A rent-warner, 245 + Mr. Redmond, M.P., 245 + Father White's Sermon, 246 + A photograph, 246 + +APPENDIX. + + NOTES-- + + A. Mr. Gladstone and the American War (Prologue xxix), 249 + B. Mr. Parnell and the Dynamiters (Prologue xxxiii), 251 + C. The American "Suspects" of 1881 (Prologue xlvii), 255 + D. The Parnellites and the English Parties (Prologue l.), 262 + E. The "Boycott" at Miltown-Malbay (p. 209) 264 + + + + +PROLOGUE. + + +I. + +This book is a record of things seen, and of conversations had, during a +series of visits to Ireland between January and June 1888. + +These visits were made in quest of light, not so much upon the +proceedings and the purposes of the Irish "Nationalists,"--with which, +on both sides of the Atlantic, I have been tolerably familiar for many +years past--as upon the social and economical results in Ireland of the +processes of political vivisection to which that country has been so +long subjected. + +As these results primarily concern Great Britain and British subjects, +and as a well-founded and reasonable jealousy exists in Great Britain of +American intromission in the affairs of Ireland, it is proper for me to +say at the outset, that the condition of Ireland interests me not +because I believe, with Cardinal Manning, that upon the future of +Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire, but because I know that +America is largely responsible for the actual condition of Ireland, and +because the future condition of Ireland, and of the British Empire, +must gravely influence the future of my own country. + +In common with the vast majority of my countrymen, who come with me of +what may now not improperly be called the old American stock--by which I +mean the three millions of English-speaking dwellers in the New World, +who righteously resented, and successfully resisted, a hundred years +ago, the attempt--not of the Crown under which the Colonies held their +lands, but of the British Parliament in which they were +unrepresented--to take their property without their consent, and apply +it to purposes not passed upon by them, I have always felt that the +claim of the Irish people to a proper control of matters exclusively +Irish was essentially just and reasonable. The measure of that proper +control is now, as it always has been, a question not for Americans, but +for the people of Great Britain and of Ireland. If Lord Edward +Fitzgerald and his associates had succeeded in expelling British +authority from Ireland, and in founding an Irish Republic, we should +probably have recognised that Republic. Yet an American minister at the +Court of St. James's saw no impropriety in advising our Government to +refuse a refuge in the United States to the defeated Irish exiles of +'98. + +It is undoubtedly the opinion of every Irish American who possesses any +real influence with the people of his own race in my country, that the +rights and liberties of Ireland can only be effectually secured by a +complete political separation from Great Britain. Nor can the right of +Irish American citizens, holding this opinion, to express their sympathy +with Irishmen striving in Ireland to bring about such a result, and with +Englishmen or Scotchmen contributing to it in Great Britain, be +questioned, any more than the right of Polish citizens of the French +Republic to express their sympathy with Poles labouring in Poland for +the restoration of Polish nationality. It is perhaps even less open to +question than the right of Americans not of Irish race, and of Frenchmen +not of Polish race, to express such sympathies; and certainly less open +to question than the right of Englishmen or Americans to express their +sympathy with Cubans bent on sundering the last link which binds Cuba to +Spain, or with Greeks bent on overthrowing the authority of the Sultan +in Crete. + +But for all American citizens of whatever race, the expression of such +sympathies ceases to be legitimate when it assumes the shape of action +transcending the limits set by local or by international law. It is of +the essence of American constitutionalism that one community shall not +lay hands upon the domestic affairs of another; and it is an undeniable +fact that the sympathy of the great body of the American people with +Irish efforts for self-government has been diminished, not increased, +since 1848, by the gradual transfer of the head-quarters and machinery +of those efforts from Ireland to the United States. The recent refusal +of the Mayor of New York, Mr. Hewitt, to allow what is called the "Irish +National flag" to be raised over the City Hall of New York is vastly +more significant of the true drift of American feeling on this subject +than any number of sympathetic resolutions adopted at party conventions +or in State legislatures by party managers, bent on harpooning Irish +voters. If Ireland had really made herself a "nation," with or without +the consent of Great Britain, a refusal to hoist the Irish flag on the +occasion of an Irish holiday would be not only churlish but foolish. But +thousands of Americans, who might view with equanimity the disruption of +the British Empire and the establishment of an Irish republic, regard, +not only with disapprobation, but with resentment, the growing +disposition of Irish agitators in and out of the British Parliament to +thrash out on American soil their schemes for bringing about these +results with the help of Irishmen who have assumed the duties by +acquiring the rights of American citizenship. It is not in accordance +with the American doctrine of "Home Rule" that "Home Rule" of any sort +for Ireland should be organised in New York or in Chicago by +expatriated Irishmen. + +No man had a keener or more accurate sense of this than the most +eloquent and illustrious Irishman whose voice was ever heard in America. + +In the autumn of 1871 Father Burke of Tallaght and San Clemente, with +whom I had formed at Rome in early manhood a friendship which ended only +with his life, came to America as the commissioned Visitor of the +Dominican Order. His mission there will live for ever in the Catholic +annals of the New World. But of one episode of that mission no man +living perhaps knows so much as I, and I make no excuse for this +allusion to it here, as it illustrates perfectly the limits between the +lawful and the unlawful in the agitation of Irish questions upon +American soil. + +While Father Burke was in New York Mr. Froude came there, having been +invited to deliver before a Protestant Literary Association a series of +lectures upon the history of Ireland. My personal relations with Mr. +Froude, I should say here, and my esteem for his rare abilities, go back +to the days of the _Nemesis of Faith_, and I did not affect to disguise +from him the regret with which I learned his errand to the New World. +That his lectures would be brilliant, impressive, and interesting, was +quite certain; but it was equally certain, I thought, that they would +do a world of mischief, by stirring up ancient issues of strife between +the Protestant and the Catholic populations of the United States. + +That they would be answered angrily, indiscreetly, and in a fashion to +aggravate prejudices which ought to be appeased on both sides of the +questions involved, was much more than probable. All this accordingly I +urged upon Father Burke, begging him to find or make time in the midst +of his engrossing duties for a systematic course of lectures in reply. +What other men would surely say in heat and with virulence would be said +by him, I knew, temperately, loftily, and wisely. Three strenuous +objections he made. One was that his work as a Catholic missionary +demanded all his thought and all his time; another that he was not +historically equipped to deal with so formidable an antagonist; and a +third that America ought not to be a battle-ground of Irish contentions. +It was upon the last that he dwelt most tenaciously; nor did he give way +until he had satisfied himself, after consulting with the highest +authorities of his Church, and with two or three of the coolest and most +judicious Irish citizens of New York, that I was right in believing that +his appearance in the arena as the champion of Ireland, would lift an +inevitable controversy high above the atmosphere of unworthy passion, +and put it beyond the reach of political mischief-makers. + +How nobly he did his work when he had become convinced that he ought to +do it, is now matter of history. But it is a hundredfold more needful +now than it was in 1871 and 1872, that the spirit in which he did it +should be known and published abroad. In the interval between the +delivery of two of his replies to Mr. Froude, Mr. Froude went to Boston. +A letter from Boston informed me that upon Mr. Froude's arrival there, +all the Irish servants of the friend with whom he was to stay had +suddenly left the house, refusing to their employer the right to invite +under his roof a guest not agreeable to them. I handed this letter, +without a word, to Father Burke a few hours before he was to speak in +the Academy of Music. He read it with a kind of humorous wrath; and when +the evening came, he prefaced his lecture with a few strong and stirring +words, in which he castigated with equal sense and severity the +misconduct of his country-people, anticipating thus by many a year the +spirit in which the supreme authority of his Church has just now dealt +with the social plague of "boycotting," whereof the strike of the +servant girls at Boston sixteen years ago was a precursory symptom. + +Father Burke understood that American citizenship imposes duties where +it confers rights. Nobody expects the European emigrant who abjures his +foreign allegiance to divest himself of his native sympathies or +antipathies. But American law, and the conditions of American liberty, +require him to divest himself of the notion that he retains any right +actively to interfere in the domestic affairs of the country of his +birth. For public and political purposes, the Irishman who becomes an +American ceases to be an Irishman. When Mr. Gladstone's Government in +1881 seized and locked up indefinitely, on "suspicion" of what they +might be about to do, American citizens of Irish birth, these "suspects" +clamoured, and had a right to clamour, for the intervention of the +American Government to protect them against being dealt with as if they +were Irishmen and British subjects. But by the abjuration of British +allegiance which gave them this right to clamour for American +protection, they had voluntarily made themselves absolute foreigners to +Ireland, with no more legal or moral right to interfere in the affairs +of that country than so many Chinamen or Peruvians. + +Having said this, I ought, in justice to my fellow-citizens of Irish +birth, to say that these elementary truths have too often been obscured +for them by the conduct of public bodies in America, and of American +public men. + +No American public man of reputation, holding an executive office in the +Federal Government, has ever thrust himself, it is true, so inexcusably +into the domestic affairs of Great Britain and Ireland as did Mr. +Gladstone into the domestic affairs of the United States when, speaking +at Newcastle in the very crisis of our great civil war, he gave all the +weight of his position as a Cabinet Minister to the assertion that Mr. +Jefferson Davis had created not only an army and a navy, but a nation, +and thereby compelled the Prime Minister of Great Britain to break the +effect of this declaration by insisting that another Cabinet Minister, +Sir George Cornewall Lewis, should instantly make a speech countering +it, and covering the neutrality of the British Government.[4] + +Nor has either House of the Congress of the United States ever been +guilty of the impertinence of adopting resolutions of sympathy with the +Home Rule, or any other movement affecting directly the domestic affairs +of the British Empire, though, within my own knowledge, very strong +pressure has been more than once put upon the Foreign Affairs Committees +of both Houses to bring this about. + +But such resolutions have been repeatedly adopted by State Legislatures, +and individual members, both of the Federal Senate and of the Federal +Lower House, have discredited themselves, and brought such discredit as +they could upon the Congress, by effusions of the same sort. The bad +citizenship of Irish-American citizens, however, is not the less bad +citizenship because they may have been led into it by the recklessness +of State Legislatures--which have no responsibility for our foreign +relations--or the sycophancy of public men. If it were proved to +demonstration that Home Rule would be the salvation of Ireland, no +American citizen would have any more right to take an active part in +furthering it than to take an active part in dethroning the Czar of all +the Russias. The lesson which Washington administered to Citizen Genet, +when that meddlesome minister of the French Republic undertook to "boom" +the rights of men by issuing letters of marque at Charleston, has +governed the foreign relations of the United States ever since, and it +is as binding upon every private citizen as upon every public servant of +the Republic. + +I must ask my readers, therefore, to bear it constantly in mind that all +my observations and comments have been made from an American, not from a +British or an Irish point of view. How or by whom Ireland shall be +governed concerns me only in so far as the government of Ireland may +affect the character and the tendencies of the Irish people, and +thereby, through the close, intimate, and increasing connection between +the Irish people and the people of the United States, may tend to affect +the future of my country. This being my point of view, it will be +apparent, I think, that I have at least laboured under no temptation to +see things otherwise than as they were, or to state things otherwise +than as I saw them. + +With Arthur Young, who more clearly than any other man of his time saw +the end from the beginning of the fatuous and featherheaded French +Revolution of 1789, I have always been inclined to think "the +application of theory to methods of government a surprising imbecility +in the human mind:" and it will be found that in this book I have done +little more than set down, as fully and clearly as I could, what I +actually saw and heard in Ireland. My method has been as simple as my +object. During each day as occasion served, and always at night, I made +stenographic notes of whatever had attracted my attention or engaged my +interest. As I had no case to make for or against any political party or +any theory of government in Ireland, I took things great and small, and +people high and low, as they came, putting myself in contact by +preference, wherever I could, with those classes of the Irish people of +whom we see least in America, and concerning myself, as to my notes, +only that they should be made under the vivid immediate impress of +whatever they were to record. These notes I have subsequently written +out in the spirit in which I made them, in all cases taking what pains +I could to verify statements of facts, and in many cases, where it +seemed desirable or necessary, submitting the proofs of the pages as +finally printed to the persons whom, after myself, they most concerned. + +I have been more annoyed by the delay than by the trouble thus entailed +upon me; but I shall be satisfied if those who may take the pains to +read the book shall as nearly as possible see what I saw, and hear what +I heard. + +I have no wish to impress my own conclusions upon others who may be +better able than I am accurately to interpret the facts from which these +conclusions have been drawn. Such as they are, I have put them into a +few pages at the end of the book. + +It will be found that I have touched only incidentally upon the subject +of Home Rule for Ireland. Until it shall be ascertained what "Home Rule +for Ireland" means, that subject seems to me to lie quite outside the +domain of my inquiries. "Home Rule for Ireland" is not now a plan--nor +so much as a proposition. It is merely a polemical phrase, of little +importance to persons really interested in the condition of Ireland, +however invaluable it may be to the makers of party platforms in my own +country, or to Parliamentary candidates on this side of the Atlantic. It +may mean anything or nothing, from Mr. Chamberlain's imperialist scheme +of four Provincial Councils--which recalls the outlines of a system +once established with success in New Zealand--to that absolute and +complete separation in all particulars of the government of Ireland from +the government of Great Britain, which has unquestionably been the aim +of every active Irish organisation in the United States for the last +twenty years, and which the accredited leader of the "Home Rule" party +in the British Parliament, Mr. Parnell, is understood in America to have +pledged himself that he will do anything to further and nothing to +impede. On this point, what I took to be conclusive documentary evidence +was submitted to me in New York several years ago by Mr. Sheridan, at a +time when the fever-heat of British indignation excited by those murders +in the Phoenix Park, for which I believe it is now admitted by the best +informed authorities that Mr. Sheridan had no responsibility, was +driving Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates into disavowals of +the extreme men of their connection, which, but for Mr. Sheridan's +coolness and consciousness of his well-assured domination over them, +might have led to extremely inconvenient consequences to all +concerned.[5] But whatever "Home Rule" may or may not mean, I went to +Ireland, not to find some achromatic meaning for a prismatic phrase, +which is flashed at you fifty times in England or America where you +encounter it once in Ireland, but to learn what I could of the social +and economical condition of the Irish people as affected by the +revolutionary forces which are now at work in that country. + +I have watched the development of these forces too long and too closely +to be under any illusion as to the real importance relatively with them +of the so-called "Parliamentary" action of the Irish Nationalists. + + +II. + +The visits to Ireland, of which this book is a record, were made on my +return from a sojourn in Rome during the celebration of the Jubilee of +His Holiness Leo XIII. What I then and there learned convinced me that +the Vatican was on the eve of grappling in Ireland with issues +substantially identical with those which were forced, in my own country, +two years ago, upon a most courageous and gifted member of the American +Catholic hierarchy, the Archbishop of New York, by the open adhesion of +an eminent Irish American ecclesiastic, the Rev. Dr. M'Glynn, to the +social revolution of which Mr. Henry George is the best-equipped and +most indefatigable apostle. Entertaining this conviction (which events +have since shown to have been well-founded), I was anxious to survey on +the spot the conditions under which the conflict so vigorously +encountered by the Archbishop in New York must be waged by the Vatican +in Ireland. + +To suppose that the Vatican, in dealing with this conflict, either in +Ireland or in America, is troubling itself about the balancing of +political acrobats, British or American, upon the tight-rope of "Home +Rule," is as absurd as it would have been to suppose that in 1885 the +Vatican concerned itself with the subterranean intrigues which there is +reason to believe the Irish Nationalists then sought to carry on with +the wire-pullers of the two great British political parties. To get a +correct perspective of the observations which I came from Rome this year +to make in Ireland, my readers, as I have already said, must allow me to +take them across the Atlantic, and must put aside as accessory and +incidental the forensic and polemic phenomena of Irish politics, with +which they are perhaps only too familiar. + +It is as easy to go too far back as it is not to go back far enough in +the study of such a revolutionary movement as that of which Ireland is +just now the arena. + +Many and sore are the historical grievances of the Irish people. That +they are historical and not actual grievances would seem to be admitted +by so sympathetic and minutely well-informed a writer as Dr. Sigerson, +when he gives it as his opinion, that after the passage of the Land Act +of 1870, "the concession in principle of the demands of the cultivators +as tenants" had "abolished the class war waged between landlords and +their tenantry." + +The class war between the tenantry and their landlords, therefore, which +is now undoubtedly waging in Ireland cannot be attributed to the +historical grievances of the Irish people. The tradition and the memory +of these historical grievances may indeed be used by designing or +hysterical traders in agitation to inflame the present war. But the war +itself is not the old war, nor can it be explained by recurring to the +causes of the old war. It has the characteristics no longer of a +defensive war, nor yet of a war of revenge absolutely, but of an +aggressive war, and of a war of conquest. In his able work on "The Land +Tenure and the Land Classes of Ireland," Dr. Sigerson, writing in 1871, +looked forward to the peaceful co-existence in Ireland of two systems of +land-holding, "whereby the country might enjoy the advantage of what is +good in the 'landlord,' or single middleman system, and in the peasant +proprietary or direct system." + +What we now see in Ireland, after nearly twenty years of legislation, +steadily tending to the triumph of equal rights, is an agitation +threatening not only the "co-existence" of these two systems, but the +very existence of each of these systems. + +To get at the origin and the meaning of this agitation we must be +content, I believe, to go no further back than ten years, and to look +for them, not in Ireland, but in America, not to Mr. Parnell and Mr. +Gladstone primarily, but to Mr. Davitt and Mr. Henry George. + + +III. + +In a very remarkable letter written to Earl Grey in 1868, after the +Clerkenwell explosions had brought the disestablishment of the Irish +Protestant Church into Mr. Gladstone's scheme of "practical politics," +the Archbishop of Westminster, not then a Cardinal, called the attention +of Englishmen to the fact, not yet I fear adequately apprehended by +them, that "the assimilating power of America upon the Irish people, if +seven days slower than that of England in reaching Ireland, is sevenfold +more penetrating and powerful upon the whole population." By this the +Archbishop meant, what was unquestionably true, that even in 1868, only +twenty years after the great Irish exodus to America began, the social +and political ideas of America were exerting a seven-fold stronger +influence upon the character and the tendencies of the Irish people than +the social and political ideas of England. Thanks to the development of +the cables and the telegraph since 1868, and to the enormous progress +of America since that time in wealth and population, this "assimilating +power" reaches Ireland much more rapidly, and exerts upon the Irish +people a very much more drastic influence than in 1868. This +establishes, of course, a return current westward, which is as necessary +to he watched, and is as much neglected by American as the original +eastward current is by British public men. + +In this letter of 1868 to Earl Grey, the Archbishop of Westminster +desiring, as an Englishman, to counteract, if possible, this influence +which was drawing Ireland away from the British monarchy, and towards +the American Republic, maintained that by two things the "heart of +Ireland" might be won, and her affections enlisted with her interests in +the support of the unity, solidity, and prosperity of the British +Empire. One of these two things was "perfect religious equality between +the Catholics and the Protestants of Ireland." The other was that the +Imperial Legislature should by statute make it impossible for any +landlord in Ireland to commit three wrongs,--"first, the wrong of +abusing his rights by arbitrary eviction; secondly, by exacting an +exorbitant rent; thirdly, by appropriating to his own use the +improvements effected by the industry of his tenants." + +Perfect religious equality has since been established between the +Catholics and the Protestants of Ireland. The three wrongs which the +Archbishop called upon the Imperial Legislature to make impossible to +Irish landlords have since been made impossible by Statute. + +Yet it is on all hands admitted that the "unity, solidity, and +prosperity" of the British Empire have never been so seriously +threatened in Ireland as during the last ten years. Was the Archbishop +wrong, therefore, in his estimate of the situation in 1868? Or has the +centripetal influence of remedial British legislation since 1868 failed +to check a centrifugal advance "by leaps and bounds," in the +"assimilating power" of America upon Ireland? + + +IV. + +Just ten years ago, in 1878, Mr. Michael Davitt and Mr. John Devoy (the +latter of whom had been commissioned in 1865 by the Fenian leader +Stephens, as "chief organiser of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the +British army"), being then together in America, promulgated, Mr. Davitt +in a speech at Boston, and Mr. Devoy in a letter sent to the _Freeman's +Journal_ in Dublin, the outlines of a scheme for overthrowing British +rule in Ireland by revolutionising the ownership of land in that +country. + +The basis of this scheme had been laid thirty years before, in 1848, by +Finton Lalor, John Mitchel, and the present Archbishop of Cashel, then a +simple curate. + +It was thus stated by Lalor in his paper, the _Irish Felon_:-- + +"The entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the sun and +down to the centre of the earth, is vested, as of right, in the people +of Ireland. The soil of the country belongs as of right to the entire +people of the country, not to any one class, but to the nation." + +This was a distinct denial of the right of private property in land. If +true of Ireland and the Irish people this proposition was true of all +lands and of all peoples. Lalor, though more of a patriot than of a +philosopher, saw this plainly; and in one of the three numbers of his +paper which appeared before it was suppressed by the British Government, +he said "the principle I propose goes to the foundations of Europe, and +sooner or later will cause Europe to uprise." Michael Davitt saw this as +clearly in 1878 as Finton Lalor thirty years before. He had matured his +plans in connection with this principle during the weary but not wasted +years of his imprisonment as a Fenian at Dartmoor, a place, the name of +which is connected in America with many odious memories of the second +war between England and the United States; and going out to America +almost immediately after his release on a ticket of leave, he there +found the ideas of Finton Lalor and his associates of 1848, ripened and +harvested in the mind of an American student of sociology, Henry George. +Nowhere in the world has what a shrewd English traveller calls "the +illegitimate development of private wealth" attained such proportions in +modern times as in America, and especially in California. Nowhere, too, +in the world is the ostentatious waste of the results of labour upon the +antics of a frivolous plutocracy a more crying peril of our times than +in America. Henry George, an American of the Eastern States, who went to +the Pacific coast as a lad, had grown up with and watched the progress +of this social disease in California; and when Davitt reached America in +1878, Henry George was preparing to publish his revolutionary book on +_Progress and Poverty_, which appeared in 1879. Dates are important from +this point, as they will trace for the reader the formation of the +strongest forces which, as I believe, are to-day at work to shape the +future of Ireland, and, if Cardinal Manning is right, with the future of +Ireland, the future of the British Empire. + +The year 1878 saw the "Home Rule" movement in Irish politics brought to +an almost ludicrous halt by the success of Mr. Parnell, then a young +member of Parliament for Meath, in unhorsing the leader of that +movement, Mr. Butt. As the Irish members then had no coherent purpose or +policy, Mr. Parnell had, without much trouble, dominated and brigaded +them to follow him blindly into a system of parliamentary obstruction, +which there is reason to suppose was suggested to him by a friend who +had studied the Congressional proceedings of the United States, the +native country of his mother, and especially the tactics which had +enabled Mr. Randall of Pennsylvania, the leader of the Democratic +minority in the House of Representatives, to check the so-called "Civil +Rights Bill," sent down by the Senate to that House, during a continuous +session of forty-six hours and a half, with no fewer than seventy-seven +calls of the house, in the month of January 1875, some time before Mr. +Parnell first took his seat in the House of Commons. + +When Mr. Parnell, early in 1878, thanks to this system, had ousted Mr. +Butt, and got himself elected as President of the Irish "Home Rule +Confederation," he found himself, as an Irish friend of mine wrote to me +at the time, in an awkward position. He had command of the "Home Rule" +members at Westminster, but he had no notion what to do with them, and +neither they nor he could see anyway open to securing a permanent hold +upon the Irish voters. Three bad harvests in succession had thrown the +Irish tenants into a state which disinclined them to make sacrifices +for any sentimental policy, but prepared them to lend their ears eagerly +to Michael Davitt, when, on his return from the United States in the +early spring of 1879, he proclaimed anew, at Irishtown in his native +county of Mayo, the gospel of 1848 giving the land of Ireland to the +people of Ireland. Clearly Mr. Davitt held the winning card. As he +frankly put the case to a special correspondent, whom I sent to see him, +and whose report I published in New York, he saw that "the only issue +upon which Home Rulers, Nationalists, Obstructionists, and each and +every shade of opinion existing in Ireland could be united was the Land +Question," and of that question he took control. Naturally enough, Mr. +Parnell, himself a landowner under the English settlement, shrank at +first from committing himself and his fortunes to the leadership of Mr. +Davitt. But no choice was really left him, and there is reason to +believe that a decision was made easier to him by a then inchoate +undertaking that he should be personally protected against the financial +consequences to himself of the new departure, by a testimonial fund, +such as was in fact raised and presented to him in 1883. In June 1879 he +accepted the inevitable, and in a speech at Westport put himself with +his parliamentary following and machinery at the service of the founder +of the Irish Land League, uttering the keynote of Mr. Davitt's "new +departure" in his celebrated appeal to the Irish tenants to "keep a firm +grip of their homesteads." In the middle of October 1879, Mr. Davitt +formally organised the Irish National Land League, "to reduce rack-rents +and facilitate the obtaining of the ownership of the land of Ireland by +the occupiers," and Mr. Parnell was made its first President. He was +sent out to America in that capacity, at the end of the year to explain +to the Irish-American leaders the importance of supplying the new +organisation with funds sufficient to enable it to take and keep the +field at Westminster with a force of paid members not dependent for +their support upon the Irish constituencies. It was obviously impossible +either to guarantee any considerable number of Irishmen holding property +against loss by a policy aimed at the foundations of property, or to +count upon finding for every Irish seat a member of local weight and +stake, imbued with the spirit of martyrdom. + +Mr. Parnell landed at New York on the 1st of January 1880. An interview +with him, written out on board of the steamer which took him to America +by a correspondent detailed for that purpose, was published on the +morning after his arrival. It made on the whole an unfavourable +impression in America, which was not improved by an injudicious quarrel +into which he drifted with a portion of the American press, and which +was distinctly deepened by his inexcusable misrepresentations of the +conduct of Queen Victoria during the famine of 1847, and by his foolish +attacks upon the management and objects of the Duchess of Marlborough's +fund for the relief of Irish distress. The friends of Mr. Davitt in +America, however, and the leaders of the most active Irish organisations +there, came to the rescue, and as the two American parties were +preparing their lines of battle for the Presidential conflict of 1880, +Mr. Parnell was not only "put through" the usual course of "receptions" +by Mayors and State legislatures, but invited on an "off-day" to address +the House of Representatives at Washington. His tour, however, on the +whole, harmed more than it helped the new Irish movement on my side of +the Atlantic, and when he was called back to take his part in the +electoral contest precipitated by Lord Beaconsfield's dissolution of +Parliament at Easter 1880, Mr. Davitt went out to America himself to do +what his Parliamentary associate had not succeeded in doing. During this +visit of Mr. Davitt to the United States, Mr. Henry George finally +transferred his residence from San Francisco to New York, and made his +arrangements to visit England and Ireland, and bring about a practical +combination between the advocates of "the land for the people" on both +sides of the ocean. These arrangements he carried out in 1881-82, +publishing in 1881, in America, his treatise on the Irish Land question, +while Mr. Davitt, who had been arrested after his return to Europe by +Mr. Gladstone's Government in February 1881, on a revocation of his +ticket-of-leave, lay a prisoner at Portland. Mr. George himself, while +travelling in Ireland with an academical English friend, came under +"suspicion" in the eyes of one of Mr. Forster's officers, and was +arrested, but at once released. During the protracted confinement of Mr. +Davitt at Portland, the utter incapacity of Mr. Parnell and his +Parliamentary associates to manage the social revolution initiated by +the founder of the Land League became fully apparent, not only to +impartial, but even to sympathetic observers in America, long before it +was demonstrated by the incarceration of Mr. Parnell in Kilmainham, the +disavowal, under pressure, of the no-rent manifesto by Archbishop Croke, +and the suppression of the Land League. In sequestrating Mr. Davitt, Mr. +Forster, as was shown by the extraordinary scenes which in the House of +Commons followed his arrest, had struck at the core of the revolution, +and had the Irish Secretary not been deserted by Mr. Gladstone, under +influences which originated at Kilmainham, and were reinforced by the +pressure of the United States Government in the spring of 1882, history +might have had a very different tale to tell of the last six years in +Ireland and in Great Britain.[6] + + +V. + +It was after the return of Mr. George from Ireland to New York in 1882 +that the first black point appeared on the horizon, of the conflict, +inevitable in the nature of things, between the social revolution and +the Catholic Church, which assumed such serious proportions two years +ago in America, and which is now developing itself in Ireland. Among the +ablest and the most earnest converts in America to the doctrine of the +new social revolution was the Rev. Dr. M'Glynn, a Catholic priest, +standing in the front rank of his order in New York, in point alike of +eloquence in the pulpit, and of influence in private life. Finding, like +Michael Davitt, in the doctrine of Henry George an outcome and a +confirmation of the principle laid down in 1848 for the liberation of +Ireland by Finton Lalor, Dr. M'Glynn threw himself ardently into the +advocacy of that doctrine,--so ardently that in August 1882 the Prefect +of the Propaganda, Cardinal Simeoni, found it necessary to invite the +attention of Cardinal M'Closkey, then Archbishop of New York, to +speeches of Dr. M'Glynn, reported in the _Irish World_ of New York, as +"containing propositions openly opposed to the teachings of the Catholic +Church." + +It did not concern the Propaganda that these propositions ran on +all-fours with the policy of the Irish Land League established by Mr. +Davitt, and accepted by Mr. Parnell. What concerned the Propaganda in +the propositions of Dr. M'Glynn at New York in 1882 was precisely what +concerns the Propaganda in the programme of Mr. Davitt as mismanaged by +Mr. Dillon in Ireland in 1888--the incompatibility of these +propositions, and of that programme, with the teachings of the Church. + +Upon receiving the instructions of the Propaganda in August 1882, +Cardinal M'Closkey sent for Dr. M'Glynn, and set the matter plainly +before him. Dr. M'Glynn professed regret for his errors, promised to +abstain in future from political meetings, and begged the Cardinal to +inform the authorities at Home of his intention to walk more +circumspectly. The submission of Dr. M'Glynn was approved at Rome, but +it was gently intimated to him that it needed to be crowned by public +reparation for the scandal he had caused. He disregarded this pastoral +hint, and when the Archbishop Coadjutor of New York, Dr. Corrigan, went +to Rome in 1883 to represent the Cardinal, who was unequal to the +journey, he found the Propaganda by no means satisfied with the attitude +of Dr. M'Glynn. Two years after this, in October 1885, Cardinal +M'Closkey died, and Dr. Corrigan succeeded him as Archbishop of New +York. + +Between the first admonition given to the sacerdotal ally of Mr. George +in 1882 and this event much had come to pass in Ireland. The Land League +suppressed by Mr. Forster had been suffered to reappear as the National +League by Earl Spencer and Mr. Trevelyan. Sir William Harcourt's +stringent and sweeping "Coercion Act" of July 11th, 1882, passed under +the stress of the murders in the Phoenix Park, expiring by its own terms +in July 1885, Mr. Gladstone found himself forced either to alienate a +number of his Radical supporters by proposing a renewal of that Act, or +to invite a catastrophe in Ireland by attempting to rule that country +under "the ordinary law." + +He elected to escape from the dilemma by inviting a defeat in Parliament +on a secondary question of the Budget. He went out of power on the 9th +of June 1885, leaving Lord Salisbury to send the Earl of Carnarvon as +Viceroy to Ireland, and the Irish party in Parliament to darken the air +on both sides of the Atlantic with portentous intimations of a +mysterious compact, under which they were to secure Home Rule for +Ireland by establishing the Conservatives in their places at the general +election in November.[7] + +What came of all this I may briefly rehearse. Going out to America in +November 1885, and returning to England in January 1886, I remained in +London long enough to assure myself, and to publish in America my +conviction of the utter hopelessness of Mr. Gladstone's "Home Rule" +measure, the success of which would have made his government the ally +and the instrument of Mr. Parnell in carrying out the plans of Mr. +Davitt, Mr. Henry George, and the active Irish organisations of the +United States. All this is matter of history. + +The effect of Mr. Gladstone's speech of April 8, 1886, introducing his +Home Rule Bill, upon the Irish in America was simply intoxicating. They +saw him, as in a vision, repeating for the benefit of Ireland at Dublin, +on a grander scale, the impressive scene of his surrender in 1858 at +Corfu of the Protectorate of the Ionian Islands to Greece. + +Upon thousands also of Americans, interested more or less intelligently +in British affairs, but neither familiar, nor caring to be, with the +details of the political situation in Great Britain, this appearance of +the British Premier, as the champion of Home Rule for Ireland, +denouncing the "baseness and blackguardism" of Pitt and his +accomplices, the framers of the Union of 1800, naturally produced a very +profound impression. What might be almost called a "tidal wave" of +sympathy with the Irish National League, and with him as its ally, made +itself felt throughout the United States. Had I witnessed the drama from +the far-off auditorium in New York, I might doubtless have shared the +conviction of so many of my countrymen that we were about to behold the +consummation tunefully anticipated so many years ago by John Quincy +Adams, and-- + + "Proud of herself, victorious over fate, + See Erin rise, an independent state." + +The moment seemed propitious for a resolute forward move in America of +Mr. Henry George, and the other American believers in the doctrine of +"the land for the people." It would have been more propitious had not +the political managers of the Irish party, misapprehending to the last +moment the drift of things in the British Parliament, and counting +firmly upon a victory for Mr. Gladstone, either at Westminster or at the +polls, insisted upon holding a great convention of the Irish in America +at Chicago in August 1886. A proposition to do this had been made in the +spring of 1885, and put off, in judicious deference to the disgust which +many independent Americans of both parties then felt at the course +pursued by Mr. Parnell's friends, Mr. Egan and Mr. Sullivan in 1884, +when these leaders openly led the Irish with drums beating and green +flags flying out of the Democratic into the Republican camp. + +As it was, however, Mr. Gladstone having gone out of power a second +time, on the second day of June in 1886, the non-parliamentary and real +leader in Ireland of the Irish revolutionary movement, Mr. Davitt, came +overtly to the front, and crossed the Atlantic to ride the whirlwind and +direct the storm at the Convention appointed to be held in Chicago on +the 18th of August. + +In New York he found Mr. Henry George quietly preparing to put the +emotions of the moment to profit at the municipal election which was to +occur in that city in November, and Dr. M'Glynn more enamoured than ever +of the doctrine of "the land for the people," and more defiant than ever +of the Propaganda and of his ecclesiastical superiors. It was resolved +that Mr. George should come forward as a candidate for the mayoralty in +November, and Dr. M'Glynn determined to take the field in support of +him. + + +VI. + +We now come to close quarters. + +Dr. Corrigan, as I have said, had become the Archbishop of New York in +October 1885. The Irish-American Convention met at Chicago, Mr. Davitt +dominating its proceedings by his courageous and outspoken support of +his defeated Parliamentary allies in England. The candidacy of Mr. Henry +George had not yet been announced in New York. But Dr. M'Glynn resumed +his practice of addressing public meetings in support of the doctrines +of Mr. Davitt and of Henry George. The Archbishop's duty was plain. It +was not pleasant. A Catholic prelate of Irish blood living in New York +might have been pardoned for avoiding, if he could, an open intervention +at such a moment, to prevent an able and popular priest from disobeying +his ecclesiastical superiors in his zeal for a doctrine hostile to +"landlordism," and cordially approved by the most influential of the +Irish leaders. + +But on the 21st August 1886, while all the Irishmen in New York were +wild with excitement over the proceedings at Chicago, Archbishop +Corrigan did his duty, and admonished Dr. M'Glynn to restrain his +political ardour. The admonition was thrown away. A month later, the +canvass of Mr. Henry George being then fully opened, Dr. M'Glynn sent +Mr. George himself to wait upon the Archbishop with a note of +introduction as his "very dear and valued friend," in the hope of +inducing the Archbishop to withdraw his inhibition and allow him to +speak at a great meeting, then about to be held, of the supporters of +Mr. George. + +The Archbishop replied in a firm but friendly note, forbidding Dr. +M'Glynn "in the most positive manner" to attend the meeting referred to, +or "any other political meeting whatever." + +Dr. M'Glynn deliberately disobeyed this order, attended the meeting, and +threw himself with ever increasing heat into the war against +landlordism. On the 2d of October 1886, therefore, he was formally +"suspended" from his priestly functions--nor has he ever since been +permitted to resume them. Another priest presides over the great church +of St. Stephen, of which he was the rector. More than once the door of +repentance and return has been opened to him; but, I believe, he is +still waging war in his own way, and beyond the precincts of the +priesthood, both upon the right of private property in land and upon the +Pope. + +He is a man of vigorous intellect; and he has defined the issue between +himself and the Church in language so terse and clear that I reproduce +it here. It defines also the real issue of to-day between the Church +speaking through the Papal Decree of April 20, 1888, and the National +League of Ireland acting through the "Plan of Campaign." + +No heed having been paid by Dr. M'Glynn to several successive +intimations summoning him to go to Rome and explain his attitude, he +finally, on the 20th of December 1886, wrote a letter in which, with a +single skilful turn of his wrist, he took out the core of Henry George's +doctrine as to land, which really is the core also of the Irish Plan of +Campaign, and thus laid it before the Archbishop of New York:-- + +"My doctrine about land has been made clear in speeches, in reports of +interviews, and in published articles, and I repeat it here. I have +taught, and I shall continue to teach in speeches and writings, as long +as I live, that land is rightfully the property of the people in common, +and that private ownership of land is against natural justice, no matter +by what civil or ecclesiastical laws it may be sanctioned; and I would +bring about instantly, if I could, such change of laws all over the +world as would confiscate private property in land without one penny of +compensation to the miscalled owners." + +There is no shuffling here. With logical precision Dr. M'Glynn strips +Mr. George's doctrine of its technical disguise as a form of taxation, +and presents it to the world as a simple Confiscation of Rents. Many +acute critics of _Progress and Poverty_ have failed to see that when +Mr. George calls upon the State to take over to itself, and to its own +uses, the whole annual rental value of the bare land of a country, the +land, that is, irrespectively of improvements put upon it by man, he +proposes not "a single tax upon land" at all, but an actual confiscation +of the rental of the land--which for practical purposes is the land--to +the uses of the State, without a levy, and without compensation to "the +miscalled owners." + +When a tax is levied, the need by the State levying it of a certain sum +of money must first be ascertained by competent authority, legislative +or executive, as the case may be, and the law-making power must then, +according to a prescribed form, enact that to raise such a sum a certain +tax shall be levied on designated property or occupations. If the +exigencies of the State are held to require it, a tax may be levied upon +property of more than its value, as in the case, for example, of the +customs duty which was imposed in one of our "tariff revisions" upon +plate glass imported into the United States by way of "protecting" a +single plate-glass factory then existing in the United States. This was +an abominable abuse of a constitutional power, but it was not +"confiscation." What Henry George proposes is confiscation, as Dr. +M'Glynn plainly sees and courageously says. What he proposes is that +the State shall compel the annual rental value of all land to be paid +into the public treasury, without regard to the question whether the +State does or does not need such a sum of money. That is confiscation +pure and simple, the State, in the assumed interest of the State, +proceeding against the private owners of land, or the "miscalled +owners," to use Dr. M'Glynn's significant phrase, precisely as under the +feudal system the State proceeded against the private property of rebels +and traitors. No good reason can be shown why the process should not be +applied to personalty and to debts as well as to land. + +This was the doctrine indorsed at the polls in New York in November 1886 +by 68,000 voters. Nor can there be much doubt that it would have been +indorsed by the few thousand more votes needed to defeat Mr. Hewitt, the +actual Mayor of New York, and to put Mr. Henry George into the Chief +Magistracy of the first city of the New World, had not its teachers and +preachers been confronted by the quiet, cool, and determined prelate who +met it as plainly as it was put. "Your letter," said the Archbishop, +"has brought the painful intelligence that you decline to go to Rome, +and that you have taught, and will continue to teach, the injustice of +private ownership of land, no matter by what laws of Church or State it +may be sanctioned. In view of such declarations, to permit you to +exercise the holy ministry would be manifestly wrong." + +In these few words of the Archbishop of New York, we have plainly +affirmed in 1886 the principle underlying the Papal Decree of 1888 +against the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting in Ireland. There is no +question of parties or of politics in the one case or in the other. When +Dr. M'Glynn talked about the private ownership of land in New York as +"against natural justice," he flung himself not only against the Eighth +Commandment and the teachings of the Catholic Church, touching the +rights of property, but against the constitutions of the State of New +York and of the United States. That "private property shall not be taken +for public uses without just compensation" is a fundamental provision of +the Constitution of the United States, which is itself a part of the +Constitution of every State of the Union; and the right of private +ownership in land is defined and protected beyond doubt or cavil in New +York under the State Constitution. An Act passed in 1830 provides and +declares that all lands within the State "are allodial, so that, subject +only to the liability to escheat, the entire and absolute property is +vested in the owners according to the nature of their respective +estates." + +By this Act "all feudal tenures of every description, with all their +incidents," were "abolished." Most of the "feudal incidents" of the +socage tenure had been previously abolished by an Act passed in 1787, +under the first Constitution of the State, adopted at Kingston in 1777, +a year after the Declaration of American Independence; and socage tenure +by fixed and determinate service, not military or variable by the lord +at his will, had been adopted long before by an Act of the first +Assembly of the Province of New York held in 1691 under the first Royal +Governor, after the reconquest of the province from Holland, and in the +reign of William and Mary. This Act provided that all lands should "be +held in free and common socage according to the tenure of East Greenwich +in England." It is an interesting circumstance that the right of private +ownership in land, thus rooted in our history, should have been defended +against a threatening revolutionary movement in New York by the courage +and loyalty to the Constitution of his country as well as to his Church +of a Catholic Archbishop. For this same Assembly of the Province of New +York in 1693, in an Act "to maintain Protestant ministers and churches," +enacted that "every Jesuit and popish priest" found in the Province +after a certain day named, should be put into "perpetual imprisonment," +with the proviso that if he escaped and was retaken he should suffer +death. And even in the Constitution of 1777 the Protestantism of New +York expressed its hostility to the Catholic Church by exacting +subjection "in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil." + +The position of the Archbishop, both as a churchman and as a citizen, +was impregnable. When Dr. M'Glynn advocated the plan of Henry George, he +advocated at one and the same time the immoral seizure and confiscation +of the whole income of many persons within the protection of the +Constitution of New York, and the overthrow of the Constitution of that +State and of the United States. It may be within the competency of the +British Parliament to enact such a confiscation of rent without a +revolution, there being not only no allodial tenure of land in Great +Britain, but, it would appear, no limit to the power of a British +Parliament over the lives, liberties, and property of British subjects, +but the will of its members. But it is not within the competency of the +Congress of the United States, or of the Assembly of New York, to do +such a thing, the powers of these bodies being controlled and denned by +written Constitutions, which can only be altered or amended in a +prescribed manner and through prescribed and elaborate forms. + + +VII. + +By the middle of October 1886 it became clear that Mr. George, whose +candidacy had at first been regarded with indifference by the party +managers, both Democratic and Republican, in New York, would command a +vote certainly larger than that of one of these parties, and possibly +larger than that of either of them. To put him at the head of a poll of +three parties would elect him. This was so apparent that he and his +friends, including Dr. M'Glynn and Mr. Davitt, were warranted in +expecting a victory. + +It was hardly therefore by a mere coincidence that this precise time was +selected for opening the war in Ireland against Rent. It is quite +possible that if Mr. Dillon and his Parliamentary friends had been in +less of a hurry to open this war before the return of Mr. Davitt from +America, it might have been opened in a manner less "politically +stupid," if not less "morally wrong." But, of course, if Mr. Henry +George had been elected Mayor of New York, as he came so near to being +in November 1886, and Mr. Davitt had returned to Ireland with the +prestige of contributing to place him in the municipal chair of the most +important city in the New World, Mr. Dillon and his Parliamentary +friends would probably have found it necessary to accept a much less +conspicuous part in the conduct of the campaign. + +It was on the 17th of October 1886 that Mr. John Dillon, M.P., first +promulgated the "Plan of Campaign" at Portumna, in a speech which was +promptly flashed under the Atlantic to New York, there to feed the +flame, already fanned by the eloquence of Dr. M'Glynn, into a blaze of +enthusiasm for the apostle of the New Gospel of Confiscation. + +Had the "Plan of Campaign" then been met by the highest local authority +of the Catholic Church in Ireland, as Henry George's doctrine of +Confiscation was met in New York by Archbishop Corrigan, it might never +have been necessary to issue the Papal Decree of April 1888. But while +the Bishop of Limerick unhesitatingly denounced the "Plan of Campaign" +as "politically stupid and morally wrong," the Archbishop of Dublin +bestowed upon it what may be called a left-handed benediction. Admitting +that it empowered one of the parties to a contract to "fix the terms on +which that contract should continue in force," the Archbishop actually +condoned the claim of this immoral power by the tenant, on the ground +that the same immoral power had been theretofore exercised by the +landlord! Peter having robbed Paul from January to July, that is, Paul +should be encouraged by his spiritual guides to rob Peter from July to +January! + +That the Catholic Church should even seem for a time to speak with two +voices on such a point as the moral quality of political machinery, or +that speaking with one voice upon such a point in America, it should +even seem to speak with another voice in Ireland, would clearly be a +disaster to the Church and to civilisation. From the moment therefore, +in 1886, when the issue between Dr. M'Glynn and the Archbishop of New +York was defined, as I have shown, and the Irish National League, with a +quasi-indorsement from the Archbishop of Dublin, had arrayed itself +practically and openly on the side of Dr. M'Glynn and against the +Archbishop of New York, interests far transcending those of any +political party in Ireland, in Great Britain, or in the United States, +were involved. Unfortunately for the immediate and decisive settlement +by Rome of the issue between Dr. M'Glynn and the Archbishop of New York, +a certain vague but therefore more vexatious measure of countenance had +been given, before that issue was raised, to the theories of Mr. Henry +George by another American prelate, the Cardinal Archbishop of +Baltimore, and by more than one eminent ecclesiastic in Europe. Of +course this would have been impossible had these ecclesiastics +penetrated, like Dr. M'Glynn, to the heart of Mr. George's contention, +or discerned with the acumen of the Archbishop of New York the +fundamental difference between any imaginable exercise of the power of +taxation by a Constitutional Government, and Mr. George's doctrine of +the Confiscation of Rent. But this having occurred, it was inevitable +that Rome, which has to deal with a world-wide and complex system of the +most varied and delicate human affairs, should proceed in the matter +with infinite patience and care. In January 1887 the Propaganda +accordingly cabled thus to the Archbishop of New York,--Dr. M'Glynn +persisting in his refusal to go to Rome--"for prudential reasons +Propaganda has heretofore postponed action in the case of Dr. M'Glynn. +The Sovereign Pontiff has now taken the matter into his own hands." + +In the hands of his Holiness the matter was safe; and in the Papal +Decree of April 20, 1888, we have at once the most conclusive +vindication of the wisdom and courage shown by the Archbishop of New +York in 1886, and the most emphatic condemnation of the attitude assumed +in 1886 by the Archbishop of Dublin. + + +VIII. + +It must not be assumed that Mr. George has been finally defeated in +America. On the contrary, he was never more active. A legacy left to +him by an Irish-American for the propagation of his doctrines has just +been declared by the Vice-Chancellor of New Jersey, to be invalid on the +ground that George's doctrines are "in opposition to the laws"; and this +decision has bred an uproar in the press which is reviving popular +attention all over the country to the doctrines and to their author. He +is astute, persevering, as much in earnest as Mr. Davitt, and as +familiar with the weak points in the political machinery of the United +States as is Mr. Davitt with the weak points in the political machinery +of Great Britain. This is a Presidential year. The election of 1888 will +be decided, as was the election of 1884, in New York. The Democratic +party go into the contest with a New York candidate, President +Cleveland, who was presented to the Convention at St. Louis for +nomination, not by an Irishman from New York, but by an Irishman from +the hopelessly Republican State of Pennsylvania, and whose renomination, +distasteful to the Democratic Governor of the State, was also openly +opposed by the Democratic Mayor of the city of New York, Mr. Hewitt, Mr. +George's successful competitor in the Municipal election of 1886. +Leaving Dr. M'Glynn to uphold the Confiscation of Land against the Pope +in New York, as Mr. Davitt, Mr. Dillon, and a certain number of Irish +priests uphold the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting against the Pope in +Ireland, Mr. George supports President Cleveland, and in so doing +cleverly makes a flank movement towards his "exclusive taxation of +land," by promoting, under the cover of "Revenue Reform," an attack on +the indirect taxation from which the Federal Revenues are now mainly +derived. Meanwhile the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore, who is also a +political supporter of President Cleveland, has not yet been confronted +by the supreme authority at Rome with such a final sentence upon the +true nature of Mr. George's "exclusive taxation of land," as the +clear-sighted Archbishop of New York is said to be seeking to obtain +from the Holy Office. What the end will be I have little doubt. But for +the moment, it will be seen, the situation in America is only less +confused and troublesome than the situation in Ireland. It is confused +and troubled too, as I have tried in this prologue to show, by forces +identical in character with those which confuse and trouble the +situation in Ireland. + +Of the social conditions amid and against which those forces are working +in America, I believe myself to have some knowledge. + +To get an actual touch and living sense of the social conditions amid +and against which they are working in Ireland was my object, I repeat, +in making the visits, of which this book is a record. More than this I +could not hope, in the time at my disposal, to do. With very much less +than this, it appears to me, many persons, whose views of Irish affairs +I had been inclined, before making these visits, to regard with respect, +must have found it possible to rest content. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +DUBLIN, _Monday, Jan. 30, 1888._--I left London last night. The train +was full of people going to attend levees and drawing-rooms about to be +held at Dublin Castle. + +Near Watford we lost half an hour by the breaking of a connecting-rod: +but the London and North-Western is a model railway, and we ran +alongside the pier at Holyhead exactly "on time." There is no such +railway travelling in America, excepting on the Pennsylvania Central; +and the North-Western sleeping-carriages, if less monumental and +elaborate than ours, are better ventilated, and certainly not less +comfortable. + +I had expected to come upon unusual things and people in Ireland, but I +had not expected to travel thither in company with an Irish Jacobite. +Two of my fellow-passengers, chatting as they smoked their cigarettes +in the little vestibule between the cabins of the carriage, had much to +say about Lord Ashburnham, and the "Order of the White Rose," and the +Grand Mass to be celebrated to-morrow morning at the Church of the +Carmelites in London, in memory of Charles Edward Stuart, who died at +Rome in 1788, and now lies buried as Charles III., King of Great Britain +and Ireland, in the vaults of the Vatican, together with his father +"James III.," and his brother "Henry IX." One of the two was as hot and +earnest about the "Divine Right of Kings" as the parson who, less than +forty years ago, preached a sermon to prove that the great cholera +visitation of 1849 was a direct chastisement of the impiety of the Royal +Mint in dropping the letters D.G. from the first florins of Queen +Victoria issued in that year. He bewailed his sad fate in being called +over to Ireland by family affairs at such a moment, and evidently did +not know that the Mass in question had been countermanded by the +Cardinal Archbishop. + +The incident, odd enough in itself, interested me the more that +yesterday, as it happens, the Cardinal had spoken with me of this +curious affair. + +He heard of it for the first time on Saturday, and, sending at once for +the priest in charge of the Carmelite Church, forbade the celebration. +Later on in the evening, two strangers came to the Archbishop's house, +and in great agitation besought him to allow the arrangements for the +Mass to go on. He declined to do this, and sent them away impaled on a +dilemma. "What you propose," said the Cardinal, "is either a piece of +theatrical tomfoolery, in which case it is unfit to be performed in a +church, or it is flat treason, in which case you should be sent to the +Tower!" + +They went away, like the Senatus of Augsburg from the presence of +Napoleon--"_tres mortifies et peu contents_." After they had gone, the +Cardinal remembered that for some time past queer documents had reached +him through the post-office, setting forth the doctrine of Divine Right, +and the story of the Stuarts. One of these, which with the rest he had +thrown into the fire, was an elaborate genealogical chart, designed to +show that the crowns of Great Britain and Ireland ought rightfully to be +worn by a certain princess in Bavaria! + +If there is anything more in all this than a new variety of the "blue +China craze," may it not be taken as a symptom of that vague but clearly +growing dissatisfaction with the nineteenth century doctrine of +government by mere majorities, which is by no means confined to Europe? +This feeling underlies the "National Association" for getting a preamble +put into the Constitution of the United States, "recognising Almighty +God as the source of all authority and power in Civil Government." There +was such a recognition in the Articles of Confederation of 1781. +Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia should have mentioned to His Holiness +the existence of this Association, when he presented to Leo XIII., the +other day at Rome, President Cleveland's curious Jubilee gift of an +emblazoned copy of what a Monsignore of my acquaintance calls "the +godless American Constitution."[8] + +We made a quick quiet passage to Kingstown. These boats--certainly the +best appointed of their sort afloat--are owned, I find, in Dublin, and +managed exclusively by their Irish owners, to whom the credit therefore +belongs of making the mail service between Holyhead and Kingstown as +admirable, in all respects, as the mail services between Dover and the +Continental ports are not. + +I landed at Kingstown with Lord Ernest Hamilton, M.P. for North Tyrone, +with whom I have arranged an expedition to Gweedore in Donegal, one of +the most ill-famed of the "congested districts" of Ireland, and just now +made a point of special interest by the arrest of Father M'Fadden, the +parish priest of the place, for "criminally conspiring to compel and +induce certain tenants not to fulfil their legal obligations." + +I could understand such a prosecution as this in America, where the +Constitution makes it impossible even for Congress to pass laws +"impairing the validity of contracts." But as the British Parliament has +been passing such laws for Ireland ever since Mr. Butt in 1870 raised +the standard of Irish Land Reform under the name of Home Rule, it seems +a little absurd, not to say Hibernian, of the British authorities to +prosecute Father M'Fadden merely for bettering their own instruction in +his own way. I could better understand a prosecution of Father M'Fadden +on such grounds by the authorities of his own Church. + +A step from the boat at Kingstown puts you into the train for Dublin. +Before we got into motion, a weird shape as of one just escaped from +the Wild West show of Buffalo Bill peered in at the window, inviting us +to buy the morning papers, or a copy of "the greatest book ever +published, 'Paddy at Home!'" This proved to be a translation of M. de +Mandat Grancey's lively volume, _Chez Paddy_. The vendor, "Davy," is one +of the "chartered libertines" of Dublin. He is supposed to be, and I +dare say is, a warm Nationalist, but he has a keen eye to business, and +alertly suits his cries to his customers. Recognising the Conservative +member for North Tyrone, he promptly recommended us to buy the _Irish +Times_ and the _Express_ as "the two best papers in all Ireland." But he +smiled approval when I asked for the _Freeman's Journal_ also, in which +I found a report of a speech delivered yesterday by Mr. Davitt at +Rathkeale, chiefly remarkable for a sensible protest against the +ridiculous and rantipole abuse lavished upon Mr. Balfour by the +Nationalist orators and newspapers. I am not surprised to see this. Mr. +Davitt has the stuff in him of a serious revolutionary leader, and no +such man can stomach the frothy and foolish vituperation to which +parliamentary agitators are addicted, not in Ireland only. Unlike Mr. +Parnell, who is forced to have one voice for New York and Cincinnati, +and another voice for Westminster, Mr. Davitt is free to be always +avowedly bent on bringing about a thorough Democratic revolution in +Ireland. I believe him to be too able a man to imagine, as some of the +Irish agitators do, that this can be done without the consent of +Democratic England, and he has lived too much in England, and knows the +English democracy too well, I suspect, not to know that to abuse an +executive officer for determination and vigour is the surest way to make +him popular. Calling Mr. Forster "Buckshot" Forster did him no harm. On +the contrary, the epithet might have helped him to success had not Mr. +Gladstone given way behind him at the most critical moment of his +grapple with the revolutionary organisation in Ireland. We hear a great +deal about resistance to tyrants being obedience to God, but I fear that +obedience to God is not the strongest natural passion of the human +heart, and I doubt whether resistance to tyrants can often be promoted +by putting about a general conviction that the tyrant has a thumping big +stick in his hand, and may be relied upon to use it. Even Tom Paine had +the wit to see that it was his "good heart" which brought Louis XVI. to +the scaffold. + +Nobody who had not learned from the speeches made in England, and the +cable despatches sent to America, that freedom of speech and of the +press has been brutally trampled under foot in Ireland by a "Coercion" +Government would ever suspect it from reading the Dublin papers which I +this morning bought. + +As a Democratic journalist I had some practical knowledge of a true +"Coercion" government in America a quarter of a century ago. The +American editor who had ventured in 1862 to publish in a New York or +Philadelphia newspaper a letter from Washington, speaking of the +Unionist Government by President Lincoln, as the letter from London +published to-day in the _Freeman's Journal_ speaks of the Unionist +Government of Lord Salisbury, would have found himself in one of the +casemates of Fort Lafayette within twenty-four hours. Our Republican +rulers acted upon the maxim laid down by Mr. Tilden's friend, Montgomery +Blair,[9] that "to await the results of slow judicial prosecution is to +allow crime to be consummated, with the expectation of subsequent +punishment, instead of preventing its accomplishment by prompt and +direct interference." Perhaps Americans take their Government more +seriously than Englishmen do. Certainly we stand by it more sternly in +bad weather. Even so good a Constitutionalist as Professor Parsons at +Harvard, I remember, when a student asked him if he would not suspend +the _Habeas Corpus_ in the case of a man caught hauling down the +American flag, promptly replied, "I would not suspend the _Habeas +Corpus_; I would suspend the _Corpus_." + +We found no "hansoms" at the Dublin Station, only "outside cars," and +cabs much neater than the London four-wheelers. One of these brought us +at a good pace to Maple's Hotel in Kildare Street, a large, +old-fashioned but clean and comfortable house. My windows look down upon +a stately edifice of stone erecting on Kildare Street for all sorts of +educational and "exhibitional" purposes, with the help of an Imperial +grant, I am told, and to be called the Leinster Hall. The style is +decidedly composite, with colonnades and loggie and domes and porticos, +and recalls the ancient Roman buildings depicted in that fresco of a +belated slave-girl knocking at her mistress's door which with its +companion pieces is fast fading away upon the walls of the "House of +Livia" on the Palatine. + +At one end of this street is the fashionable and hospitable Kildare +Street Club; at the other the Shelburne Hotel, known to all Americans. +This seems to have been "furbished-up" since I last saw it. There, for +the last time as it proved, I saw and had speech of my friend of many +years, the prince of all preachers in our time, Father Burke of Tallaght +and of San Clemente. + +I had telegraphed to him from London that I should halt in Dublin for a +day, on my way to America, to see him. He came betimes, to find me +almost as badly-off as St. Lawrence upon his gridiron. The surgeon whom +the hotel people had hastily summoned to relieve me from a sudden attack +of that endemic Irish ecstasy, the lumbago, had applied what he called +the "heroic treatment" on my telling him that I had no time to be ill, +but must spend that day with Father Burke, dine that night with Mr. +Irving and Mr. Toole, and go on the next day to America. + +"What has this Inquisitor done to you?" queried Father Tom. + +"Cauterised me with chloroform." + +"Oh! that's a modern improvement! Let me see--" and, scrutinising the +results, he said, with a merry twinkle in his deep, dark eyes--"I see +how it is! They brought you a veterinary!" + +This was in 1878. On that too brief, delightful morning, we talked of +all things--supralunar, lunar, and sublunary. Much of Wales, I remember, +where he had been making a visit. "A glorious country," he said, "and +the Welsh would have been Irish, only they lost the faith." Full of love +for Ireland as he was, he was beginning then to be troubled by symptoms +in the Nationalist movement, which could not be regarded with composure +by one who, in his youth at Rome, had seen, with me, the devil of +extremes drive Italy down a steep place into the sea. + +Five years afterwards I landed at Queenstown, in July 1883, intending to +visit him at Tallaght. But when the letter which I sent to announce my +coming reached the monastery, the staunchest Soldier of the Church in +Ireland lay there literally "dead on the field of honour." Chatham, in +the House of Lords, John Quincy Adams, in the House of Representatives, +fell in harness, but neither death so speaks to the heart as the simple +and sublime self-sacrifice of the great Dominican, dragging himself from +his dying bed into Dublin to spend the last splendour of his genius and +his life for the starving children of the poor in Donegal. + +What would I not give for an hour with him now! + +After breakfast I went out to find Mr. Davitt, hoping he might suggest +some way of seeing the Nationalist meeting on Wednesday night without +undergoing the dismal penance of sitting out all the speeches. I wished +also to ask him why at Rathkeale he talked about the Dunravens as +"absentees." He was born in Lord Lucan's country, and may know little of +Limerick, but he surely ought to know that Adare Manor was built of +Irish materials, and by Irish workmen, under the eye of Lord Dunraven, +all the finest ornamental work, both in wood and in stone, of the +mansion, being done by local mechanics; and also that the present owners +of Adare spend a large part of every year in the country, and are +deservedly popular. He was not to be found at the National League +headquarters, nor yet at the Imperial Hotel, which is his usual resort, +as Morrison's is the resort of Mr. Parnell. So I sent him a note through +the Post-Office. + +"You had better seal it with wax," said a friend, in whose chambers I +wrote it. + +"Pray, why?" + +"Oh! all the letters to well-known people that are not opened by the +police are opened by the Nationalist clerks in the Post-Offices. 'Tis a +way we've always had with us in Ireland!" + +I had some difficulty in finding the local habitation of the "National +League." I had been told it was in O'Connell Street, and sharing the +usual and foolish aversion of my sex to asking questions on the highway, +I perambulated a good many streets and squares before I discovered that +it has pleased the local authorities to unbaptize Sackville Street, "the +finest thoroughfare in Europe," and convert it into "O'Connell Street." +But they have failed so ignominiously that the National League finds +itself obliged to put up a huge sign over its doorways, notifying all +the world that the offices are not where they appear to be in Upper +Sackville Street at all, but in "O'Connell Street." The effect is as +ludicrous as it is instructive. Oddly enough, they have not attempted to +change the name of another thoroughfare which keeps green the "pious and +immortal memory" of William III., dear to all who in England or America +go in fear and horror of the scarlet woman that sitteth upon the seven +hills! There is a fashion, too, in Dublin of putting images of little +white horses into the fanlights over the doorways, which seems to smack +of an undue reverence for the Protestant Succession and the House of +Hanover. + +What you expect is the thing you never find in Ireland. I had rather +thoughtlessly taken it for granted the city would be agog with the great +Morley reception which is to come off on Wednesday night. There is a +good deal about it in the _Freeman's Journal_ to-day, but chiefly +touching a sixpenny quarrel which has sprung up between the Reception +Committee and the Trades Council over the alleged making of contracts by +the Committee with "houses not employing members of the regular trades." + +For this the typos and others propose to "boycott" the Committee and the +Reception and the Liberators from over the sea. From casual +conversations I gather that there is much more popular interest in the +release, on Wednesday, of Mr. T.D. Sullivan, ex-Lord Mayor, champion +swimmer, M.P., poet, and patriot. A Nationalist acquaintance of mine +tells me that in Tullamore Mr. Sullivan has been most prolific of +poetry. He has composed a song which I am afraid will hardly please my +Irish Nationalist friends in America: + + "We are sons of Sister Isles, + Englishmen and Irishmen, + On our friendship Heaven smiles; + Tyrant's schemes and Tory wiles + Ne'er shall make us foes again." + +There is to be a Drawing-Room, too, at the Castle on Wednesday night. +One would not unnaturally gather from the "tall talk" in Parliament and +the press that this conjuncture of a great popular demonstration in +favour of Irish nationality, with a display of Dublin fashion doing +homage to the alien despot, might be ominous of "bloody noses and +cracked crowns." Not a bit of it! I asked my jarvey, for instance, on an +outside car this afternoon, whether he expected a row to result from +these counter currents of the classes and the masses. "A row!" he +replied, looking around at me in amazement. "A row is it? and what for +would there be? Shure they'll be through with the procession in time to +see the carriages!" + +Obviously he saw nothing in either show to offend anybody; though he +could clearly understand that an intelligent citizen might be vexed if +he found himself obliged to sacrifice one of them in order to fully +enjoy the other. + +Lady Londonderry, it seems, is not yet well enough to cross the Channel; +but the Duchess of Marlborough, who is staying here with her nephew the +Lord-Lieutenant, has volunteered to assist him in holding the +Drawing-Room, whereupon a grave question has arisen in Court circles as +to whether the full meed of honours due to a Vice-Queen regnant ought to +be paid also to an ex-Vice-Queen. This is debated by the Dublin dames as +hotly as official women in Washington fight over the eternal question of +the relative precedence due to the wives of Senators and "Cabinet +Ministers." It will be a dark day for the democracy when women get the +suffrage--and use it. + +At luncheon to-day I met the Attorney-General, Mr. O'Brien, who, with +prompt Irish hospitality, asked me to dine with him to-morrow night, and +Mr. Wilson of the London _Times_, an able writer on Irish questions from +the English point of view. Mr. Balfour, who was expected, did not +appear, being detained by guests at his own residence in the Park. + +I went to see him in the afternoon at the Castle, and found him in +excellent spirits; certainly the mildest-mannered and most sensible +despot who ever trampled in the dust the liberties of a free people. He +was quite delightful about the abuse which is now daily heaped upon him +in speeches and in the press, and talked about it in a casual dreamy way +which reminded me irresistibly of President Lincoln, whom, if in nothing +else, he resembles alike in longanimity and in length of limb. He had +seen Davitt's _caveat_, filed at Rathkeale, against the foolishness of +trying to frighten him out of his line of country by calling him bad +names. "Davitt is quite right," he said, "the thing must be getting to +be a bore to the people, who are not such fools as the speakers take +them to be. One of the stenographers told me the other day that they had +to invent a special sign for the phrase 'bloody and brutal Balfour,' it +is used so often in the speeches." About the prosecution of Father +M'Fadden of Gweedore, he knew nothing beyond the evidence on which it +had been ordered. This he showed me. If the first duty of a government +is to govern, which is the American if not the English way of looking at +it, Father M'Fadden must have meant to get himself into trouble when he +used such language as this to his people: "I am the law in Gweedore; I +despise the recent Coercion Act; if I got a summons to-morrow, I would +not obey it." From language like this to the attitude of Father M'Glynn +in New York, openly flouting the authority of the Holy See itself, is +but an easy and an inevitable step. + +Neither "Home Rule" nor any other "Rule" can exist in a country in which +men whose words carry any weight are suffered to take up such an +attitude. It is just the attitude of the "Comeouters" in New England +during my college days at Harvard, when Parker Pillsbury and Stephen +Foster used to saw wood and blow horns on the steps of the +meeting-houses during service, in order to free their consciences "and +protest against the Sabbatarian laws." + +To see a Catholic priest assume this attitude is almost as amazing as to +see an educated Englishman like Mr. Wilfrid Blunt trying to persuade +Irishmen that Mr. Balfour made him the confidant of a grisly scheme for +doing sundry Irish leaders to death by maltreating them in prison. + +I see with pleasure that the masculine instincts of Mr. Davitt led him +to allude to this nonsense yesterday at Rathkeale in a half +contemptuous way. Mr. Balfour spoke of it to-day with generosity and +good feeling. "When I first heard of it," he said, "I resented it, of +course, as an outrageous imputation on Mr. Blunt's character, and +denounced it accordingly. What I have since learned leads me to fear +that he really may have said something capable of being construed in +this absurd sense, but if he did, it must have been under the +exasperation produced by finding himself locked up." + +I heard the story of Mr. Balfour's meeting with Mr. Blunt very plainly +and vigorously told, while I was staying the other day at Knoyle House, +in the immediate neighbourhood of Clouds, where the two were guests +under conditions which should be at least as sacred in the eyes of +Britons as of Bedouins. In Wiltshire nobody seemed for a moment to +suppose it possible that Mr. Blunt can have really deceived himself as +to the true nature of any conversation he may have had with Mr. Balfour. +This is paying a compliment to Mr. Blunt's common sense at the expense +of his imagination. In any view of the case, to lie in wait at the lips +of a fellow guest in the house of a common friend, for the counts of a +political indictment against him, is certainly a proceeding, as Davitt +said yesterday of Mr. Blunts tale of horror, quite "open to question." +But, as Mr. Blunt himself has sung, "'Tis conscience makes us sinners, +not our sin," and I have no doubt the author of the _Poems of Proteus_ +really persuaded himself that he was playing lawn tennis and smoking +cigarettes in Wiltshire with a modern Alva, cynically vain of his own +dark and bloody designs. Now that he finds himself struck down by the +iron hand of this remorseless tyrant, why should he not cry aloud and +warn, not Ireland alone, but humanity, against the appalling crimes +meditated, not this time in the name of "Liberty," but in the name of +Order? + +What especially struck me in talking with Mr. Balfour to-day was his +obviously unaffected interest in Ireland as a country rather than in +Ireland as a cock-pit. It is the condition of Ireland, and not the +gabble of parties at Westminster about the condition of Ireland, which +is uppermost in his thoughts. This, I should say, is the best guarantee +of his eventual success. + +The weakest point of the modern English system of government by Cabinets +surely is the evanescent tenure by which every Minister holds his +place. Not only has the Cabinet itself no fixed term of office, being in +truth but a Committee of the Legislature clothed with executive +authority, but any member of the Cabinet may be forced by events or by +intrigues to leave it. In this way Mr. Forster, when he filled the place +now held by Mr. Balfour, found himself driven into resigning it by Mr. +Gladstone's indisposition or inability to resist the peremptory pressure +put upon the British Premier at a critical moment by our own Government +in the spring of 1882. Mr. Balfour is in no such peril, perhaps. He is +more sure, I take it, of the support of Lord Salisbury and his +colleagues than Mr. Forster ever was of the support of Mr. Gladstone; +and the "Coercion" law which it is his duty to administer contains no +such sweeping and despotic clause as that provision in Mr. Gladstone's +"Coercion Act" of 1881, under which persons claiming American +citizenship were arrested and indefinitely locked up on "suspicion," +until it became necessary for our Government, even at the risk of war, +to demand their trial or release. + +But if Mr. Balfour were Chief Secretary for Ireland "on the American +plan"; if he held his office, that is, for a fixed term of years, and +cared nothing for a renewal of the lease, he could not be more +pre-occupied than he seems to be with simply getting his executive duty +done, or less pre-occupied than he seems to be with what may be thought +of his way of getting it done. If all executive officers were of this +strain, Parliamentary government might stand in the dock into which +Prince Albert put it with more composure, and await the verdict with +more confidence. Surely if Ireland is ever to govern herself, she must +learn precisely the lesson which Mr. Balfour, I believe, is trying to +teach her--that the duty of executive officers to execute the laws is +not a thing debateable, like the laws themselves, nor yet determinable, +like the enactment of laws, by taking the yeas and the nays. How well +this lesson shall be taught must depend, of course, very much upon the +quality of the men who make up the machine of Government in Ireland. +That the Irish have almost as great a passion for office-holding as the +Spanish, we long ago learned in New York, where the percentage of Irish +office-holders considerably exceeds the percentage of Irish citizens. +And as all the witnesses agree that the Irish Government has for years +been to an inordinate degree a Government by patronage, there must +doubtless be some reasonable ground for the very general impression that +"the Castle" needs overhauling. It is not true, however, I find, +although I have often heard it asserted in England, that the Irish +Government is officered by Englishmen and Scotchmen exclusively. The +murdered Mr. Burke certainly was not an Englishman; and there is an +apparent predominance of Irishmen in the places of trust and power. That +things at the Castle cannot be nearly so bad, moreover, as we in America +are asked to believe, would seem to be demonstrated by the affectionate +admiration with which Lord Spencer is now regarded by men like Mr. +O'Brien, M.P., who only the other day seemed to regard him as an unfit +survival of the Cities of the Plain. If what these men then said of him, +and of the Castle generally, was even very partially true--or if being +wholly false, these men believed it to be true--every man of them who +now touches Lord Spencer's hand is defiled, or defiles him. + +But that concerns them. Their present attitude makes Lord Spencer a good +witness when he declares that the Civil servants of the Crown in +Ireland, called "the Castle," are "diligent, desire to do their duty +with impartiality, and to hold an even balance between opposing +interests in Ireland," and maintains that they "will act with +impartiality and vigour if led by men who know their own minds, and +desire to be firm in the Government of the country." All this being +true, Mr. Balfour ought to make his Government a success. + +Mr. Balfour introduced me to Sir West Ridgway, the successor of Sir +Redvers Buller, who has been rewarded for the great services he did his +country in Asia, by being flung into this seething Irish stew. He takes +it very composedly, though the climate does not suit him, he says; and +has a quiet workmanlike way with him, which impresses one favourably at +once. + +All the disorderly part of Ireland (for disorder is far from being +universal in Ireland) comes under his direct administration, being +divided into five divisions on the lines originally laid down in 1881 by +Mr. Forster. Over each of these divisions presides a functionary styled +a "Divisional Magistrate." The title is not happily chosen, the powers +of these officers being rather like those confided to a French Prefect +than like those which are associated in England and America with the +title of a "magistrate." They have no judicial power, and nothing to do +with the trial of offenders. Their business is to protect life and +property, and to detect and bring to justice offenders against the law. +They can only be called Magistrates as the Executive of the United +States is sometimes called the "Chief Magistrate." + +One of the most conspicuous and trusted of these Divisional Magistrates, +I find, is Colonel Turner, who was Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, +under Lord Aberdeen. He is now denounced by the Irish Nationalists as a +ruthless tyrant. He was then denounced by the Irish Tories as a +sympathiser with Home Rule. It is probable, therefore, that he must be a +conscientious and loyal executive officer, who understands and acts upon +the plain lines of his executive duty. + +I dined to-night at the Castle, not in the great hall or banqueting-room +of St. Patrick, which was designed by that connoisseur in magnificence, +the famous Lord Chesterfield, during his Viceroyalty, but in a very +handsome room of more moderate dimensions. Much of the semi-regal state +observed at the Castle in the days of the Georges has been put down with +the Battle-Axe Guards of the Lord-Lieutenant, and with the +basset-tables of the "Lady-Lieutenant," as the Vice-queen used to be +called. At dinner the Viceroy no longer drinks to the pious and immortal +memory of William III., or to the "1st of July 1690." No more does the +band play "Lillibullero," and no longer is the pleasant custom +maintained, after a dinner to the city authorities of Dublin, of a +"loving cup" passed around the table, into which each guest, as it +passed, dropped a gold piece for the good of the household. Only so much +ceremonial is now observed as suffices to distinguish the residence of +the Queen's personal representative from that of a great officer of +State, or an opulent subject of high rank. + +Dublin Castle indeed is no more of a palace than it is of a castle. Its +claim to the latter title rests mainly on the fine old "Bermingham" +tower of the time of King John; its claim to the former on the Throne +Room, the Council Chamber, and the Hall of St. Patrick already +mentioned. This last is a very stately and sumptuous apartment. Just +twenty years ago the most brilliant banquet modern Dublin has seen was +given in this hall by the late Duke of Abercorn to the Prince and +Princess of Wales, to celebrate the installation of the Prince as a +Knight of St. Patrick. It is a significant fact, testified to by all +the most candid Irishmen I have ever known, that upon the occasion of +this visit to Ireland in 1868 the Prince and Princess were received with +unbounded enthusiasm by the people of all classes. Yet only the year +before, in 1867, the explosion of some gunpowder at Clerkenwell by a +band of desperadoes, to the death and wounding of many innocent people, +had brought the question of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, in +the mind of Mr. Gladstone, within the domain of "practical politics"! By +parity of reasoning, one would think, the reception of the heir-apparent +and his wife in Ireland ought to have taken that question out of the +domain of "practical politics." + +The Prince of Wales, it is known, brought away from this visit an +impression that the establishment of a prince of the blood in Ireland, +or a series of royal visits to Ireland, would go far towards pacifying +the relations between the two Islands. Mr. Gladstone thought his +Disestablishment would quite do the work. Events have shown that Mr. +Gladstone made a sad mistake as to the effect of his measure. The pains +which, I am told, were taken by Mr. Deasy, M.P., and others to organise +hostile demonstrations at one or two points in the south of Ireland, +during a subsequent visit of the Prince and Princess, would seem to show +that in the opinion of the Nationalists themselves, the impression of +the Prince was more accurate than were the inferences of the Premier. + +There is nothing froward or formidable in the aspect of Dublin Castle. +It has neither a portcullis nor a drawbridge. People go in and out of it +as freely as through the City Hall in New York. There is a show of +sentries at the main entrance, and in one of the courts this morning the +picturesque band of a Scotch regiment was playing to the delectation of +a small but select audience of urchins and little girls. A Dublin mob, +never so little in earnest and led by a dozen really determined men, +ought to be able to make as short work of it as the hordes of the +Faubourgs in Paris made of the Bastille, with its handful of invalids, +on that memorable 14th of July, about which so many lies have passed +into history, and so much effervescent nonsense is still annually talked +and printed. + +The greater part of the Castle as it existed when the Irish Parliaments +sat there under Elizabeth, and just before the last Catholic Viceroy +made Protestantism penal, and planned the transformation of Ireland +into a French province, was burned in the time of James II. The Earl of +Arran then reported to his father that "the king had lost nothing but +six barrels of gunpowder, and the worst castle in the worst situation in +Christendom." + +Here, as at Ottawa, a viceregal dinner-table is set off by the neat +uniforms and skyblue facings of the aides-de-camp and secretaries. For +some mysterious reason Lord Spencer put these officers into chocolate +coats with white facings. But the new order soon gave place to the old +again. + +At the dinner to-night was Lord Ormonde, who is returning to London, but +kindly promised to make arrangements for showing me at Kilkenny Castle +the muniment room of the Butlers, which contains one of the most +valuable private collections of charters and State papers in the realm. + + +_Tuesday, Jan. 31._--I lunched to-day with Sir Michael Morris, the Lord +Chief Justice of Ireland, whom I had last seen in Rome at the Jubilee +Mass of His Holiness. Sir Michael is one of the recognised lights of +social life and of the law in Dublin. While he was in Rome some one +highly commended him in the presence of that staunch Nationalist the +Archbishop of Dublin, who assented so far as to say, "Yes, yes, there +are worse fellows in Dublin than that Morris!" It would be hard to find +a more typical Irishman of the better sort than Sir Michael, a man more +sure, in the words of Sheridan, to "carry his honour and his brogue +unstained to the grave." + +The brogue of Sir Michael, it is said, made his fortune in the House of +Commons. It has hardly the glow which made the brogue of Father Burke a +memory as of music in the ears of all who heard it, and differs from +that miraculous gift of the tongue as a ripe wine of Bordeaux differs +from a ripe wine of Burgundy. But to the ordinary brogue of the street +and the stage, it is as is a Brane Mouton Rothschild of 1868 to the +casual Medoc of a Parisian restaurant. "Do you know Father Healy?" said +one of the company to whom I spoke of it; "he was at a wedding with Sir +Michael. As the happy pair drove off under the usual shower of rice and +old slippers, Sir Michael said to the Father, 'How I wish I had +something to throw after her!' 'Ah, throw your brogue after her,' +replied the Father." + +This brogue comes to Sir Michael lawfully enough. He belongs to one of +the fourteen tribes of Galway. His father, Mr. Martin Morris, was High +Sheriff of the County of Galway City in 1841, being the first Catholic +who had served that office since the time of Tyrconnel. His mother was a +Blake of Galway, and the family seat, Spiddal, came to them through a +Fitzpatrick. "Remember these things," said one of the guests to me, a +Catholic from the south of Ireland, "and remember that Sir Michael, like +myself, and, so far as I know, like every Irish Catholic in this room +to-day, is a thoroughgoing Unionist, who would think it midsummer +madness to hand Ireland over to the 'Home Rule' of the 'uncrowned king,' +Mr. Parnell, who hasn't a drop, I believe, of Irish blood in his veins, +and who, whatever else he may be, is certainly not a Catholic. Didn't +Parnell vote at first against religion and in favour of Bradlaugh? and +didn't he do this to force the bargain for the clerical franchise at the +Parliamentary conventions?" + +"But there are some good Catholics, are there not," I answered, "and +some good Christians, and of Irish blood too, among the associates of +Mr. Parnell?" + +"Associates!" he exclaimed; "if you know anything of Mr. Parnell, you +must know that he has no associates. He has followers, and he has +instruments, but he has no associates. The only Irishmen whom he has +really taken counsel with, or treated, I was about to say, with ordinary +civility, were Egan and Brennan. His manner with them was always +conspicuously different from his cold and almost contemptuous bearing +towards the men whom he commands in Parliament, and Egan, who directs +his forces in your country, rewards him by calling him 'the great and +gifted leader of _our_ race!' 'Our race' indeed! Parnell comes of the +conquering race in Ireland, and he never forgets it, or lets his +subordinates forget it. I was in Galway when he came over there suddenly +to quell the revolt organised by Healy. The rebels were at white-heat +before he came. But he strode in among them like a huntsman among the +hounds--marched Healy off into a little room, and brought him out again +in ten minutes, cowed and submissive, but filled, as anybody can see, +ever since, with a dull smouldering hate which will break out one of +these days, if a good and safe opportunity offers." + +"How do you account, then," I asked, "for the support which all these +men give Mr. Parnell?" + +"For the support which they give him!" exclaimed my new acquaintance, +"for the support they give him! Bless your heart, my dear sir, it is he +gives them the support! Barring Biggar, who, to do him justice, is as +free with his pocket as he is with his tongue--and no man can say more +for anybody than that--barring Biggar and M'Kenna and M'Carthy, and +perhaps a dozen more, all these men are nominated by Mr. Parnell, and +draw salaries from the body he controls; they are paid members, like the +working-men members. Support indeed!" + +"But the constituencies," I urged, "surely the voters must know and care +something about their representatives?" + +The gentleman from the south of Ireland laughed aloud. "Very clear it +is," he said, "that you have made your acquaintance with my dear +countrymen in America, or in England perhaps--not in Ireland. Look at +Thurles, in January '85! The voters selected O'Ryan; Parnell ordered him +off, and made them take O'Connor! The voters take their members to-day +from the League--that is, from Mr. Parnell, just as they used to take +them from the landlords. What Lord Clanricarde said in Galway, when he +made all those fagot votes by cutting up his farms, that he could return +his grey mare to Parliament if he liked, Mr. Parnell can say with just +as much truth to-day of any Nationalist seat in the country. I tell +you, the secret of his power is that he understands the Irish people, +and how to ride them. He is a Protestant-ascendency man by blood, and he +is fighting the unlucky devils of landlords to-day by the old 'landlord' +methods that came to him with his mother's milk--that is rightly +speaking, I should say, with his father's," and here he burst out +laughing at his own bull--"for his mother, poor lady, she was an +American." + +"Thank you," I said. + +"Oh, no harm at all! But did you ever know her? An odd woman she was, +and is." + +"Her father," I replied, "was a gallant American sailor of Scottish +blood." + +"Oh yes, and is it true that he got a great hatred of England from being +captured in the _Chesapeake_ by the English Captain Broke? I always +heard that." + +I explained that there were historical difficulties in the way of +accepting this legend, and that Commodore Stewart's experiences, during +the war of 1812, had been those of a captor, not of a captive. + +"Well, a clever woman she is, only very odd. She was a great terror, I +remember, to a worthy Protestant parson, near Avondale; she used to come +at him quite unexpectedly with such a power of theological discussion, +and put him beside himself with questions he couldn't answer." + +"Very likely," I replied, "but she has transferred her interest to +politics now; and she had the good sense, at the Chicago Convention in +1886, to warn the physical-force men against showing their hand too +plainly in support of her son." + +A curious conversation, as showing the personal bitterness of politics +here. It reminded me of Dr. Duche's description in his famous letter to +Washington of the party which carried the Declaration of Independence +through the Continental Congress. But it had a special interest for me +as confirming the inferences I have often drawn as to Mr. Parnell's +relations with his party, from his singular and complete isolation among +them. I remember the profound astonishment of my young friend Mr. D----, +of New York, who, as the son of, perhaps, the most conspicuous and +influential American advocate of Home Rule, had confidently counted upon +seeing Mr. Parnell in London, when he found that the most important +member of the Irish Parliamentary party, in point of position, was +utterly unable to get at Mr. Parnell for him, or even to ascertain where +Mr. Parnell could be reached by letter. + +Though a staunch Unionist, Sir Michael is no blind admirer of things as +they are, nor even a thick-and-thin partisan of English rule in Ireland. +"If you will have the Irish difficulty in a nutshell," he is reported to +have said to a prosy British politician, "here it is: It is simply a +very dull people trying to govern a very bright people." + +He has quick and wide intellectual sympathies, or, as he put it to a +lawyer who was kindly enlightening him about some matters of scientific +notoriety, "I don't live in a cupboard myself." His own terse summing up +of the Irish difficulty could hardly be better illustrated than by the +current story of the discomfiture of an English Treasury official, who +came into his official chambers to complain of the expenditure for fuel +in the Court over which he presides. The Lord Chief-Justice looked at +him quietly while he set forth his errand, and then, ringing a bell on +his table, said to the servant who responded: "Tell Mary the man has +come about the coals." + +At Sir Michael's I had some conversation also with Mr. Justice Murphy, +who won a great reputation in connection with those murders in the +Phoenix Park, which went near to breaking the heart and hope of poor +Father Burke, and with Lord and Lady Ashbourne, whom I had not seen +since I met them some years ago under the hospitable roof of Lord +Houghton. Lord Ashbourne was then Mr. Gibson, Q.C. He is now the Lord +Chancellor of Ireland, and the author of the Land Purchase Act of 1885, +which many well-informed and sensible men regard as the Magna Charta of +peace in Ireland, while others of equal authority assure me that by +reversing the principle of the Bright clauses in the Act of 1871 it has +encouraged the tenants to expect an eventual concession of the +land-ownership to them on merely nominal terms. + +Naturally enough, he is carped at and reviled almost as much by his +political friends as by his political foes. In the time of Sir Michael +Hicks Beach I remember hearing Lord Ashbourne denounced most bitterly by +a leading Tory light as "a Home Ruler in disguise, who had bedevilled +the Irish Question by undertaking to placate the country if it could be +left to be managed by him and by Lord Carnarvon." + +The disguise appears to me quite impenetrable, and after my talk with +him, I remembered a characteristic remark about him made to me by Lord +Houghton after he had gone away: "A very clever man with a very clever +wife. He ought to be on our side, but he has everything the Tories lack, +so they have stolen him, and will make much of him, and keep him. But +one of these days he will do them some great service, and then they'll +never forgive him!" + +Lord Ashbourne went off early to look up some fine old wooden +mantelpieces and wainscotings in the "slums" of Dublin. A brisk trade it +seems has for some time been driven in such relics of the departed +splendour of the Irish capital. In the last century, when Dublin was +further from London than London now is from New York, the Irish +landlords were more fond of living in Dublin than a good many of the +Irish Nationalists I know now are. In this way the Iron Duke came to be +born in Dublin, where his father and mother had a handsome town house, +whereas when they went up to London they used to lodge, according to old +Lady Cork, "over a pastry-cook's in Oxford Street." In those days there +must have been a good many fine solidly built and well decorated +mansions in Dublin, of a type not unlike that of the ample rather +stately and periwigged houses, all British brick without, and all Santo +Domingo mahogany within, which, in my schoolboy days, used to give such +a dignified old-world air to Third and Fourth Streets in Philadelphia. +It is among such of these as are still standing, and have come to vile +uses, that the foragers from London now find their harvest. + +From the Chief-Justice's I went with Lord Ernest Hamilton to a meeting +of the Irish Unionists. Admission was by tickets, and the meeting +evidently "meant business." I suppose Presbyterian Ulster was largely +represented: but Mr. Smith Barry of Fota Island, near Cork, one of the +kindest and fairest, as well as one of the most determined and resolute, +of the southern Irish landlords, was there, and the most interesting +speech I heard was made by a Catholic lawyer of Dublin, Mr. Quill, Q.C., +who grappled with the question of distress among the Irish tenants, and +produced some startling evidence to show that this distress is by no +means so great or so general as it is commonly assumed to be.[10] Able +speeches were also made by Mr. T.W. Russell, M.P. for Tyrone, and by +Colonel Saunderson, the champion of Ulster at Westminster. Both of these +members, and especially Colonel Saunderson, "went for" their +Nationalist colleagues with an unparliamentary plainness of speech which +commanded the cordial sympathy of their audience. "Is it possible," +asked Colonel Saunderson, "that you should ever consent, on any terms, +to be governed by such--, well, by such wretches as these?" to which the +audience gave back an unanimous "Never," neither thundered nor shouted, +but growled, like Browning's "growl at the gates of Ghent,"--a low deep +growl like the final notice served by a bull-dog, which I had not heard +since the meetings which, at the North, followed the first serious +fighting of the Civil War. I was much struck, too, by the prevalence +among the audience of what may be called the Old Middle State type of +American face and head. A majority of these men might have come straight +from those slopes of the Alleghany which, from Pennsylvania down to the +Carolinas, were planted so largely by the only considerable Irish +emigrations known to our history, before the great year of famine, 1847, +the Irish emigrations which followed the wars against the woollen +industries in the seventeenth century, and the linen industries in the +eighteenth. A staunch, doggedly Protestant people, loving the New +England Puritans and the Anglicans of Eastern Virginia little better +than the Maryland Catholics, but contributing more than their full share +of traditional antipathy to that extreme dislike and dread of the Roman +Church which showed itself half-a-century ago in the burning of +convents, and thirty years ago gave life and fire to the Know-Nothing +movement. Even so late as at the time of Father Burke's grand and most +successful mission to America, I remember how much astonished and +impressed he was by the vigour and the virulence of these feelings. One +of the bishops, he told me, in a great diocese tried (though of course +in vain) to dissuade him on this account from wearing his Dominican +dress. These anti-Catholic passions are much stronger in America to-day +than it always suits our politicians to remember, though to forget it +may some day be found very dangerous. Even now two of the ablest +prelates of the most liberal of the Protestant American bodies, Bishop +Cleveland Coxe of Western New York, and Bishop Beckwith of Georgia, the +latter of whom I met the other day in Rome on his return from Palestine, +are promoting what looks very much like a crusade against the plan for +establishing a Catholic University at Washington. Bishop Cleveland +Coxe's denunciations of what he calls "the alien Church," point straight +to a revival of the "Native American" movement; and I fear that +President Cleveland's gift of a copy of the Constitution to Leo XIII. +will hardly make American Catholics forget either the hereditary +anti-Catholic feeling which led him, when Governor of New York, to +imperil the success of the Democratic party by his dogged resistance to +the Catholic demand for the endowment of Catholic schools and +protectories, or the scandalous persecution (it can be called by no +other name) of Catholics in Alaska, which was carried on in the name and +under the patronage of his sister, Miss Cleveland, by a local missionary +of the Presbyterian Church, to the point of the removal by the President +of a Federal judge, who dared to award a Catholic native woman from +Vancouver the custody of her own child. + +It is hard to imagine a greater misfortune for the Church in Ireland, +and for both the Church and the Irish race in America, than the +identification of the Home Rule movement with the Church, and its +triumph, after being so identified, and with the help of British +sympathisers and professional politicians, over the resistance of +Protestant Ireland. This dilemma of the Church in Ireland, plainly seen +at Rome, as I know, to-day, was forcibly presented in the speech of +Colonel Saunderson. + +The chair at this Loyalist meeting was filled by the Provost of Trinity, +Dr. Jellett, a man of winning and venerable aspect, a kind of "angelic +doctor," indeed, whose musical and slightly tremulous voice gave a +singular pathos and interest to his brief but very earnest speech.[11] + +To-night I dined with the Attorney-General, Mr. O'Brien. Among the +company were the Chief-Baron Palles, whose appointment dates back to Mr. +Gladstone's Administration of 1873, but who is now an outspoken opponent +of Home Rule; Judge O'Brien, an extremely able man, with the face of an +eagle; Mr. Carson, Q.C.; and other notabilities of the bench and bar. My +neighbours at table were a charming and agreeable bencher of the King's +Inn, Mr. Atkinson, Q.C., a leader of the Irish bar, and Mr. T.W. +Russell, M.P., who told me some amusing things of one of his colleagues, +an ideal Orangeman, who writes blood-curdling romances in the vein of La +Tosca, and goes in fear of the re-establishment of the Holy Office in +Dublin and London. In view of the clamours about the severity of the +bench in Ireland, it was edifying to find an Irish Judge astonished by +the drastic decisions of our Courts in regard to the anarchists who were +hanged at Chicago, after a thorough and protracted review of the law in +their cases. He thought no Court in Great Britain or Ireland could have +dealt with them thus stringently, it being understood that the charge of +murder against them rested on their connection, solely as provocative +instigators to violence, with the actual throwing of the bombs among the +police. + +Some good stories were told by the lawyers; one of a descendant of the +Irish Kings, a lawyer more remarkable for his mental gifts than for his +physical graces. + +A peasant looking him carefully over at Cork whispered to a neighbour, +"And is he really of the ould blood of the Irish kings now, indeed?" + +"He is indeed!" + +"Well, then, I don't wonder the Saxons conquered the Island!" + +Of the Home Rule movement one of the lawyers said to me, "The whole +thing is a business operation mainly--a business operation with the +people who see in it the hope of appeasing their land hunger--and a +business operation for the agitators who live by it. Its main strength, +outside of the priests, who for one reason or another countenance or +foment it, is in the small country solicitors. The five hundred thousand +odd Irish tenants are the most litigious creatures alive. They are +always after the local lawyer with half-a-crown to fight this, that, or +the other question with some neighbour or kinsman, usually a kinsman. So +the solicitors know the whole country." + +"When the League has chosen a spot in which to work the 'Plan of +Campaign,' the local attorney whips up the tenants to join it. The +poorer tenants are the most easily pushed into the plan, having least to +lose by it. But the lawyer takes the well-to-do tenants in hand, and +promises them that if they yield to the patriotic pressure of the +League, and come to grief by so doing, the landlord will at all events +have to pay the costs of the proceedings. It is this promise which +finally brings down most of them. To enjoy the luxury of a litigation +without paying for it tempts them almost as strongly as the prospect of +getting the land without paying for it. You will find that the League +always insists, when things come to a settlement, that the landlord +shall pay the costs. If the landlord through poverty of spirit or of +purse succumbs to this demand, the League scores a victory. If the +landlord resists, it is a bad job for the League. The local lawyer is +discredited in the eyes of his clients, and if he is to get any fees he +must come down upon his clients for them. Naturally his clients resent +this. If Mr. Balfour keys up the landlords to stand out manfully against +paying for all the trouble and loss they are continually put to, he will +take the life of the League so far as Ireland is concerned. As things +now stand, it is almost the only thriving industry in Ireland!" + + +_Wednesday, Feb. 1._--This morning I called with Lord Ernest Hamilton +upon Sir Bernard Burke, the Ulster King-at-Arms, and the editor or +author of many other well-known publications, and especially of the +"Peerage," sometimes irreverently spoken of as the "British Bible." + +Sir Bernard's offices are in the picturesque old "Bermingham" tower of +the castle. There we found him wearing his years and his lore as lightly +as a flower, and busy in an ancient chamber, converted by him into a +most cosy modern study. He received us with the most cordial courtesy, +and was good enough to conduct us personally through his domain. + +Many of the State papers formerly kept here have been removed to the +Four Courts building. But Sir Bernard's tower is still filled with +documents of the greatest historical interest, all admirably docketed +and arranged on the system adopted at the Hotel Soubise, now the Palace +of the Archives in Paris. + +These documents, like the tower itself, take us back to the early days +when Dublin was the stronghold of the Englishry in Ireland, and its +citizens went in constant peril of an attack from the wild and "mere +Irish" in the hills. The masonry of the tower is most interesting. The +circular stone floors made up of slabs held together without cement, +like the courses in the towers of Sillustani, by their exact adjustment, +are particularly noteworthy. High up in the tower Sir Bernard showed us +a most uncomfortable sort of cupboard fashioned in the huge wall of the +tower, and with a loophole for a window. In this cell the Red Hugh +O'Donnell of Tyrconnel was kept as a prisoner for several years under +Elizabeth. He was young and lithe, however, and after his friends had +tried in vain to buy him out, a happy thought one day struck him. He +squeezed himself through the loophole, and, dropping unhurt to the +ground, escaped to the mountains. There for a long time he made head +against the English power. In 1597 he drove Sir Conyers Clifford from +before the castle of Ballyshannon, with great loss to the English, and +when he could no longer keep the field, he sought refuge in Spain. He +was with the Spanish, as Prince of Tyrconnel, at the crushing defeat of +Kinsale in 1601. Escaping again, he died, poisoned, at Simancas the next +year. + +Sir Bernard showed us, among other curious manuscripts, a correspondence +between one Higgins, a trained informer, and the Castle authorities in +1798. This correspondence shows that the revolutionary plans of the +Nationalists of 1798 were systematically laid before the Government. + +When one thinks how very much abler were the leaders of the Irish +rebellion in 1798 than are the present heads of the Irish party in +Parliament, how much greater the provocations to rebellion given the +Irish people then were than they are now even alleged to be--how little +the Irish people in general have now to gain by rebellion, and how much +to lose, it is hard to resist a suspicion that it must be even easier +now than it was in 1798 for the Government to tap the secrets of the +organisations opposed to it. + +Sir Bernard showed us also a curious letter written by Henry Grattan to +the founder of the great Guinness breweries, which have carried the fame +of Dublin porter into the uttermost parts of the earth. The Guinnesses +are now among the wealthiest people of the kingdom, and Ireland +certainly owes a great deal to them as "captains of industry," but they +are not Home Rulers. + +At the Kildare Street Club in the afternoon I talked with two Irish +landlords from the north of Ireland, who had come up to take their +womenkind to the Drawing-Room. + +I was struck by their indifference to the political excitements of the +day. One of them had forgotten that the Ripon and Morley reception was +to take place to-night. The other called it "the love-feast of Voltaire +and the Vatican." Both were much more fluent about hunting and farming. +I asked if the hunting still went on in their part of the island. + +"It has never stopped for a moment," he replied. + +"No," added the other, "nor ever a dog poisoned. They were poisoned, +whole packs of them, in the papers, but not a dog really. The stories +were printed just to keep up the agitation, and the farmers winked at it +so as not to be 'bothered.'" + +Both averred that they got their rents "fairly well," but both also said +that they farmed much of their own land. One, a wiry, energetic, elderly +man, of a brisk presence and ruddy complexion, said he constantly went +over to the markets in England. "I go to Norwich," he said, "not to +Liverpool. Liverpool is only a meat-market, and overdone at that. +Norwich is better for meat and for stores." Both agreed this was a great +year for the potatoes, and said Ireland was actually exporting potatoes +to America. One mentioned a case of two cargoes of potatoes just taken +from Dundrum for America, the vessel which took them having brought over +six hundred tons of hay from America. + +They were breezy, out-of-door men, both of them. One amused us with a +tale of espying, the other day, two hounds, a collie dog, a terrier, and +eighteen cats all amicably running together across a farmyard, with +their tails erect, after a dairymaid who was to feed them. The other +capped this with a story of a pig on his own place, which follows one of +his farm lads about like a dog,--"the only pig," he said, "I ever saw +show any human feeling!" The gentleman who goes to Norwich thought the +English landlords were in many cases worse off than the Irish. "Ah, no!" +interfered the other, "not quite; for if the English can't get their +rents, at least they keep their land, but we can neither get our rents +nor keep our land!" They both admitted that there had been much bad +management of the land in Ireland, and that the agents had done the +owners as well as the tenants a great deal of harm in the past, but they +both maintained stoutly that the legislation of late years had been +one-sided and short-sighted. "The tenants haven't got real good from +it," said one, "because the claims of the landlord no longer check their +extravagance, and they run more in debt than ever to the shopkeepers and +traders, who show them little mercy." Both also strenuously insisted on +the gross injustice of leaving the landlords unrelieved of any of the +charges fixed upon their estates, while their means of meeting those +charges were cut down by legislation. + +"You have no landlords in America," said one, "but if you had, how would +you like to be saddled with heavy tithe charges for a Disestablished +Church at the same time that your tenants were relieved of their dues +to you?" + +I explained to him that so far from our having no landlords in America, +the tenant-farmer class is increasing rapidly in the United States, +while it is decreasing in the Old World, while the land laws, especially +in some of our older Western States, give the landlords such absolute +control of their tenants that there is a serious battle brewing at this +moment in Illinois[12] between a small army of tenants and their +absentee landlord, an alien and an Irishman, who holds nearly a hundred +thousand acres in the heart of the State, lives in England, and grants +no leases, except on the condition that he shall receive from his +tenants, in addition to the rent, the full amount of all taxes and +levies whatsoever made upon the lands they occupy. + +"God bless my soul!" exclaimed the gentleman who goes to Norwich, "if +that is the kind of laws your American Irish will give us with Home +Rule, I'll go in for it to-morrow with all my heart!" + +After an early dinner, I set out with Lord Ernest to see the +Morley-Ripon procession. It was a good night for a torchlight +parade--the weather not too chill, and the night dark. The streets were +well filled, but there was no crowding--no misconduct, and not much +excitement. The people obviously were out for a holiday, not for a +"demonstration." It was Paris swarming out to the Grand Prix, not Paris +on the eve of the barricades; very much such a crowd as one sees in the +streets and squares of New York on a Fourth of July night, when the city +fathers celebrate that auspicious anniversary with fireworks at the City +Hall, and not in the least such a crowd as I saw in the streets of New +York on the 12th of July 1871, when, thanks to General Shaler and the +redoubtable Colonel "Jim Fiske," a great Orange demonstration led to +something very like a massacre by chance medley. + +Small boys went about making night hideous with tom-toms, extemporised +out of empty fig-drums, and tooting terribly upon tin trumpets. There +was no general illumination, but here and there houses were bright with +garlands of lamps, and rockets ever and anon went up from the +house-tops. + +We made our way to the front of a mass of people near one of the great +bridges, over which the procession was to pass on its long march from +Kingstown to the house of Mr. Walker, Q.C., in Rutland Square, where the +distinguished visitors were to meet the liberated Lord Mayor, with Mr. +Dwyer Gray, and other local celebrities. A friendly citizen let us perch +on his outside car. + +The procession presently came in sight, and a grand show it made--not of +the strictly popular and political sort, for it was made up of guilds +and other organised bodies on foot and on horseback, marching in +companies--but imposing by reason of its numbers, and of the flaring +torches. Of these there were not so many as there should have been to do +justice to the procession. The crowd cheered from time to time, with +that curious Irish cheer which it is often difficult to distinguish from +groaning, but the only explosive and uproarious greeting given to the +visitors in our neighbourhood came from a member of "the devout female +sex," a young lady who stood up between two friends on the top of a car +very near us, and imperilled both her equilibrium and theirs by wildly +waving her hand-kerchief in the air, and crying out at the top of a +somewhat husky voice, "Three cheers for Mecklenburg Street! Three +cheers for Mecklenburg Street!" + +This made the crowd very hilarious, but as Lord Ernest's local knowledge +did not enable him to enlighten me as to the connection between +Mecklenburg Street and the liberation of Ireland, I must leave the +mystery of their mirth unsolved till a more convenient season. + +At Rutland Square the crowd was tightly packed, but perfectly +well-behaved, and the guests were enthusiastically cheered. But even +before they had entered the house of Mr. Walker it began to break up, +and long files of people wended their way to see "the carriages" +hastening with their lovely freight to the Castle. Thither Lord Ernest +has just gone, arrayed in a captivating Court costume of black velvet, +with cut-steel buttons, sword, and buckles--just the dress in which +Washington used to receive his guests at the White House, and in which +Senator Seward, I remember, insisted in 1860 on getting himself +presented by Mr. Dallas to Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +SION HOUSE, COUNTY TYRONE, _Feb. 3d._--Hearing nothing from Mr. Davitt +yesterday, I gave up the idea of attending the Ripon-Morley meeting last +night. As I have come to Ireland to hear what people living in Ireland +have to say about Irish affairs, I see no particular advantage in +listening to imported eloquence on the subject, even from so clever a +man as his books prove Mr. Morley to be, and from so conscientious a man +as an acquaintance, going back to the days when he sat with Kingsley at +the feet of Maurice, makes me believe Lord Ripon to be. How much either +of them knows about Ireland is another matter. A sarcastic Nationalist +acquaintance of mine, with whom I conversed about the visitors +yesterday, assured me it had been arranged that Lord Ripon should wear +the Star of the Garter, "so the people might know him from Morley." When +I observed that Dublin must have a short memory to forget so soon the +face of a Chief Secretary, he replied: "Forget his face? Why, they never +saw his face! It's little enough he was here, and indoors he kept when +here he was. He shook hands last night with more Irishmen than ever he +spoke to while he was Chief Secretary; for he used to say then, I am +told, in the Reform Club, that the only way to get along with the Irish +was to have nothing to do with them!" + +There was a sharp discussion, I was told, in the private councils of the +Committee yesterday as to whether the Queen should be "boycotted," and +the loyal sentiments usual in connection with her Majesty's name dropped +from the proceedings. I believe it was finally settled that this might +put the guests into an awkward position, both of them having worn her +Majesty's uniform of State as public servants of the Crown. + +During the day I walked through many of the worst quarters of Dublin. I +met fewer beggars in proportion than one encounters in such parts of +London as South Kensington and other residential regions not +over-frequented by the perambulating policemen; but I was struck by the +number of persons--and particularly of women--who wore that most +pathetic of all the liveries of distress, "the look of having seen +better days." In the most wretched streets I traversed there was more +squalor than suffering--the dirtiest and most ragged people in them +showing no signs of starvation, or even of insufficient rations; and +certainly in the most dismal alleys and by-streets, I came upon nothing +so revolting as the hives of crowded misery which make certain of the +tenement house quarters of New York more gruesome than the Cour des +Miracles itself used to be. + +This morning at 7.25 A.M. I left Dublin with Lord Ernest Hamilton for +Strabane. My attention was distracted from the reports of the great +meeting by the varied and picturesque beauty of the landscape, through +which we ran at a very respectable rate in a very comfortable carriage. +We passed Dundalk, where Edward Bruce got himself crowned king of +Ireland, after his brother Robert had won a throne in Scotland. + +These masterful Normans, all over Europe from Apulia to Britain, worked +out the problem of "satisfied nationalities" much more successfully and +simply than Napoleon III. in our own day. If Edward Bruce broke down +where Robert succeeded, the causes of his failure may perhaps be worth +considering even now by people who have set themselves the task in our +times of establishing "an Irish nationality." Leaving out the +Cromwellian English of Tipperary and the South, and the Scotch who have +done for Ulster, what he aimed at for all Ireland, they have very much +the same materials to deal with as those which he dismally failed to +fashion. + +Drogheda stands beautifully in a deep valley through which flows the +Boyne Water, spanned by one of the finest viaducts in Europe. Here, two +years after the discovery of America, Poyning's Parliament enacted that +all laws passed in Ireland must be subject to approval by the English +Privy Council. I wonder nobody has proposed a modification of this form +of Home Rule for Ireland now. Earl Grey's recent suggestion that +Parliamentary government be suspended for ten years in Ireland, which I +heard warmly applauded by some able lawyers and business men in Dublin, +involves like this an elimination of the Westminster debates from the +problem of government in Ireland. As we passed Drogheda, Father Burke's +magnificent presence and thrilling voice came back to me out of the +mist of years, describing with an indignant pathos, never to be +forgotten, the fearful scenes which followed the surrender of Sir Arthur +Ashton's garrison, when "for the glory of God," and "to prevent the +further effusion of blood," Oliver ordered all the officers to be +knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed, and the +rest shipped as slaves to the Barbadoes. But how different was the +spirit in which the great Dominican recalled these events from that in +which the "popular orators," scattering firebrands and death, delight to +dwell upon them! + +At Strabane station we found a handsome outside car waiting on us, and +drove off briskly for this charming place, the home of one of the most +active and prosperous manufacturers in Ireland. A little more than half +way between the station and Sion House, Mr. Herdman met us afoot. We +jumped off and walked up with him. Sion House, built for him by his +brother, an accomplished architect, is a handsome Queen Anne mansion. It +stands on a fine knoll, commanding lovely views on all sides. Below it, +and beyond a little stream, rise the extensive flax-mills which are the +life of the place, under the eye and within touch of the hand of the +master. These works were established here by Mr. Herdman's father, after +he had made a vain attempt to establish them at Ballyshannon in Donegal, +half a century ago. As all salmon fishers know, the water-power is +admirable at Ballyshannon, where the Erne pours in torrents down a +thirty feet fall. But the ignorance and indolence of the people made +Ballyshannon quite impossible, with this result, that while the Erne +still flows unvexed to the sea, and the people of Ballyshannon live very +much as they lived in 1835, here at Sion the Mourne enables 1100 Irish +operatives to work up L90,000 worth of Irish flax every year into yarn +for the Continent, and to divide among themselves some L20,000 a year in +wages. + +After luncheon we walked with Mr. Herdman through the mills and the +model village which has grown up around them. Everywhere we found order, +neatness, and thrift. The operatives are almost all people of the +country, Catholics and Protestants in almost equal numbers. "I find it +wise," said Mr. Herdman, "to give neither religion a preponderance, and +to hold my people of both religions to a common standard of fidelity and +efficiency." The greatest difficulty he has had to contend with is the +ineradicable objection of some of the peasantry to continuous industry. +He told us of a strapping lass of eighteen who came to the mills, but +very soon gave up and went back to the parental shebeen in the mountains +rather than get up early in the morning to earn fourteen shillings a +week. + +Three weeks of her work would have paid the year's rent of the paternal +holding. + +In the village, which is regularly laid out, is a reading-room for the +workpeople. There are cricket clubs, and one of the mill buildings (just +now crammed with bales of flax) has been fitted up by Mr. Herdman as a +theatre. There is a drop-curtain representing the Lake of Como, and the +flies are flanked by life-size copies in plaster of the Apollo Belvidere +and the Medicean Venus. This is a development I had hardly looked to see +in Ulster. + +After we had gone over the works thoroughly, Mr. Herdman took us back, +on a transparent pretext of enlightened curiosity touching certain +qualities of spun flax, to give us a glimpse of the "beauty of Sion"--a +well-grown graceful girl of fifteen or sixteen summers. She +concentrated her attention, as soon as we appeared, upon certain +mysterious bobbins and spindles, with an exaggerated determination which +proved how completely she saw through our futile and frivolous devices. +Mr. Herdman told us, as we came away discomfited, a droll story of the +ugliest girl ever employed here--a girl so preternaturally ugly that one +of his best blacksmiths having been entrapped into offering to marry +her, lost heart of grace on the eve of the sacrifice, and, taking ship +at Derry for America, fled from Sion for ever. + +In the evening came, with other guests, Dr. Webb, Q.C., Regius Professor +of Laws and Public Orator of Trinity at Dublin, well known both as a +Grecian capable of composing "skits" as clever as the verses yclept +Homerstotle--in which the _Saturday Review_ served up the Donnelly +nonsense about Bacon and Shakespeare--and as a translator of _Faust_. He +was abused by the Loyalists at Dublin, in 1884, for his defence of P.N. +Fitzgerald, the leader who beat Parnell and Archbishop Croke so badly at +Thurles the other day; and he is in a fair way now to be denounced with +equal fervour by the Nationalists as a County Court judge in Donegal. +He finds this post no sinecure. "I do as much work in five days," he +said to-night, "as the Superior Judges do in five weeks." + +He is a staunch Unionist, and laughs at the notion that the Irish people +care one straw for a Parliament in Dublin. "Why should they?" he said. +"What did any Parliament in Dublin ever do to gratify the one real +passion of the Irish peasant--his hunger for a bit of land? So far as +the Irish people are concerned, Home Rule means simply agrarian reform. +Would they get that from a Parliament in Dublin? If the British +Parliament evicts the landlords and makes the tenants lords of the land, +they will be face to face with Davitt's demand for the nationalising of +the land. Do you suppose they will like to see the lawyers and the +politicians organising a labour agitation against the 'strong farmers'? +The last thing they want is a Parliament in Dublin. Lord Ashbourne's Act +carries in its principle the death-warrant of the 'National League.'" + +Some excellent stories were told in the picturesque smoking-room after +dinner, one of a clever and humorous, sensible and non-political priest, +who, being taken to task by some of his brethren for giving the cold +shoulder to the Nationalist movement, excused himself by saying, "I +should like to be a patriot; but I can't be. It's all along of the +rheumatism which prevents me from lying out at nights in a ditch with a +rifle." The same priest being reproached by others of the cloth with a +fondness for the company of some of the resident landlords in his +neighbourhood, replied, "It's in the blood, you see. My poor mother, God +rest her soul! she always had a liking for the quality. As for my dear +father, he was just a blundering peasant like the rest of ye!" + + +GWEEDORE, _Saturday, 4th Feb._--A good day's work to-day! + +We left our hospitable friends at Sion House early in the morning. The +sun was shining brightly; the air so soft and bland that the thrushes +were singing like mad creatures in the trees and the shrubbery; and the +sky was more blue than Italy. "A foine day it is, sorr," said our jarvey +as we took our seats on the car. There is some point in the old Irish +sarcasm that English travellers in Ireland only see one side of the +country, because they travel through it on the outside car. But to make +this point tell, four people must travel on the car. In that case they +must sit two on a side, each pair facing one side only of the landscape. +It is a very different business when you travel on an outside car alone, +with the driver sitting on one side of it, or with one companion only, +when the driver occupies the little perch in front between the sides of +the car. When you travel thus, the outside car is the best thing in the +world, after a good roadster, for taking you rapidly over a country, and +enabling you to command all points of the horizon. Double up one leg on +the seat, let the other dangle freely, using the step as a stirrup, and +you go rattling along almost as if you were on horseback. + +We drove through a long suburb of Strabane into the busiest quarter of +the busy little place. The names on the shops were predominantly +Scotch--Maxwells, Stewarts, Hamiltons, Elliotts. I saw but one Celtic +name, M'Ilhenny, and one German, Straub. I changed gold for enormous +Bank of Ireland notes at a neat local bank, and the cheery landlord of +the Abercorn Arms gave us a fresh car to take us on to Letterkenny, a +drive of some twenty miles. + +The car came up like a small blizzard, flying about at the heels of an +uncanny little grey mare. Lord Ernest knew the beast well, and said she +was twenty-five years old. She behaved like an unbroken filly at first, +but soon striking her pace, turned out a capital goer, and took us on +without turning a hair till her work was done. The weather continued to +be good, but clouds rolled up around the horizon. + +"It'll always be bad weather," said our saturnine jarvey, "when the +Judges come to hold court, and never be good again till they rise." + +Here is a consequence of alien rule in Ireland, never, so far as I know, +brought to the notice of Parliament. + +"Why is this?" I asked; "is it because of the time of the year they +select?" + +"The time of year, sorr?" he replied, glancing compassionately at me. +"No, not at all; it's because of the oaths!" + +We reached Letterkenny in time for a very good luncheon at "Hegarty's," +one of the neatest little inns I have ever found in a place of the size. +It stands on the long main street which is really the town. At one end +of this street is a very pretty row of picturesque ivy-clad brick +cottages, built by a landlord whose property and handsome park bound +the town on the west; and the street winds alongside the slope of a hill +rising from the bank of the Swilly river. A fair was going on. The +little market-place was alive with bustling, chattering, and chaffering +country-folk. Smartly-dressed young damsels tripped in and out of the +neat well-filled shops, and in front of a row of semidetached villas, +like a suburban London terrace, on the hill opposite "Hegarty's," a +German band smote the air with discordant fury. Decidedly a lively, +prosperous little town is Letterkenny, nor was I surprised to learn from +a communicative gentleman, nursing his cane near the inn-door, that +advantage would be taken of the presence of the Hussars sent to keep +order at Dunfanaghy, to "give a ball." + +"But I thought all the country was in arms about the trials at +Dunfanaghy," I said. + +"In arms about the trials at Dunfanaghy? Oh no; they'll never be locked +up, Father M'Fadden and Mr. Blane. And the people here at Letterkenny, +they've more sinse than at Dunfanaghy. Have you heard of the champagne?" + +Upon this he proceeded to tell me, as a grand joke, that Father +M'Fadden and Mr. Blane, M.P., having declined to accept the tea offered +them by the authorities during their detention, they had been permitted +to order what they liked from the local hotel-keeper. After the trial +was over, and they were released on bail to prosecute their appeal, the +hotel-keeper demanded of the authorities payment of his bill, including +two bottles of champagne ordered to refresh the member for Armagh! + +A conspicuous, smart, spick-and-span house on the main street, built of +brick and wood, with a verandah, and picked out in bright colours, was +pointed out to me by this amiable citizen as the residence of a +"returned American." This was a man, he said, who had made some money in +America, but got tired of living there, and had come back to end his +days in his native place He was a good man, my informant added, "only he +puts on too many airs." + +A remarkably handsome, rosy-faced young groom, a model of manhood in +vigour and grace, presently brought us up a wagonette with a pair of +stout nags, and a driver in a suit of dark-brown frieze, whose head +seemed to have been driven down between his shoulders. He never lifted +it up all the way to Gweedore, but he proved to be a capital jarvey +notwithstanding, and knew the country as well as his horses. + +Not long after leaving the town by a road which passes the huge County +Asylum (now literally crammed, I am told, with lunatics), we passed a +ruined church on the banks of a stream. Here the country people, it +seems, halt and wash their feet before entering Letterkenny, failing +which ceremony they may expect a quarrel with somebody before they get +back to their homes. This wholesome superstition doubtless was +established ages ago by some good priest, when priests thought it their +duty to be the preachers and makers of peace. + +We soon left the wooded country of the Swilly and began to climb into +the grand and melancholy Highlands of Donegal. The road was as fine as +any in the Scottish Highlands, and despite the keen chill wind, the +glorious and ever-changing panoramas of mountain and strath through +which we drove were a constant delight, until, just as we came within +full range of Muckish, the giant of Donegal, the weather finally broke +down into driving mists and blinding rain. + +We pulled up near a picturesque little shebeen, to water the horses and +get our Highland wraps well about us. Out came a hardy, cheery old +farmer. He swept the heavens with the eye of a mountaineer, and +exclaimed:--"Ah! it's a coorse day intirely, it is." "A coorse day +intirely" from that moment it continued to be. + +Happily the curtain had not fallen before we caught a grand passing +glimpse of the romantic gorge of Glen Veagh, closed and commanded in the +shadowy distance by the modern castle of Glenveagh, the mountain home of +my charming country-woman, Mrs. Adair. + +Thanks to its irregular serpentine outline, and to the desolate majesty +of the hills which environ it, Lough Veagh, though not a large sheet of +water, may well be what it is reputed to be, a rival of the finest lochs +in Scotland. No traces are now discernible on its shores of the too +celebrated evictions of Glen Veagh. But from the wild and rugged aspect +of the surrounding country it is probable enough that these evictions +were to the evicted a blessing in disguise, and that their descendants +are now enjoying, beyond the Atlantic, a measure of prosperity and of +happiness which neither their own labour nor the most liberal +legislation could ever have won for them here. We caught sight, as we +drove through Mrs. Adair's wide and rocky domain, of wire fences, and I +believe it is her intention to create here a small deer forest. This +ought to be as good a stalking country as the Scottish Highlands, +provided the people can be got to like "stalking" stags better than +landlords and agents. + +Long before we reached Glen Veagh we had bidden farewell, not only to +the hedges and walls of Tyrone and Eastern Donegal, but to the +"ditches," which anywhere but in Ireland would be called "embankments," +and entered upon great stone-strewn wastes of land seemingly unreclaimed +and irreclaimable. Huge boulders lay tossed and tumbled about as if they +had been whirled through the air by the cyclones of some prehistoric +age, and dropped at random when the wild winds wearied of the fun. The +last landmark we made out through the gathering storm was the pinnacled +crest of Errigal. Of Dunlewy, esteemed the loveliest of the Donegal +lakes, we could see little or nothing as we hurried along the highway, +which follows its course down to the Clady, the river of Gweedore; and +we blessed the memory of Lord George Hill when suddenly turning from +the wind and the rain into what seemed to be a mediaeval courtyard +flanked by trees, we pulled up in the bright warm light of an open +doorway, shook ourselves like Newfoundland dogs, and were welcomed by a +frank, good-looking Scottish host to a glowing peat fire in this really +comfortable little hotel, the central pivot of a most interesting +experiment in civilisation. + + +GWEEDORE, _Sunday, Feb. 5th._--A morning as soft and bright almost as +April succeeded the stormy night. Errigal lifted his bold irregular +outlines royally against an azure sky. The sunshine glinted merrily on +the swift waters of the Clady, which flows almost beneath our windows +from Dunlewy Lough to the sea. The birds were singing in the trees, +which all about our hotel make what in the West would be called an +"opening" in the wide and woodless expanse of hill and bog. + +This hotel was for many years the home of Lord George Hill, who built it +in the hope of making Gweedore, what in England or Scotland it would +long ago have become, a prosperous watering-place. Now that a +battle-royal is going on between Lord George's son and heir and the +tenants on the estate, organised by Father M'Fadden under the "Plan of +Campaign," it is important to know something of the history of the +place. + +Is this a case of the sons of the soil expropriated by an alien and +confiscating Government to enrich a ruthless invader? I was told by a +Nationalist acquaintance in Dublin that the owner of Gweedore is a near +kinsman of the Marquis of Londonderry, and that the property came to him +by inheritance under an ancient confiscation of the estates of the +O'Dounels of Tyrconnel. All of this I find is embroidery. + +The "Carlisle" room, which our landlord has assigned to us, contains a +number of books, the property of the late Lord George, and ample +materials are here for making out the annals of Gweedore. Lord George, +it seems, was a posthumous son of the fourth Marquis of Downshire, and a +nephew of that Marchioness of Salisbury who was burned to death with the +west wing of Hatfield House half a century ago. He inherited nothing in +Donegal, nor was any provision made for him under his father's will. His +elder brothers made up and settled upon him a sum of twenty thousand +pounds. He entered the Army, and being quartered for a time at +Letterkenny, shot and fished all about Donegal. He found the people here +kindly and friendly, but in a deplorable state of ignorance and of +destitution. Their holdings under sundry small proprietors were entirely +unimproved, and as their families increased, these holdings were cut up +by themselves into even smaller strips under the system known as +"rundale,"--each son as he grew up taking off a slice of the paternal +holding, putting up a hut with mud, and scratching the soil after his +own rude fashion. This custom, necessarily fatal to civilisation, +doubtless came down from the traditional times when the lands of a sept +were held in common by the sept, before the native chieftains had +converted themselves into landlords, and defeated Sir John Davies's +attempt to convert their tribal kinsmen into peasant proprietors. + +Whatever its origin, it had reduced Gweedore, or "Tullaghobegly," fifty +years ago to barbarism. Nearly nine thousand people then dwelt here with +never a landlord among them. There was no "Coercion" in Gweedore, +neither was there a coach nor a car to be found in the whole district. +The nominal owners of the small properties into which the district was +divided knew little and cared less about them. The rents were usually +"made by the tenants,"--a step in advance, it will be seen, of the +system which the collective wisdom of Great Britain has for the last +twenty years been trying to establish in Ireland. But they were only +paid when it was convenient. An agent of one of these properties who +travelled fourteen miles one day to collect some rents gave it up and +drove back again, because the "day was too bad" for him to wander about +in the mountains on the chance of finding the tenants at home and +disposed to give him a trifle on account. On most of the properties +there were arrears of eight, ten, and twenty years' standing. + +There was one priest in the district, and one National School, the +schoolmaster, with a family of nine persons, receiving the munificent +stipend of eight pounds a year. These nine thousand people, depending +absolutely upon tillage and pasture, owned among them all one cart and +one plough, eight saddles, two pillions, eleven bridles, and thirty-two +rakes! They had no means of harrowing their lands but with meadow rakes, +and the farms were so small that from four to ten farms could be +harrowed in a day with one rake. + +Their beds were of straw, mountain grass, or green and dried rushes. +Among the nine thousand people there were but two feather-beds, and but +eight beds stuffed with chaff. There were but two stables and six +cow-houses in the whole district. None of the women owned more than one +shift, nor was there a single bonnet among them all, nor a looking-glass +costing more than threepence. + +The climate and the scenery took the fancy of Lord George. He made up +his mind to see what could be done with this forgotten corner of the +world, and to that end bought up as he could the small and scattered +properties, till he had invested the greater part of his small fortune, +and acquired about twenty thousand acres of land. Of this, little was +fit for cultivation, even with the help of capital and civilised +management. There was not a road in the district, nor a drain. + +Lord George came and established himself here. He went to work +systematically to improve the country, reclaiming bog-lands, building +roads, and laying out the property into regular farms. He went about +among the people himself, trying to get their confidence, and to let +them know what he wanted to do for them, and with their help. + +For a long time they wouldn't believe him to be a lord at all, "because +he spoke Irish"; and the breaking up of the rundale system, under which +they had lived in higgledy-piggledy laziness, exasperated them greatly. +Of the first man who took a fenced and well-defined farm from Lord +George, and went to work on it, the others observed that he would come +to no good by it, because he would "have to keep a maid just to talk to +his wife." Men could not be got for any wages to work at draining, or at +making the "ditches" or embankments to delineate the new holdings; and +when Lord George found adventurous "tramps" willing to earn a few +shillings by honest work of the kind, conspiracies were formed to undo +by night what was done by day. However, Lord George persevered. + +There was not a shop, nor a dispensary, nor a doctor, nor a warehouse, +nor a quay for landing goods in this whole populous and sea-washed +region. He put up storehouses, built a little harbour at Bunbeg, +established a dispensary, got a doctor to settle in the district, and +finally put up the hotel in which we are. He advanced money to tenants +disposed to improve their holdings. Finding the women, as usual, more +thrifty and industrious than the men, and gifted with a natural aptitude +for the loom and the spindle, he introduced the weaving of woollen yarn +into stout frieze stuffs and foot-gear for both sexes. This was in 1840, +and in 1854 Gweedore hand-knit socks and stockings were sold to the +amount of L500, being just about the annual estimated rents of all the +properties bought by Lord George at the time when he bought them in +1838! But with this difference: The owners from whom Lord George bought +the properties got their L500 very irregularly, when they got it at all; +whereas the wives and daughters of the tenants, who made the socks and +stockings, were paid their L500 in cash. + +Clearly in Gweedore I have a case not of the children of the soil +despoiled and trampled upon by the stranger, but of the honest +investment of alien capital in Irish land, and of the administration by +the proprietor himself of the Irish property so acquired for the benefit +alike of the owner and of the occupiers of the land. + +That the deplorable state in which he found the people was mainly due to +their own improvidence and gregarious incapacity is also tolerably +clear. On the west coast of Norway, dear to the heart of the +salmon-fisher, you find people living under conditions certainly no more +favourable than here exist. North of the Hardanger Fjord, the spring +opens only in June. The farmers grow only oats and barley; but they have +no market except for the barley, and live chiefly by the pasturage. It +is as rocky a region as Donegal. But the Norsemen never try to make the +land do more than it is capable of doing. With them the oldest son takes +the farm and works it. The juniors are welcome to work on the farm if +they like for their brother, but they are not allowed to cut it up. +There is no rundale in Norway; and when the cadets see that there is no +room for them they quietly "pull up stakes," and go forth to seek a new +home, no matter where. + +For fourteen years Lord George Hill spent on Gweedore all the rents he +received from it, and a great deal more. During that time the relations +between the people and their new landlord seem to have been, in the +main, most friendly, notwithstanding his constant efforts to break up +their old habits, or, to use their own language, to "bother them." But +there were no "evictions"; rents were not raised even where the tenants +were visibly able to pay better rents; prizes were given annually for +the best and neatest cottages, for the best crops of turnips (neither +turnips, parsnips, nor carrots were there at Gweedore when Lord George +bought the estate), for the best pigs (there was not a pig in Gweedore +in 1838!), for calves and colts, for the best fences, the best ordered +tillage farms, the best labourers' cottages, the best beds and bedding, +the best butter, the best woollen goods made on the estate. The old +rundale plan of dividing up the land among the children was put a stop +to, and every tenant was encouraged not to make his holding smaller, but +to add to and enlarge it. A corn-mill, saw-mill, and flax-mill were +established. In 1838 there was not a baker within ten miles. In 1852 the +local baker was driving a good business in good bread. The tenant's +wife, for whom in 1838 a single shift was a social superiority, in 1852 +went shopping at Bunbeg for the latest fashions from Derry or Dublin. + +Whatever "landlordism" may mean elsewhere in Ireland, it is plain enough +that in the history of Gweedore it has meant the difference between +savage squalor and civilisation. + +Lord George Hill died in 1879, the year in which the Land League began +its operations. He bequeathed this property to his son, Captain Hill, by +whom the management of it has been left to agents. After Lord George's +death two tracts of mountain pasture, reserved by him to feed imported +sheep, were let to the tenants, who by that time had come to own quite a +considerable number, some thousands, of live stock, cattle, horses, and +sheep. + +Concurrently with this concession to the tenants the provisions made by +Lord George against the subdivision of holdings began to give way. +Father M'Fadden, combining the position of President of the National +League with that of parish priest, seems to have favoured this tendency, +and to have encouraged the putting up of new houses on reduced holdings +to accommodate an increasing population. A flood which in August 1880 +damaged the chapel and caused the death of five persons gave him an +opportunity of bringing before the British public the condition of the +people in a letter to the London _Times_, which elicited a very generous +response, several hundred pounds, it is said, having been sent to him +from London alone. Large contributions of relief were also made to +Gweedore from the Duchess of Marlborough's Fund, and Gweedore became a +standing butt of British benevolence. Two results seem to have followed, +naturally enough,--a growing indisposition on the part of the tenants to +pay rent, and a rapid rise in the value of tenant rights. With the +National League standing between them and the landlord, with the British +Parliament legislating year after year in favour of the Irish tenant and +against the Irish landlord, and with the philanthropic public ready to +respond to any appeal for help made on their behalf, the tenants at +Gweedore naturally became a privileged class. In no other way at least +can I explain the extraordinary fact that tenant rights at Gweedore have +been sold, according to Lord Cowper's Blue-book of 1886, during the +period of the greatest alleged distress and congestion in this district, +at prices representing from forty to a hundred-and-thirty years' +purchase of the landlord's rent! + +In this Blue-book the Rev. Father M'Fadden appears as receiving no less +than L115 sterling for the tenant-right sold by him of ground, the head +rent of which is L1, 2s. 6d. a year. The worst enemy of Father M'Fadden +will hardly suspect him, I hope, of taking such a sum as this from a +tenant farmer for the right to starve to death by inches.[13] + +A shrewd Galway man, now here, who seems to know the region well, and +likes both the scenery and the people, tells me that the troubles which +have now culminated in the arrest of Father M'Fadden have been +aggravated by the vacillation of Captain Hill, and by the foibles of his +agent, Colonel Dopping, who not long ago brought down Mr. Gladstone with +his unloaded rifle. That the tenants as a body have been, or now are, +unable to pay their rent he does not believe. On the contrary, he thinks +them, as a body, rather well off. Certainly I have seen and spoken with +none of them about the roads to-day who were not hearty-looking men, and +in very good case. Colonel Dopping, according to my Galwegian, is not an +Englishman, but a Longford Irishman of good family, who got his +training in India as an official of the Woods and Forests in Bengal. "He +is not a bad-hearted man, nor unkind," said my Galwegian, "but he is +too much of a Bengal tiger in his manner. He went into the cottages +personally and lectured the people, and that they never will stand. They +don't require or expect you to believe what they say--in fact they have +little respect for you if you do--but they like to have the agent +pretend that he believes them, and then go on and show that he don't. +But he must never lose his temper about it. Colonel Dopping, I have +heard, argued with an old woman one day who was telling him more yarns +than were ever spun into cloth in Gweedore, till she picked up her cup +of tea and threw it in his face. He flounced out of the cottage, and +ordered the police to arrest her. That did him more harm than if he had +shot a dozen boys." "What with the temper of Colonel Dopping and the +vacillation of Captain Hill, who is always of the mind of the last man +that speaks to him, Father M'Fadden has had it all his own way. Captain +Hill's claim was for L1800 of arrears, long arrears too, and L400 of +costs. How much the people paid in under the Plan of Campaign nobody +knows but Father M'Fadden. But he is a clever _padre_, and he played +Captain Hill till he finally gave up the costs, and settled for L1450." + +"And this sum represents what?" + +"It represents in round numbers about two years' income from an estate +in which Captain Hill's father must have invested, first and last, more +nearly L40,000 than L20,000 of money that never came out of it." + +"That doesn't sound like a very good operation. But isn't the question, +Whether the tenants have earned this sum, such as it is, out of the land +let to them by Captain Hill?" + +"No, not exactly, I think. You must remember there are some twelve +hundred families living here on land bought with Lord George's money, +and enjoying all the advantages which the place owes to his investment +and his management, much more than to any labour or skill of theirs. You +must look at their rents as accommodation rents. Suppose they earn the +rent in Scotland, or England, or Tyrone, or wherever you like, the +question is, What do they get for it from Captain Hill? They get a +holding with land enough to grow potatoes on, and with as much free fuel +as ever they like, and with free pasture for their beasts, and all this +they get on the average, mind you, for no more than ten shillings a +year! Why, there was a time, I can assure you, when the women here +earned the value of all the Hill rents by knitting stockings and making +woollen stuffs. You see the stuffs lying here in this window that they +make even now, and good stuffs too. But before the League boycotted the +agency here, the agency ten years ago used to pay out L900 in a year, +where it pays less than L100 to the women for their work." + +"Why did the League do this?" + +"Why? Why, because it wanted to control the work itself, and to know +just what it brings into the place. You must remember Father M'Fadden is +the President of the League, and the people will do anything for him. I +have heard of one old woman who sat up of nights last year knitting +socks to send up to London, to pay the Christmas dues to the +Father,--six shillings' worth." + +"And are these stuffs here in the hotel made for the agency you speak +of?" + +"Oh no; these are just made by women that know the hotel, and Mr. +Robinson here, he kindly takes in the stuffs. You see the name of every +woman on every one of them that made it, and the price. If a stranger +buys some, he pays the money to Mr. Robinson, and so it goes to the +women, and no commission charged." + +The "stuffs" are certainly excellent, very evenly woven; and the +patterns, all devised, I am told, by the women themselves, very simple +and tasteful. The only dyes used are got by the women also from the +sea-weeds and the kelp, which must be counted among the resources of the +place. The browns and ochres thus produced are both soft and vivid; +while nothing can be better than a peculiar warm grey, produced by a +skilful mingling of the undyed wools. + +"What, then, causes the distress for which the name of Gweedore is a +synonym?" I asked. + +"It doesn't exist," responded my Galwegian; "that is, there is no such +distress in Gweedore as you find in Connemara, for instance;[14] but +what distress there is in Gweedore is due much more to the habits the +people have been getting into of late years, and to the idleness of +them, than to any pressure of the rents you hear about, or even to the +poverty of the soil. Go down to the store at Bunbeg, and see what they +buy and go in debt for! You won't find in any such place as Bunbeg in +England such things. And even this don't measure it; for, you see, +two-thirds of them are not free to deal at Bunbeg." + +"Why not? Is Bunbeg 'boycotted'?" + +"No, not at all. But they are on the books of the 'Gombeen man'--Sweeney +of Dungloe and Burtonport. They're always in debt to him for the meal; +and then he backs the travelling tea-pedlars, and the bakers that carry +around cakes, and all these run up the accounts all the time. Tot up +what these people lay out for tea at four shillings a pound--and they +won't have cheap tea--and what they pay for meal, and what they pay for +interest, and the 'testimonials,'--they paid for the monument here to +O'Donnell, the Donegal man that murdered Carey,--and the dues to the +priest, and you'll find the L700 or so they don't pay the landlord going +in other directions three and four times over." + +"Then they are falling back into all the old laziness, the men +sauntering about, or sitting and smoking, while the women do all the +work." + +The maid having told us Mass would be performed at noon, I walked with +Lord Ernest a mile or so up the road to Derrybeg, to see the people +thronging down from the hills; the women in their picturesque fashion +wearing their bright shawls drawn over their heads. But the maid had +deceived us. The Mass was fixed for eleven, and I suspect her of being a +Protestant in disguise. + +On the way back we met Mr. Burke, the resident magistrate. He has a neat +house here, with a garden, and had come over from Dunfanaghy to see his +wife. He meant to return before dark. The country was quiet enough, he +said; but there were some troublesome fellows about, keeping up the +excitement over the arrest at Father M'Fadden's trial of Father +Stephens--a young priest recently from Liverpool, who has become the +curate of quite another Father M'Fadden--the parish priest of +Falcarragh, and is giving his local superior a great deal of trouble by +his activity in connection with the "Plan of Campaign." Mr. Wybrants +Olphert of Ballyconnell, the chief landlord of Falcarragh, has been +"boycotted," on suspicion of promoting the arrest of the two priests. +Five policemen have been put into his house. At Falcarragh, where six +policemen are usually stationed, there are now forty. Mr. Burke +evidently thinks, though he did not say so, that Father Stephens has +been spoiled of his sleep by the laurels of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore. +He is to be tried at Dunfanaghy on Tuesday, and there are now 150 troops +quartered there--Rifles and Hussars. + +"Are they not boycotted?" I asked. + +"No. The people rather enjoy the bustle and the show, not to speak of +the money the soldiers spend." + +Lord Ernest, who knows Mr. Olphert, sent him over a message by Mr. Burke +that we would drive over to-morrow, and pay our respects to him at +Ballyconnell. From this Mr. Burke tried to dissuade us, but what he told +us naturally increased our wish to go. + +After luncheon I ordered a car, and drove to Derrybeg, to call there on +Father M'Fadden, Lord Ernest, who has already seen him, agreeing to call +there for me on his return from a walk. We passed much reclaimed +bogland, mostly now in grass, and looking fairly well; many piles of +turf and clusters of cottages, well-built, but not very neatly kept. +From each, as we passed, the inevitable cur rushed out and barked +himself hoarse. Then came a waste of bog and boulders, and then a long, +neat stone wall, well coped with unhewn stone, which announced the +vicinity of Father M'Fadden's house, quite the best structure in the +place after the chapel and the hotel. It is of stone, with a neat side +porch, in which, as I drove up, I descried Father M'Fadden, in his trim +well-fitting clerical costume, standing and talking with an elderly +lady. I passed through a handsome iron wicket, and introduced myself to +him. He received me with much courtesy, and asked me to walk into his +well-furnished comfortable study, where a lady, his sister, to whom he +presented me, sat reading by the fire. + +I told Father M'Fadden I had come to get his view of methods and things +at Gweedore, and he gave it to me with great freedom and fluency. He is +a typical Celt in appearance, a M'Fadden Roe, sanguine by temperament, +with an expression at once shrewd and enthusiastic, a most flexible +persuasive voice. All the trouble at Gweedore, he thought, came of the +agents. "Agents had been the curse both of Ireland and of the landlord. +The custom being to pay them by commissions on the sums collected, and +not a regular salary, the more they can screw either out of the soil, or +out of any other resources of the tenants, the better it is for them. At +Gweedore the people earn what they can, not out of the soil, but out of +their labour exported to Scotland, or England, or America. Only +yesterday," he continued, turning to his neat mahogany desk and taking +up a letter, "I received this with a remittance from America to pay the +rent of one of my people." + +"This was in connection," I asked, "with the 'Plan of Campaign' and your +contest here?" + +"Yes," he replied; "and a girl of my parish went over to Scotland +herself and got the money due there for another family, and brought it +back to me here. You see they make me a kind of savings-bank, and have +done so for a long time, long before the 'Plan of Campaign' was talked +about as it is now." + +This was interesting, as I had heard it said by a Nationalist in Dublin +that the "Plan of Campaign" was originally suggested by Father M'Fadden. +He made no such claim himself, however, and I made no allusion to this +aspect of the matter. "I have been living here for fifteen years, and +they listen to me as to nobody else." + +In these affairs with the agents, he had always told his people that +"whenever a settlement came to be made, cash alone in the hand of the +person representing them could make it properly." "Cash I must have," he +said, "and hold the cash ready for the moment. When I had worked out a +settlement with Captain Hill, I had a good part of the money in my hand +ready to pay down. L1450 was the sum total agreed upon, and after the +further collection, necessitated by the settlement, there was a deficit +of about L200. I wrote to Professor Stuart," he added, after a pause, +"that I wanted about L200 of the sum-total. But more has come in since +then. This remittance, from America yesterday, for example." + +"Do they send such remittances without being asked for them?" I +inquired. + +"Yes; they are now and again sending money, and some of them don't send, +but bring it. Some of them go out to America now as they used to go to +England--just to work and earn some money, and come back. + +"If they get on tolerably well they stay for a while, but they find +America is more expensive than Ireland, and if, for any cause, they get +out of work there, they come back to Ireland to spend what they have. +Naturally, you see," said Father M'Fadden, "they find a certain pleasure +to be seen by their old friends in the old place, after borrowing the +four pounds perhaps to take them to America, coming back with the money +jingling in their pockets, and in good clothes, and with a watch and a +chain--and a high hat. And there is in the heart of the Irishman an +eternal longing for his native land constantly luring him back to +Ireland. All do not succeed, though, in your country," he said. "We hear +of two out of ten perhaps who do very well. They take care we hear of +that. The rest disappear, and are never heard of again." + +"Then you do not encourage emigration?" I, asked, "even although the +people cannot earn their living from the soil?" + +Father M'Fadden hesitated a moment, and then replied, "No, for things +should be so arranged that they may earn their living, not out of the +country, but on the soil at home. It is to that I want to bring the +condition of the district." + +At this point Lord Ernest Hamilton came up and knocked at the door. He +was most courteously received by Father M'Fadden. To my query why the +Courts could not intervene to save the priests from taking all this +trouble on themselves between the owners and the occupiers of the land, +Father M'Fadden at first replied that the Courts had no power to +intervene where, as in many cases in Gweedore, the holdings are +subdivided. + +"The Courts," he said, "may not be, and I do not think they are, all +that could be desired, though they undoubtedly do supply a more or less +impartial arbitrator between the landlord and the tenant. It is an +improvement on the past when the landlords fixed the rents for +themselves." + +I did not remind him of what Lord George Hill tells us, that in the +olden time at Gweedore the tenants fixed their own rents--and then did +not pay them--but I asked him how this could be said when the tenant +clearly must have accepted the rent, no matter who fixed it. "Oh!" said +Father M'Fadden, "that may be so, but the tenant was not free, he was +coerced. With all his life and labour represented in the holding and its +improvements, he could not go and give up his holding. It's a +stand-and-deliver business with him--the landlord puts a pistol to his +head!" + +"But is it not true," I said, "that under the new Land Bill the Land +Commissioner's Court has power to fix the rents judicially without +regard to landlord or tenant during fifteen years?" + +"Yes, that is so," said Father M'Fadden. "Under Mr. Gladstone's Act of +81, and under the later Act of the present Government, the rents so +fixed from '81 to '86 inclusive are subject to revision for three years; +but the people have no confidence in the constitution of the Courts, +and, as a matter of fact, the improvements of the tenants are +confiscated under the Act of '81, and the reductions allowed under the +Act of '87 are incommensurate with the fall in prices by 100 per cent. +And there still remains the burden of arrears. I feel that I must stand +between my people and obligations which they are unable to meet. To that +end I take their money, and stand ready to use it to relieve them when +the occasion offers. That is my idea of my work under the 'Plan of +Campaign'; and, furthermore, I think that by doing it I have secured +money for the landlord which he couldn't possibly have got in any other +way." + +This struck me as a very remarkable statement, nor can I see how it can +be interpreted otherwise than as an admission that if the people had +the money to pay their rents, they couldn't be trusted to use it for +that purpose, unless they put it into the control of the priest or of +some other trustee. + +Reverting to what he had said of the necessity for some change in the +conditions of life and labour here, I asked if, in his opinion, the +people could live out of the land if they got the ownership of it. + +In existing circumstances he thought they could not. + +Was he in favour, then, of Mr. Davitt's plan of Land Nationalisation? + +"Well, I have not considered the question of Nationalisation of the +land." + +To my further question, What remedies he would himself propose for a +state of things in which it was impossible for the people to live out of +the land either as occupiers or as owners--emigration being barred, +Father M'Fadden, without looking at Lord Ernest, replied, "Oh, I think +abler men who draw up Parliamentary Acts and live in public life ought +to devise remedies, and that is a matter which would be best settled by +a Home Government." + +The glove was well delivered, but Lord Ernest did not lift it. + +"But, Father M'Fadden," I said, "I am told you are a practical +agriculturist and engineer, and that you have contrived to get excellent +work done by the people here, dividing them off into working squads, and +assigning so many perches to so many--surely then you must understand +better than a dozen members of Parliament what they can be got to do?" + +He smiled at this, and finally admitted that he had a plan of his own. +It was that the Government should advance sums for reclaiming the land. +"The people could live on part of their earnings while thus employed, +and invest the surplus in sheep to be fed on the hill pastures. When the +reclamation was effected the families could be scattered out, and the +holdings increased. In this district alone there are 350 holdings of +reclaimable land of 20 acres each, the reclamation of which, according +to a competent surveyor, "would pay well." And the district could be +improved by creating employment on the spot, establishing factories, +developing fisheries, giving technical education, and encouraging +cottage industries, which are so vigorously reviving in this district +owing to the benevolent efforts of the Donegal Industrial Fund." + +Father M'Fadden spoke freely and without undue heat of his trial, and +gave us a piquant account of his arrest. + +This was effected at Armagh, just as he was getting into an early +morning train. A sergeant of police walked up as the train was about to +start, and asked-- + +"Are you not Father M'Fadden of Gweedore?" + +"What interest have you in my identity?" responded the priest. + +"Only this, sir," said the officer, politely exhibiting a warrant. + +"I had been in Armagh the previous day," said Father M'Fadden, +"attending the month's memory of the late deceased Primate of All +Ireland, Dr. M'Gettigan, and stayed at a private residence, that of +Surgeon-Major Lavery, not suspecting that while enjoying the genial +hospitality of the Surgeon-Major my steps were dogged by a detective, +and that gentleman's house watched by police." + +Of the trial Father M'Fadden spoke with more bitterness. His eyes glowed +as he exclaimed, "Can you imagine that they refused me bail, when bail +had been allowed to such a felon as Arthur Orton? Why should I have +been locked up over two Sundays, for ten days, when I offered to pledge +my honour to appear?" He made no other complaint of the magistrate, and +none of the prosecutor, Mr. Ross. He praised his own lawyer, too, but he +strongly denounced the stenographer who took down his speech, or the +parts of it which I told him I had seen in Dublin. + +"Why, just think of it," he exclaimed; "it took the clerk just eight +minutes to read the report given by that stenographer of a speech which +it took me an hour and twenty minutes to deliver! I do not speak from +the lips, I speak from the heart, and consequently rather rapidly; and a +stenographer who can take down 190 words a minute has told me I run +ahead of him!" + +I suggested that the report, without pretending even to be a full +summary of his speech, might be accurate as to phrases and sentences +pronounced by him. + +"Yes, as to phrases," he answered, "that might be; but the phrases may +be taken out of their true connection, and strung together in an +untruthful, yet telling way. Even my words were not fully set down," he +said, with some heat. "I was made to call a man 'level,' when I said in +the American way that he was 'level-headed.'" _A propos_ of this, I am +told that the American word "spree" has become Hibernian, and is used to +describe meetings of the National League and "other political +entertainments." + +When I told Father M'Fadden I had just come from Rome, where, as I had +reason to believe, the Vatican was anxious to get evidence from others +than Archbishop Walsh and Monsignore Kirby, of the Irish College, as to +the attitude of the priests in Ireland towards the laws of the United +Kingdom, he said he knew that "some Italian prelates neither understood +nor approved the 'Plan of Campaign,' nor is the Irish Land question +understood at Rome;" but this did not seem to disturb him much, as he +was quite sure that in the end the "Plan of Campaign" would be legalised +by the British Government. "I think I see plainly," he said, "that Lord +Ernest's government is fast going to pieces, though I can't expect him +to admit it!" Lord Ernest laughed good-naturedly, and said that Father +M'Fadden saw more in Donegal than he (Lord Ernest) was able to see in +Westminster. Upon my asking him whether the "Plan of Campaign" did not +in effect abrogate the moral duty of a man to meet the legal obligations +he had voluntarily incurred, Father M'Fadden advanced his own theory of +the subject, which was that, "if a man can pay a fair year's rent out of +the produce of his holding, he is bound to pay it. But if the rent be a +rack-rent, imposed on the tenant against his will, or if the holding +does not produce the rent, then I don't think that is a strict +obligation in conscience." + +In America, the courts, I fear, would make short work of this theory of +Father M'Fadden. If a tenant there cannot pay his first quarter's rent +(they don't let him darken his soul by a year's liabilities) they +promptly and mercilessly put him out. + +Interesting as was our conversation with the parish priest of Gweedore, +I felt that we might be trespassing too far upon his kindness and his +time. So we rose to go. He insisted upon our going into the dining-room, +where, as he told us, he had hospitably entertained sundry visiting +statesmen from England, and there offered us a glass of the excellent +wine of the country. He excused himself from joining us as being +"almost a teetotaller." + +On our return to the hotel I met the Galwegian strolling about. When I +told him of Father M'Fadden's courteous hospitality, he said, "I am very +glad you took that glass he offered. I really believe his quarrel with +Captain Hill dates back to Hill's declining that same courtesy under +Father M'Fadden's roof." + + +GWEEDORE, _Monday, Feb. 6._--Another very beautiful morning--as a farmer +said with whom I chatted on my morning stroll, "A grand day, sorr!" +Errigal, which in this mountain atmosphere seems almost to hang over our +hotel, but is in reality three or four miles away, stood out superbly +against a clear azure sky, wreaths of soft luminous mist floating like a +divine girdle half way up his bare volcanic peak. + +I walked up to the Bunbeg road with Lord Ernest to call upon some +peasants whom he knows. In one stone cabin, very well built and +plastered, standing sidewise to the road, with doors on either side, we +found the house apparently in charge of a little girl of nine or ten +years, a weird but pretty child with very delicate well-cut features, +who lay couchant upon her doubled-up arm on a low bed in a corner of the +main room, and peered at us over her elbow with sparkling inquisitive +eyes. + +By her side sat a man with his cap on, who might have been the "young +Pretender," or the "old Kaiser," so far as his looks went towards +indicating his age. He never rose or welcomed us, being, as we +afterwards found out, only a visitor like ourselves, and a kinsman of +Mrs. M'Donnell, the head of the house. "Mrs. M'Donnell," he said, "is +gone to the store at Bunbeg." + +This main room rose perhaps ten feet in height to the open roof. It had +one large and well-glazed window. When Lord George Hill came here there +were not ten square feet of window-glass in the whole parish outside of +the Church, the national school, and the residence of the chief +police-officer. + +Windows when there were any were closed with dried sheepskins, through +which the cats ran in and out as freely as through the curious tunnel +which the kindly Master of Blantyre has constructed at Sheba's Cross for +their special benefit. + +There were two beds in the main room; rather high than low, one of +rushes, on which lay the child of whom I have spoken, and one of +greater pretensions vacant in another corner. + +The door stood wide open, but the cabin was warm and comfortable, and a +peat fire smouldered, sending up, to me, most agreeable odours. An inner +room seemed to be a sort of granary, full of hay and straw. There the +cow is kept at night. "It's handy if you want a drink of milk," said the +visitor. In comparison with the dwellings of small farmers in Eastern +France or in Southern Italy this Donegal cabin was not only clean but +attractive. It was more squalid perhaps, but less dreary than the +extemporised and flimsy dwellings of settlers in the extreme Far West of +the United States, and I should say decidedly a more wholesome +habitation than the hermetically sealed and dismal wooden houses of +hundreds of struggling farmers in the older Eastern States. I am sure my +old friend Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, who made the only thorough surveys +of agricultural life in the United States before the Civil War, would +have pronounced it in all respects superior, so far as health and +comfort go, to the average home of the average "poor buccra," between +the Chesapeake and the Sabine. I am afraid a great deal of not wholly +innocuous nonsense has been written and spoken about this part of the +United Kingdom by well-meaning philanthropists who have gauged the +condition of the people here by their own standards of comfort and +enjoyment. Most things in this life of ours are relative. I well +remember hearing an American millionaire, who began life in New York as +the patentee of a mouse-trap, express his profound compassion for a +judge of the Supreme Court condemned to live "upon a pittance of eight +thousand dollars a year." + +These dwellers in the cabins of Donegal are millionaires, so far as +those essentials of life are concerned, which we call room and air and +freedom to move and breathe, in comparison with hundreds and thousands +of their own race in the slums of New York and Chicago and Liverpool and +London. + +Mrs. M'Donnell's cousin, however, took dark views of things. The times +"were no good at all." + +The potatoes, I had heard, were doing well this year. + +"No! they wouldn't keep the people; indeed, they wouldn't. There would +have to be relief." + +"Why not manure the land?" + +"Manure? oh yes, the sea-stuff was good manure, but the people couldn't +get it. They had no boats; and it cost eighteenpence a load to haul it +from Bunbeg. No! they couldn't get it off the rocks. At the Rosses they +might; the Rosses were not so badly off as Derrybeg or Gweedore, for all +they might say." + +"But Father M'Fadden had urged me," I said, "to see the Rosses, because +the people there were worse off than any of the people." + +"Well, Father M'Fadden was a good man; he was a friend of the people; +and they were bad indeed at the Rosses, but they could get the sea-stuff +there, and hadn't to pay for cartage. And indeed, if you put the +sea-stuff on the bogland, the land was better in among the rocks' at the +Rosses than was the bogland, it was indeed: the stuff did no good at all +the first year. The second and the third it gave good crops--but then +you must burn it--and by the fourth year and the fifth it was all ashes, +and no good at all! This was God's truth, it was; and there must be +relief." + +"But could the people earn nothing in Scotland or in Tyrone?" + +"Oh no, they could earn nothing at all. They could pay no rent." + +So he sat there, a Jeremiah among the potsherds, quite contented and +miserable--well and hearty in a ragged frieze coat, with his hat over +his eyes. + +While we talked, a tall lusty young beggar-girl wandered in and out +unnoticed. Chickens pecked and fluttered about, and at intervals the +inevitable small dog suddenly barked and yelped. + +On our way back we met the elder daughter of Mrs. M'Donnell, a girl of +sixteen, the "beauty of Gweedore." A beauty she certainly is, and of a +type hardly to have been looked for here. + +Her lithe graceful figure, her fine, small, chiselled features, her +shapely little head rather defiantly set on her sloping shoulders, her +fair complexion and clear hazel eyes, her brown golden hair gathered up +behind into a kind of tress, all these were Saxon rather than Celtic. +Her trim neat ankles were bare, after the mountain fashion, but she was +prettily dressed in a well-fitting dark blue gown, wore a smartly +trimmed muslin apron, with lace about her throat, and carried over her +arm a new woollen shawl, very tasteful and quiet in colour. She greeted +us with a self-possessed smile. + +"No," she had not, been shopping with her mother. The shawl was a +present from one of her cousins. Did we not think it very pretty? She +was only out for a walk, and had no notion where her mother might be. A +stalwart red-bearded man who lounged and loitered behind her on the road +was "only a friend," she said, "not a relation at all!" Nor did she +show, I am sorry to say, any compassion for the evident uneasiness with +which, from a distance, he regarded her long and affable parley with two +strangers. + +We asked her whether she expected and wished to live in Gweedore, or +would like to follow elsewhere some calling or trade. "Oh yes," she +unhesitatingly replied, "I should like to be a dress-maker in Deny; +but," she added pensively, "it's no use my thinking about it, for I know +I shouldn't be let!" + +"Wouldn't you like Dublin as well?" I asked. + +"Perhaps; but I shouldn't be let go to Dublin either!" + +Would she like to go to America? + +"No!" she didn't think much of "the Americans who came back," and +America must be "a very hard country for work, and very cold in the +winter." + +Now this was a widow's daughter, living in such a cabin as I have +described, and upon a small holding in a parish reputed to be the most +"distressful" in Donegal![15] + +Returning to the hotel we found our car ready for Falcarragh. Our driver +was a quiet, sensible fellow, who did not seem to care sixpence about +the great Nationality question, though he knew the country very well. + +Iron was visible in the rocks as we drove along, and we passed some +abandoned mining works, "lead and silver mines;" he said, "they were +given up long before his time." We got many fine views of the mountains +Errigal, Aghla More, and Muckish. Lough Altan, a wild tarn, lies between +Errigal and Aghla More. + +The peasants we met stared at us curiously, but, were very civil, even +at a place bearing the ominous name of Bedlam, against which Mr. Burke +had warned us as the most troublesome on the way. All the countryside +was there attending a fair, and we drove through throngs of red-shawled, +barelegged women, ponies, horses, cattle, and sheep. Of Tory Island, +with its famous tower, dating back to the fabled "Fomorians," we had +some grand glimpses. The white surf, flashing and leaping high in the +air on the nearer islets accented and gave life to the landscape. + +In one glorious landlocked bay, we saw not a single boat riding. Our +driver said, "The fishermen all live on Tory Island, and send their fish +to Sligo. The people on the mainland don't like going out in the boats." + +Lord Ernest tells me there is a movement to have a telegraph station set +up on Tory Island, to announce the Canadian steamers coming into Moville +for Deny. + +We found Falcarragh, or "Cross-Roads," a large clean-looking village, +consisting of one long and broad street, through which horses and cattle +were wandering in numbers, apparently at their own sweet will. + +Ballyconnell House, the seat of Mr. Wybrants Olphert, is the manor house +of the place. As we drew near, no signs appeared of the dreadful +"Boycott." The great gates of the park stood hospitably open, and we +drove in unchallenged past a pretty ivy-clad lodge, and through low, but +thickly planted groves. A huge boulder, ruddy with iron ore, bears the +uncanny and unspellable name of the "Clockchinnfhaelaidh," or "Stone of +Kinfaele." Upon this stone, tradition tells us, Balor, a giant of Tory +Island, chopped off the head of an unreasonable person named +Mackinfeale, for complaining that Balor, under some prehistoric "Plan of +Campaign," had driven away his favourite cow, Glasgavlan. + +Ballyconnell House, a substantial mansion of the Georgian era, stands +extremely well. Over a fine sloping lawn in front, you have a glorious +view of the sea, and of a very fine headland, known as "the Duke's +Head," from the really remarkable resemblance it bears to the profile of +Wellington. The winds have such power here that there are but few +well-grown trees, and those near the house. About them paraded many +game-hens, spirited birds, looking like pheasants. These, as we learned, +never sleep save in the trees. + +The "boycotted" lord of the manor came out to greet us--a handsome, +stalwart man of some seventy years, with a kindly face, and most +charming manners. His family, presumably of Dutch origin, has been +established here since Charles II. He himself holds 18,133 acres here, +valued at L1802 a year; and he is a resident landlord in the fullest +sense of the term. For fifty years he has lived here, during all which +time, as he told us to-day, he has "never slept for a week out of the +country." His furthest excursions of late years have been to Raphoe, +where he has a married daughter. "Absenteeism" clearly has nothing to do +with the quarrel between Mr. Olphert and his tenants, or with the +"boycotting" of Ballyconnell. + +The dragoons from Dunfanaghy had just ridden away as we came up. They +had come over in full fig to show themselves, and to encourage the +respectable Catholics of Falcarragh, who side with their parish priest, +Father M'Fadden of Glena, and object to the vehement measures, promoted +by his young curate, Father Stephens, recently of Liverpool. The people +had received them with much satisfaction. "They had never seen the +cavalry before, and were much delighted!" + +Before we sat down to luncheon young Mr. Olphert came in. It was curious +to see this quiet, well-bred young gentleman throw down his belt and his +revolver on the hall table, like his gloves and his umbrella. "Quite +like the Far West," I said. "And we are as far in the West as we can +get," he replied laughingly. + +Our luncheon was excellent--so good, in fact, that we felt a kind of +remorse as if we had selfishly quartered ourselves upon a beleaguered +garrison. But Mr. Olphert said he had no fear of being starved out. +Personally he was, and always had been, on the best terms with the +people of Falcarragh. The older tenants, even now, if he met them +walking in the fields when no one was in sight, would come up and salute +him, and say how "disgusted" they were with what was going on. It was +the younger generation who were troublesome--more troublesome, he added, +to their own parish priest than they were to him. Three or four years +ago a returned American Irishman, an avowed unbeliever, but an active +Nationalist and one of Mr. Forster's "suspects," had come into the +neighbourhood and done his worst to break up the parish. He used to come +to Falcarragh on a Sunday, and get up on a stone outside the chapel +while Father M'Fadden was saying Mass or preaching, and harangue such +people as would listen to him, and caricature the priest and the sermon +going on within sound of his own voice. "I am myself a Protestant," +said Mr. Olphert, "but I have a great respect for priests who do their +duty; and the conduct of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, in countenancing +this man, who tried to overthrow the authority of Father M'Fadden of +Glena, excited my indignation. As to what is going on now," said Mr. +Olphert, "it is to Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, and to Father Stephens +here, that the trouble is chiefly to be charged." This tallies with what +I heard at Gweedore from my Galwegian acquaintance. He thought Mr. +Olphert, and Mr. Hewson, the agent, ought to have made peace on the +terms which Father Stephens said he was willing to accept for the +tenants, these being a reduction of 3s. 4d. in the pound, if Mr. Olphert +would extend the reduction to the whole year. My Galwegian thought this +reasonable, because in this region the rent, it appears, is only +collected once a year. With this impartial temper, my Galwegian still +maintained that but for the two priests--the parish priest of Gweedore +and the curate of Falcarragh--there need have been no trouble at +Falcarragh. There had been no "evictions." When the tenants first went +to Mr. Olphert they asked a reduction of 4s. in the pound on the +non-judicial rents, and this Mr. Olphert at once agreed to give them. +The tenants had regularly paid their rents for ten years before. That +they are not going down in the world would appear from the fact that the +P.O. Savings Banks' deposits at Falcarragh, which stood at L62, 15s. +10d. in 1880, rose in 1887 to L494, 10s. 8d. A small number of them had +gone into Court and had judicial rents fixed; and it was on the +contention promoted by the two priests, through these judicial tenants, +he said, that all the difficulty hinged. Father M'Fadden of Glena, who +thought the quarrel unjustifiable and silly, had an interview with Mr. +Blane, M.P., and with Father Stephens, and tried to arrange it all. He +would have succeeded, my Galwegian thought, had not the agent, Mr. +Hewson, obstinately fought with the obstinate curate, Father Stephens, +over the suggestion made by the latter, that the terms granted on the +fine neighbouring estate of Mr. Stuart of Ards--a man of wealth, who +lives mainly at Brighton, though Ards is one of the loveliest places in +Ireland--should be extended by Mr. Olphert for a whole year to his own +people, who had never asked for anything of the kind! + +Mr. Olphert said he knew Gweedore well. He owns a "townland"[16] there, +on which he has thirty-five tenants, none of them on a holding at more +more than L4 a year. Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, he said, finding that +the people on Mr. Olphert's townland were going back to the "Rundale" +practices, tried to induce Mr. Olphert to return all these subdivisions +as "tenancies." This he refused to do. As to the resources of the +peasantry, he thought them greater than they appeared to be. "This comes +to light," said Mr. Olphert, "whenever there is a tenant-right for sale. +There is never any lack of money to buy it, and at a round good price." +The people also, he thinks, spend a great deal on what they regard as +luxuries, and particularly on tea. "A cup of tea could not be got for +love or money in Gweedore, when Lord George Hill came there. You might +as well have asked for a glass of Tokay." + +Now they use and abuse it in the most deleterious way imaginable. They +buy the tea at exorbitant rates, often at five shillings a pound, and +usually on credit, paying a part of one bill on running up another, put +it into a saucepan or an iron pot, and boil, or rather stew, it over the +fire, till they brew a kind of hell-broth, which they imbibe at odd +moments all day long! Oddly enough, this is the way in which they +prepare tea in Cashmere and other parts of India, with this essential +difference, though, that the Orientals mitigate the astringency of the +herb with milk and almonds and divers ingredients, tending to make a +sort of "compote" of it. Taken as it is taken here, it must have a +tremendous effect on the nerves. Mr. Olphert thinks it has had much to +do with the increase of lunacy in Ireland of late years. From his +official connection with the asylum at Letterkenny, he knows that while +it used to accommodate the lunatics of three counties, it is now hardly +adequate to the needs of Donegal alone. + +Everything about Ballyconnell House is out of key with the actual +military conditions of life here. It is essentially what Tennyson calls +"an ancient home of ordered peace." In the ample hall hang old portraits +and trophies of the chase. The large and handsome library, panelled in +rich dark wood, is filled full of well-bound books. Prints, busts, the +thousand and one things of "bigotry and virtue" which mark the +dwelling-place of educated and thoughtful people are to be seen on every +side. Mr. Olphert showed us a cabinet full of bronzes, picked up on the +strand of the sea. Among these were brooches, pins, clasps, buckles, two +very fine bronze swords, and a pair of bronze links engraved with +distinctly Masonic emblems, such as the level, the square, and the +compasses. When were these things made, and by what people? + +So far as I know, Masonry in the British Islands cannot be historically +traced back much, if at all, beyond the Revolution of 1688. + +Mr. Olphert and his son walked about the place with us. They have no +fears of an attack, but think it wise to keep a force of police on the +premises. The only demonstration yet made of any kind against the house +was the march from Falcarragh some time ago of a mob of young men, who +promptly withdrew on catching sight of half-a-dozen policemen within the +park gates. As to getting his work done, some of his people had steadily +refused to acknowledge the "boycott," and they were now strengthened by +the attitude of those who had surrendered to the pressure, and were now +sullen and angry with the League which had given them nothing to do, and +no supplies. + +At Falcarragh we met a person who knew much about the late Lord Leitrim, +who was murdered in this neighbourhood on the highway some years ago. He +spoke freely of the murderer by name, as if it were matter of common +notoriety. Of the murdered man, he said that he had made himself +extremely unpopular and odious, not so much by certain immoralities +freely alleged at the time of his death, as by vexatious meddling with +the prejudices and whims of his tenants. "He used to go into the houses +and pull down cartoons and placards, if he saw them put up on the +walls." "No! he had no party feeling in the matter; he used to pull down +William III. and the Pope with an equal hand." It seems that in this +region, too, a local legend has grown up of the birth at a place called +Cashelmore of a "Queen of France." The case is worth noting as throwing +light on the genesis and accuracy of local traditions. The "Queen of +France" referred to proves, on inquiry, to have been Miss Patterson, who +married Jerome Bonaparte, brother of the first Emperor, afterwards +created by him King of Westphalia! This Avas the lady so well known in +America as Mrs. Patterson Bonaparte of Baltimore, who died at a great +age only a few years ago. I have no reason to suppose that she was born +at Cashelmore at all or in Ireland. But her father, reputed in the time +of Washington to be the richest man in the United States, who came from +the North of Ireland and settled in Baltimore as a merchant, may very +well have been born there. + +To my great regret Father M'Fadden of Glena, or Falcarragh, was absent +from home. As we drove homeward we met on the way a young lady on a +smart jaunting-car, with a servant in livery. This was the daughter, our +driver told us, of Mr. Griffiths, the Protestant clergyman, past whose +residence our road lay. His church stands high upon a commanding cliff, +and is a feature in the landscape. We met the parson himself also, +walking with a friend. The road from Bedlam to Derrybeg goes by a region +of the "Rosses," reputed the most woe-begone part of the Gweedore +district. This is the scene of a curious tale told about Father M'Fadden +of Gweedore, by his ill-wishers in these parts, to the effect that he +advises English Members of Parliament and other "sympathising" visitors +who come here to make a pilgrimage to "the Bosses," where, no matter at +what time of day they appear, they invariably find sundry of the people +sitting in their huts and eating stewed seaweed out of iron pots. I +cannot vouch for this tale, but certainly I have seen no people here of +either sex, or of any age, who look as if they lived on stewed seaweed. +Another person at Falcarragh told us, as an illustration of the +influence exerted by Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, in this parish, over +which he has no proper authority, that, in obedience to an intimation +from him, the persons whose seats in the chapel had been occupied on two +successive Sundays by the policemen now stationed here, yesterday +refused to allow the policemen to occupy them, the only exception being +in the case of a man who had been arrested at the same time with Father +Stephens, and who had been so well treated by the police, that he felt +bound to repay their courtesy by offering one of them his seat. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +DUNGLOE, _Tuesday, Feb. 7._--We rose early this morning at Gweedore; the +sun shining so brightly that we were forced to drop the window-shades at +breakfast, while I read my letter from Rome, telling me of the bitter +cold there, and of a slight snow-fall last week. Here the birds were +singing, and the air was as soft and exhilarating as that of an April +morning in the Highlands of Mexico or Costa Rica. + +Our host gave us a capital car, with a staunch nag and a wide-awake +jarvey, thanks to all which I found the thirteen miles drive to this +place too short. No doubt it will be a great thing for Donegal when +"light railways" are laid down here. But I pity the traveller of the +future here, if he is never to know the delight of traversing these wild +and picturesque wastes in such weather as we have had to-day, on a car, +well-balanced by a single pleasant companion, drinking, as he goes, +deep draughts of the Atlantic air! Truly on a jaunting-car "two are +company and three are none." You have almost the free companionship of a +South American journey in the saddle, jumping off to walk, when you +like, more freely still. + +We drove near the house of the "beauty of Gweedore," but she was not +visible, though we met her mother (by no means a _pulchra mater_) as we +crossed the Clady at Bryan's Bridge. + +We soon passed from the bogland into a wilderness of granite. Our +jarvey, however, maintained that there was "better land among the stones +than any bogland could be." He was a shrewd fellow, and summed up the +economical situation, I thought, better than some of his betters, when +he said of the whole region that "it will fatten four, feed five, and +starve six." + +It may well fatten six, though, I should say, if the natural wealth of +this vast granite range can be properly turned to account. On every side +of us lay vast blocks of granite of all hues and grades, all absolutely +unworked, but surely not unworkable. We stopped and picked up many +specimens, some of them almost as rich in colour as porphyry. Of lakes +and lakelets supplying water-power the name too, is legion. + +Beyond Annagary we caught a glimpse of the Isle of Arran, the scene, a +few years ago, of so much suffering, and that of a kind I should think +as much beyond the control of legislation as the misery and destruction +which have overtaken successive attempts to establish settlements on +Anticosti in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. + +This town of Dungloe sprawls along the shore of the sea. It is reputed +the most ill-favoured town in Donegal, and it certainly is not a dream +of beauty. But it blooms all over with evidences of the prosperity of +that interesting type of Irish civilisation, the "Gombeen man," of whom +I had heard so much at Gweedore. Over the doorways of most of the shops +appear the names of various members of the family of Sweeney, all of +them, I am told, brought here and established within a few years past by +the head of the sept, who is not only the great "Gombeen man" of the +region, but a leading local member of the National League, and Her +Majesty's Postmaster. The Sweeneys, in fact, commercially speaking, +dominate Dungloe, their, only visible rivals being a returned Irish +American, who has built himself a neat two-story house and shop just at +the entrance of the village, and our own host, Mr. Maurice Boyle, whose +extremely neat little inn just faces a large shop, the stronghold of the +Chief of the Sweeneys. I am sorry to find that this important citizen of +Dungloe is not now here. We went into his chief establishment to make +some purchases, and found it full of customers, chiefly women, neatly +dressed after the Donegal fashion, and busily chaffering with the +shopgirls and shopmen, who had their hands full, exhibiting goods such +as certainly would not be found in any New York or New England village +of this sort. When we secured the attention of the chief shopman, a +nattily dressed, dark-haired young man who would not have discredited +the largest "store" in Grand Street or the Bowery of New York, we asked +him to show us some of the home-made woollen goods of the country. +These, he assured us, had no sale in Dungloe, and he did not keep them. +But he showed us piles of handsome Scottish tweeds at much higher +prices. Now as this is an exclusively agricultural region, it is evident +that the tenants must be able to make it worth a trader's while to keep +on hand such goods as we here found, and therefore that they cannot be +exactly on "the ragged edge" of things. + +Mr. Sweeney is also the proprietor of the chief "hotel" of Dungloe; our +host, Mr. Boyle, being in fact supposed to be "boycotted" for +entertaining officers of the police. This "boycott," however, has +entailed no practical inconvenience upon us; and Mr. Boyle's pretty and +plucky daughters, who manage his house for him, laughed scornfully at +the notion of being "bothered" by it. + +After luncheon we took a car and drove out to Burtonport, on the Roads +of Arranmore, to visit the parish priest there, Father Walker, and Mr. +Hammond, the agent of the Conyngham estates. + +We passed near a large inland lake, Lough Meela, and the seaward views +along the coast were very fine. With peace and order this corner of +Ireland might easily become the chosen site of the most delightful +seaside homes in the United Kingdom. The Recorder of Cork has discovered +this, and passes a great part of the year here. This Donegal coast is no +further from the great centres of British wealth and population than are +Mount Desert and the other summer resorts of Maine and New Hampshire +from New York and Philadelphia; and the islands which break the great +roll of the Atlantic here cannot well be more nearly in "a state of +nature" than were the Isles of Shoals, for example, in my college days, +long after Mr. Lowell first wandered there with the transcendental +Thaxters to celebrate the thunders of the surf at Appledore. + +The wonderful granitic formations we had seen on the way from Gweedore +stretch all along the coast to the Roads of Arranmore. At Burtonport +they lie on the very water's edge. At a place called Lickeena, masses of +beautiful salmon-and rose-coloured granite actually trend into the +tidewater, and at Burtonport proper is a promontory of that +richly-mottled granite which I had supposed to be the peculiar heritage +of Peterhead, and which is now largely exported from Scotland to the +United States. Why should not this Irish granite be shipped directly +from Donegal to America, there to be built up into cathedrals, and +shaped into monuments for the Exiles of Erin? All these formations which +we have seen present themselves in great cubical blocks, so jointed that +they may be detached without blasting, with great comparative ease, and +with little of the waste which results from the squaring of shapeless +masses. At the same time, as we saw while coming from Gweedore, the +many lakes of this region offer all the water-power necessary for +polishing-works, columnar lathes, and the general machinery used in +developing such quarries. Without being an expert in granites, I have +seen enough of the granite works at home to feel quite sure that a +moderate and judiciously managed investment here ought to return a +handsome result. If the National League is as well off as it is reputed +to be, it might go into this business open a new and remunerative +industry to the people of a "congested" district, and earn dividends +large enough to enable it to pay the expenses of the war against England +at Westminster, without drawing on the savings of the servant-girls in +America, The only person likely to suffer would be the "Gombeen man," if +the peasantry earned enough to pay off their debts to him, and stop the +flow of interest into his coffers. + +At Burtonport we found the "Gombeen man," of Dungloe, represented by a +very large "store." He runs steamers between this place and various +ports on the Scottish and Irish coasts, bringing in goods and taking out +the crops which his debtors turn over to him. + +This Burtonport "store" towers high above the modest home of the parish +priest, Father Walker. To our great regret he was absent on parochial +duty, but his niece very kindly welcomed us into his modest study, where +we left a note begging him to honour us with his company at dinner in +Dungloe. + +Mr. Hammond, too, was absent, so after paying our respects to his wife, +we drove back to Dungloe, and walked about the village till dark, +chatting with the good-natured, civil people. The local sensation here +they tell us is not the trial of the priests at Dunfanaghy, but a "row" +breeding between the chief of the Sweeneys and one of his brethren over +the possession of Her Majesty's Post-office. It seems there is an +official regulation or custom that the post-office once established in a +particular building shall not be moved thence without positive cause +shown. The head of the Sweeneys, having completed his new and grand +establishment, wishes to move the post-office thither; but the brother +to whom he confided the office in the older building, where he left it +while making the change of his own business, now desires to keep the +office where it is, and, I suppose, to become postmaster himself![17] A +trivial matter enough, but not without edification for students of the +actual situation in this most curious country. + +About seven o'clock Father Walker made his appearance--a fine-looking, +dignified, most amiable man. He is a teetotaller, which we esteemed a +stroke of good fortune, a bottle of port wine which we obtained, despite +the "boycott," from the Gombeen shop, proving to be of such a quality +that it might have been concocted in the last century, expressly to +discredit the Methuen treaty. + +Father Walker is the President of the National League branch. + +Like Father M'Fadden at Gweedore, he speaks of the landlords in this +part of Donegal as really owning, not so much farms as residential +grounds for tenants who export their thews and sinews to Scotland and +other countries, and live by that traffic mainly. It is a common +practice here, he tells me, for the children, who are very sharp and +bright, to be taken by their parents into Tyrone and other parts of the +North, and put out to live with the people there, who prize them, and +pay very good wages. I asked him if he thought the official estimate I +had seen of the proportion of these "migratory labourers" to the whole +population of Ulster, as about one-tenth of one per cent., an +under-statement. He thought it was an under-statement for this part of +the county of Donegal, but to be explained, perhaps, by the fact that so +much of the migration is merely from one county into another, and not +out of the kingdom. He agreed that the practice goes on upon a much more +extensive scale in the County Mayo, where more than thirteen per cent, +of all the adult male population are said to belong to the category of +migratory labourers. The Irish population of England seems to be +recruited at regular seasons in this way, very much as is the Albanian +population of Constantinople. + +Father Walker was full of information about the granite quarries, and +much interested in the prospect of their development. He told us that a +practical engineer from Liverpool had, not long ago, been here seeking a +lease of the quarries--or, in other words, of the quarrying rights over +sixty or seventy miles of Donegal--from the agent of Lord Conyngham. +This engineer had come to Donegal on a sporting expedition last year, +and gone back full of the capabilities of the granite region. Father +Walker had been told by him that similar quarries also exist in the +County Mayo at Belmullet, where preparations are now making, he thinks, +to develop them, though on a smaller scale than would be both +practicable and desirable here. + +In Mayo, as in Donegal, labour must be plentiful enough, and the +comparatively unskilled labour required in such quarries would be +particularly abundant here. It would be a great thing, Father Walker +thought, to introduce here the custom of a regular pay-day, and with it +gradually habits of exactness and economy, not easily developed without +it. + +He gave me also, at my request, some valuable information as to the +stipends of the Catholic clergy, and the sources from which they are +derived. This subject has been agitated in the local press of this part +of Ireland in connection with estimates of Father M'Fadden's income at +Gweedore, which Father M'Fadden declares, I believe, to be greatly +exaggerated. Father Walker has been parish priest at Burtonport for +about nine years. In all that time the highest sum reached in one year +by the stipend has been L560; this sum having to be divided between the +parish priest, who received L280, and two curates receiving L140 each. +The annual stipend, however, has more than once fallen below L480, and +Father Walker thinks L520 a fair average, giving L260 to the parish +priest, and L130 each to his curates. Where there are only two priests +in a parish, as is the case, for example, in each of the parishes of +Gweedore and Falcarragh, the parish priest receives two-thirds, and the +curate one-third of the stipend. + +The sources of this stipend are various, and in speaking upon this point +Father Walker desired me to note that he could only speak positively of +the rules of this particular diocese, as they do not cover in their +entirety the usages of other provinces, or even of other dioceses in +this province of Ireland. One general and invariable rule indeed exists +throughout Ireland, which is that every parish priest is bound to offer +the Holy Sacrifice, _pro populo_, for the whole people, without fee or +reward, on all Sundays and Holy Days, making in all some eighty-seven +times a year. + +In the diocese of Raphoe, to which Burtonport belongs, there are four +recognised methods by which the revenues of the priests are raised. The +first is an annual fixed stipend of four shillings for each household or +family. "Sometimes," said Father Walker, "but rarely, the better-off +families give more than this; and not unfrequently the poorer families +fail to give anything under this head." The second is a fixed stipend of +one pound upon the occasion of a marriage. "Sometimes, but not often, +this sum is exceeded by generous and prosperous parishioners." The third +is a standard stipend of two shillings for a baptism. "This also +suffers, but on rare occasions," said the good priest, "a favourable +exception. I mention the exceptions as well as the rules," said the good +Father, "in order to make grateful allusion to the donors." + +The fourth and last consists of the offerings at interments. "These vary +very much indeed, but they constitute an important, and, I may say, a +necessary item in the incomes of the clergy." + +Besides these four forms of stipend, the priests derive a revenue from +"those who ask them to offer the Holy Sacrifice 'for their special +intention.'" In such cases it is customary to offer a sum, usually of +two shillings, but sometimes of half-a-crown, which is intended both as +a remuneration for the priest, and to cover the cost of altar +requisites. + +Father Walker estimates the families in his own parish in round numbers +at about thirteen hundred, and in Gweedore and Falcarragh at about nine +hundred each. We had some conversation about the great fisheries, which +one would think ought to exist, but do not exist, on this coast, such +fishing as is done here by the natives being on a very limited scale. +Father Walker tells me that formerly L80,000 worth of herring were taken +on this coast, though he is not sure that Donegal fishermen took them. +But of late years he thinks the herring have deserted these waters. He +admits, however, that the people have no liking for the sea. "Going over +once," he said, "to Arranmore from the mainland in a boat with a priest +of the country, the water was a little rough, and the poor man nearly +pinched a piece out of my arm holding on to me!" Father Walker himself +thought the trip across the "sound" to Tory Island rather a ticklish +piece of business. Yet the natives make it sometimes in their little +corraghs or canvas boats, which would seem to show that some of them +must be capable of seamanship. Most of these islands, notably +Arranmore, Father Walker thought quite incapable of supporting the +people who dwell on them, without constant help from the mainland. Is it +not an open question whether an age which countenances the condemnation +of private property in houses declared unfit for human habitation ought +to hesitate at dealing in the same spirit with nurseries of chronic +penury and intermittent famine? On one of these islands, known as Scull +Island, Father Walker tells me great quantities of human bones are found +in circular graves or trenches, very shallow, and going all around the +island. There are legends of great battles fought on the little island, +and of pestilences, to account for these. But it is likely enough that +the island was simply used as a cemetery by the dwellers on the shore at +some early date. Father Walker when he was last, there had brought away +some of these relics. One he showed us, the beautifully formed jawbone +of a young child, apparently ten or twelve years old, with exquisite +pearly teeth. The chin was not in the least prognathous, but very well +formed. In this district of Dungloe, too, the women weave and knit as +well as at Gweedore; and Father Walker, before he left us for his home, +after a most agreeable evening, promised to send me some specimens of +their handiwork. He is sure that with a proper organisation this +industry might be so developed as to materially relieve the people here +from the pressure of their debts to the dealers of all kinds, a pressure +much more severe than that of the rent. According to the dealers +themselves, no tenant really in debt to them can now expect to work +himself free of the burden under four or five years. It is obvious how +much power, political as well as social, is thus lodged in the hands of +the dealers, and especially of the "Gombeen men." + + +BARON'S COURT, _Wednesday, Feb. 8._--Since last night I have travelled +from one extreme to the other of Irish life--from the desolation of the +Rosses of Donegal to the grandly wooded, picturesque, and beautiful +demesne of Baron's Court. We made an early start from Dungloe on a +capital car for Letterkenny, where we were to strike the railway for +Strabane and Newtown-Stewart. The morning was clear, but cold. On +leaving Dungloe we drove directly into a region of reclaimed land, where +improvements of various kinds seemed to be going on. All this our +jarvey informed us, with a knowing look, belonged to Mr. Sweeney. + +"Was he a squire of this country?" I asked innocently. + +"A squire of this country, sorr? He is just Mr. Sweeney, the Gombeen +man; he and his brothers, they all came here from where I don't know." + +An energetic man, certainly, Mr. Sweeney, and not likely, I should +think, to allow the National League, to push matters here to the point +of nationalising the land of Donegal, if he can prevent it. In the +highway we met, two or three miles out of Dungloe, a very trim dainty +little lady, in a long, well-fitting London waterproof ulster, with a +natty little umbrella in her hand, walking merrily towards the town. How +weatherwise she was soon appeared, the rain coming up suddenly, and +coming down sharply, in the whirling way it has among the hills +everywhere. The scenery was desolate, but grand. Countless little lochs +give sparkle and life to it. Everywhere the granite. About Doocharry, a +romantic little spot, where Lord Cloncurry has a fishing-box in the +heart of a glorious landscape, masses crop out of a rich red granite, +finer in colour than any we had previously seen. In that neighbourhood +the wastes of Donegal take on an aspect which recalls, though upon quite +a different key in colour, the inimitable beauty of those treeless +North-western highlands of Scotland, upon which Nature has lavished all +the wealth of her palette. Vast spaces of brown and red and gold shimmer +away under the softly luminous mountain atmosphere to the dark blues and +purples of the hills. We passed Glen Veagh again, but from quite a +different point of view, which gave us a beautiful picture of Lough +Veagh in its length, and of the smiling pastoral landscape upon its +further shore. + +As we drew near the eastern boundary of Donegal, hedges and civilised +agriculture reappeared. With these we came upon mud cottages, such as I +had not seen in Donegal, being the huts provided for their labourers by +the tenant-farmers, whose comfortable stone-houses and out-buildings +stood well back under the long ranges of the hills. + +We passed through much striking scenery, perhaps the finest point being +a magnificent Gap in the hills, guarded and defined by three colossal +headlands, one of them a vast long rampart, the other two gigantic +counterscarps. The immediate approach to Letterkenny, too, from the west +is charming, passing in full view of the extensive and beautiful park +and the large mansion of Colonel Stewart of the Guards, and skirting the +well-kept estate of Mr. Boyd, the owner of the ivy-clad cottages which +so took my fancy the other day. + +In the Ulster settlement under King James I. a patent for Letterkenny +was issued to one of the Crawfords. Then, as the records tell us, "Sir +George Marburie dwelt there, and there were forty houses all inhabited +by British tenants. A great market town, and standeth well for the +King's service." + +Again we found a fair going on--this time attended by swarms of peddlers +vending old clothes and all sorts of small wares, bread-cartmen, and +tea-vendors. These latter aver that it is easier to sell tea in the +"congested" districts at 4s. 6d. than at 2s. 6d. The people have no test +of its quality but its price! + +The town was gay with soldiers and police--whose advent had created such +a demand for bread and meat, a man told us, that all the butchers and +bakers in Letterkenny and Dunfanaghy were at their wits' ends to meet +it. "But they don't complain of that!" We reached Newtown-Stewart by +railway after dark. As we passed Sion the mills were all lighted up, +giving it the look of an English or New England town. A New England +snow-storm, too, awaited us at our journey's end; and, after a wild +drive of several miles through the whirling white mists, it was a +delectable thing to find ourselves welcomed in a hall full of light and +warmth and flowers by merry children and lively dogs, the guard of +honour of the most gracious and charming of hostesses. + + +BARON'S COURT, _Thursday, Feb. 9._--Among a batch of letters received +this morning I find one from a most estimable and accomplished priest in +the West of Ireland, to whom I wrote from Dublin announcing my intention +of visiting the counties of Clare and Kerry. "I shall be very glad," he +says, "to learn that no evil hath befallen you during your visit to that +solitary plague-spot, where dwell the disgraceful and degraded +'Moonlighters.' Would not 'martial law,' if applied to that particular +spot, suffice to stamp out, these-insensate pests of society?" This +language, strong, but not too strong in view of the hideous murder last +week near Lixnaw of a farmer in the presence of his daughter for the +atrocious crime of taking a farm "boycotted" by the National League, +shows that the open alliance between this organisation and the criminal +classes in certain parts of Ireland is beginning (not a day too soon) to +arouse the better order of priests in Ireland to the peril of playing +with edged tools. For my correspondent is not only a priest, but a +Nationalist. I have sent him in reply a letter received by me, also +to-day, touching the conduct in connection with the Lixnaw murder of a +priest, a curate, I think, comparatively new to the place, who, +standing by the corpse of the murdered man, endeavoured, so my informant +states, to make his unfortunate daughter give up the names of the +murderers, the effect of which would have been to put them on their +guard, and "under the protection of that public conspiracy of silence, +which is the shield of all such criminals in these parts!" Baron's Court +is a very large, stately mansion, lacking elevation perhaps like +Blenheim, but imposing by its mass and the area it covers. It was +rebuilt almost entirely by the late Duke of Abercorn, who also made +immense plantations here which cover the country for miles around. His +grandfather, the handsome Marquis of the days of the Prince Regent, +came here a great deal towards the end of his life, but did little +towards making the mansion worthy of its site. Two very good portraits +of him here show that he deserved his reputation as the finest-looking +man of his day, a reputation attested by a diamond ring, the history of +which is still preserved in the family. A fine though irregular pearl +given by Philip of Spain to his hapless spouse, Mary Tudor, is another +of the heirlooms of Baron's Court; but the ring and the note left by +Mary Stuart to Claud Hamilton, Lord Paisley, mysteriously disappeared +during the long minority of the late Duke under the trusteeship of the +fourth Earl of Aberdeen, and have since, it is said, come into the +possession of the Duke of Hamilton. + +Of the three castles given to Lord Claud Hamilton by James I., to enable +him to hold this country, one which stood at Strabaue has disappeared, +the memory of it surviving only in the name of Castle Street in that +town. The ivy-clad ruins of another adorn a height in this beautiful +park. They are "bosomed high in tufted trees," and overlook one of three +most lovely lakes, stretching in a shining chain through the length of +the demesne. + +Another ruined tower of the time of King John stands on an island in +one of these lakes. When the Ulster settlement was made, these lands +with all the countryside were held by the O'Kanes. With the other Celtic +and Catholic inhabitants, they were driven by the masterful invaders +into the mountains and bogs. There still remain their descendants, still +Celtic and still Catholic, and still dreaming of the day when they shall +descend into the low country and drive the Protestant Scotch and English +from the "fat lands" which they occupy. In this way the racial and +religious animosities are kept alive, which have died out in Tipperary +and Waterford, for example, where the Cromwellian English have become +more Irish and often more Catholic than the Irish themselves. + +I took a long drive and walk with Lord Ernest this afternoon through the +park, which rivals Curraghmore in extent. It is nowhere divided from the +lands of the adjoining tenants, and with great liberality is thrown open +to the people, not only of Newtown-Stewart and Strabane, but of all the +country. Parties, sometimes of seven hundred people, from Belfast come +down to pass the day in these sylvan solitudes, and it is to be recorded +to the praise of Ireland that these visitors always behave with perfect +good sense and good feeling. + +The "terrible trippers" of the English midlands, as I once heard an old +verger in a northern Cathedral call them, who chip off relics from +monuments, pull up flowers by the roots, and scatter sandwich papers and +empty gingerbeer bottles broadcast over well-rolled lawns, are not +known, Lord Ernest tells me, in this island. As he neatly puts it, the +Irishman, no matter what his station in life may be, or how great a +blackguard he may really be, always instinctively knows when he ought to +behave like a gentleman, and knows how to do so. In the lakes were +hundreds of wild fowl. The sky was a sky of Constable--silvery-white +clouds, floating athwart a dome of clear Italian blue. The soil here +must be extraordinarily fertile. The woods and groves are dense beyond +belief. Cut down what you like, the growth soon overtakes you, as lush +almost as in the tropics. + +There was a great cyclone here a year or two ago, which prostrated in a +night over a hundred thousand trees. You see the dentated gaps left by +this disaster in the great circle of firs and birches on the surrounding +hills, but they make hardly a serious break in the thoroughly sylvan +character of the landscape. We visited the centre of the devastation, +where I found myself in what seemed to be a backwoods clearing in +America. An enterprising Scot, Kirkpatrick by name, has taken a contract +under the Duke, built himself a neat wooden cabin and stables, set up a +small saw-mill driven by steam, and is hard at work turning the fallen +trees into timber, and making a very good thing of it, both for the Duke +and for himself. He has one or two of his own people with him, but +employs the labour of the country, and has no fear of disturbance. He +thinks, however, that he must get "a good wicked dog" to frighten away +the tramps, who sometimes stray into his woodland, and put the +enterprise in peril by smoking and drowsing under haystacks. + +Near this clearing is a model village, the houses scrupulously neat, +with trees and flowers, and here we met the Duchess with her devoted dog +walking briskly along to visit one of her people, a wonderful old man, +bearing the ancient name of the O'Kanes, and five years older than the +Kaiser William. Until six months ago this veteran was an active +carpenter, coming and going, about his work at ninety-six like a man in +middle age. Then he went to bed with a bad cold, and will probably +never rise again. In all his life he never has touched meat or soup, and +when they are now offered him rejects them angrily. He has lived, and +preferred to live, entirely on oatmeal in the form of cakes and +porridge, and on potatoes; so I make a present of him as a glorious +example to the vegetarians. As in so many other cases, his memory of +recent events is dim and clouded--of events long past, clear and +photographic: the negatives taken in youth quite perfect, the lenses +which now take, dimmed and fractured. + +He perfectly recollects, for example, the assembling here of the +recruits going out to the Continent before the battle of Waterloo, and +can give the names and describe the peculiarities of stalwart lads long +since crumbled into dust around Mont St. Jean. With the curious +unconcern about death which marks his people, this expectant emigrant +into the unknown world chats about his departure as if it were for +Dublin, and his kinsfolk chat with him. + +"Ye'll be going soon!" + +"Oh yes, I shan't trouble ye more than an hour or two more." + +In quite another part of the domain we came upon a Covenanter--a true, +authentic Covenanter, who might have walked out of _Old Mortality_; the +name of him, Keyes. He greeted Lord Ernest cheerily enough, nodded to me +in a not unfriendly way, and at once broke into exhortation: "It's a +very short life we live; man that is born of woman is of few days, and +full of trouble. Well for them that are the children of light--if seeing +the light they sin not against it"; and so on with amazing volubility. + +There are eighty-five of these Covenanters here. They touch not nor have +touched the accursed thing. To them all parties and all governments are +alike evil. The Whigs persecuted the Solemn League and Covenant--so did +the Tories. Nationalists and Unionists are to them alike abominable, +sold under sin. Withal they are shrewd, canny, successful farmers--and, +as I inferred from sundry incidents, before Lord Ernest confided the +fact to me, not averse from a "right gude williewaught" now and then. + +Mr. Keyes, I thought, was not a blue-ribbon man, nor a ribbon-man of any +kind. + +The Duchess told me afterwards she had vainly endeavoured more than once +to get these people to vote at elections. + +We had a sprinkling of such people, and very good people in quiet times +they were, in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War, to whom +Federals and Confederates were alike anathema. + +We wound up our drive to-day just beyond "the Duke's seat," a little +rustic bench put up by the late Duke on a hill range which commands a +magnificent view over the whole domain of hill and forest and lakes, and +far away to the mountains of Munterlony. There, in the bogs and woods +James Hamilton, "lord baron of Strabane," with "other rebels, unknown, +in his company," hid himself till, after the fall of Charlemont in +August 1650, he was captured by a party of the Commonwealth's +men--whereby, as the record here runs, "all and singular his manors, +towns, lands, and so forth were forfeited to the Commonwealth of +England." Under this pressure he sought "protection," and got it a +fortnight later from Cromwell's General, Sir Charles Coote, whose +descendants still nourish in Wicklow. But on the 31st of December 1650 +he "broke the said protection, and joined himself with Sir Phelim +O'Neill, being then in rebellion." + +Troublous times those, and a "lord baron of Strabane" needed almost the +alacrity in turning his coat of a harlequin or a modern politician! It +is a comfort to know that at last, on the 16th of June 1655, he found +rest, dying at Ballyfathen, "a Roman Catholic and a papist recusant." As +we came back into the gardens and grounds, Lord Ernest showed me, +imbedded in the earth, a huge anchor presented to the present Duke by +the Corporation of Waterford, as having belonged to the French 28-gun +frigate, on which in 1689 James II. and Lord Abercorn sailed away from +Ireland for Prance. I believe that because of its weight the present +First Lord of the Admiralty avers that it is no anchor at all, but a +buoy fixture. It might have been ten times as heavy, and yet not have +availed to keep James from getting to sea at that particular time. + + +BARON'S COURT, _Friday, Feb. 10._--Here also, in County Tyrone, the +Irish women show their skill in women's work. Mrs. Dixon, the English +wife of the house-steward of Baron's Court, has charge of a woollen +industry founded here, after a discourse on thrift, delivered at a +temperance meeting of the people by the then Marquis of Hamilton, had +stirred the country up to consider whether the peasant women might not +possibly find some better and more profitable way of passing their +winter evenings than in sitting huddled around a peat fire with their +elbows on their knees, gossiping about their neighbours. Lord Hamilton +cited the women of Gweedore as proofs that such a way might by searching +be found. + +The Duke and Duchess found the funds, the stewardess invested them in +buying the necessary yarn and knitting-needles, and the Marchioness of +Hamilton acted as corresponding clerk and business agent of the new +industry. The clothing department of the British army lent a listening +ear to the business proposals made to it, and the work began. From that +time on it has been the main substantial resource against suffering and +starvation of the families of some three hundred labourers in the hill +country near Baron's Court. + +These labourers work for the small farmers from April to November; and +between the autumn and the spring their wives and daughters knit, and by +the Baron's Court machinery are enabled to dispose of, nearly twenty +thousand pairs of woollen socks. The yarns are brought from Edinburgh to +the store-house at Baron's Court. Thither every Wednesday come the +knitters. Mrs. Dixon weighs the hanks of yarn, and gives them out. + +On the following Wednesday the knitters reappear, each with her bale of +stockings or socks. These are again weighed, and the knitters receive +their pay according to the weight, quality, and size of the goods. In +some families there are four, five, or six knitters. All these people, +with four or five exceptions, are small cottars living on wretched +little mountain farms, not on the Duke of Abercorn's property; and but +for this industry they would be absolutely without employment all the +winter through. + +Some of them come from a distance of twelve or fourteen miles, and but +for this resource would literally starve. They are nearly all of them +Catholics, and the Protestants here being Unionists, they are probably +Nationalists. About three hundred knitters in all are employed. In the +year 1886-87 the orders given for Baron's Court work enabled Mrs. Dixon +to pay out regularly about five pounds a week, not including casual +private orders. For the current year the orders have been much larger, +and the expenditure proportionally greater. Mrs. Dixon's storehouse was +full of goods to-day. The long knickerbocker stockings which she showed +us were remarkably good, some in "cross-gartered" patterns, handsomer, +I thought, than similar goods in the Scottish Highlands--and all of them +staunch and well-proportioned. + +For socks such as are supplied to the volunteers and the troops the War +Office pays 8-3/4d. a pair. + +It was pleasant to learn from Mrs. Dixon that these people thoroughly +appreciate the spirit which prompted and still directs this enterprise. +Last spring when the Duchess was thought for a time to be hopelessly +ill, a young girl came down to Baron's Court weeping bitterly. On her +arm was a basket, in which were two young chanticleers crowing lustily. +The poor girl said these were all she had, and she had brought them "to +make soup for the Duchess, for she heard that was what the great people +lived on, and it might save her life." + +This afternoon I went over by the railway to Derry with Lord Ernest to +attend a meeting there. The "Maiden City" stands picturesquely on the +Foyle, and has a fine, though not large, cathedral of St. Colomb, +restored only last year, of which it may be noted that the work never +was undertaken while the Protestant Church of Ireland was established by +law, and has been successfully carried out since the disendowment of +that Church. The streets were white with snow, but the meeting in the +old Town Hall was largely attended. It was, in fact, a sort of Orange +symposium--tea being served at long tables, and the platform decorated +with a pianoforte. The Mayor of the city presided, and between the +speeches, songs, mostly in the Pyramus or condoling vein, were sung by a +local tenor of renown. It was very like an American tea-fight in the +country, and the audience were unquestionably enthusiastic. They quite +cheered themselves hoarse when Lord Ernest Hamilton reminded them that +he had made his first political speech in that hall on a "memorable +occasion," when, being an as yet unfledged Parliamentarian, he had taken +a hand in a successful attempt to prevent the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr. +Dawson, from making a speech in Derry. One of my neighbours, a merchant +in the city, told me that a project is afoot for tearing down the old +hall in which we met "to enlarge the street," but he added that "the +people of Derry were too proud of their history to allow it!" + +I understood him to say it is one of the very few buildings in Derry +which witnessed the famous siege, and the breaking of the boom. + +We left the "revel" early, caught a fast train to Newtown-Stewart, and +returned here an hour ago through a driving snowstorm, most dramatically +arranged to enhance the glow and genial charm of our welcome. + + +BARON'S COURT, _Saturday, Feb. 11th._--All the world was white with snow +this morning. Alas! for the deluded birds we have been listening to for +days past; thrushes, larks, and as, I believe, blackbirds, though there +is a tradition in these parts that no man ever heard the blackbird sing +before the 15th of February. I suspect it grew out of the date of St. +Valentine's Day. We had some lovely music, however, within doors this +morning; and, in spite of the snow and the chill wind, a little fairy of +a girl, with her groom, went off like mad across country on her pony, +"Guinea Pig," to fetch the mails from Newtown-Stewart. + +Not long after breakfast came in from Letterkenny Sergeant Mahony of the +constabulary, on whose testimony Father M'Fadden was convicted. We had +heard at Letterkenny that he was now on leave at Belfast, and Lord +Ernest had kindly arranged matters so that he should come here and +tell us his story of Gweedore. + +An admirable specimen he is of a most admirable body of men. He is as +thoroughly Celtic in aspect as he is by name--a dark Celt, with a quiet +resolute face, and a wiry well-built frame. + +Nothing could be better than his manner and bearing, at once respectful +and self-respectful: that manner of a natural gentleman one so often +sees in the Irish peasant. He is a devout Catholic, but no admirer of +Father M'Fadden. + +As to his evidence, he explains very clearly that he was not sent to +report Father M'Fadden's speech at all, but to note and take down and +report language used in the speech of a sort to excite the people +against the law. He was selected for this duty for three reasons: he is +a Donegal man who has lived at Gweedore for sixteen years; he is a fair +stenographer; and he speaks Irish, in which language Father M'Fadden +made his speech. + +"I speak Irish quite as well as he does," said the Sergeant quietly, +"and he knows I do. What I did was to put down in English words what I +heard said in Irish. This I had to do because I have no stenographic +signs for the Irish words." He tells me he taught himself stenography. + +"As for Father M'Fadden," he said, "he told the people that' he was the +law in Gweedore, and they should heed no other.' He spoke the truth, +too, for he makes himself the law in Gweedore. He dislikes me because I +am a living proof that he is not the only law in Gweedore!" Of the +business shrewdness and ability of Father M'Fadden, Sergeant Mahony +expressed a very high opinion, though hardly in terms which would have +gratified such an ecclesiastic as the late Cardinal Barnabo. Possibly +Cardinal Cullen might have relished them no better. "Certainly he has +the finest house in Gweedore, sir, and what's more he made it the finest +himself." + +"Do you mean that he built it?" + +"He did, indeed; and did you not notice the beautiful stone fences he is +putting up all about it, and the four farms he has?" + +"Then he is certainly a man of substance?" + +"And of good substance, sir! The Government, they gave him a hundred +pounds towards the house. But it was the flood that was the blessed +thing for him and made a great man of him!" + +"The flood?" I asked, with some natural astonishment; "the flood? What +flood?" + +"And did you never hear of the great flood of Gweedore? It was in +August 1880. You will mind the water that comes down behind the chapel? +Well, there was a flood, and it swelled, and it swelled, and it burst +the small pipe there behind the chapel: too small it was entirely for +carrying off' the great water, and nobody took notice of it, or that +there was anything wrong, and so the water was piled up behind the +chapel, and at Mass on the Sunday, while the chapel was full, the walls +gave way, and the water rushed in, and was nine feet deep. There were +five people that couldn't get out in time, and were drowned--two old +people and three children, young people. It was a great flood. And +Father M'Fadden wrote about it--oh, he is a clever priest with the +pen--and they made a great subscription in London for the poor people +and the chapel. I can't rightly say how much, but it was in the papers, +a matter of seven hundred pounds, I have heard say. And it was all sent +to Father M'Fadden." + +"And it was spent, of course," I said, "on the repairs of the chapel, or +given to the relatives of the poor people who were drowned." + +"Oh, no doubt; very likely it was, sir! But the repairs of the +chapel--there isn't a mason in Donegal but will tell you a hundred +pounds would not be wanted to make the chapel as good as it ever was. +And for the people that were drowned--two of them were old people, as I +said to you, sir, that had no kith or kin to be relieved, and for the +others they were of well-to-do people that would not wish to take +anything from the parish." + +"What was done with it, then?" + +"Oh! that I can't tell ye. It was spent for the people some way. You +must ask Father M'Fadden. He is the fund in Gweedore, just as he is the +law in Gweedore. Oh! they came from all parts to see the great ruin of +the flood at Gweedore. They did, indeed. And some of them, it was poor +sight they had; they couldn't see the big rift in the walls, when Father +M'Fadden pointed it out to them. 'Whisht! there it is!' he would say, +pointing with his finger. Then they saw it!" + +I asked him at what figure he put the income of Father M'Fadden from his +parish. Without a moment's hesitation he answered, "It's over a thousand +pounds a year, sir, and nearer twelve hundred than eleven." I expressed +my surprise at this, the whole rental of Captain Hill, the landlord, +falling, as I had understood, below rather than above L700 a year; and +Gweedore, as Father Walker had told me, containing fewer houses than +Burtonport. + +"Fewer houses, mayhap," said the sergeant, "though I'm not sure of that; +but if fewer they pay more. There's but one curate--poor man, he does +all the parish work, barring the high masses, and a good man he is, but +he gets L400 a year, and that is but a third of the income!" + +I asked by what special stipends the priest's income at Gweedore could +be thus enhanced. "Oh, it's mainly the funeral-money that helps it up," +he replied. "You see, sir, since Father M'Fadden came to Gweedore it's +come to be the fashion." + +"The fashion?" I said. + +"Yes, sir, the fashion. This is the way it is, you see. When a poor +creature comes to be buried--no matter who it is, a pauper, or a tenant, +or any one--the people all go to the chapel; and every man he walks up +and lays his offering for the priest on the coffin; and the others, they +watch him. And, you see, if a man that thinks a good deal of himself +walks up and puts down five shillings, why, another man that thinks less +of him, and more of himself, he'll go up and make it a gold ten-shilling +piece, or perhaps even a sovereign! I've known Father M'Fadden, sir, to +take in as much as L15 in a week in that way." + +Sergeant Mahony told us a curious tale, too, of the way in which Father +M'Fadden dealt with the people of the neighbouring parish of Falcarragh. +He would go down to the parish boundary, if he wanted to address the +people of Falcarragh, and stand over the line, with one foot in each +parish! + +At our request Sergeant Mahony made some remarks in Irish; very wooing +and winning they were in sound. Before he left Baron's Court he promised +to make out and send me a schedule of the parochial income at Gweedore, +under the separate heads of the sources whence it is derived. + +Obviously Sergeant Mahony would make a good "devil's advocate" at the +canonization of Father M'Fadden. But, all allowances made for this, one +thing would seem to be tolerably clear. Of the three personages who take +tribute of the people of Gweedore, the law intervenes in their behalf +with only one--the landlord. The priest and the "Gombeen man" deal with +them on the old principle of "freedom of contract." But it is by no +means so clear which of the three exacts and receives the greatest +tribute. + +We leave Baron's Court in an hour for Dublin, whence I go on alone +to-night into Queen's County. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +ABBEYLEIX, _Sunday, Feb. 12._--Newtown-Stewart, through which I drove +yesterday afternoon with Lord Ernest to the train, is a prettily +situated town, with the ruins of a castle in which James II. slept for a +night on his flight to France. He was cordially received, and by way of +showing his satisfaction left the little town in flames when he +departed. Here appears to be a case, not of rack-renting, but of +absenteeism. The town belongs to a landlord who lives in Paris, and +rarely, if ever, comes here. There are no improvements--no +sanitation--but the inhabitants make no complaint. "Absenteeism" has its +compensations as well as its disadvantages. They pay low rents, and are +little troubled; the landlord drawing, perhaps, L400 a year from the +whole place. The houses are small, though neat enough in appearance, but +the town has a sleepy, inert look. On the railway between Dundalk and +Newry, we passed a spot known by the ominous name of "The Hill of the +Seven Murders," seven agents having been murdered there since 1840! I +suppose this must be set down to the force of habit. At Newry a cavalry +officer whom Lord Ernest knew got into our carriage. He was full of +hunting, and mentioned a place to which he was going as a "very fine +country." + +"From the point of view of the picturesque?" I asked. + +"Oh no! from the point of view of falling off your horse!" + +At Maple's Hotel I found a most hospitable telegram, insisting that I +should give up my intention of spending the night at Maryborough, and +come on to this lovely place in my host's carriage, which would be sent +to meet me at that station. I left Kingsbridge Station in Dublin about 7 +P.M. We had rather a long train, and I observed a number of people +talking together about one of the carriages before we started; but there +was no crowd at all, and nothing to attract special attention. As we +moved out of the station, some lads at the end of the platform set up a +cheer. We ran on quietly till we reached Kildare. There quite a +gathering awaited our arrival on the platform, and as we slowed up, a +cry went up from among them of, "Hurrah for Mooney! hurrah for Mooney!" +The train stopped just as this cry swelled most loudly, when to my +surprise a tall man in the gathering caught one or two of the people by +the shoulder, shaking them, and called out loudly, "Hurrah for +Gilhooly--you fools, hurrah for Gilhooly!" + +This morning I learned that I had the honour, unwittingly, of travelling +from Dublin to Maryborough with Mr. Gilhooly, M.P., who appears to have +been arrested in London on Friday, brought over yesterday by the day +train, and sent on at once from Dublin to his destined dungeon. + +An hour's drive through a rolling country, showing white and weird under +its blanket of snow in the night, brought us to this large, rambling, +delightful house, the residence of Viscount de Vesci. Mr. Gladstone came +here from Lord Meath's on his one visit to Ireland some years ago. I +find the house full of agreeable and interesting people; and the chill +of the drive soon vanished under the genial influences of a light +supper, and of pleasant chat in the smoking-room. A good story was told +there, by the way, of Archbishop Walsh, who being rather indiscreetly +importuned to put his autograph on a fan of a certain Conservative lady +well known in London, and not a little addicted to lion-hunting, +peremptorily refused, saying, "no, nor any of the likes of her!" And +another of Father Nolan, a well-known priest, who died at the age of +ninety-seven. When someone remonstrated with him on his association with +an avowed unbeliever in Christianity, like Mr. Morley, Father Nolan +replied, "Oh, faith will come with time!" The same excellent priest, +when he came to call on Mr. Gladstone, here at Abbeyleix, on his arrival +from the Earl of Meath's, pathetically and patriarchally adjured him, on +his next visit to Ireland, "not to go from one lord's house to another, +but to stay with the people." This was better than the Irish journal +which, finding itself obliged to chronicle the fact that Mr. Gladstone, +with his wife and daughter, was visiting Abbeyleix, gracefully observed +that he "had been entrapped into going there!" Some one lamenting the +lack of Irish humour and spirit in the present Nationalist movement, as +compared with the earlier movements, Lord de Vesci cited as a solitary +but refreshing instance of it, the incident which occurred the other day +at an eviction in Kerry,[18] of a patriotic priest who chained himself +to a door, and put it across the entrance of the cabin to keep out the +bailiffs! + +It is discouraging to know that this delightful act was bitterly +denounced by some worthy and well-meaning Tory in Parliament as an +"outrage"! + +Despite the snow the air this morning, in this beautiful region, is soft +and almost warm, and all the birds are singing again. The park borders +upon and opens into the pretty town of Abbeyleix, the broad and +picturesque main thoroughfare of which, rather a rural road than a +street, is adorned with a fountain and cross, erected in memory of the +late Lord de Vesci. There is a good Catholic chapel here (the ancient +abbey which gave the place its name stood in the grounds of the present +mansion), and a very handsome Protestant Church. + +It is a curious fact that two of the men implicated in the Phoenix Park +murders had been employed, one, I believe, as a mason, and one as a +carver, in the construction of this church. Both the chapel and the +church to-day were well attended. I am told there has been little real +trouble here, nor has the Plan of Campaign been adopted here. Sometimes +Lord de Vesci finds threatening images of coffins and guns scratched in +the soil, with portraits indicating his agent or himself; but these mean +little or nothing. Lady de Vesci, who loves her Irish home, and has done +and is doing a good deal for the people here, tells me, as an amusing +illustration of the sort of terrorism formerly established by the local +organisations, that when she met two of the labourers on the place +together, they used to pretend to be very busy and not to see her. But +if she met one alone, he greeted her just as respectfully as ever. + +The women here do a great deal of embroidery and lace work, in which she +encourages them, but this industry has suffered what can only be a +temporary check, from the change of fashion in regard to the wearing of +laces. Why the loveliest of all fabrics made for the adornment of women +should ever go "out of fashion" would be amazing if anything in the +vagaries of that occult and omnipotent influence could be. The Irish +ladies ought to circulate Madame de Piavigny's exquisite _Lime +d'Heures_, with its incomparable illustrations by Carot and Meaulle, +drawn from the lace work of all ages and countries, as a tonic against +despair in respect to this industry. In one of the large rooms of her +own house, Lady de Vesci has established and superintends a school of +carving for the children of poor tenants. It has proved a school of +civilisation also. The lads show a remarkable aptitude for the arts of +design, and of their own accord make themselves neat and trim as soon as +they begin to understand what it is they are doing. They are always busy +at home with their drawings and their blocks, and some of them are +already beginning to earn money by their work. + +What I have seen at Adare Manor near Limerick, where the late Earl of +Dunraven educated all the workmen employed on that mansion as +stone-cutters and carvers, suffices to show that the people of this +country have not lost the aptitudes of which we see so many proofs in +the relics of early Irish art. + +Among the guests in the house is a distinguished officer, Colonel +Talbot, who saw hard service in Egypt, and in the advance on Khartoum, +with camels across the desert--a marvellous piece of military work. I +find that he was in America in 1864-65, with Meade and Hunt and Grant +before Petersburg, being in fact the only foreign officer then present. +He there formed what seem to me very sound and just views as to the +ability of the Federal commanders in that closing campaign of the Civil +War, and spoke of Hunt particularly with much admiration. Of General +Grant he told me a story so illustrative of the simplicity and modesty +which were a keynote in his character that I must note it. The day +before the evacuation of Petersburg by the Con federates, Grant was +urged to order an attack upon the Confederate positions. He refused to +do so. The next day the Confederates were seen hastily abandoning them. +Grant watched them quietly for a while, and then putting down his glass, +said to one of the officers who had urged the assault, "You were right, +and I was wrong. I ought to have attacked them." + +It is provoking to know that the notes taken by this British officer at +that time, being sent through the Post Office by him some years ago to +Edinburgh for publication, were lost in the transmission, and have never +been recovered. Curiously enough, however, he thinks he has now and then +discerned indications in articles upon the American War, published in a +newspaper which he named, going to show that his manuscripts are in +existence somewhere. + +ABBEYLEIX, _Monday, Feb. 13._--To-day, in company with Lord de Vesci +and a lady, I went over to Kilkenny. We left and arrived in a snowstorm, +but the trip was most interesting. Kilkenny, chiefly known in America, I +fear, as the city of the cats, is a very picturesque place, thanks to +its turrets and towers. It has two cathedrals, a Bound Tower (one of +these in Dublin was demolished in the last century!), a Town Hall with a +belfry, and looming square and high above the town, the Norman keep of +its castle. The snow enlivened rather than diminished the scenic effect +of the place. Bits of old architecture here and there give character to +the otherwise commonplace streets. Notable on the way to the castle is a +bit of mediaeval wall with Gothic windows, and fretted with the +scutcheon in stone of the O'Sheas. The connection of a gentleman of this +family with the secret as well as the public story of the Parnellite +movement may one day make what Horace Greeley used to call "mighty +interestin' reading." A dealer in spirits now occupies what is left of +the old Parliament House of Kilkenny, in which the rival partisans of +Preston and O'Neill outfought the legendary cats, to the final ruin of +the cause of the Irish confederates, and the despair of the loyal +legate of Pope Innocent. + +Of Kilkenny Castle, founded by Strongbow, but two or three towers +remain. The great quadrangle was rebuilt in 1825, and much of it again +so late as in 1860. There is little, therefore, to recall the image of +the great Marquis who, if Rinuccini read him aright, played so +resolutely here two centuries and a half ago for the stakes which Edward +Bruce won and lost at Dundalk. The castle of the Butlers is now really a +great modern house. + +The town crowds too closely upon it, but the position is superb. The +castle windows look clown upon the Nore, spanned by a narrow ancient +bridge, and command, not only all that is worth seeing in the town, but +a wide and glorious prospect over a region which is even now beautiful, +and in summer must be charming. + +Over the ancient bridge the enterprise of a modern brewer last week +brought a huge iron vat, so menacingly ponderous that the authorities +made him insure the bridge for a day. + +Within the castle, near the main entrance, are displayed some +tapestries, which are hardly shown to due advantage in that position. +They were made here at Kilkenny in a factory established by Piers +Butler, Earl of Ormonde, in the sixteenth century, and they ought to be +sent to the Irish Exhibition of this year in London, as proving what +Irish art and industry well directed could then achieve. They are +equally bold in design and rich in colour. The blues are especially +fine. + +The grand gallery of the castle, the finest in the kingdom, though a +trifle narrow for its length, is hung with pictures and family +portraits. One of the most interesting of these is a portrait of the +black Earl of Ormon'de, a handsome swarthy man, evidently careful of his +person, who was led by that political flirt, Queen Elizabeth, to believe +that she meant to make him a visit in Ireland, and, perhaps, to honour +him with her hand. He went to great expenses thereupon. At a parley with +his kinsman, the Irish chieftain O'Moore of Abbeyleix, this black earl +was traitorously captured, and an ancient drawing representing this +event hangs beneath his portrait. + +The muniment room, where, thanks to Lord Ormonde's courtesy, we found +everything prepared to receive us, is a large, airy, and fire-proof +chamber, with well-arranged shelves and tables for consulting the +records. These go back to the early Norrnan days, long before Edward +III. made James Butler Earl of Ormonde, upon his marriage with Alianore +of England, granddaughter of Edward I. The Butlers came into Ireland +with Henry II., and John gave them estates, the charters of some of +which, with the seals annexed, are here preserved. There are fine +specimens of the great seals also of Henry III., and of his sons Edward +I. and Edmund Crouchback, and of the Tudor sovereigns, as well as many +private seals of great interest. The wax of the early seals was +obviously stronger and better than the wax since used. Of Elizabeth, who +came of the Butler blood through her mother, one large seal in yellow +wax, attached to a charter dated Oct. 24, 1565, is remarkable for the +beauty of the die. The Queen sits on the obverse under a canopy; on the +reverse she rides in state on a pacing steed as in her effigy at the +Tower of London. The seals of James I. follow the design of this die. +Two of these are particularly fine. At the Restoration something +disappears of the old stateliness. A seal of Charles II., of 1660, very +large and florid in style, shows the monarch sitting very much at his +ease, with one knee thrown negligently over the other. Many of the +private letters and papers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth +centuries, during which Kilkenny, as it had been often before, was a +great centre of Irish politics and intrigues, have been bound up in +volumes, and the collection has been freely drawn upon by historians. +But it would obviously bear and reward a more thorough co-ordination and +examination than it has ever yet received. + +There is a curious Table Book here preserved of Charles I. while at +Oxford in 1644, from which it appears that while the colleges were +melting up their plate for the King, his Majesty fared better than might +have been expected. His table was served with sixty pounds of mutton a +day; and he wound up his dinner regularly with "sparaguss" so long as it +lasted, and after it went out with artichokes. + +An Expense Book, too, of the great Marquis, after he became the first +Duke of Ormonde, Colonel Blood's Duke, kept at Kilkenny in 1668 throws +some interesting light on the cost of living and the customs of great +houses at that time. The Duke, who was in some respects the greatest +personage in the realm, kept up his state here at a weekly cost of +about L50, a good deal less--allowing for the fall in the power of the +pound sterling--than it would now cost him to live at a fashionable +London hotel. He paid L9, 10s. a week for the keep of nineteen horses, +18 shillings board wages for three laundry-maids, and L1, 17s. 4d. for +seven dozen of tallow-candles. The wines served at the ducal table were +Burgundy, Bordeaux, "Shampane," Canary, "Renish," and Portaport, the +last named at a shilling a bottle, while he paid no more than L3, 18s. +for six dozen bottles of Bordeaux, and L1, 1s. for a dozen and a half of +"Shampane." This of course was not the sparkling beverage which in our +times is the only contribution of Champagne to the wine markets of the +world, for the _Ay Mousseux_ first appears in history at the beginning +of the eighteenth century. It was the red wine of Champagne, which so +long contested the palm with the vintages of Burgundy. St. Evremond, who +with the Comte d'Olonne and the great _gourmets_ of the seventeenth +century thought Champagne the best, as the Faculty of Paris also +pronounced it the most wholesome of wines, doubtless introduced his own +religion on the subject into England--but the entry in the Duke's +Expense Book of 1668 is an interesting proof that the duel of the +vintages was even then going as it finally went in favour of Burgundy. +While the Duke got his Champagne for 1s. 2d. a bottle, he had to pay +twenty shillings a dozen, or 1s. 8d. a bottle, for five dozen of +Burgundy. He got his wines from Dublin, which then, as long before, was +the most noted wine mart of Britain. The English princes drew their best +supplies thence in the time of Richard II. + +From the castle we drove through the snow to the Cathedral of St. +Canice, a grand and simple Norman edifice of the twelfth century, now +the Church of the Protestant bishop. An ancient Round Tower of much +earlier date stands beside it like a campanile, nearly a hundred feet in +height. + +There is a legend that Rinuccini wanted to buy and carry away one of the +great windows of this Cathedral, in which mass was celebrated while he +was here. The Cathedral contains some interesting monuments of the +Butlers, and there are many curiously channelled burial slabs in the +floor, like some still preserved in the ruins of Abbeyleix. Lord de +Vesci pointed out to me several tombs of families of English origin once +powerful here, but now sunk into the farmer class. On one of these I +think it was that we saw a remarkably well-preserved effigy of a lady, +wearing a plaited cap under a "Waterford cloak"--one of the neatest +varieties of the Irish women's cloak--garment so picturesque at once, +and so well adapted to the climate, that I am not surprised to learn +from Lady de Vesci that it is very fast going out of fashion. This +morning before we left Abbeyleix she showed us two such cloaks, types +from two different provinces, each in its way admirable. Put on and worn +about the room by two singularly stately and graceful ladies, they fell +into lines and folds which recalled the most exquisitely beautiful +statuettes of Tanagra; and all allowance made for the glamour lent them +by these two "daughters of the gods, divinely tall," it was impossible +not to see that no woman could possibly look commonplace and +insignificant in such a garment. Yet Lady de Vesci says that more than +once she has known peasant women, to whom such cloaks had been +presented, cut off the characteristic and useful hood, and trim the +mangled robe with tawdry lace. So it is all over the world! Women who +are models for an artist when they wear some garment indigenous to their +country and appropriate to its conditions, prefer to make guys of +themselves in grotesque travesties of the latest "styles" from London +and Paris and Dublin! + +Kilkenny boasts that its streets are paved with marble. It is in fact +limestone, but none the worse for that. The snow did not improve them. +So without going on a pilgrimage to the Kilkenny College, at which +Swift, Congreve, and Farquhar,--an odd concatenation of +celebrities--were more or less educated, we made our way to the Imperial +Hotel for luncheon. The waiter was a delightful Celt. Upon my asking him +whether the house could furnish anything distantly resembling good Irish +whisky, he produced a bottle of alleged Scotch whisky, which he put upon +the table with a decisive air, exclaiming, "And this, yer honour, is the +most excellent whisky in the whole world, or I'm not an Irishman!" + +Urged by the cold we tempered it with hot water and tasted it. It shut +us up at once to believe the waiter a Calmuck or a Portuguese--anything, +in short, but an Irishman. It is an extraordinary fact that, so far, the +whisky I have found at Irish hotels has been uniformly quite execrable. +I am almost tempted to think that the priests sequestrate all the good +whisky in order to discourage the public abuse of it, for the "wine of +the country" which they offer one is as uniformly excellent. + +Kilkenny ought to be and long was a prosperous town. In 1702, the second +Duke of Ormonde made grants (at almost nominal ground-rents) of the +ground upon which a large portion of the city of Kilkenny was then +standing, or upon which houses have since been built. + +These grants have passed from hand to hand, and form the "root of title" +of very many owners of house property in Kilkenny. The city is the +centre of an extensive agricultural region, famous, according to an +ancient ditty, for "fire without smoke, air without fog, water without +mud, and land without bog"; but of late it has been undeniably +declining. For this there are many reasons. The railways and the +parcel-post diminish its importance as a local emporium. The almost +complete disappearance of the woollen manufacture, the agricultural +depression which has made the banks and wholesale houses "come down" +upon the small dealers, and the "agitation," bankrupting or exiling the +local gentry, have all conspired to the same result. + +From Abbeyleix station we walked back to the house through the park +under trees beautifully silvered with the snow. At dinner the party was +joined by several residents of the county. One of them gave me his views +of the working of the "Plan of Campaign." It is a plan, he maintains, +not of defence as against unjust and exacting landlords, but of offence +against "landlordism," not really promoted, as it appears to be, in the +interest of the tenants to whose cupidity it appeals, but worked from +Dublin as a battering engine against law and order in Ireland. Every +case in which it is applied needs, he thinks, to be looked into on its +own merits. It will then be found precisely why this or that spot has +bees selected by the League for attack. At Luggacurren, for instance, +the "Plan of Campaign" has been imposed upon the tenants because the +property belongs to the Marquis of Lansdowne, who happens to be +Governor-General of Canada, so that to attack him is to attack the +Government. The rents of the Lansdowne property at Luggacurren, this +gentleman offers to prove to me, are not and never have been excessive; +and Lord Lansdowne has expended very large sums on improving the +property, and for the benefit of the tenants. Two of the largest +tenants having got into difficulties through reckless racing and other +forms of extravagance found it convenient to invite the league into +Luggacurren, and compel other tenants in less embarrassed circumstances +to sacrifice their holdings by refusing to pay rents which they knew to +be fair, and were abundantly able and eager to pay. At Mitchelstown the +"Plan of Campaign" was aimed again, not at the Countess of Kingston, the +owner, but at the Disestablished Protestant Church of Ireland, the +trustees of which hold a mortgage of a quarter of a million sterling on +the estates. On the Clanricarde property in Galway the "Plan of +Campaign" has been introduced, my informant says, because Lord +Clanricarde happens to be personally unpopular. "Go down to Portumna and +Woodford," he said, "and look into the matter for yourself. You will +find that the rents on the Clanricarde estates are in the main +exceptionally fair, and even low. The present Marquis has almost never +visited Ireland, I believe, and he is not much known even in London. +People who dislike him for one reason or another readily believe +anything that is said to his disadvantage as a landlord. Most people who +don't like the cut of Dr. Fell's whiskers, or the way in which he takes +soup, are quite disposed to listen to you if you tell them he beats his +wife or plays cards too well. The campaigners are shrewd fellows, and +they know this, so they start the 'Plan of Campaign' on the Portumna +properties, and get a lot of English windbags to come there and hobnob +with some of the most mischievous and pestilent parish priests in all +Ireland--and then you have the dreadful story of the 'evictions,' and +all the rest of it. Lord Clanricarde, or his agent, or both of them, +getting out of temper, will sit down and do some hasty or crabbed or +injudicious thing, or write a provoking letter, and forthwith it is +enough to say 'Clanricarde,' and all common sense goes out of the +question, to the great damage, not so much of Lord Clanricarde--for he +lives in London, and is a rich man, and, I suppose, don't mind the +row--but of landlords all over Ireland, and therefore, in the long-run, +of the tenants of Ireland as well." + +At Luggacurren, this gentleman thinks, the League is beaten. There are +eighty-two tenants there, evicted and living dismally in what is called +the Land League village, a set of huts erected near the roadside, while +their farms are carried on for the owner by the Land Corporation. As +they were most of them unwilling to accept the Plan, and were +intimidated into it for the benefit of the League, and of the two chief +tenants, Mr. Dunn and Mr. Kilbride, men of substance who had squandered +their resources, the majority of the evicted are sore and angry. + +"At first each man was allowed L3 a month by the League for himself and +his family. But they found that Mr. Kilbride, who has been put into +Parliament by Mr. Parnell for Kerry, a county with which he has no more +to do than I have with the Isle of Skye, was getting L5 a week, and so +they revolted, and threatened to bolt if their subsidy was not raised to +L4 a month." + +"And this they get now? Out of what funds?" + +"Out of the League funds, or, in other words, out of their own and other +people's money, foolishly put by the tenants into the keeping of the +League to 'protect' it! They give it the kind of 'protection' that +Oliver gave the liberties of England: once they get hold of it, they +never let go!" + +I submitted that at Gweedore Father M'Fadden had paid over to Captain +Hill the funds confided to him. + +"No doubt; but there the landlord gave in, and the more fool he!" + +With another guest I had an interesting conversation about the Ulster +tenant-right, which got itself more or less enacted into British law +only in 1870, and of which Mr. Froude tells me he sought in vain to +discover the definite origin. "The best lawyers in Ireland" could give +him no light on this point. He could only find that it did not exist +apparently in 1770, but did exist apparently twenty years later. The +gentleman with whom I talked to-night tells me that the custom of Ulster +was really once general throughout Ireland, and is called the "Ulster" +custom, only because it survived there after disappearing elsewhere. +There is a tradition too, he says, in Ulster that the recognition of +this tenant-right as a binding custom there is really due to Lord +Castlereagh. It would be a curious thing, could this be verified, to +find Lord Castlereagh, whose name has been execrated in Ireland for +fourscore years, recommending and securing a century ago that +recognition of the interest of the Irish tenant in his holding, which, +in our time, Mr. Gladstone, just now the object of Irish adulation, was, +with much difficulty and reluctance, brought to accord in the +Compensation for Disturbances clause of his Act of 1870! + +Of this clause, too, I am told to-night that the scale of compensation +fixed for the awards of the Court in the third section of it was devised +(though Mr. Gladstone did not know this) by an Irish member in the +interest of the "strong farmers," who wish to root out the small +farmers. There is an apparent confirmation of this story in the fact +that under this section the small farmers, under L10, may be awarded +against the landlord seven years' rent as compensation for disturbance, +while the number of years to be accounted for in the award diminishes as +the rental increases, a discrimination not unlikely to strengthen the +preference of the landlords for the large farm system. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +DUBLIN, _Tuesday, Feb. 14th._--I left Abbeyleix this morning for Dublin, +in company with Mr. and Mrs. Henry Doyle. Mr. Doyle, C.B., a brother of +that inimitable master of the pencil, and most delightful of men, +Richard Doyle, is the Director of the Irish National Gallery. He was +kind enough to come and lunch with me at Maple's, after which we went +together to the Gallery. It occupies the upper floors of a stately and +handsome building in Merrion Square, in front of which stands a statue +of the founder, Mr. William Dargan, who defrayed all the expenses of the +Dublin Exhibition in 1853, and declined all the honours offered to him +in recognition of his public spirited liberality, save a visit paid to +his wife by Queen Victoria. The collection now under Mr. Doyle's charge +was begun only in 1864, and the Government makes it an annual grant of +no more than L2500, or about one-half the current price, in these days, +of a fine Gainsborough or Sir Joshua! "They manage these things better +in France," was evidently the impression of a recent French tourist in +Ireland, M. Daryl, whose book I picked up the other day in Paris, for +after mentioning three or four of the pictures, and gravely affirming +that the existence here of a gallery of Irish portraits proves the +passionate devotion of Dublin to Home Rule, he dismisses the collection +with the verdict that "_ce ne vaut pas le diable_." Nevertheless it +already contains more really good pictures than the Musee either of +Lyons or of Marseilles, both of them much larger and wealthier cities +than Dublin. Leaving out the Three Maries of Perugino at Marseilles, and +at Lyons the Ascension, which was once the glory of San Pietro di +Perugia, the Moses of Paul Veronese, and Palma Giovanni's Flagellation, +these two galleries put together cannot match Dublin with its Jan Steen, +most characteristic without being coarse, its Terburg, a life-size +portrait of the painter's favourite model, a young Flemish gentleman, +presented to him as a token of regard, its portrait of a Venetian +personage by Giorgione, with a companion portrait by Gian Bellini, its +beautiful Italian landscape by Jan Both, its flower-wreathed head of a +white bull by Paul Potter, its exquisitely finished "Vocalists" by +Cornells Begyn, its admirable portrait of a Dutch gentleman by Murillo, +and its two excellent Jacob Ruysdaels. A good collection is making, too, +of original drawings, and engravings, and a special room is devoted to +modern Irish art. I wish the Corcoran Gallery (founded, too, by an +Irishman!) were half as worthy of Washington, or the Metropolitan Museum +one-tenth part as worthy of New York! + +The National Gallery in London has loaned some pictures to Dublin, and +Mr. Doyle is getting together, from private owners, a most interesting +gallery of portraits of men and women famous in connection with Irish +history. The beautiful Gunnings of the last century, the not less +beautiful and much more brilliant Sheridans of our own, Burke, Grattan, +Tom Moore, Wellington, Curran, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, O'Connell, Peg +Woffington, Canning, and Castlereagh, Dean Swift, Laurence Sterne are +all here--wits and statesmen, soldiers and belles, rebels and royalists, +orators and poets. Two things strike one in this gallery of the "glories +of Ireland." The great majority of the faces are of the Anglo-Irish or +Scoto-Irish type; and the collection owes its existence to an +accomplished public officer, who bears an Irish name, who is a devout +Catholic, and who is also an outspoken opponent of the Home Rule +contention as now carried on. + +The gallery is open on liberal conditions to students. Mr. Doyle tells +me that a young sister of Mr. Parnell was at one time an assiduous +student here. He used to stop and chat with her about her work as he +passed through the gallery. One day he met her coming out. "Mr. Doyle," +she said, "are you a Home Ruler?" "Certainly not," he replied +good-naturedly. Whereupon, with an air of melancholy resignation, the +young lady said, "Then we can never more be friends!" and therewith +flitted forth. + +A small room contains some admirable bits of the work of Richard Doyle, +among other things a weird and grotesque, but charming cartoon of an +elfish procession passing through a quaint and picturesque mediaeval +city. It is a _conte fantastique_ in colour--a marvel of affluent fancy +and masterly skill. + +I found here this morning letters calling me over to Paris for a short +time, and one also from Mr. Davitt, in London, explaining that my note +to him through the National League had never reached him, and that he +had gone to London on his woollen business. I have written asking him to +meet me to-morrow in London, and I shall cross over to-night. + + +LONDON, _Wednesday, Feb. 15th._--Mr. Davitt spent an hour with me +to-day, and we had a most interesting conversation. His mind is just now +full of the woollen enterprise he is managing, which promises, he +thinks, in spite of our tariff, to open the American markets to the +excellent woollen goods of Ireland. He has gone into it with all his +usual earnestness and ability. This is not a matter of politics with +him, but of patriotism and of business. He tells me he has already +secured very large orders from the United States. I hope he is not +surprised, as I certainly am not, to find that the Parliamentarian Irish +party give but a half-hearted and lukewarm support to such enterprises +as this. Perhaps he has forgotten, as I have not, the efforts which a +certain member of that party made in 1886 to persuade an Irish gentleman +from St. Louis, who had brought over a considerable sum of money for the +relief of the distress in North-Western Ireland, into turning it over +to the League, on the express ground that the more the people were made +to feel the pinch of the existing order of things, the better it would +be for the revolutionary movement. + +The Irish Woollen Company will, nevertheless, be a success, I believe, +and a success of considerably more value to Ireland than the election of +Mr. Wilfrid Blunt as M.P. for Deptford would be. + +As to this election, Mr. Davitt seems to feel no great confidence. He +has spoken in support of Mr. Blunt's candidacy, and is hard at work now +to promote it. But he is not sanguine as to the result, as on all +questions, save Home Rule for Ireland, Mr. Blunt's views and ideas, he +thinks, antagonise the record of Mr. Evelyn and the local feeling at +Deptford. I was almost astonished to learn from Mr. Davitt that Mr. +Blunt, by the way, had told him at Ballybrack, long before he was locked +up, how Mr. Balfour meant to lock up and kill four men, the "pivots" of +the Irish movement, to wit, Mr. O'Brien, Mr. Harrington, Mr. Dillon, and +Mr. Davitt himself. But I was not at all astonished to learn that Mr. +Blunt told him all this most seriously, and evidently believed it. + +"How did you take it?" I asked. + +"Oh, I only laughed," said Mr. Davitt, "and told him it would take more +than Mr. Balfour to kill me, at any rate by putting me in prison. As for +being locked up, I prefer Cuninghame Graham's way of taking it, that he +meant 'to beat the record on oakum!'" + +If all the Irish "leaders" were made of the same stuff with Mr. Davitt, +the day of a great Democratic revolution, not in Ireland only, but in +Great Britain, might be a good deal nearer than anything in the signs of +the times now shows it to be. Mr. Parnell and the National League are +really nothing but the mask of Mr. Davitt and the Land League. Mr. +Forster knew what he was about when he proclaimed the Land League in +October 1881, six months or more after he had arrested and locked up Mr. +Davitt in Portland prison. This was shown by the foolish No-Rent +manifesto which Mr. Parnell and his associates issued from Kilmainham +shortly after their incarceration, and without the counsel or consent at +that time of Mr. Davitt--a manifesto which the Archbishop of Cashel, +despite his early sympathies and connection with the agrarian agitation +of 1848, found it expedient promptly to disavow. It would have been +still more clearly shown had not Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Forster parted +company under the restiveness of Mr. Gladstone's Radical followers, and +the pressure of the United States Government in the spring of 1882. But +after the withdrawal of Mr. Forster, and the release of Mr. Davitt, the +English lawyers and politicians who led Lord Spencer and Sir George +Trevelyan into allowing the Land League to be revived under the +transparent alias of the National League, gave Mr. Davitt an +opportunity, of which he promptly availed himself, to regain the ground +lost by the blundering of the men of Kilmainham. From that time forth I +have always regarded him as the soul of the Irish agitation, of the war +against "landlordism" (which is incidentally, of course, a war against +the English influence in Ireland), and of the movement towards Irish +independence. Whether the agitation, the war, and the movement have gone +entirely in accordance with his views and wishes is quite another +matter. + +I have too good an opinion of his capacity to believe that they have; +and when the secret history of the Chicago Convention comes to be +written, I expect to find such confirmation therein of my notions on +this subject as I could neither ask nor, if I asked, could expect to get +from him. + +Meanwhile the manliness and courage of the man must always command for +him the respect, not to say the admiration, even of those who most +sternly condemn his course and oppose his policy. + +Born the child of an evicted tenant, in the times when an eviction meant +such misery and suffering as are seldom, if ever, now caused by the +process--bred and maimed for life in an English factory--captured when +hardly more than a lad in Captain M'Cafferty's daring attempt to seize +Chester Castle, and sent for fifteen years by Lord Chief-Justice +Cockburn into penal servitude of the most rigorous kind, Michael Davitt +might have been expected to be an apostle of hate not against the +English Government of Ireland alone, but against England and the English +people. The truculent talk of too many of his countrymen presents +Ireland to the minds of thoughtful men as a flagrant illustration of the +truth so admirably put by Aubrey de Vere that "worse than wasted weal is +wasted woe." But woe has not been wasted upon Michael Davitt, in this, +that, so far as I know (and I have watched his course now with lively +personal interest ever since I made his acquaintance on his first visit +to America), he has never made revenge and retaliation upon England +either the inspiration or the aim of his revolutionary policy. I have +never heard him utter, and never heard of his uttering, in America, such +malignant misrepresentations of the conduct of the English people and +their sovereign during the great famine of 1847, for example, as those +which earned for Mr. Parnell in 1880 the pretty unanimous condemnation +of the American press. How far he went with Mr. Parnell on the lines of +that speech at New Ross, in which murder was delicately mentioned as "an +unnecessary and prejudicial measure of procedure" in certain +circumstances, I do not know. But he can hardly have gone further than +certain persons calling themselves English Liberals went when the +assassins of Napoleon III. escaped to England. And he has a capacity of +being just to opponents, which certainly all his associates do not +possess. I was much struck to-day by the candour and respect with which +he spoke of John Bright, whose name came incidentally into our +conversation. He seemed to feel personally annoyed and hurt as an +Irishman, that Irishmen should permit themselves to revile and abuse Mr. +Bright because he will not go with them on the question of Home Rule, in +utter oblivion of the great services rendered by him to the cause of +the Irish people "years before many of those whose tongues now wag +against him had tongues to wag." I was tempted to remind him that not +with Irishmen only is gratitude a lively sense of favours to come. + +I find Mr. Davitt quite awake to the great importance of the granite +quarries of Donegal. He is bestirring himself in connection with some +men of Manchester, in behalf of the quarries at Belmullet in Mayo, +which, if I am not mistaken, is his native county. This bent of his mind +towards the material improvement of the condition of the Irish people, +and the development of the resources of Ireland, is not only a mark of +his superiority to the rank and file of the Irish politicians--it goes +far to explain the stronger hold which he undoubtedly has on the people +in Ireland. "Home Rule," as now urged by the Irish politicians, +certainly excites much more attention and emotion in America and England +than it seems to do in Ireland. It seems so simple and elementary to +John Bull and Brother Jonathan that people should be suffered to manage +their own affairs! Yet the North would not suffer the South to do +this--and what would become of India if England turned it over in +fragments to the native races? The Land Question, on the contrary, +touches the "business and bosom" of every Irishman in Ireland, while it +is so complicated with historical conditions and incidents as to be +troublesome and therefore uninteresting to people not immediately +affected by it. If I am right in my impressions the collapse of the +National League will hardly weaken the hold of Mr. Davitt on the Irish +people in Ireland, and it may even strengthen his hold on the agrarian +movement in Wales, England, and Scotland, unless he identifies himself +too completely in that collapse with his Parliamentary instruments. On +the other hand, the triumph of the National League on its present lines +of action would diminish the value for good or evil of any man's hold +upon the Irish people, for the obvious reason that by driving out of +Ireland, and ruining, the class of "landlords" and capitalists, it would +leave the country reduced to a dead level of peasant-holdings, saddled +with a system of poor-rates beyond the ability of the peasant-holders to +carry, and at the mercy, therefore, of the first bad year. The "war +against the landlords," as conducted by the National League, would end +where the Irish difficulty began, in a general surrender of the people +to "poverty and potatoes." + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +ENNIS, _Saturday, Feb. 18._--I found it unnecessary to go on to Paris, +and so returned to Ireland on Thursday night; we had a passage as over a +lake. In the train I met a lively Nationalist friend, whose acquaintance +I made in America. He is a man of substance, but not overburdened with +respect for the public men, either of his own party or of the Unionist +side. When I asked him whether he still thought it would be safe to turn +over Ireland to a Parliament made up of the Westminster members, of whom +he gave me such an amusing but by no means complimentary account, he +looked at me with astonishment:-- + +"Do you suppose for a moment we would send these fellows to a Parliament +in Dublin?" + +He told me some very entertaining tales of the methods used by certain +well-meaning occupants of the Castle in former days to capture Irish +popularity, as, for example, one of a Vice-Queen who gave a fancy dress +ball for the children of the local Dublin people of importance, and had +a beautiful supper of tea and comfits, and cakes served to them, after +which she made her appearance, followed by servants bearing huge bowls +of steaming hot Irish potatoes, which she pressed upon the horrified and +overstuffed infants as "the true food of the country," setting them +herself the example of eating one with much apparent gusto, and a pinch +of salt! + +"Now, fancy that!" he exclaimed; "for the Dublin aristocracy who think +the praties only fit for the peasants!" + +Of a well-known and popular personage in politics, he told me that he +once went with him on a canvassing tour. It was in a county the +candidate had never before visited. "When we came to a place, and the +people were all out crying and cheering, he would whisper to me, 'Now +what is the name of this confounded hole?' And I would whisper back, +'Ballylahnich,' or whatever it was. Then he would draw himself up to the +height of a round tower, and begin, 'Men of Ballylahnich, I rejoice to +meet you! Often has the great Liberator said to me, with tears in his +voice, 'Oh would I might find myself face to face with the noble men of +Ballylahnich!" + +"A great man he is, a great man! + +"Did you ever hear how he courted the heiress? He walked up and down in +front of her house, and threatened to fight every man that came to call, +till he drove them all away!" + +A good story of more recent date, I must also note, of a well-known +priest in Dublin, who being asked by Mr. Balfour one day whether the +people under his charge took for gospel all the rawhead and bloody-bones +tales about himself, replied, "Indeed, I wish they only feared and hated +the devil half as much as they do you!" + +In a more serious vein my Nationalist friend explained to me that for +him "Home Rule" really meant an opportunity of developing the resources +of Ireland under "the American system of Protection." About this he was +quite in earnest, and recalled to me the impassioned protests made by +the then Mayor of Chicago, Mr. Carter Harrison, against the Revenue +Reform doctrines which I had thought it right to set forth at the great +meeting of the Iroquois Club in that city in 1883. "Of course," he +said, "you know that Mr. Harrison was then speaking not only for +himself, but for the whole Irish vote of Chicago which was solidly +behind him? And not of Chicago only! All our people on your side of the +water moved against your party in 1884, and will move against it again, +only much more generally, this year, because they know that the real +hope of Ireland lies in our shaking ourselves free of the British Free +Trade that has been fastened upon us, and is taking our life." I could +only say that this was a more respectable, if not a more reasonable, +explanation of Mr. Alexander Sullivan's devotion to Mr. Blaine and the +Republicans, and of the Irish defection from the Democratic party than +had ever been given to me in America, but I firmly refused to spend the +night between London and Dublin in debating the question whether Meath +could be made as prosperous as Massachusetts by levying forty per cent. +duties on Manchester goods imported into Ireland. + +He had seen the reception of Mr. Sullivan, M.P., in London. "I believe, +on my soul," he said, "the people were angry with him because he didn't +come in a Lord Mayor's coach!" + +When I told him I meant to visit Luggacurren, he said, a little to my +surprise, "That is a bad job for us, and all because of William +O'Brien's foolishness! He always thinks everybody takes note of whatever +he says, and that ruins any man! He made a silly threat at Luggacurren, +that he would go and take Lansdowne by the throat in Canada, and then he +was weak enough to suppose that he was bound to carry it out. He +couldn't be prevented! And what was the upshot of it? But for the +Orangemen in Canada, that were bigger fools than he is, he would have +been just ruined completely! It was the Orangemen saved him!" + +I left Dublin this morning at 7.40 A.M. The day was fine, and the +railway journey most interesting. Before reaching Limerick we passed +through so much really beautiful country that I could not help +expressing my admiration of it to my only fellow-traveller, a most +courteous and lively gentleman, who, but for a very positive brogue, +might have been taken for an English guardsman. + +"Yes, it is a beautiful country," he said, "or would be if they would +let it alone!" + +I asked him what he specially objected to in the recent action of +Parliament as respects Ireland? + +"Object?" he responded; "I object to everything. The only thing that +will do Ireland any good will be to shut up that talking-mill at +Westminster for a good long while!" + +This, I told him, was the remedy proposed by Earl Grey in his recent +volume on Ireland. + +"Is it indeed? I shall read the book. But what's the use? 'For judgment +it is fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.'" + +This he said most cheerily, as if it really didn't matter much; and, +bidding me good-bye, disappeared at Limerick, where several friends met +him. In his place came a good-natured optimistic squire, who thinks +"things are settling down." There is a rise in the price of cattle. +"Beasts I gave L8 for three mouths ago," he said, "I have just sold for +L12. I call that a healthy state of things." And with this he also left +me at Ardsollus, the station nearest the famous old monastery of Quin. + +At Ennis I was met by Colonel Turner, to whom I had written, enclosing a +note of introduction to him. With him were Mr. Roche, one of the local +magistrates, and Mr. Richard Stacpoole, a gentleman of position and +estate near Ennis, about whom, through no provocation of his, a great +deal has been said and written of late years. Mr. Stacpoole at once +insisted that I should let him take me out to stay at his house at +Edenvale, which is, so to speak, at the gates of Ennis. Certainly the +fame of Irish hospitality is well-founded! Meanwhile my traps were +deposited at the County Club, and I went about the town. I walked up to +the Court-house with. Mr. Roche, in the hope of hearing a case set down +for trial to-day, in which a publican named Harding, at Ennis--an +Englishman, by the way--is prosecuted for boycotting. The parties were +in Court; and the defendant's counsel, a keen-looking Irish lawyer, Mr. +Leamy, once a Nationalist member, was ready for action; but for some +technical reason the hearing was postponed. There were few people in +Court, and little interest seemed to be felt in the matter. The +Court-house is a good building, not unlike the White House at Washington +in style. This is natural enough, the White House having been built, I +believe, by an Irish architect, who must have had the Duke of Leinster's +house of Carton, in Kildare, in his mind when he planned it. Carton was +thought a model mansion at the beginning of this century; and Mr. +Whetstone, a local architect of repute, built the Ennis Court-house some +fifty years ago. It is of white limestone from quarries belonging to +Mr. Stacpoole, and cost when built about L12,000. To build it now would +cost nearly three times as much. In fact, a recent and smaller +Court-house at Carlow has actually cost L36,000 within the last few +years. + +I was struck by the extraordinary number of public-houses in Ennis. A +sergeant of police said to me, "It is so all over the country." Mr. +Roche sent for the statistics, from which it appears that Ennis, with a +population of 6307, rejoices in no fewer than 100 "publics"; Ennistymon, +with a population of 1331, has 25; and Milltown Malbay, with a +population of 1400, has 36. At Castle Island the proportion is still +more astounding--51 public-houses in a population of 800. In Kiltimagh +every second house is a public-house! These houses are perhaps a legacy +of the old days of political jobbery.[19] No matter when or why granted, +the licence appears to be regarded as a hereditary "right" not lightly +to be tampered with; and of course the publicans are persons of +consequence in their neighbourhood, no matter how wretched it may be, +or how trifling their legitimate business. Three police convictions are +required to make the resident magistrates refuse the usual yearly +renewal of a licence; and if an application is made against such a +renewal, cause must be shown. The "publics" are naturally centres of +local agitation, and the publicans are sharp enough to see the advantage +to them of this. The sergeant told me of a publican here in Ennis, into +whose public came three Nationalists, bent not upon drinking, but upon +talking. The publican said nothing for a while, but finally, in a +careless way, mentioned "a letter he had just received from Mr. Parnell +on a very private matter." Instantly the politicians were eager to see +it. The publican hesitated. The politicians immediately called for +drinks, which were served, and after this operation had been three times +repeated, the publican produced the letter, began with a line or two, +and then said, "Ah, no! it can't be done. It would be a betrayal of +confidence; and you know you wouldn't have that! But it's a very +important letter you have seen!" So they went away tipsy and happy. + +Only yesterday no fewer than twenty-three of these publicans from +Milltown Malbay appeared at Ennis here to be tried for "boycotting" the +police. One of them was acquitted; another, a woman, was discharged. Ten +of them signed, in open court, a guarantee not further to conspire, and +were thereupon discharged upon their own recognisances, after having +been sentenced with their companions to a month's imprisonment with hard +labour. The magistrate tells me that when the ten who signed (and who +were the most prosperous of the publicans) were preparing to sign, the +only representative of the press who was present, a reporter for _United +Ireland_, approached them in a threatening manner, with such an obvious +purpose of intimidation, that he was ordered out of the court-room by +the police. The eleven who refused to sign the guarantee (and who were +the poorest of the publicans, with least to lose) were sent to gaol. + +An important feature of this case is the conduct of Father White, the +parish priest of Milltown Malbay. In the open court, Colonel Turner +tells me, Father White admitted that he was the moving spirit of all +this local "boycott." While the court was sitting yesterday all the +shops in Milltown Malbay were closed, Father White having publicly +ordered the people to make the town "as a city of the dead." After the +trial was over, and the eleven who elected to be locked up had left in +the train, Father White visited all their houses to encourage the +families, which, from his point of view, was no doubt proper enough; but +one of the sergeants reports that the Father went by mistake into the +house of one of the ten who had signed the guarantee, and immediately +reappeared, using rather unclerical language. All this to an American +resembles a tempest in a tea-pot. But it is a serious matter to see a +priest of the Church assisting laymen to put their fellow-men under a +social interdict, which is obviously a parody on one of the gravest +steps the Church itself can take to maintain the doctrine and the +discipline of the Faith. What Catholics, if honest, must think of this +whole business, I saw curiously illustrated by some marginal notes +pencilled in a copy of Sir Francis Head's _Fortnight in Ireland_, at the +hotel in Gweedore. The author of the _Bubbles from the Brunnen_ +published this book in 1852. At page 152 he tells a story, apparently on +hearsay, of "boycotting" long before Boycott. It is to the effect that, +in order to check the proselyting of Catholics by a combination of +Protestant missionary zeal with Protestant donations of "meal," certain +priests and sisters in the south of Ireland personally instructed the +people to avoid all intercourse of any sort with any Roman Catholic who +"listened to a Protestant clergyman or a Scripture Reader"; and Sir +Francis cites an instance--still apparently on hearsay--of a "shoemaker +at Westport," who, having seceded from the Church, found that not a +single "journeyman dared work for him"; that only "one person would sell +him leather"; and, "in short, lost his custom, and rapidly came to a +state of starvation." + +On the margin of the pages which record these statements, certain +indignant Catholics have pencilled comments, the mildest of which is to +the effect that Sir Francis was "a most damnable liar." It is certainly +most unlikely that Catholics should have arrogated to themselves the +Church's function of combating heresy and schism in the fashion +described by Sir Francis. But without mooting that question, these +expressions are noteworthy as showing how just such proceedings, as are +involved in the political "boycottings" of the present day, must be +regarded by all honest and clear-headed people who call themselves +Catholics; and it is a serious scandal that a parish priest should lay +himself open to the imputation of acting in concert with any political +body whatever, on any pretext whatever, to encourage such proceedings. + +I asked one of the sergeants how the publicans who had signed the +guarantee would probably be treated by their townspeople. He replied, +there was some talk of their being "boycotted" in their turn by the +butchers and bakers. "But it's all nonsense," he said, "they are the +snuggest (the most prosperous) publicans in this part of the country, +and nobody will want to vex them. They have many friends, and the best +friend they have is that they can afford to give credit to the country +people. There'll be no trouble with them at all at all!" + +Walking about the town, I saw many placards calling for subscriptions in +aid of a newsvendor who has been impounded for selling _United Ireland_. +"It'll be a good thing for him," said a cynical citizen, to whom I spoke +of it, "a good deal better than he'd be by selling the papers." And, in +fact, it is noticeable all over Ireland how small the sales of the +papers appear to be. The people about the streets in Ennis, however, +seemed to me much more effervescent and hot in tone than the Dublin +people are--and this on both sides of the question. One very decent and +substantial-looking man, when I told him I was an American, assured me +that "if it was not for the soldiers, the people of Ennis would clear +the police out of the place." He told me, too, that not long ago the +soldiers of an Irish regiment here cheered for Home Rule in the +Court-house, "but they were soon sent away for that same." On the other +hand, a Protestant man of business, of whom I made some inquiries about +the transmission of an important paper to the United States in time to +catch to-morrow's steamer from Queenstown, spoke of the Home Rulers +almost with ferocity, and thought the "Coercion" Government at Dublin +ought to be called the "Concession" Government. He was quite indignant +that the Morley and Ripon procession through the streets of Dublin +should not have been "forbidden." + +There are some considerable shops in Ennis, but the proprietor of one of +the best of them says all this agitation has "killed the trade of the +place." I am not surprised to learn that the farmers and their families +are beginning seriously to demand that the "reduction screw" shall be +applied to other things besides rent. "A very decent farmer," he says, +"only last week stood up in the shop and said it was 'a shame the +shopkeepers were not made to reduce the tenpence muslin goods to +sixpence!'" + +This shopkeeper finds some dreary consolation for the present state of +things in standing at his deserted shop-door and watching the doors of +his brethren. He finds them equally deserted. In his own he has had to +dismiss a number of his attendants. "When a man finds he is taking in +ten shillings a day, and laying out three pounds ten, what can he do but +pull up pretty short?" As with the shopkeepers, so it is with the +mechanics. "They are losing custom all the time. You see the tenants are +expecting to come into the properties, so they spend nothing now on +painting or improvements. The money goes into the bank. It don't go to +the landlords, or to the shopkeepers, or the mechanics; and then we that +have been selling on credit, and long credit too, where are we? +Formerly, from one place, Dromoland, Lord Inchiquin's house, we used +regularly to make a bill of a hundred pounds at Christmas, for blankets +and other things given away. Now the house is shut up and we make +nothing!" + +It is a short but very pleasant drive from Ennis to Edenvale--and +Edenvale itself is not ill-named. The park is a true park, with fine +wide spaces and views, and beautiful clumps of trees. A swift river +flows beyond the lawn in front of the spacious goodly house--a river +alive with wild fowl, and overhung by lofty trees, in which many pairs +of herons build. A famous heronry has existed here for many years, and +the birds are held now by Mr. and Mrs. Stacpoole as sacred as are the +storks in Holland. Where the river widens to a lake, fine terraced +gardens and espalier walls, on which nectarines, apricots, and peaches +ripen in the sun, stretch along the shore. Deer come down to the further +bank to drink, and in every direction the eye is charmed and the mind is +soothed by the loveliest imaginable sylvan landscapes. + + +EDENVALE, _Sunday, Feb. 19._--I was awakened at dawn by the clamour of +countless wild ducks, to a day of sunshine as brilliant and almost as +warm as one sees at this season in the south of France. Mrs. Stacpoole +speaks of this place with a kind of passion, and I can quite understand +it. Clearly this, again, is not a case of the absentee landlord draining +the lifeblood of the land to lavish it upon an alien soil! The demesne +is a sylvan sanctuary for the wild creatures of the air and the wood, +and they congregate here almost as they did at Walton Hall in the days +of that most delightful of naturalists and travellers, whose adventurous +gallop on the back of a cayman was the delight of all English-reading +children forty years ago, or as they do now at Gosford. Yet the crack of +the gun, forbidden in the precincts of Walton Hall, is here by no means +unknown--the whole family being noted as dead shots. I asked Mr. +Stacpoole this morning whether the park had been invaded by trespassers +since the local Nationalists declared war upon him. He said that his +only experience of anything like an attack befell not very long ago, +when his people came to the house on a Sunday afternoon and told him +that a crowd of men from Ennis, with dogs, were coming towards the park +with a loudly proclaimed intent to enter it, and go hunting upon the +property. + +Upon this Mr. Stacpoole left the house with his brother and another +person, and walked down to the park entrance. Presently the men of Ennis +made their appearance on the highway. A very brief parley followed. The +men of Ennis announced their intention of marching across the park, and +occupying it. + +"I think not," the proprietor responded quietly. "I think you will go +back the way you came. For you may be sure of one thing: the first man +who crosses that park wall, or enters that gate, is a dead man." + +There was no show of weapons, but the revolvers were there, and this the +men of Ennis knew. They also knew that it rested with themselves to +create the right and the occasion to use the revolvers, and that if the +revolvers were used they would be used to some purpose. To their credit, +be it said, as men of sense, they suddenly experienced an almost +Caledonian respect for the "Sabbath-day," and after expressing their +discontent with Mr. Stacpoole's inhospitable reception, turned about and +went back whence they had come. + +This morning an orderly from Ennis brought out news of the arrest +yesterday, at the Clare Road, of Mr. Lloyd, a Labour delegate from +London, on his return from an agitation meeting at Kildysart. Harding, +the Englishman I saw awaiting his trial yesterday, became bail for +Lloyd. + +In the afternoon we took a delightful walk to Killone Abbey, a pile of +monastic ruins on a lovely site near a very picturesque lake. The ruins +have been used as a quarry by all the country, and are now by no means +extensive. But the precincts are used as a graveyard, not only by the +people of Ennis, but by the farmers and villagers for many miles around. +Nothing can be imagined more painful than the appearance of these +precincts. The graves are, for the most part, shallow, and closely +huddled together. The cemetery, in truth, is a ghastly slum, a +"tenement-house" of the dead. The dead of to-day literally elbow the +dead of yesterday out of their resting-places, to be in their turn +displaced by the dead of to-morrow. Instead of the crosses and the fresh +garlands, and the inscriptions full of loving thoughtfulness, which lend +a pathetic charm to the German "courts of peace"--instead of the +carefully tended hillocks and flower-studded turf which make the +churchyard of a typical old English village beautiful,--all here is +confusion, squalor, and neglect. Fragments of coffins and bones lie +scattered among the sunken and shattered stones. We picked up a skull +lying quite apart in a corner of the enclosure. A clean round bullet +hole in the very centre of the frontal bone was dumbly and grimly +eloquent. Was it the skull of a patriot or of a policeman? of a +"White-boy" or of a "landlord"? + +One thing only was apparent from the conformation of the grisly relic. +It was the skull of a Celt. Probably, therefore, not of a land agent, +shot to repress his fiduciary zeal, but perhaps of some peasant +selfishly and recklessly bent on paying his rent. + +While we wandered amid the ruins we came suddenly upon a woman wearing a +long Irish cloak, and accompanied by two well-dressed men. One of the +men started upon catching sight of Colonel Turner, who was of our party, +grew quite red for a moment, and then very civilly exchanged salutations +with him. The party walked quietly away on a lower road leading to +Ennis. When they had gone Colonel Turner told us that the man who had +spoken to him was a local Nationalist of repute and influence in Ennis. +"He would never have ventured to be civil to me in the town," he said. A +discussion arose as to the probable object of the party in visiting +these ruins. A gentleman who was with us half-laughingly suggested that +they might have been putting away dynamite bombs for an attack on +Edenvale. Colonel Turner's more practical and probable theory was that +they were looking about for a site for the grave of the Fenian veteran, +Stephen J. Meany, who died in America not long ago. He was a native, I +believe, of Ennis, and his remains are now on their way across the +Atlantic for interment in his birth-place. "Would a processional funeral +be allowed for him?" I asked. Colonel Turner could see no reason why it +should not be. + +One exception I noted to the general slovenliness of the graves. A new +and handsome monument had just been set up by a man of Ennis, living in +Australia, to the memory of his father and mother, buried here twenty +years ago. But this touching symbol of a heart untravelled, fondly +turning to its home, had been so placed, either by accident or by +design, as to block the entrance way to the vault of a family living, or +rather owning property, in this neighbourhood. Until within a year or +two past this family had occupied a very handsome mansion in a park +adjoining the park of Edenvale. But the heir, worn out with local +hostilities, and reduced in fortune by the pressure of the times and of +the League, has now thrown up the sponge. His ancestral acres have been +turned over for cultivation to Mr. Stacpoole. His house, a large fine +building, apparently of the time of James II., containing, I am told, +some good pictures and old furniture, is shut up, as are the model +stables, ample enough for a great stud; and so another centre of local +industry and activity is made sterile. + +Near the ruins of Killone is a curious ancient shrine of St. John, +beside a spring known as the Holy Well. All about the rude little altar +in the open air simple votive offerings were displayed, and Mrs. +Stacpoole tells me pilgrims come here from Galway and Connemara to climb +the hill upon their knees, and drink of the water. Last year for the +first time within the memory of man the well went dry. Such was the +distress caused in Ennis by this news, that on the eve of St. John +certain pious persons came out from the town, drew water from the lake, +and poured it into the well! + +As we walked away one of the party pointed to a rabbit fleeing swiftly +into a hole in one of the graves. "I was on this hill," he said, "one +day not very long ago when a funeral train came out from Ennis. As it +entered the precincts a rabbit ran rapidly across the grounds. Instantly +the procession broke up; the coffin was literally dropped to the +ground, and the bearers, the mourners, and the whole company united in a +hot and general chase of bunny. Of course, I need not say," he added, +"that there was no priest with them. The fixed charge of the priest for +a burial is twenty shillings, but there is usually no service at the +grave whatever." + +This may possibly be a trace of the practices which grew up under the +Penal Laws against Catholics. When Rinuccini came to Ireland in the time +of the Civil War, he found the observances of the Church all fallen into +degradation through these laws. The Holy Sacrifice was celebrated in the +cabins, and not unfrequently on tables which had been covered +half-an-hour before with the remains of the last night's supper, and +would be cleared half-an-hour afterwards for the midday meal, and +perhaps for a game of cards. + +Several guests joined us at dinner. One gentleman, a magistrate familiar +with Gweedore, told me he believed the statements of Sergeant Mahony as +to the income of Father M'Fadden to fall within the truth. While he +believes that many people in that region live, as he put it, "constantly +within a hair's-breadth of famine," he thinks that the great body of +the peasants there are in a position, "with industry and thrift, not +only to make both ends meet, but to make them overlap." + +Mr. Stacpoole told us some of his own experiences nearer home. Not long +ago he was informed that the National League had ordered some decent +people, who hold the demesne lands of his neighbour, Mr. Macdonald +(already alluded to) at a very low rental, to make a demand for a +reduction, which would have left Mr. Macdonald without a penny of +income. To counter this Mr. Stacpoole offered to take the lands over for +pasture at the existing rental, whereupon the tenants promptly made up +their minds to keep their holdings in defiance of the League. + +Last year a man, whom Mr. Stacpoole had regarded as a "good" tenant, +came to him, bringing the money to pay his rent. "I have the rint, +sorr," the man said, "but it is God's truth I dare not pay it to ye!" +Other tenants were waiting outside. "Are you such a coward that you +don't dare be honest?" said Mr. Stacpoole. The man turned rather red, +went and looked out of all the windows, one after another, lifted up the +heavy cloth of the large table in the room, and peeped under it +nervously, and finally walked up to Mr. Stacpoole and paid the money. +The receipt being handed to him, he put it back with his hand, eyed it +askance as if it were a bomb, and finally took it, and carefully put it +into the lining of his hat, after which, opening the door with a great +noise, he exclaimed as he went out, "I'm very, very sorry, master, that +I can't meet you about it!" This man is now as loud in protestation of +his "inability" to pay his rent as any of the "Campaigners." Mr. +Stacpoole thinks one great danger of the actual situation is that men +who were originally "coerced" by intimidation into dishonestly refusing +to pay just rents, which they were abundantly able to pay, are beginning +now to think that they will be, and ought to be, relieved by the law of +the land from any obligation to pay these rents. + +It seems to be his impression that things look better, however, of late +for law and order. On Monday of last week at Ennis an example was made +of a local official, which, he thinks, will do good. This was a Poor-Law +Guardian named Grogan. He was bound over on Monday last to keep the +peace for twelve months towards one George Pilkington. Pilkington, it +appears, in contempt of the League, took and occupied, in 1886, a +certain farm in Tarmon West. For this he was "boycotted" from that time +forth. In December last he was summoned, with others, before the Board +of Guardians at Kilrush, to fix the rents of certain labourers' +cottages. While he sat in the room awaiting the action of the Board, +Grogan, one of its members, rose up, and, looking at Pilkington, said in +a loud voice, "There's an obnoxious person here present that should not +be here, a land-grabber named Pilkington." There was a stir in the room, +and Pilkington, standing up, said, "I am here because I have had notice +from the Guardians. If I am asked to leave the place, I shall not come +back." The Chairman of the Board upon this declared that "while the +ordinary business of the Board was transacting, Mr. Pilkington would be +there only by the courtesy of the Board;" and treating the allusions of +Grogan to Pilkington as a part of the business of the Board, he said, "A +motion is before the Board, does any one second it?" Another guardian, +Collins, got up, and said "I do." Thereupon the Chairman put it to the +vote whether Pilkington should be requested to leave. The ayes had it, +and the Chairman of the Board thereupon invited Pilkington to leave the +meeting which the Board had invited him to attend! + +Grogan has now been prosecuted for the offence of "wrongfully, and +without legal authority, using violence and intimidation to and towards +George Pilkington of Tarmon West, with a view to cause the said +Pilkington to abstain from doing an act which he had a legal right to +do, namely, to hold, occupy, and work on a certain farm of land at +Tarmon West." + +Plainly this case is one of a grapple between the two Governments which +have been and are now contending for the control of Ireland: the +Government of the Queen of Ireland, which authorises Pilkington to take +and farm a piece of land, and the Government of the National League, +which forbids him to do this. Is it possible to doubt which of the two +is the government of Liberty, as well as the government of Law? + +It illustrates the demoralising influence upon society in Ireland of the +protracted toleration of such a contest as has been waging between the +authority of the Law and the authority of the League, that, when this +case came up for consideration ten days ago, an official here actually +thought it ought to be put off. Colonel Turner insisted it should be +dealt with at once; and so Mr. Grogan was proceeded against, with the +result I have stated. + +The trees on this demesne are the finest I have so far seen in Ireland, +beautiful and vigorous pencil-cedars, ilexes, Scotch firs, and Irish +yews. There is one noble cedar of Lebanon here worth a special trip to +see. In conversation about the country to-night, Mr. Stacpoole mentioned +that tobacco was grown here, strong and of good quality, and he was much +interested, as I remember were also the charming chatelaine of Newtown +Anner and Mr. Le Poer of Gurteen four or five years ago, to learn how +immensely successful has been the tobacco-culture introduced into +Pennsylvania only a quarter of a century ago, as a consequence of the +Civil War. The climatic conditions here are certainly not more +unfavourable to such an experiment in agriculture than they were at +first supposed to be in the Pennsylvanian counties of York and +Lancaster. Of course the Imperial excise would deal with it as harshly +as it is now dealing with a similar experiment in England. But the Irish +tobacco-growers would not now have to fear such hostile legislation as +ruined the Irish linen industries in the last century. The +"Moonlighters" of 1888 lineally represent, if they do not simply +reproduce, the "Whiteboys" of 1760; and the domination of the "uncrowned +king" constantly reminds one of Froude's vivid and vigorous sketch of +the sway wielded by "Captain Dwyer" and "Joanna Maskell" from Mallow to +Westmeath, between the years 1762 and 1765. On that side of the quarrel +there seems to be nothing very new under the sun in Ireland. But the +spirit and the forms of the Imperial authority over the country have +unquestionably undergone a great change for the better, not only since +the last century, but since the accession of Queen Victoria. + +Upon the question of land improvements, Mr. Stacpoole told me, to-night, +that he borrowed L1000 of the Government for drainage improvements on +his property here, the object of which was to better the holdings of +tenants. Of this sum he had to leave L400 undrawn, as he could not get +the men to work at the improvements, even for their own good. They all +wanted to be gangers or chiefs. It reminded me of Berlioz's reply to the +bourgeois who wanted his son to be made a "great composer." "Let him go +into the army," said Berlioz, "and join the only regiment he is fit +for." "What regiment is that?" "The regiment of colonels." + +In the course of the evening a report was brought out from Ennis to +Colonel Turner. He read it, and then handed it to me, with an +accompanying document. The latter, at my request, he allowed me to keep, +and I must reproduce it here. It tells its own tale. + +A peasant came to the authorities and complained that he was "tormented" +to make a subscription to a "testimonial" for one Austen Mackay of +Kilshanny, in the County Clare, producing at the same time a copy of the +circular which had been sent about to the people. It is a +cheaply-printed leaflet, not unlike a penny ballad in appearance, and +thus it runs:-- + + +"_Testimonial to_ Mr. AUSTEN MACKAY, _Kilshanny_, _County Clare_. + +"We, the Nationalists and friends of Mr. Austen Mackay, at a meeting +held in March 1887, agreed and resolved on presenting the long-tried and +trusted friend--the persecuted widow's son--with a testimonial worthy of +the fearless hero who on several occasions had to hide his head in the +caves and caverns of the mountains, with a price set on his body. First, +for firing at and wounding a spy in his neighbourhood, as was alleged +in '65, for which he had to stand his trial at Clare Assizes. Again, for +firing at and wounding his mother's agent and under-strapper while in +the act of evicting his widowed mother in the broad daylight of Heaven, +thus saved his mother's home from being wrecked by the robber agent, the +shock of which saved other hearths from being quenched; but the noble +widow's son was chased to the mountains, where he had to seek shelter +from a thousand bloodhounds. + +"The same true widow's son nobly guarded his mother's homestead and that +of others from the foul hands of the exterminators. This is the same +widow's son who bravely reinstated the evicted, and helped to rebuild +the levelled houses of many; for this he was persecuted and convicted at +Cork Assizes, and flung into prison to sleep on the cold plank beds of +Cork and Limerick gaols. Many other manly and noble services did he +which cannot be made known to the public. At that meeting you were +appointed collector with other Nationalists of Clare at home and abroad. +This is the widow's son, Austen Mackay, whom we, the Committee to this +testimonial, hope and trust every Irishman in Clare will cheerfully +subscribe, that he may be enabled in his present state of health to get +into some business under the protection of the Stars and Stripes, where +he is a citizen of." + +"Subscriptions to be sent to Henry Higgins, Ennis. + +"Treasurers: Daniel O'Loghlen, Lisdoonvarna; James Kennedy, Ennistymon." + +Then follow, with the name of the Society, the names of the committee. + +In behalf of the Stars and Stripes, "where he is a citizen of," I thanked +Colonel Turner for this interesting contribution to the possible future +history of my country, there being nothing to prevent the election of +any heir of this illustrious "widow's son," born to him in America, to +the Presidency of the Republic. The use of this phrase, the "widow's +son," by the way, gives a semi-masonic character to this curious +circular. + +One officer says in his report upon this Committee: "All the persons +named are well known to their respective local police, and, except one, +have little or no following or influence in their respective localities. +They are all members of the National League." The same officer subjoins +this instructive observation: "I beg to add that I find no matter how +popular a man may be in Clare, start a testimonial for him, and from +that time forth his influence is gone." + +Can it be possible that the "testimonial," which, as the papers tell me, +is getting up all over Ireland for Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, can have been +"started" with a sinister eye to this effect, by local patriots jealous +of any alien intrusion into their bailiwick? I am almost tempted to +suspect this, remembering that a Nationalist with whom I talked about +Mr. Blunt in Dublin, after lavishing much praise upon his disinterested +devotion to the cause of Ireland, moodily remarked, "For all that, I +don't believe he will do us any good, for he comes of the blood of +Mountjoy, I am told!" + + +EDENVALE, _Monday, Feb. 20._--This morning Colonel Turner called my +attention to the report in the papers of a colloquy between the Chief +Secretary for Ireland and Mr. J. Redmond, M.P., in the House, on the +subject of last week's trials at Ennis. In speaking of the boycotting at +Milltown Malbay of a certain Mrs. Connell, Mr. Balfour described the +case as one of barbarous inhumanity shown to a helpless old woman. Mr. +Redmond denying this, asserted that he had seen the woman Connell a +fortnight ago in Court, and that so far from her being a decrepit old +woman, she was only fifty years of age, hale and hearty, but +disreputable and given to drink; he also said she was drunk at the +trial, so drunk that the Crown prosecutor, Mr. Otter, was obliged to +order her down from the table. + +"What are the facts?" I asked. "Mr. Balfour speaks from report and +belief, Mr. Redmond asserts that he speaks from actual observation." + +"The facts," said Colonel Turner quietly, "are that Mr. Balfour's +statement is accurate, and that Mr. Redmond, speaking from actual +observation, asserts the thing that is not." + +"Where is this old woman?" I asked. "Would it be possible for me to see +her?" + +"Certainly; she is at no great distance, and I will with pleasure send a +car with an officer to bring her here this afternoon!" + +"Meanwhile, how came the old woman into Court? and what is her +connection with the cases of boycotting last week tried?" + +"Those cases arose out of her case," said Colonel Turner; "the publicans +last week arraigned, 'boycotted' a fortnight ago the police and +soldiers who were called in to keep the peace during the trial of the +dealers who 'boycotted' her. + +"Her case was first publicly made known by a letter which appeared in +the Dublin _Express_ on the 28th of January. That day a line was sent to +me from Dublin ordering an inquiry into it. I endorsed upon the order, +'Please report. I imagine this is greatly exaggerated.' This was on +January 30th. The next day, January 31st, I received a full report from +Milltown Malbay. Here it is,"--taking a document from a portfolio and +handing it to me--"and you may make what use you like of it." + +It is worth giving at length:-- + + "James Connell, ex-soldier, and his mother, Hannah Connell, of + Fintamore, in this sub-district are boycotted, and have been since + July last. James Connell held a farm and a garden from one Michael + Carroll, a farmer, who was evicted from his holding for non-payment + of three years' rent, July 14, 1886. After the period of redemption, + six months, had passed, the agent made Connell a tenant for his + house and garden, giving him in addition about half an acre (Irish) + of the evicted farm which adjoins his house. In consequence Connell + was regarded by the National League here as a 'land-grabber.' About + the same time the agent also appointed him a rent-warner. + + "On the 22d June last Connell received a letter through the + Post-Office threatening him if he did not give up his place as a + rent-warner. I have no doubt the letter was written by (here a + resident was named). On the 10th, and again on the 17th, of July, + Connell was brought before indoor meetings of the National League + here for having taken the half acre of land, when he through fear + declared he had not done it. + + "At the first meeting the Rev. J.S. White, P.P., suggested that in + order to test whether Connell had taken the land, Carroll, the + evicted tenant, should go and cut the meadowing on it, which he did, + when Connell interfered and prevented him. At the next meeting + Carroll brought this under notice, and Connell was thereupon + boycotted. Immediately afterwards the men who had been engaged + fishing for Connell refused to fish, saying that if they fished for + him the sale of the fish would be boycotted, which was true. + + "Since then Connell has been deprived of his means of livelihood, + and no one dare employ him. He, however, through his mother, was + able to procure the necessaries of life until about the 22d of + November last, when his mother was refused goods by the tradesmen + with whom she had dealt, owing to a resolution passed at a meeting + of the 'suppressed' branch of the League here, to the effect that + any person supplying her would be boycotted. December 23d she came + into Milltown Malbay for goods, and was refused. The police + accompanied her, but no person would supply her. On the 2d of + January she came again, when one trader supplied her with some + bread, but refused groceries. The police accompanied her to several + traders, who all refused. Ultimately she was supplied by the + post-mistress. On the 7th of January she came, and the police + accompanied her to several traders, all of whom refused her even + bread. Believing she wanted it badly, we, the police, supplied her + with some. On these three occasions she was followed by large + numbers of young people about the street, evidently to frighten and + intimidate her, and their demeanour was so hostile that we were + obliged to disperse them and protect her home. On a subsequent + occasion she stated that stones were thrown at her. Since then she + has not come here for goods, and, in my opinion, it would not be + safe for her to do so without protection. She and her son are now + getting goods from Mrs. Moroney's shop at Spanish Point, which she + opened a few years ago to supply boycotted persons. + + "The Connells find it hard to get turf, and are obliged to bring it + a distance in bags so that it may not be observed. As for milk, the + person who did supply them privately for a considerable time + declined some weeks ago to do so any longer. They are now really + destitute, as any little money Connell had saved is spent, and, + although willing and anxious to work, no person will employ him. + Summonses have been issued against the tradesmen for refusing to + supply Hannah Connell on the occasions already referred to. I have + only to add that I have from time to time reported fully the + foregoing facts with regard to the persecution of this poor man and + his aged mother; and I regret to say that boycotting and + intimidation never prevailed to a greater extent here than at + present. Connell's safety is being looked after by patrols from this + and Spanish Point station." + +Three things seem to me specially noteworthy in this tale of cowardly +and malignant tyranny. The victims of this vulgar Vehmgericht are +neither landlords nor agents. They are a poor Irish labourer and his +aged mother. The "crime" for which these poor creatures are thus +persecuted is simply that one of them--the man--chose to obey the law of +the land in which he lives, and to work for his livelihood and that of +his mother. And the priest of the parish, instead of sheltering and +protecting these hunted creatures, is presented as joining in the hunt, +and actually devising a trap to catch the poor frightened man in a +falsehood. + +Upon this third point, a correspondence which passed between Father +White and Colonel Turner, after the conviction of the boycotters of Mrs. +Connell, and copies of which the latter has handed to me at my request, +throws an instructive light. + +When the report of January 31st reached him, Colonel Turner ordered the +tradespeople implicated in the persecution to be proceeded against. Six +of them were put on their trials on the 3d and 4th of February. All the +shops in Milltown Malbay were closed, by order of the local League, +during the trial, and the police and the soldiers called in were refused +all supplies. + +On the 4th, one of the persons arraigned was bound over for +intimidation, and the five others were sentenced to three months' +imprisonment with hard labour. + +A week later, February 11th, Colonel Turner addressed the following +letter to Father White, twenty-six publicans of Milltown Malbay having +meanwhile been prosecuted for boycotting the police and the soldiers:-- + + "DEAR SIR,--I write to you as a clergyman who possesses great + influence with the people in your part of the country, to put it to + you whether it would not be better for the interests of all + concerned if the contemptible system of petty persecution, called + boycotting, were put an end to in and about Milltown Malbay, which + would enable me to drop prosecutions. If it is not put a stop to, I + am determined to stamp it out, and restore to all the ordinary + rights of citizenship. + + "But I should very greatly prefer that the people should stop it + themselves, and save me from taking strong measures, which I should + deplore. The story of a number of men combining to persecute a poor + old woman is one of the most pitiful I ever heard.--I am, sir, yours + truly, + + ALFRED TURNER." + +As the cost of the extra policemen sent to Milltown Malbay at this time +falls upon the people there, this letter in effect offered the priest an +opportunity to relieve his parish of a burden as well as to redeem its +character. + +The next day Father White replied:-- + + "DEAR SIR,--No one living is more anxious for peace in this district + than I. During very exciting times I have done my best to keep it + free from outrage, and with success, except in one mysterious + instance.[20] There is but one obstacle to it now. If ever you can + advise Mrs. Moroney to restore the evicted tenant, whose rent you + admitted was as high as Colonel O'Callaghan's, I can guarantee on + the part of the people the return of good feelings; or, failing + that, if she and her employees are content with the goods which she + has of all kinds in her own shop, there need be no further trouble. + + "I have a promise from the people that the police will be supplied + for the future. This being so, if you will kindly have prosecutions + withdrawn, or even postponed for say a month, it will very much + strengthen me in the effort I am making to calm down the feeling. + Regarding Mrs. Connell, the head-constable was told by me that she + was to get goods, and she did get bread, till the police went round + with her. This upset my arrangements, as I had induced the people to + give her what she might really want. In fact she was a convenience + to Mrs. Moroney for obvious reasons, and her son is now in her + employment in place of Kelly, who has been dismissed since his very + inconvenient evidence. It is, and was, well known they were not + starving as they said, they having a full supply of their accustomed + food.--Thanking you for your great courtesy, I am, dear sir, truly + yours, + + "J. White." + +On the 14th Colonel Turner replied:-- + + "My dear Sir,--We cannot adjourn the cases. But if those who are + prosecuted are prepared to make reparation by promising future good + conduct in Court, I can then see my way to interfere, and to prevent + them from suffering imprisonment. + + "These cases have nothing whatever to do with Mrs. Moroney.[21] They + are simply between the defendants and the police and other + officials, who were at Milltown Malbay that day. I am greatly + pleased at your evident wish to co-operate with me in calming down + the ill-feeling which unfortunately exists, and I am satisfied that + success will attend our efforts." + +On Thursday and Friday last, as I have recorded, the cases came on of +the twenty-six publicans charged. Between February 4th, when the +offences were committed, and the 17th of February, one of these +publicans had died, one had fled to America, and there proved to be an +informality in the summons issued against a third. Twenty-three only +were put upon their trial. As I have stated, one was acquitted and the +others were found guilty, and sentenced to be imprisoned. In accordance +with his promise made to Father White, Colonel Turner offered to relieve +them all of the imprisonment if they would sign an undertaking in Court +not to repeat the offence. Ten, the most prosperous and substantial of +the accused, accepted this offer and signed, as has been already stated. +One, a woman, was discharged without being required to sign the +guarantee, the other eleven refused to sign, and were sent to prison. +Father White, whose own evidence given at the trial, as his letter to +Colonel Turner would lead one to expect, had gone far to prove the +existence of the conspiracy, encouraged the eleven in their attitude. + +This was his way of "co-operating" with Colonel Turner to "calm down the +ill-feeling which exists"! + +During the morning Mrs. Stacpoole sent for the clerk and manager of the +estate, and asked him to show me the books. He is a native of these +parts, by name Considine, and has lived at Edenvale for eighteen years. +In his youth he went out to America, but there found out that he had a +"liver," an unpleasant discovery, which led him to return to the land of +his birth, and to the service of Mr. Stacpoole. He is perfectly familiar +with the condition of the country here, and as the accounts of this +estate are kept minutely and carefully from week to week, he was able +this morning to show me the current prices of all kinds of farm produce +and of supplies in and about Ennis--not estimated prices, but prices +actually paid or received in actual transactions during the last ten +years. I am surprised to see how narrow has been the range of local +variations during that time; and I find Mr. Considine inclined to think +that the farmers here have suffered very little, if at all, from these +fluctuations, making up from time to time on their reduced expenses what +they have lost through lessened receipts. The expenses of the landlord +have however increased, while his receipts have fallen off. In 1881 +Edenvale paid out for labour L466, 0s. 1-1/2d., in 1887 L560, 6s. +3-1/2d., though less labour was employed in 1887 than in 1881. The wages +of servants, where any change appears, have risen. In 1881 a gardener +received L14 a year, in 1888 he receives 15s. a week, or at the rate of +L39 a year. A housemaid receiving L12 a year in 1881, receives now L17 a +year. A butler receiving in 1881 L26 a year, now receives L40 a year. A +kitchen maid receiving in 1881 L6, now receives L10, 10s. a year. +Meanwhile, the Sub-Commissioners are at this moment cutting down the +Edenvale rents again by L190, 3s. 2d., after a walk over the property in +the winter. Yet in July 1883 Mr. Reeves, for the Sub-Commission, +"thought it right to say there was no estate in the County Clare so +fairly rented, to their knowledge, or where the tenants had less cause +for complaint." In but one case was a reduction of any magnitude made by +the Commission of 1883, and in one case that Commission actually +increased the rent from L11, 10s. to L16. In January 1883 the rental of +this property was L4065, 5s. 1d. The net reduction made by the +Commissioners in July 1883 was L296, 14s. 0-1/2d. + +After luncheon a car came up to the mansion, bringing a stalwart, +good-natured-looking sergeant of police, and with him the boycotted old +woman Mrs. Connell and her son. The sergeant helped the old woman down +very tenderly, and supported her into the house. She came in with some +trepidation and uneasiness, glancing furtively all about her, with the +look of a hunted creature in her eyes. Her son, who followed her, was +more at his ease, but he also had a worried and careworn look. Both were +warmly but very poorly clad, and both worn and weatherbeaten of aspect. +The old woman might have passed anywhere for a witch, so wizened and +weird she was, of small stature, and bent nearly double by years and +rheumatism. Her small hands were withered away into claws, and her head +was covered with a thick and tangled mat of hair, half dark, half grey, +which gave her the look almost of the Fuegian savages who come off from +the shore in their flat rafts and clamour to you for "rum" in the +Straits of Magellan. Her eyes were intensely bright, and shone like hot +coals in her dusky, wrinkled face. It was a raw day, and she came in +shivering with the cold. It was pathetic to see how she positively +gloated with extended palms over the bright warm, fire in the +drawing-room, and clutched at the cup of hot tea which my kind hostess +instantly ordered in for her. + +This was the woman of whom Mr. Redmond wrote to Mr. Parnell that she was +"an active strong dame of about fifty." When Mr. Balfour, in Parliament, +described her truly as a "decrepit old woman of eighty," Mr. Redmond +contradicted him, and accused her of being "the worse for liquor" in a +public court. + +"How old is your mother?" I asked her son. + +"I am not rightly sure, sir," he replied, "but she is more than eighty." + +"The man himself is about fifty," said the sergeant; "he volunteered to +go to the Crimean War, and that was more than thirty years ago!" + +"I did indeed, sir," broke in the man, "and it was from Cork I went. And +I'd be a corpse now if it wasn't for the mercy of God and the +protection. God bless the police, sir, that protected my old mother, +sir, and me. That Mr. Redmond, sir, they read me what he said, and sure +he should be ashamed of his shadow, to get up there in Parliament, and +tell those lies, sir, about my old mother!" I questioned Connell as to +his relations with Carroll, the man who brought him before the League. +He was a labourer holding a bit of ground under Carroll. Carroll refused +to pay his own rent to the landlord. But he compelled Connell to pay +rent to him. When Carroll was evicted, the landlord offered to let +Connell have half an acre more of land. He took it to better himself, +and "how did he injure Carroll by taking it?" How indeed, poor man! Was +he a rent-warner? Yes; he earned something that way two or three times +a year; and for that he had to ask the protection of the police--"they +would kill him else." What with worry and fright, and the loss of his +livelihood, this unfortunate labourer has evidently been broken down +morally and physically. It is impossible to come into contact with such +living proofs of the ineffable cowardice and brutality of this business +of "boycotting" without indignation and disgust. + +While Connell was telling his pitiful tale a happy thought occurred to +the charming daughter of the house. Mrs. Stacpoole is a clever amateur +in photography. "Why not photograph this 'hale and hearty woman of +fifty,' with her son of fifty-three?" Mrs. Stacpoole clapped her hands +at the idea, and went off at once to prepare her apparatus. + +While she was gone the sergeant gave me an account of the trial, which +Mr. Redmond, M.P., witnessed. He was painfully explicit. "Mr. Redmond +knew the woman was sober," he said; "she was lifted up on the table at +Mr. Redmond's express request, because she was so small and old, and +spoke in such a low voice that he could not hear what she said. Connell +had always been a decent, industrious fellow--a fisherman. But for the +lady, Mrs. Moroney, he and his mother would have starved, and would +starve now. As for the priest, Father White, Connell went to him to ask +his intercession and help, but he could get neither." + +The sergeant had heard Father White preach yesterday. "It was a curious +sermon. He counselled peace and forbearance to the people, because they +might be sure the wicked Tory Government would very soon fall!" + +Presently the sun came out with golden glow, and with the sun came out +Mrs. Stacpoole. It was a job to "pose" the subjects, the old woman +evidently suspecting some surgical or legal significance in the +machinery displayed, and her son finding some trouble in making her +understand what it meant. But finally we got the tall, personable +sergeant, with his frank, shrewd, sensible face, to put himself between +the two, in the attitude as of a guardian angel; the camera was nimbly +adjusted, and lo! the thing was done. + +Mrs. Stacpoole thinks the operation promises a success. I suppose it +would hardly be civil to send a finished proof of the group to Mr. J. +Redmond, M.P. + + + + +APPENDIX. + + +NOTE A. + +MR. GLADSTONE AND THE AMERICAN WAR. (Prologue, p. xxix.) + + +This statement as to the action of Lord Palmerston in connection with +Mr. Gladstone's Newcastle speech of October 7th, 1862, made upon the +authority of a British public man whose years and position entitle him +to speak with confidence on such a subject, appeared to me of so much +interest, that after sending it to the printer I caused search to be +made for the speech referred to as made by Sir George Cornewall Lewis. +My informant's statement was that Lord Palmerston insisted that Sir +George Lewis should find or make an immediate opportunity of covering +what Mr. Gladstone had said at Newcastle. He was angry about it, and his +anger was increased by an article which Mr. Delane printed in the +_Times_, intimating that Mr. Gladstone's speech was considered by many +people to be a betrayal of Cabinet secrets. Sir George Lewis was far +from well (he died the next spring), and reluctant to do what his chief +wished; but he did it on the 17th of October 1862 in a speech at +Hereford. Mr. Milner-Gibson was also put forward to the same end, and +after Parliament met, in February 1863, Mr. Disraeli gave the +Government a sharp lashing for sending one or two Ministers into the +country in the recess to announce that the Southern States would be +recognised, and then putting forward the President of the Board of Trade +(Milner-Gibson) to attack the Southern States and the pestilent +institution of slavery. Mr. Gladstone's speech at Newcastle, coming as +it did from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, after the close of a +session during which everybody knew that the Emperor of the French had +been urging upon England the recognition of the Confederate States, and +that Mr. Mason had been in active correspondence on that subject with +Lord Russell, was taken at Newcastle, and throughout the country, to +mean that the recognition was imminent. Mr. Gladstone even went so far +as to say he rather rejoiced that the Confederates had not been able to +hold Maryland, as that might have made them aggressive, and so made a +settlement more difficult, it being, he said, as certain as anything in +the future could be that the South must succeed in separating itself +from the Union. This remark about Maryland distinctly indicated +consultation as to what limits and boundaries between the South and the +North should be recognised in the recognition, and on that account, it +seems, was particularly resented by Earl Russell as well as by Lord +Palmerston. + +Sir George Cornewall Lewis's speech of October 17, 1862, was a most +skilful and masterly attempt to protect the Cabinet against the +consequences of what the _Times_, on the 9th of October, had treated as +the "indiscretion or treason" of his colleague. But it did not save the +Government from the scourge of Mr. Disraeli, or much mitigate the effect +in America of Mr. Gladstone's performance at Newcastle, which was a much +more serious matter from the American point of view than any of the +speeches recently delivered about "Home Rule" in the American Senate +can be fairly said to be from the British point of view. + + + +NOTE B. + +MR. PARNELL AND THE DYNAMITERS. (Prologue, p. xxxiii.) + + +The relation of Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates to what is +called the extreme and "criminal" section of the Irish American +Revolutionary Party can only be understood by those who understand that +it is the ultimate object of this party not to effect reforms in the +administration of Ireland as an integral part of the British Empire, but +to sever absolutely the political connection between Ireland and the +British Empire. Loyal British subjects necessarily consider this object +a "criminal" object, just as loyal Austrian subjects considered the +object of the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 to be a "criminal" object. +But the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 did not accept this view of their +object. On the contrary, they held their end to be so high and holy that +it more or less sanctified even assassination when planned as a means to +that end. Why should the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 be judged by one +standard and the Irish Revolutionists of 1888 by another? + +If Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates were to declare in +unequivocal terms their absolute loyalty to the British Crown, and their +determination to maintain in all circumstances the political connection +between Great Britain and Ireland, they might or might not retain their +hold upon Mr. Davitt and upon their constituents in Ireland, but they +would certainly put themselves beyond the pale of support by the great +Irish American organisations. Nor do I believe they could retain the +confidence of those organisations if it were supposed that they really +regarded the most extreme and violent of the Irish Revolutionists, the +"Invincibles" and the "dynamiters" as "criminals," in the sense in which +the "Invincibles" and the "dynamiters" are so regarded by the rest of +the civilised world. Can it, for example, be doubted that any English or +Scottish public man who co-operates with Mr. Parnell and his +Parliamentary associates would instantly hand over to the police any +"Invincible" or "dynamiter" who might come within his reach? And can it +for a moment be believed that Mr. Parnell, or any one of his +Parliamentary associates, would do this? There are thousands of Irish +citizens in the United States who felt all the horror and indignation +expressed by Mr. Parnell at the murders in the Phoenix Park, but I +should be very much surprised to learn that any one of them all ever +did, or ever would do, anything likely to bring any one of the authors +of these murders to the bar of justice. Mr. Parnell and his +Parliamentary associates are held and bound by the essential conditions +of their political existence to treat with complaisance the most extreme +and violent men of their party. Nor is this true of them alone. + +There is no more respectable body of men in the United States than the +Hibernian Society of Philadelphia. This society was instituted in 1771, +five years before the declaration of American Independence. It is a +charitable and social organisation only, with no political object or +colour. It is made up of men of character and substance. Its custom has +always been to celebrate St. Patrick's Day by a banquet, to which the +most distinguished men of the country have repeatedly been bidden. +Immediately after the inauguration of Mr. Cleveland as President, on +the 4th of March 1885, Mr. Bayard, the new Secretary of State of the +United States, was invited by this Society to attend its one hundred and +fourteenth banquet. It will be remembered that, on the 30th of May 1884, +London had been startled and shocked by an explosion of dynamite in St. +James's Square, which shattered many houses and inflicted cruel injuries +upon several innocent people. It was not so fatal to life as that +explosion at the Salford Barracks, which Mr. Parnell treated as a +"practical joke." But it excited lively indignation on both sides of the +Atlantic, and Mr. Bayard, who at that time was a Senator of the United +States, sternly denounced it and its authors on the floor of the +American Senate. What he had said as a Senator he thought it right to +repeat as the Foreign Secretary of the United States in his reply to the +invitation of the Hibernian Society in March 1885. This reply ran as +follows:-- + + "WASHINGTON, D.C., _March_ 9, 1885. + + "NICHOLAS J. GRIFFIN, Esq., _Secretary of the Hibernian Society of + Philadelphia._ + + "Dear Sir,--I have your personal note accompanying the card of + invitation to dine with your ancient and honourable Society on their + one hundred and fourteenth anniversary, St. Patrick's Day, and I + sincerely regret that I cannot accept it. The obvious and many + duties of my public office here speak for themselves, and to none + with more force than to American citizens of Irish blood or birth + who are honestly endeavouring to secure liberty by maintaining a + government of laws, and who realise the constant attention that is + needful. + + "In the midst of anarchical demonstrations which we witness in other + lands, and the echoes of which we can detect even here in our own + free country, where base and silly individuals seek to stain the + name of Ireland by associating the honest struggle for just + government with senseless and wicked crimes, there are none of our + citizens from whom honest reprobation can be more confidently + expected than from such as compose your respected and benevolent + Society. Those who worthily celebrate the birthday[22] of St. + Patrick will not forget that he drove out of Ireland the reptiles + that creep and sting. + + "The Hibernian Society can contain no member who will not resent the + implication that sympathy with assassins can dwell in a genuine + Irish heart, which will ever be opposed to cruelty and cowardice, + whatever form either may take. + + "Present to your Society my thanks for the kind remembrance, and + assure them of the good-will and respect with which I am--Your + obedient servant, + + T.F. BAYARD." + +What was the response of this Society, representing all the best +elements of the Irish American population of the United States, to this +letter of the Secretary of State, the highest executive officer of the +American Government after the President, upon whom under an existing law +the succession of the chief magistracy now devolves in the event of the +death or disability of the President and the Vice-President? + +_The letter was not read at the banquet._ + +But it was given to the press by the officers of the Society, and the +most influential Irish American newspaper in the United States did not +hesitate to describe it as an "insulting letter," going to show that its +author was "an Englishman in spirit who will not allow any opportunity +to go by, however slight, without testifying his sympathy with the +British Empire and his antipathy for its foes." + +This was capped by an American political journal which used the +following language: "Lord Granville himself would hardly strike a more +violent attitude against the dynamite section of the Irish people. When +Lord Wolseley, whom it is proposed to make Governor-General of the +Soudan, is offering a reward for the head of Ollivier Pain, it is hardly +in good taste for an American Secretary of State to condemn so bitterly +a class of Irishmen which, while it includes bad men no doubt, also +includes men who are moved by as worthy motives as Lord Wolseley." + +In the face of this testimony to the "solidarity" of all branches of the +Irish revolutionary movement in America, how can Mr. Parnell, or any +other Parliamentary Irishman who depends upon Irish American support, be +expected by men of sense to condemn in earnest "the dynamite section of +the Irish people"? + + + +NOTE C. + +THE AMERICAN "SUSPECTS" OF 1881. (Prologue, p. xlvii.) + + +In his recently published and very interesting _Life of Mr. Forster_, +Mr. Wemyss Reid alludes to some action taken by the United States +Government in the spring of 1882 as one of the determining forces which +brought about the abandonment at that time by Mr. Gladstone of Mr. +Forster's policy in Ireland. Without pretending to concern myself here +with what is an essentially British question as between Mr. Forster and +Mr. Gladstone, it may be both proper and useful for me to throw some +light, not, perhaps, in the possession of Mr. Reid, upon the part taken +in this matter by the American Government. Sir William Harcourt's +"Coercion Bill" was passed on the 2d of March 1881, two days before the +inauguration of General Garfield as President of the United States. Mr. +Blaine, who was appointed by the new President to take charge of the +Foreign Relations of the American Government, received, on the 10th of +March, at Washington, a despatch written by Mr. Lowell, the American +Minister in London, on the 26th of February, being the day after the +third reading in the Commons of the "Coercion Bill." In this despatch +Mr. Lowell called the attention of the American State Department to a +letter from Mr. Parnell to the Irish National Land League, dated at +Paris, February 13, 1881, in which Mr. Parnell attempted to make what +Mr. Lowell accurately enough described as an "extraordinary" distinction +between "the American people" and "the Irish nation in America." + +"This double nationality," said Mr. Lowell, "is likely to be of great +practical inconvenience whenever the 'Coercion Bill' becomes law." By +"this double nationality" in this passage, the American Minister, of +course, meant "this claim of a double nationality;" for neither by Great +Britain nor by the United States is any man permitted to consider +himself at one and the same time a citizen of the American republic and +a subject of the British monarchy. Nor was he quite right in +anticipating "great practical inconvenience" from this "claim," upon +which neither the British nor the American Government for a moment +bestowed, or could bestow, the slightest attention. + +The "great practical inconvenience" which, first to the American +Legation in England, then to the United States Government at Washington, +and finally to the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone, did, however, arise from +the application of Sir William Harcourt's Coercion Act of 1881 to +American citizens in Ireland, had its origin not in Mr. Parnell's +preposterous idea of an Irish nationality existing in the United States, +but in the failure of the authorities of the United States to deal +promptly and firmly with the situation created for American citizens in +Ireland by the administration of Sir William Harcourt's Act. + +As I have said, Sir William Harcourt's Act became law on the 2d of +March 1881, two days before the inauguration of President Garfield at +Washington. Without touching the question of the relations between Great +Britain and Ireland, and between the British Parliament and the Irish +National Land League, it was clearly incumbent upon the Secretary of +State of the United States, who entered upon his duties three days after +Sir William Harcourt's Bill went into force in Ireland, to inform +himself minutely and exactly as to the possible effects of that Bill +upon the rights and interests of American citizens travelling or +sojourning in that country. This was due not only to his own Government +and to its citizens, but to the relations which ought to exist between +his own Government and the Government of Great Britain. It was no affair +of an American Secretary of State either to impede or to further the +execution of "Coercion Acts" in Ireland against British subjects. But it +was his affair to ascertain without delay the nature and the measure of +any new and unusual perils, or "inconveniences," to which American +citizens in Ireland might be exposed in the execution there by the +British authorities of such Acts. + +And it is on record, under his own hand, in a despatch to the American +Minister in London, dated May 26, 1881, that Mr. Blaine had not so much +as seen a copy of Sir William Harcourt's Coercion Act at that date, +three months after it had gone into effect; three months after many +persons claiming American citizenship had been arrested and imprisoned +under it; and two months after his own official attention had been +called by the American Minister in London, in an elaborate despatch, to +the arrest under it of one such person, a man of Irish birth, who based +his claim of American citizenship upon allegations of military service +during the Civil War, of residence and citizenship in New York, and of +the granting to him, by an American Secretary of State, of a citizen's +passport. And when he did finally take the trouble to look at this Act, +Mr. Elaine seems to have examined it so cursorily, and with such slight +attention, that he overlooked a provision made in it, under which, had +its true force and meaning been perceived by him, the State Department +of the United States might, in the early summer of 1881, have secured +for American citizens in Ireland the consideration due to them as the +citizens of a friendly State. A curious despatch from Mr. Sackville +West, the British Minister at Washington, to Earl Granville, published +in a British Blue-book now in my possession, plainly intimates that in +the summer of 1881 the American Secretary of State had given the British +Minister to understand that no representations made to him or to his +Government by the Government of the United States touching +American-Irish "suspects" need be taken at all seriously. The whole +diplomatic correspondence on this subject which went on between the two +Governments while Mr. Blaine was Secretary of State, from the 4th of +March 1881 to the 20th of December 1881, was of a sort to lull the +British Government into the belief that "suspects" might be freely and +safely arrested and locked up all over Ireland, with no more question of +their nationality than of any evidence to establish their guilt or their +innocence. During the whole of that time the State Department at +Washington seems to have substantially remained content with the +declaration of Earl Granville, in a letter sent to the American Legation +on the 8th of July 1881, four months after the Coercion Act went into +effect, that "no distinction could be made in the circumstances between +foreigners and British subjects, and that in the case of British +subjects the only information given was that contained in the warrant." + +No fault can be found with the British Government for standing by this +declaration so long as it thus seemed to command the assent of the +Government of the United States. + +But when Mr. Frelinghuysen was called into the State Department by +President Arthur in December 1881, to overhaul the condition into which +our foreign relations had been brought by his predecessor, he found that +in no single instance had Mr. Blaine succeeded in inducing the British +Government, either to release any American citizen arrested under a +general warrant without specific charges of criminal conduct, and on +"suspicion" in Ireland, or to order the examination of any such citizen. +The one case in which an American citizen arrested under the Coercion +Act in Ireland during Mr. Blaine's tenure of office had been liberated +when Mr. Frelinghuysen took charge of the State Department, was that of +Mr. Joseph B. Walsh, arrested at Castlebar, in Mayo, March 8, 1881, and +discharged by order of the Lord-Lieutenant, October 21, 1881, not +because he was an American citizen, nor after any examination, but +expressly and solely on the ground of ill-health. + +When Mr. Frelinghuysen became Secretary of State in December 1881 the +Congress of the United States was in session. So numerous were the +American "suspects" then lying in prison in Ireland, some of whom had +been so confined for many months, that the doors of Congress were soon +besieged by angry demands for an inquiry into the subject. A resolution +in this sense was adopted by the House of Representatives, and +forwarded, through the American Legation in London, to the British +Foreign Office. Memorials touching particular cases were laid before +both Houses of the American Congress. On the 10th of February 1882, Mr. +Bancroft Davis, the Assistant-Secretary of State, instructed the +American Minister at London to take action concerning one such case, and +to report upon it. The Minister not moving more rapidly than he had been +accustomed to do under Mr. Blaine, Mr. Davis grew impatient, and on the +2d of March 1882 (being the anniversary of the adoption of the Coercion +Act in England) the American Secretary of State cabled to the Minister +in London significantly enough, "Use all diligence in regard to the late +cases, especially of Hart and M'Sweeney, and report by cable." + +Mr. Lowell replied the next day, giving the views in regard to Hart of +the American Vice-Consul, and of the British Inspector of Police at +Queenstown, and adding an expression of his own opinion that neither +Hart nor M'Sweeney was "more innocent than the majority of those under +arrest." + +This was an unfortunate despatch. It roused the American Secretary of +State into responding instantly by cable in the following explicit and +emphatic terms: "Referring to the cases of O'Connor, Hart, M'Sweeney, +M'Enery, and D'Alton, American citizens imprisoned in Ireland, say to +Lord Granville that, without discussing whether the provisions of the +Force Act can be applied to American citizens, the President hopes that +the Lord-Lieutenant will be instructed to exercise the powers intrusted +to him by the first section to order early trials in these and all other +cases in which Americans may be arrested." + +There was no mistaking the tone of this despatch. It was instantly +transmitted to the British Foreign Secretary, who replied the same day +that "the matter would receive the immediate attention of Her Majesty's +Government." + +The reference made to the Coercion Act by Mr. Frelinghuysen touched a +plain and precise provision, that persons detained under the Act +"should not be discharged or tried by any court without the direction of +the Lord-Lieutenant." Had the Coercion Act received from Mr. Blaine in +March 1881 the attention bestowed upon it in March 1882 by Mr. +Frelinghuysen, this provision might have been used to obviate the +dangerous accumulation of injustice to individuals, and of international +irritation, resulting from the application to possibly innocent foreign +citizens in Ireland of the despotic powers conferred by that Act upon +Mr. Gladstone's Government, powers as nearly as possible analogous with +those which Mr. Gladstone himself, years before, had denounced in +unmeasured terms when they were claimed and exercised by the Government +of Naples in dealing with its own subjects. + +After the consideration by Her Majesty's Government of this despatch of +the United States Government, it is understood in America that Mr. +Forster, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, was invited to communicate with +the Lord-Lieutenant, and request him to exercise his discretion in the +sense desired, and that Mr. Forster positively refused to do this. + +How this may be I do not pretend to say. But as no satisfactory reply +was made to the American despatch, and as public feeling in the United +States grew daily more and more determined that a stop should be put to +the unexplained arrest and the indefinite detention of American citizens +in Ireland, the American Secretary of State made up his mind towards the +end of the month of March to repeat his despatch of March 3d in a more +terse and peremptory form. As a final preliminary to this step, however, +Mr. Frelinghuysen was induced to avail himself of the unusual and +officious intervention of his most distinguished living predecessor in +the State Department, Mr. Hamilton Fish. After measuring the gravity of +the situation, Mr. Fish at the end of March sent a despatch to an +eminent public man, well known on both sides of the Atlantic, and now +resident in London, with authority to show it personally to Mr. +Gladstone, to the effect that if any further delay occurred in complying +with the moderate and reasonable demand of the American Government for +the immediate release or the immediate trial of the American "suspects," +the relations between Great Britain and the United States would be very +seriously "strained." + +This despatch was at once communicated to Mr. Gladstone. Within the +week, the liberation was announced of six American "suspects." Within a +fortnight, Mr. Parnell, Mr. O'Kelly, and Mr. Dillon, it is understood, +imprisoned members of Parliament, were offered their liberty if they +would consent to a sham exile on the Continent for a few weeks, or even +days; and within a month Mr. Forster, in his place in Parliament, was +imputing to his late chief and Premier the negotiation of that +celebrated "Treaty of Kilmainham," which was repudiated with equal +warmth by the three Irish members already named, and by Mr. Gladstone. + + + + +NOTE D. + +THE PARNELLITES AND THE ENGLISH PARTIES. + +(Prologue, p. 1.) + + +As I am not writing a history of English parties, I need not discuss +here the truth or falsehood of this contention. But I cannot let it pass +without a word as to two cases which came under my own observation, and +which aggravate the inherent improbability of the tale. In November 1885 +I went to America, and on my way passed through Stockport, where my +friend, Mr. Jennings, long my correspondent in England, was then +standing as a Conservative candidate. I attended one of his meetings and +heard him make an effective speech, much applauded, which turned +exclusively upon imperial and financial issues. That he had no +understanding whatever with the "managers" of the Irish vote in +Stockport, I have the best reason to believe. But he was assured by them +that the Irish intended to vote for him; and at a subsequent time he was +rashly assailed in the House of Commons by an Irish member with the +charge that he had broken faith with the Irish who elected him. It was +an unlucky assault for the assailant, as it gave Mr. Jennings an +opportunity, which he promptly improved, to show that he owed nothing to +the Irish voters of Stockport. Whether they voted for him in any number +in 1885 was more than doubtful; while in 1886 they voted solidly against +him, with the result of swelling his majority from 369 to 518 votes. + +In January 1886 I returned to Europe, and going on a visit into +Yorkshire, there met a prominent Irish Nationalist, who told me that he +had come into the north of England expressly to regiment the Irish +voters, and throw their votes for the Conservative candidates, on the +ground that it was necessary to make the Liberals fully understand their +power. He had fully expected in this way to elect a Conservative member +for the city of York. Great was his chagrin, therefore, when he found +the Liberal candidate returned. Upon investigation he discovered, as he +told me, that the catastrophe was due to the activity of a local Irish +priest, _who was a devoted Fenian_, utterly opposed to the Parliamentary +programme, and who had exerted his authority over the local Irish to +bring them to the polls for the Liberal candidate. + +Sir Frederick Milner, Bart., the defeated Conservative candidate for +York, afterwards told me that the local priest referred to here was a +most excellent man, and that so far from playing the part thus ascribed +to him, he took the trouble, as a matter of fair dealing, to see his +parishioners on the morning of the election and warn them against +believing a pamphlet which was sedulously circulated among the Irish +voters on the night before the polling, with a message to the effect +that Sir Frederick despised the Irish, and wanted nothing to do with +them or their votes. Sir Frederick has no doubt, from his knowledge of +what occurred during the canvass, that direct instructions were sent by +Mr. Parnell or his agents to the Irish voters in York to throw their +votes against the Radical candidates. These latter brought down a Home +Rule lecturer to counteract the effect of these instructions, and the +pamphlet above referred to was an eleventh-hour blow in the same +interest. It was successful; the Irish votes, some 500 in number, being +polled early in the morning under the impression produced by it. The +moral of this incident would seem to be, not that there was any real +understanding in 1885 between the Parnellites and the English +Conservatives at all, but simply that the English Radical wirepullers +are more alert and active than either the Irish Parnellites or the +English Conservatives. It is interesting, too, as it illustrates the +deep dread and distrust of the "Fenians" in which the Parnellites +habitually go. + + + +NOTE E. + +THE "BOYCOTT" AT MILTOWN-MALBAY. + +(Vol. i. p. 209.) + + +Father White of Miltown-Malbay, taking exception to the statement made +by me, upon the authority of Colonel Turner, that he was "the moving +spirit" of the local "boycott" of policemen and soldiers at that place, +addressed a note to Colonel Turner on the 5th of September, in which he +desired to know whether Colonel Turner, had given me grounds for making +this statement. To this note Colonel Turner tells me he returned at once +the following reply, which he kindly forwards to me for publication:-- + + "ENNIS, _6th September_ 1888. + + "REV. SIR,--I am in receipt of your letter of yesterday, and in + reply thereto beg to state that I informed Mr. Hurlbert that you + said 'in open court' that you had directed (I believe from the + altar) that the town was to be 'made as a city of the dead' during + the trials of 23 publicans who were charged for conspiracy in + boycotting the forces of the Crown who had been employed in + preserving the peace on the occasion of a former trial--this you + said you did in the interests of peace. The magistrates, however, + took a different view, viz., that it was done with the object of + preventing the military and police from obtaining any supplies, + which they were unable to do; and that their view was the correct + one was proved by the fact that half of the accused pleaded guilty + to the offence, and on promise of future good behaviour were allowed + out on their own recognisances. That the people followed your + instructions on that day, coupled with the fact that in your letter + to the _Freeman's Journal_, dated 17th March of this year, you + stated that you offered me peace all round on certain conditions, + thereby showing that at least you consider yourself possessed of + authority to bring about a state of peace or otherwise, probably led + Mr. Hurlbert, to whom I showed a copy of this letter, to infer that + you admitted that you were the moving spirit of all this 'local + boycott,' while you only did so in the particular case above + mentioned. Whether Mr. Hurlbert is correct in drawing the inference + he does as to your being the moving spirit, and as to your conduct, + may perhaps be gathered from the numerous numbers of _United + Ireland_ and other papers which he saw giving reports of illegal + meetings of the suppressed branch of the Miltown-Malbay National + League, at which you were stated to have presided, and at some of + which condemnatory resolutions were passed, and also from the fact + that you are reported to have presided at a meeting on Sunday, April + 8, which was held at Miltown-Malbay in defiance of Government + proclamation.--I am, dear Sir, yours faithfully, + + ALFRED E. TURNER. + + "Rev. P. White, P.P., Miltown-Malbay." + +On further investigation of his records, Colonel Turner found it +necessary to follow up this letter with another, a copy of which, +through his courtesy, I subjoin:-- + + "ENNIS, _10th September_ 1888. + + "REV. SIR,--A slight inaccuracy has been pointed out to me in my + letter to you of the 6th inst., which I hasten to correct. It + occurred in transcribing my letter from the original draft. I should + have said that I told Mr. Hurlbert that you stated in open court, at + the trial of 23 publicans charged with boycotting the forces of the + Crown on the occasion of a former trial, that you had told the + people (I believe from the altar) that the town was to be made as a + city of the dead during the former trial; and that in consequence + the soldiers and police could get nothing to eat or drink in Miltown + that day. + + "I also told him that this boycotting of the police was by no means + new, since on the 13th March 1887, at a meeting of the + Miltown-Malbay branch of the League at which you are reported to + have presided, in _United Ireland_ of 19/3/87, the following + resolution was unanimously adopted:-- + + "'That from this day any person who supplies the police while + engaged in work which is opposed to the wishes of the people with + drink, food, or cars, be censured by this branch, and that no + further intercourse be held with them.' + + "I regret that through inadvertence I have had to trouble you with a + second letter.--I am, Rev. Sir, yours faithfully, + + "ALFRED E. TURNER. + + "Rev. P. White, P.P." + + + + +[1] Vol. ii. p. 376. + +[2] Vol. ii. p. 364-370. + +[3] The exasperation of the local agitators under the cool and +determined treatment of Mr. Tener may be measured by the facts stated in +the following communication received by me from Mr. Tener on the 20th of +September. I leave them to speak for themselves:-- + + + "POLICE BARRACKS, WOODFORD, _17th Sept._ 1888. + + "DEAR MR. HURLBERT,--I enclose you _a printed_ placard found posted + up in Woodford district on Sunday morning the 9th inst. It alludes + to _tenants_ who had paid me their rent,--and broken the 'unwritten + law of the League.' All the men named are now in great danger. The + police force of the district has been increased--for their + protection; but the police are very anxious about their safety! + + "I send you also a _pencil_ copy taken from a more _perfect_ placard + which the police preserve. John White or Whyte is the tenant whose + name I already have given you. He is the tall dark man whom you saw + (with an ex-bailiff) at Portumna. He was then an "Evicted Tenant." + He has since been, on payment of his rent, restored to his farm by + me. And now, as you see in the placard, he is held up to the + vengeance of the "League of Hell," as P.J. Smyth called it.--Yours, + etc. + + "ED. TENER. + + "_P.S._--The evictions were finished on the 1st of September, and on + the 9th (_after_ it became known that the men whose names are in the + placard had paid) the placard was issued." + + + _(Placard.)_ + + "IRISHMEN!--Need we say in the face of the desperate Battle the + People are making for their Hearths and Homes that the time has come + for every HONEST MAN, trader and otherwise, to extend a helping hand + to the MEN in the GAP. You may ask, How will that be done? The + answer is plain. + + "Let those who have become traitors to their neighbours and their + Country be shunned as if they were possessed by a devil. Let no man + buy from them or sell to them, let no man work for them. Leave them + to Tener and his Emergency gang. The following are a few of the + greatest traitors and meanest creatures that ever walked--John + Whyte, of Dooras; Fahey (of the hill) of Dooras; big Anthony + Hackett, of Rossmore; Tom Moran, of Rossmore! Your Country calls on + you to treat them as they deserve. Bravo Woodford! Remember Tom + Larkin!--'GOD SAVE IRELAND!'" + + +[4] Appendix, Note A. + +[5] Appendix, Note B. + +[6] Appendix, Note C. + +[7] Appendix, Note D. + +[8] Since this was written fifteen Catholic bishops in England, +headed by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, have united (April 12, +1888) in a public protest against the Optional Oaths Bill, in which they +say: "To efface the recognition of God in our public legislature is an +act which will surely bring evil consequences." Yet how can the +recognition of God be more effectually "effaced" than by the unqualified +assertion that the will of the people, or of a majority, is the one +legitimate source of political authority? + +[9] Mr. Blair was then a member of the Lincoln Cabinet, and its +"fighting member." + +[10] Mr. Quill stated that the Savings-Banks deposits increased +in Ireland during 1887 eight per cent. more than in thrifty Scotland, +and _forty per cent._ more than in England and Wales! + +[11] This was the Provost's last appearance in public. He died +rather suddenly a few weeks afterwards. + +[12] In the Census of 1880 it appears that of 255,741 farms in +Illinois, 59,624 were held on the metayer system, pronounced by Toubeau +the worst of systems, and 20,620 on a money rental. + +[13] I have since learned that Father M'Fadden sold another +holding, rental 6s. 8d., for L80. He has three more holdings from +Captain Hill, at 15s., 6s. 8d., and 11s. 2d., for which he was in +arrears for two years in April 1887, when ejectment decrees were +obtained against him. For his house holding he pays 2s. a year! So he +was really fighting his own battle as a tenant in the Plan of Campaign. + +[14] Yet of Connemara, Cardinal Manning, in his letter to the +Archbishop of Armagh, August 31, 1873, cites the "trust-worthy" evidence +of "an Englishman who had raised himself from the plough's tail," and +who had gone "to see with his own eyes the material condition of the +peasantry in Ireland." It was to the effect that in abundance and +quality of food, in rate of wages, and even if the comfort of their +dwellings, the working men of Connemara were better off than the +agricultural labourers of certain English counties. + +[15] For this holding, of 10 Irish acres, I have since learned +the widow O'Donnell pays 10s. a year. She is in the receipt of outdoor +relief, there being fever in the house (May 1888). + +[16] This "townland" is a curious use of a Saxon term to +describe a Celtic fact. The territory of an Irish sept seems to have +been divided up into "townlands," each townland consisting of four, or +in some cases six, groups of holdings, occupied by as many families of +the "sept." The chief of the "sept" divided up each "townland" +periodically among these groups, while the common fields were cut up +among the families as they increased and multiplied according to the +system--against which Lord George Hill battled at Gweedore--known as +"rimdale" or "rundeal," from the Celtic, "ruindioll," a "partition" or +"man's share." This is quite unlike the Russian "mir" or collective +village, and not more like the South Slav "zadruga" which makes each +family a community, the land belonging to all, as, according to M. +Eugene Simon, it does in China. But it is as inconsistent with Henry +George's State ownership of the land or the rents as either of those +systems. + +[17] From a question just asked (July 12) in the House of +Commons, and answered by the Postmaster-General, I gather that this +"local question" has been further complicated by the removal of Mr. +Sweeney, the sub-postmaster, under an official regulation. + +[18] The incident occurred in Clare. See p. 45. + +[19] Or they may date back to the Parliament of Grattan, who +wrote to Mr. Guinness that he regarded the brewery of Ireland as "the +actual nurse of the people, and entitled to every encouragement, favour, +and exemption." + +[20] This refers, I am told, to the murder, in open daylight, +in 1881, of an old man, Linnane, who acted as a "caretaker" for Mrs. +Moroney. It should gratify Father White to know that, as I am now +informed (May 21, 1888), a clue has just been found to the assassins, +who appear to have received the same price for doing their work that was +paid the murderers of Fitzmaurice. + +[21] Mrs. Moroney, so often referred to here, is the widow of a +gentleman formerly High Sheriff and Deputy-Lieutenant for the County +Clare, who died in 1870. She lives at Milton House, and has fought the +local League steadily and successfully. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) 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